About Pierre Sauvêtre’s book Murray Bookchin ou l’objectif communocène (Murray Bookchin or the Communocene Objective) (Éditions de l’Atelier, 2024) and his participation in the program “De la Commune au communalisme, histoire d’un projet politique” (From the Commune to Communalism: History of a Political Project) on France Culture (April 17, 2025).
“The danger for radical thought is not so much being attacked from outside as being watered down from within.1” — M. Bookchin
I am delighted that my work on social ecology, communalism, and direct democracy continues to inspire new readings and proposals today. Pierre Sauvêtre’s book is evidence of a significant intellectual effort to articulate contemporary issues around a project of ecological and social emancipation. It is part of a stimulating critical tradition and offers useful tools for debate. However, on careful reading, some clarifications are necessary, as certain conceptual shifts seem to me to have serious consequences.
A partial and sometimes ambiguous reading of social ecology
Sauvêtre strives to outline the broad lines of social ecology, rightly emphasizing its demand for a political project of radical transformation. He sometimes succeeds in doing so, but what he proposes is not so much a restitution as a partial reconstruction, marked by certain concessions to state forms of political thought.
What strikes me in the France Culture program is the recurrent use of the term “federalism” to refer to what I have always called “confederalism.” This is not a detail: federalism evokes a structure in which the higher level subsumes or dominates the basic entities. Confederalism, on the other hand, which I defend in its libertarian version, is based on the autonomy of municipalities, linked together by binding, revocable mandates and direct democracy. The omission or blurring of this distinction suggests a vision in which forms of verticality, or even representative government, are surreptitiously reintroduced.
Here, we need to restore conceptual clarity: for me, federalism refers to horizontal cooperation between municipalities on a voluntary and ethical basis, rooted in direct democracy. At the local level, federation allows several municipalities to coordinate without losing their autonomy. Confederalism, on the other hand, refers to the supra-local level, where several federations or municipalities are linked by confederal councils made up of delegates with binding and revocable mandates. These two dimensions—federal and confederal—are complementary: they ensure unity without uniformity, interdependence without centralization. As I wrote in The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship:
“Confederation is the organizational structure that allows autonomous communities to coordinate their efforts while maintaining their political sovereignty. It allows for a union based on complementarity, cooperation, and solidarity, rather than subordination.”
It is therefore crucial not to confuse these concepts or conflate them with forms of statehood. Municipalist confederalism is based on a bottom-up dynamic: decisions are made by popular assemblies. Confederal structures have no power of their own. They are bodies of coordination and administration, not command. They guarantee the ethic of complementarity, i.e., the fact that each municipality finds in the others what it lacks to satisfy the material, social, cultural, and ecological needs of its population.
This is also why autonomy, in this perspective, never means autarky. Quite the contrary. A free municipality is not an isolated municipality, but an active cell of a larger organism: the confederation. Social ecology is based on this rational and moral interdependence. The local only makes sense when connected to other localities through a bond of solidarity, shared responsibility, and mutualization of resources. It is not a question of closing oneself off, but of opening up to a form of internationalism from below, rooted in local realities but concerned with the global common good.
The trap of republican vocabulary
When Sauvêtre introduces the notion of “republican confederal communalism” in chapter 7, he applies terms from a fundamentally different political universe to the communalist tradition. The word “republican,” especially in the French context, is historically linked to the nation-state, Jacobin centralization, and a conception of sovereignty as a monopoly of the state. Adding communalism to it weakens its anti-state edge and muddies the message.
Fundamentally, it is very difficult to realize how deeply rooted the hierarchical principle—what I have called the principle of domination—is in people’s minds, often unconsciously, even among those who consider themselves revolutionary. What I have always fought against as internalized authoritarianism permeates not only institutions but also psyches, even among the oppressed. The deeply elitist idea that the “people” are incapable of self-government without supervision is widespread. It is often considered that only certain people are worthy of participating fully in public life—often those who resemble us, who share our culture, our language, our references. This leads to a glaring contradiction: one can proclaim direct democracy while refusing to accept its consequences—that is, the full capacity of each individual, in a popular assembly, to deliberate, decide, and administer collective life.
Is it this fear of popular autonomy, this deep skepticism about the ability of peoples to organize themselves ethically, rationally, and egalitarianly, that pushes Pierre Sauvêtre toward this shift toward a so-called “republican” communalism? Is it a lack of confidence in the ability of free communes to self-regulate through confederation, that bottom-up, non-coercive structure that I have always opposed to forms of state sovereignty? This is the real political question raised by this book.
I have said it often: communalism needs no external epithets to exist. It is not a question of “municipalism” — a term too often used by reformists who simply wish to “humanize” municipal management — but rather communalism in the strong sense, as I now use it to avoid any ambiguity, the political project of social ecology: the very project that abolishes hierarchies, destroys classes, and eliminates capitalism and the state as permanent structures of domination.
An uncorrected and revealing confusion?
In this regard, I cannot ignore a revealing moment in a recent interview on France Culture. During a discussion with Killian Martin, the latter confused municipalism (stripped of any libertarian connotation) with communalisme, suggesting that the two were interchangeable. Pierre Sauvêtre, who was present, did not correct this fundamental confusion. This silence is troubling—perhaps the format of the program and its primary objective did not lend themselves to a substantive opposition of the concept—but the fact remains that for listeners, Martin thus contributes to smoothing over communalisme, making it palatable to opportunistic political parties or proponents of a watered-down form of citizenship that never questions the very structures of power and property. Communitarianism cannot be reduced to yet another variant of participatory democracy or a civic engineering project compatible with the state and capital.
A significant example of this confusing appropriation can be seen in the way the political party La France insoumise is beginning to claim communalisme for itself in the run-up to the 2026 municipal elections. But what communalisme are we talking about here? Certainly not the one I have defended all my life. This is an opportunistic and empty use of the term, stripped of all its radicalism and its anti-state and anti-capitalist significance. It is a facade of communalism, ready to be swallowed up by electoral logic, emptied of its fundamental principles: direct democracy, communal autonomy, and a break with the state and the market. It is utter confusion.
Communalism and the commons economy: an opening, provided it is radicalized
Sauvêtre’s introduction of the term “communalism” to refer to a municipal economy of democratic commons is an interesting step in the right direction. But here again, caution is needed: there is a great risk that this concept will be reduced to a simple “economy of alternative public services,” disconnected from the need to transform the social relations of production themselves, and above all from the need to build locally rooted popular institutions.
Commons, yes. But not without popular assemblies. Not without a break with the market economy. Not without a libertarian and revolutionary perspective.
A missed opportunity?
This book and this radio program could have been a valuable contribution to the strategic clarification of the emerging communalist movement. But in their eagerness to combine incompatible concepts—republicanism and confederalism, municipalism and direct democracy (Martin on France Culture), socialism of the commons and the maintenance of representative institutions (Martin on France Culture)—they perpetuate a dangerous form of confusion and ambiguity. Yet our times demand clarity, coherence, and rