We reproduce here an article by Paul Boino who deciphers the ideas of Murray Bookchin and analyzes them in the light of libertarian communist ideas. An article published in 2001 on the website https://libertaire.pagesperso-orange.fr (the link is no longer available) then on June 15, 2020 on the website www.education-populaire.fr
Murray Bookchin: Libertarian Communalism and Libertarian Municipalism
Libertarian municipalism is a controversial subject…
A dangerous reformist deviation for some, a relevant and necessary reformulation of anti-authoritarian praxis for others, the proposal formulated more than twenty years ago by Murray Bookchin has provoked and continues to provoke extremely contrasting reactions within the libertarian movement. Radical positions, delivered with sweeping peremptory arguments, designed less to convince or debate than to denigrate or exalt, to glorify or wither, have succeeded one another and still stir up the anarchist rabble from time to time.
Watching the supporters and opponents of municipalism clash in this way, a naive person might believe that this is a matter of the utmost importance.
Faced with such virulence, how can we not think that we have here a break or at least a proposal for a fundamental break with everything that could have been thought of and implemented before in and by the libertarian movement?
How can we not suppose that we are facing a central question around which the very future of anarchism is being decided and shaped?
However, if our candid friend were to look at the history and reality of the libertarian movement, he would undoubtedly be very surprised because, in many respects, the municipalist idea is simply an extension of very ancient concepts and practices, ideas and behaviors that are, moreover, still very strongly rooted in this school of thought.
The roots of municipalism
If we define municipalism as getting involved in one’s neighborhood or community, we can rightly ask how this constitutes a break with what the libertarian movement is or has been. Have anarchists never participated in or even initiated movements against landlords or local authorities? Have they never promoted agricultural collectives, free communes or, more modestly and even more frequently, distribution cooperatives, self-managed public services and neighborhood committees? The Athénées in Spain, the Bourses du Travail in France, the agrarian communities in South America, the rent strikes in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century or, to cite more recent examples, the Social Centers in Italy, parent-run daycare centers, parents’ associations, education and teaching, squats or even the fight for free public transport and against the privatization of public services… have libertarians never been involved or are they no longer involved in these areas? The answer is obvious. To be convinced of this, one only has to open any newspaper of the libertarian press.
If we now specify municipalism not as a strategy for action but as a social project or at least as an important aspect of this project, our candidness could once again be perplexed. Indeed, what does Murray Bookchin propose if not that the libertarian society be managed by the communes and by their federation without delegation of power? On this very point, he writes that the political lines and decisions concerning agriculture and industrial production would be the responsibility of assemblies (…) which one would attend as a citizen, not only as a worker, peasant or specialist (1).
This concept may undoubtedly offend certain French revolutionary syndicalists (2) for whom the future society should be governed solely by the unions and through them by the producers as producers. But for a large part of the libertarian movement, if not the majority, how is the Bookchinian suggestion heresy? Does it not refer us at least partially (3) to the dual federalism advocated since the origins of the libertarian movement? Is this dual federalism, both territorial (federation of communes) and sectoral (federation of producers), not the cornerstone of libertarian communism? And finally, is libertarian communism not the goal shared by both libertarian communists proper and anarcho-syndicalists (4) and even many individualists?
In fact, in the light of the past and current practices and conceptions of the libertarian movement, our innocent would undoubtedly be led to think that we have a lot of sound and fury about nothing. Presented in this way, municipalism does not seem to be in any fundamental break with the pre-existing libertarian ideological corpus. Nor does it seem to induce radically new practices in this movement.
If by chance our candid friend had a curious mind, and he probably does to some extent, he would nevertheless doubt that one could confront each other with such vigor for no real reason.
Of course, this may be partly due to people who live only for and through controversy. Of course, these controversies may also reflect and result from somewhat exclusive ways of thinking and behaving; some people, often the same ones as before, sometimes having some difficulty in conceiving that anyone can think differently from them. From their somewhat narrow perspective, getting involved in a neighborhood committee or a union can only be a dead end, even a betrayal that should be fought with the utmost energy.
But unless we strongly believe that libertarians are madmen of Byzantine quarrels and/or congenital sectarians, our candid friend certainly could not leave it at that. Before expressing such a peremptory opinion, he would seek to deepen his understanding of the issues… and would discover that the debate is about much more than whether or not to get involved in one’s neighborhood or the role of municipalities in a libertarian society. In reality, it is much more certain analyses (the end of industrial society) that Murray Bookchin develops to support the validity of his thesis, as well as certain methods of action (participation in local elections) that he advocates as part of a municipalist strategy, that raise questions and are subject to debate.
Bookchinian electoralism
In the context of municipalism, Murray Bookchin envisages that libertarians can participate in local elections, be elected and hold positions of political responsibility such as mayor or municipal councillor.
In his view, however, this participation is not a preamble to municipalist action, but on the contrary a possible, conceivable (and not inevitable) consequence of this action.
Thus he does not write in any way that libertarians must stand for election, in order to promote direct management in their municipality once elected. Murray Bookchin does not imply that society can be reformed by decree or that self-management can be imposed from above in the absence of a self-management movement with strong roots in society. On the contrary, he writes that libertarians must encourage, promote and participate in the development of a self-managing territorial movement in their cities, neighborhoods and villages. He goes on to consider that this development will necessarily involve the structuring of this movement into neighbourhood committees and a federation of local committees. He concludes by stressing that the question of the relationship between neighbourhood committees and the legal municipality will increasingly arise as tensions become more acute over who, between the two, decides, directs and manages the municipality.
It is from this perspective that Murray Bookchin envisages the conquest of municipal power by neighborhood committees (and not libertarians as such). In his view, this could break the deadlock and even lead to the definitive triumph of self-management, since the neighborhood committees would thus have every opportunity, once elected, to legally and completely transfer the municipality’s decision-making and action powers to the territorial associations.
Bookchinian electoralism is therefore defined in these terms. It can be debated and obviously will be in the following lines. But this clarification already allows us to see how far some people who very loudly claim to be Bookchinists may actually be from him.
When people who are officially Bookchin supporters consider standing in the next municipal elections (as is the case of Mimmo of ACL publishers in Lyon) in the absence of a self-management movement of any significance, without being mandated in any way by the embryonic movements of this type present in the neighborhood where they are standing, or even contrary to what these structures may think or envisage (5), and finally without having first sought and succeeded, not in stirring up talk in the salons where people talk, but in initiating and participating in concrete attempts to create committees in the same neighborhood, one may wonder how this relates to what Murray Bookchin advocates.
Is the reference to the latter here nothing more than a veneer intended to mask the vacuity of personal ambitions, the bottomless pit of their thirst not for power, we are not even there, but more petty for public and media recognition?
Admittedly, the question posed in these terms may seem like a brutal attack… but if the charge is harsh, yet euphemized as much as possible, is it not because it hits home somewhere?
A utopian tactic
While standing for election in such conditions may at the very least be perplexing, and while this strategy is indeed not the one recommended by Bookchin, what he proposes very specifically can nevertheless be subject to criticism.
One could obviously argue by referring to the texts bequeathed to us by our august founding fathers. With a big bang of Kropotkin, Malatesta, or Sébastien Faure, show that this strategy is excluded from the tables of the law and therefore does not even have to be discussed. However, let us leave these questions of quasi-theological orthodoxy to others who are very gifted in this field.
One could also, which is not the same thing, discuss Bookchin’s proposal from an ideological and strategic point of view. One would then emphasize that it opens ipso facto a hiatus between saying and doing, between the theoretical position for direct action and the concrete attitude that participates in and reproduces the delegation of power. This could indeed be dangerous because it is difficult to resolve later, as the lessons of history seem to attest. But let us give credit to Murray Bookchin by conceding that participation in elections would only serve here to immediately and radically dissolve the power won.
It is from a much more pragmatic, much more down-to-earth point of view that I would like to discuss Murray Bookchin’s proposal here, a discussion that can also be fully understood by people who do not share libertarian ideals.
At a time when electoral political parties on the left and the right, where local and national elected representatives, whatever their political persuasion, agree on at least one point, namely that local elected representatives do not have the legal, political or financial means to solve the problems they face, one may wonder how and why things would be different if these elected representatives came from neighborhood committees or if these powers were held by neighborhood committees.
By declaring that participation in elections to win municipal power is undoubtedly necessary, even if it means destroying it afterwards, Murray Bookchin in fact identifies these powers as a central issue for solving not all the problems, but some of them that he considers particularly crucial today. In his view, the control of these powers would also represent an important, if not decisive, step towards a self-managing system. However, does not approaching things in these terms considerably exaggerate the nature, scope and autonomy of the powers currently held by municipal councils and therefore the effects that one is entitled to expect if the neighborhood committees were to control them?
Municipal councils are not independent, neither in France nor elsewhere.
Their actions and their capacity for action are strictly limited to what is granted to them by law and decrees, in this case the legislative and executive powers of the State (and even continental powers in our countries, given the growing power of the European Union).
Similarly, the freedom of municipalities is closely dependent on economic realities and in this case on those induced by capitalism.
Thus the financial capacity of the municipalities (which gives them the possibility of implementing their policy) depends on the subsidies paid by the State (global operating grants [DGF] and subsidies granted within the framework of contractual policies) and secondarily on the local taxation partly paid by the companies (the business tax), and partly by the inhabitants (the property taxes). Inevitably, if a municipality decides to develop a policy other than that desired by the State, the money from the contractualized subsidies evaporates, leaving it with just enough DGF to finance the bare minimum. Inevitably, if a municipality ventures to develop an anti-capitalist policy or simply tries to curb certain aspects of it (the protection of the natural environment, for example), it is the companies that relocate and the business tax revenues that collapse, forcing the municipality to tax its inhabitants all the more if it wants to balance its budget.
Similarly, the political capacity of municipalities depends on the powers granted to them by the State (particularly in the context of decentralization laws in France). These powers authorize it to intervene in certain areas only (town planning, schools, etc.) and not in all areas. Thus, it cannot intervene in the content of school curricula (a prerogative of the State), nor challenge the market economy, nor even modify the definition of the scope of public services. For example, it is forbidden to set up a municipal bakery that sells bread at no profit.
Not only does a municipality have a very clearly defined scope of intervention, but it is also rarely the only decision-maker in areas where it does have legal competence. It does indeed have theoretical control over its development, but in practice, the State can also intervene in this area and even impose its will against that of the municipality (via territorial development directives in particular). Other local authorities of a higher rank (department and region) or of the same rank (neighboring municipalities, for example) also limit the decision-making autonomy of a municipality because, necessarily, certain areas such as urban planning or public transportation, another example, cannot be dealt with within the narrow and largely obsolete framework of a municipality. This necessary collaboration, which takes the form of inter-municipal structures or contractual arrangements between authorities of different ranks, clearly shows everyone that a municipality cannot decide its policy alone, that it must negotiate with other bodies.
This very real situation then brings us back to the question of the alliances and compromises that a municipality (whether or not it is Bookchinian) must necessarily make and concede with the State, the Region, the department, and with other municipalities too… whether these bodies are held by the right or by the left. Let us then be told in advance and clearly what the policy of alliance and compromise of municipalist elected representatives or Bookchinist neighborhood committees should be!
Contrary to what Murray Bookchin supposes, the control of the powers currently held by municipal councils does not in any way mean (and whoever holds them, elected representatives or neighborhood committees) that we can do whatever we want, nor that it is a leap, if not decisive, at least important, towards a self-managing society. Instead of a break with the past, what such a strategy suggests is that we are much more likely to find ourselves mired in the mysteries of the political system as it is today, with its petty political alliances and grand compromises.
Bookchinian electoralism thus has a hard time convincing people, and with good reason, as to its ability to change the organization of the current political system towards more direct democracy. Moreover, it also seems difficult to solve or simply improve the problems that Murray Bookchin nevertheless considers central today: environmental protection, gender equality and North-South relations, to name but a few; all problems that go far beyond the scope of action of municipalities, both in terms of their causes and their effects.
One may therefore wonder about the point of mastering these powers or wasting time and energy trying to master them when the only perspective that this opens up is to allow us to co-manage, with the State and other public authorities, certain very limited aspects of our daily lives, without touching anything essential and, what is more, getting us bogged down in the intoxicating pleasure of political compromises.
The meaning of social change
The municipalism developed by Murray Bookchin is not, however (and fortunately), limited to advocating participation in elections under certain conditions. He also develops an often penetrating and highly intelligent analysis of the social changes of the last thirty years.
It is this analysis that forms the basis and legitimizes his proposal for intervention and organization at the territorial level and that allows us to better understand how he sees things.
For Bookchin, the socio-economic changes that have taken place since the early 1970s signal the end of industrial society and the class structure associated with it.
To put it simply, technological changes would lead to a reduction in the need for direct intervention in the production process. Intellectual work would tend to replace manual labor and this transformation of production processes, their technologization, their automation, would not be without consequences on the structuring of society. It would lead on the one hand to the decline of the working class and on the other hand to the swelling of the ranks of employees and technicians.
We would also see a trend towards the disappearance of the traditional bourgeoisie (rentiers and bosses) and the increasing salaried status of company management. And these two phenomena, one affecting the working class and the other the bourgeoisie, would ultimately generate an overall growth of the tertiary sector, a relative homogenization of working conditions (all employees, all intellectual workers), a disappearance of the pre-existing social classes and their fusion into a vast middle class.
In addition to a fundamental transformation of the socio-economic structure, technological changes would also lead to a reduction in working hours with an increasing delay in the age of entry into working life (longer studies), a significant drop in the retirement age, a lengthening of the annual vacation period and a reduction in weekly working hours. This overall reduction in working hours would inevitably lead to the relative disappearance of work and the relationship to work in everyone’s life, hence the crisis in trade unionism and the rise of new social issues such as consumption, the environment, etc.
Finally, we are witnessing a third phenomenon, this time affecting lifestyles. The growth of urbanization is leading to a relative homogenization of living conditions, with home ownership on the outskirts of urban areas becoming the standard.
All in all, would we be witnessing on the economic and sociological levels a real process of social homogenization (which does not mean the end of all inequalities) leading to the absorption of the pre-existing structuring of society into classes and their fusion into an immense middle class: all intellectual workers, all urban homeowners, all consumers benefiting from the system.
It must be said, first and foremost, that Murray Bookchin is not alone in this way of thinking. He is part of a whole social science trend that believes that current developments mark the advent of a post-industrial, post-modern or even informational society, in any case and whatever the term, a relatively homogeneous society, dominated by services and white-collar workers, by areas of diffuse urbanization and detached houses as far as the eye can see. In this understanding of things, the relations of production would no longer be the central determinant around which society is organized and structured. Inequalities would obviously remain, but would no longer refer to questions of antagonistic social classes, whose existence would be consubstantial with the old industrial society.
Not only do renowned scientists seem to validate Murray Bookchin’s thesis, but the figures, the sacrosanct statistics, also seem to agree with him.
Thus, in France alone, the share of the industrial sector in total employment fell from 40% during the post-war boom to less than a quarter in 1990, and the share of the tertiary sector is now almost 75%. In parallel with this expansion of services and therefore of employees, we have also witnessed an unprecedented boom in urbanization, which today affects 96% of the French population, a very significant increase in the motorization of households, home ownership, etc. All phenomena that could indeed attest to a certain trend towards the homogenization of lifestyles.
Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the libertarian movement can already understand how and to what extent the Bookchinian analysis is disturbing.
It calls into question the very foundations of this movement, or at least a large part of it: industry and the workers, the social classes and their confrontation around the relations of production. It announces to a current stemming from the First International that everything that gave it birth and meaning is suddenly outdated.
At the same time, it warned of its imminent death due to the loss of meaning and relevance in relation to current social realities… or at least signaled that as a movement for class emancipation, anarchism could only be an archaism devoid of any foundation, if not to perpetuate the nostalgic memory of what once was and is no more.
The only chance of survival for the libertarian movement as a social movement in any way in tune with today’s world would then be to abandon its old pipe dreams and take note of the developments that have been observed.
This is the point made by Murray Bookchin who, when he finishes his demonstration, concludes on the vital necessity of municipalism, but a municipalism adapted to this new social situation and not based on any kind of class relationship as it may have existed in the past. His ambition is not to bring together one given class against another, and for good reason, but to unite individuals residing in close proximity to one another, bringing them together on the basis of their neighborhood to encourage them to take charge of their daily lives and their immediate environment, as well as inviting them to question the inequalities that structure today’s world, such as the relationship between the sexes, between the north and south of the planet, or even with nature, to once again cite the examples he himself cites.
Common sense and critical thinking
The simple observation of what surrounds us, particularly when we live in a city, at the heart of this machine that homogenizes society if we are to believe Bookchin, can, it is true, make us doubt the validity of his analyses.
The suburbs of Lyon, to take the closest example, like the poor neighborhoods of New York or Los Angeles, would tend rather to suggest to us that inequalities are still as glaring as ever in modern metropolises… unless we manage the feat of confusing working-class neighborhoods with residential suburbs.
Similarly, the examples that everyone can find in their circle of acquaintances would also seem to indicate that inequalities are perpetuated from generation to generation and therefore that, while the working class is no longer what it was, this in no way implies that it no longer exists, and even less that the proletariat (those who have only their labor to live on) has disappeared. Certainly the son of a worker will not necessarily, or even mainly, become a worker. Some will escape their inherited condition through the top, as usual… but most will become unemployed, intermittent or precarious workers, depending on the case, and certainly in the tertiary sector. And anyone who is even slightly familiar with the reality of office and service work may find themselves doubting that tertiarization is necessarily a vector for the standardization of employment. Differences in status and working conditions still exist and are still reproduced between the anonymous administrative agent or the run-of-the-mill secretary and the world of managers and executives, as in the past between workers, foremen and bosses.
In short, our common sense (that damned common sense) seems to tell us that while developments have obviously taken place in recent decades, and while in some respects they resemble what Bookchin tells us about, this does not seem to mean that social inequalities have disappeared or that they are on the way to being resolved, or even that they are now totally or relatively unrelated to economic issues and to our position in the production system. In the light of our personal and sensitive experience of everyday life, one would rather have the impression that they are perpetuated behind the high walls of offices, as in the past in the shadow of blast furnaces. One would rather have the feeling that they continue to structure our lives and our cities, within which, moreover, relatively differentiated social groups are distributed and compose real socio-spatial classes today as in the past.
Deindustrialization or Technologization
Are these impressions that our common sense gives us unfounded? Probably not that much, judging by what we see from the research carried out in the social sciences in recent years.
It is certainly true to say that Murray Bookchin’s analyses are not purely intellectual speculations devoid of any foundation. But it is also true to remember that his analyses and the research on which he relies are now more than twenty years old… which is undoubtedly appreciable for whisky, but somewhat insufficient for gauging the situation and current social evolution.
In the 1970s, the period in which Bookchin developed his thinking and his conception of municipalism, the Fordist-Keynesian-Taylorist system that had structured the previous decades was collapsing without a clear understanding of what would emerge from this great upheaval. But since then, time has passed, things have become a little clearer, everyone has had the opportunity to see that the world that was emerging was far from paradise… and new research has clearly shown that these were not just subjective impressions.
First of all, with regard to the statistics, which apparently seem to support Bookchin’s analysis, many social science researchers have now emphasized that they are in no way a guarantee of truth, that they are in no way pure and perfect reflections of society or even of its economy. They are merely social constructs, the result of choices that are arbitrary in nature (which does not mean unfounded), choices that are strongly influenced by technical… but also political reasons. In fact, we should avoid taking at face value the evidence highlighted by the major categories of statistical institutes and, in this case, those highlighted by their employment grid in primary (agriculture), secondary (industry) and tertiary (services).
Firstly, these statistics only concern the old industrialized countries (Europe, North America, Japan). For the rest, and in particular for the newly industrialized countries, we are very far from witnessing deindustrialization; quite the contrary. And globally (due to world demographics), the number of workers in the strict sense (people employed in manual labor in industrial companies) is in fact constantly increasing on the planet, both in absolute and relative terms.
Secondly, and as far as industrialized countries alone are concerned, the evolution of the relative weight of each of the major employment categories seems to show a process of deindustrialization and, conversely, tertiarization. But is this really the case? Could this feeling not simply stem from the labels given to these categories?
In fact, other types of job categorization (such as that carried out by the Strates team, for example), other types of statistics, tell us about a process of technologization of industrial employment and not of deindustrialization. This change of label is not just formal. It has a real heuristic value, because it invites us to think differently about the changes underway. Because, obviously, this process of technologization of production is not new in itself. It began with the invention of the spade and the screwdriver, the sickle and the hammer (if I may be permitted this little aside) and continues today with the rise of increasingly sophisticated, increasingly automated and computerized tools. This initial observation, trivial as it may seem at first glance, is in fact not without consequence for the subsequent analysis of events.
New metamorphosis of the proletariat
In fact, this perspective inevitably invites us not to deny the social changes taking place, but to put them into perspective by placing them in a broader historical perspective.
It reminds us that this is not the first time that a major technological leap has taken place, that it has always led to significant social change and that socio-economic issues have not disappeared as a result, and that the class structure of society has not been fundamentally affected, even if the content and the respective position of the different classes may have changed over time.
Didn’t the first industrial revolution lead to the decline of the artisan worker and the rise of the industrial worker? Didn’t the second industrial revolution replace the old trade worker with the specialized worker, of whom the unionized steelworker, employed for life or almost so in a large Fordist factory, is the archetype, which we all remember? All in all, aren’t the changes taking place part of this centuries-old history?
When some, including Bookchin, speak of the decline, if not the disappearance, of the working class, is this not in fact one of those historically dated and geographically localized formulations that is in reality tending to fade away to give birth to a new form of proletariat whose organization, structuring and contours are still difficult to define?
Between the hypothesis of a social fusion into a single, immense middle class and that of a reformulation of the division of society into classes, everyone can obviously choose as they see fit, but there are nevertheless facts that tend to show that the second hypothesis is undoubtedly much more well-founded than the first.
For the hypothesis of social homogenization to be well-founded, social inequalities would have to be no longer linked to the original social position of individuals or that of their parents, but instead only refer to questions of individual trajectories that are more or less successful. On the other hand, what differentiates and conversely unites individuals should no longer have anything to do with questions of collective positions in the social hierarchy, but with individual choices and their equally individual capacity to assume these choices. Finally, socio-economic gaps should tend overall, if not to disappear, at least to fade.
In other words, three types of indicators can help us better determine which of these hypotheses is valid and which is not: the reproduction or non-reproduction of social classes, the differentiation between social classes and homogeneity within social classes, and finally the homogenization or polarization of society.
On the reproduction of social inequalities from one generation to the next, a reproduction that partly underpins the notion of social class, a great deal of research has already been able to enlighten us precisely as to the future of the children of workers. The latter do indeed tend to become, in turn, not all workers but rather employees in services or shops. There is therefore a significant change in employment conditions and employment systems, which are in fact much more precarious than in the past. But if we look at the relative position occupied by working-class parents and their employed children in the social hierarchy, we see that it is not significantly different. Both remain in a position of subordination, without any control over the means of production and exchange (other than striking, of course), with no other means of support than renting out their labor, whether manual or intellectual. From these initial elements, it is clear that the working class of yesteryear may be in decline in our countries, but that the proletariat is far from disappearing. This proletariat, which includes workers in the strict sense of the word, reproduces itself generation after generation, even if transformations in production processes (technologization) and employment systems (precariousness) modify its materiality, living conditions and socio-spatial organization.
As for the differentiation between social groups, it is certainly no longer the time of the smock for the workers and the ruff for the notables. However, the distinction between social groups and imitation within social groups continue to operate, in a more subtle way, but just as effectively as before. To take just one example, the brands ostentatiously displayed on the clothes of suburban lads, whatever their cultural origin, cannot and obviously are not confused by anyone with the clothes of young bourgeois, whose quality of cut alone is enough to mark their social position. These elements of distinction are expressed in fact as much in clothes as in food, whatever one may believe, cultural habits (cinema, theater, books, music), or even more subtly through gestural codes, language, accent, humor too… Along with income and employment, they mark at the deepest level of our daily lives what we participate in and what we do not, what we are and what we are not.
Finally, on the question of the trend towards even relative homogenization of living conditions and lifestyles, other research has shown that neither tertiarization nor urbanization means that we are in such a dynamic. Quite the contrary. What has been called the economic crisis since the early 1970s (and which is clearly not a crisis for everyone) has led to a worsening of social inequalities both between rich and poor countries, and within rich and poor countries. As the refrain of statistics on income and living conditions reminds us, over the last thirty years, the most privileged classes have continued to widen the gap between themselves and the most disadvantaged classes.
All in all, the social question, that of the relationship between social classes, remains at the heart of our societies… and more than amply determines other areas such as the environment in particular. How can we envisage solving current environmental problems, for example, without calling into question the race for profit, which leads certain oil and gas companies to charter floating wrecks that regularly come to spew their fuel oil on the beaches of Brittany, and even then, are we talking about it and taking action?
For communalism
Analysis of the municipalism advocated by Bookchin ultimately leads us to reject two of its main elements: electoralism and interclassism.
However, should everything he says and everything that has enabled us to develop this analysis lead us to conclude that the very idea of territorial action is absurd? Certainly not!
Contrary to what Murray Bookchin writes, the class structure of society remains extremely significant and socio-economic issues are central, even decisive in relation to other problems, particularly with regard to ecology. Wanting to achieve political and social equality while ignoring the question of economic equality is obviously nonsensical, as these different terms are so closely linked. However, things are no longer seen in the same terms as in the past, and we cannot therefore continue to invoke the same solutions to deal with them.
The relationship to work has changed in recent decades, which does not mean that economic issues have faded. Job insecurity has also significantly transformed our working and living conditions and, more generally, called into question a certain form of stability in social relations. And this twofold evolution has had an impact on the possibilities of structuring the proletariat as well as on the issues that particularly challenge it today.
Vertical (company) unions, the traditional structure for organizing employees, are finding it difficult to adapt to the new social realities and in particular to job instability. It is obviously no coincidence that the majority of union members are civil servants or employees of nationalized companies. This decline of vertical unionism is, let’s be clear about it, nothing to be celebrated in itself, because at the same time the prospects for new forms of proletarian structuring are, for the time being, very difficult to discern. It must also be put into perspective. Because, as things stand, there is no guarantee that we are heading towards a total disappearance of this form of organization in the more or less long term. Because we must also be careful not to underestimate the weight and the interest of this form of structure which, on the one hand, always represents a significant and, what is more, organized workforce, and on the other hand, can indeed be extremely effective in confronting employers.
That being said, vertical or company unionism is nevertheless in crisis, something of which the management of the major unions is perfectly aware. And there are good reasons to doubt that, in the future, these types of union will succeed in becoming the central structures they were in the past, even if it is clear that they will retain significant weight and role. In part, it seems obvious that this loss of influence is closely linked to the fact that it is increasingly difficult to organize in the workplace. From now on, the neighborhood could effectively become a new place of organization, somewhat like the labor exchanges a century ago. This idea is all the more well-founded as social classes tend to group together in the same neighborhoods and, as a result, neighborhood committees could effectively be relatively effective elements of social organization.
But is trade unionism only in crisis because of a poor spatial match with the new realities? This can be doubted in view of the new types of social conflicts that are developing today and which tend to show that some of what is at stake in society today is no longer necessarily linked to the company itself and resolvable from a categorical perspective, as all the trade unions do on a daily basis.
The precariousness of a growing part of the population has transformed many public services into the last safety net, without which and without whom it is no longer possible to live decently. And public transport, the cause of most of the suburban riots, and the ever-increasing price of water, and the school canteens from which all children whose parents can no longer pay are excluded, and these nuisances (highway, landfill, wastewater treatment plant, etc.) that pollute our existence and that are systematically placed on the side of the poor suburbs… All these subjects have become central today, even if they are not the only ones to crystallize social discontent, even if the social movement is not most effective around them.
But the fact remains that this new type of issue, that of public services, is now being forcefully raised, that it is being raised at the territorial level and that it cannot be resolved in a categorical or sectoral approach. They can only be addressed from a global perspective, which does not necessarily mean a radical one, as shown by a number of neighborhood committees with an environmental focus. These issues do, however, highlight the causal links that exist between, for example, the degradation of the environment, the capitalist system in which only profit and therefore minimizing costs matter, and finally the political system in which the lives of certain inhabitants are shamelessly sacrificed for an electoral campaign financed under the table. From this perspective, and regardless of the radical nature of the analysis, the traditional approach of the trade union confederations seems relatively ineffective because it is difficult, if not impossible, in these areas to address an issue without considering the causes and consequences, as can be the case when requesting a pay rise. Anyone who has ever fought, for example, over issues relating to school meals knows very well that they will inevitably have to answer (and therefore think about) the following questions: what quality at what cost? can we accept the exclusion of children whose parents cannot pay for the canteen or not? what is the municipality’s reasoning? Why does it make its choices? Are they justified? How, for our part, would we like it to work? And so, how do we see the question of access, price and quality of food?
In fact, while company struggles can be waged in the name of the immediate interests of workers and without prejudging what they think and want in essence, territorial struggles that have public services as their central issues are highly political and ideological, without which they could neither mobilize nor exist.
It is ultimately from this perspective that the communalist proposal is made. It is in this context that it must be heard.
- A communalism that differs from Bookchinian municipalism, even if there are similarities, even if analyses can be shared.
- A communism that clearly arises in the field of class struggle, which in no way intends to unite the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed, but only the latter against the former.
- A communism that takes its name from the Paris Commune, to be part of a history, that of the labor movement.
- A communalism that aims to develop both the challenge to the established order and the construction of a new world, urban struggles and concrete alternatives, particularly in terms of self-managed public services.
- A communalism based on territorial action, not to replace union action but to try to give new impetus to the social movement together with it.
- A communalism that rightly addresses not only the convinced, but the entire social movement, without sectarianism, but without hiding its ideas.
- A communalism, finally, that has the honesty to recognize that its action is eminently political because it cannot be otherwise and that in this respect its convictions are anarchist, its perspectives revolutionary and its goal libertarian communism.
Paul Boino
Anarchist Federation
(1) Bookchin, 1988, A Society for Rebuilding, ACL, p.178
(2) These “revolutionary” trade unionists generally refer here to the work of Pierre Besnard. However, it should be emphasized that the latter, even if he often contradicts himself in his works and even sometimes within his works, even if he is sometimes very vague on these issues, has never written that the future society must be managed solely by the trade unions. On the contrary, he writes that it must be co-managed by the unions and territorial assemblies. Subsequently, some people claiming to be followers of Besnard have indeed been able to transform his words by considering that these territorial assemblies could only be the Local, Departmental and Regional Unions of the unions, which then amounts to having society managed solely by the unions and by producers as producers. This perspective, which is again that of certain revolutionary trade unionists and not of P. Besnard himself, effectively excludes de facto all those who do not work (young, old, sick). It also amounts to wanting to make production decisions not according to expressed demand and in the context of sometimes fundamental societal choices (for example, electricity, but at what social and environmental cost, with or without nuclear power?), but according to what those who hold the means of production want or do not want.
(3) Only partially, because the question of producer federations is obviously missing.
(4) See Isaac Puente’s libertarian communism and the CNT motion at the Zaragoza congress in 1936.
(5) To stick with the case of the Croix-Rousse and the Mimmo candidacy, it is clear that the far-left and left-wing groups already have their candidate, just as the various environmentalist movements, as for the libertarian structures (Anarchist Federation, CNT, squats, etc.), it is an understatement to say that they are hostile to this candidacy.
Rebounds: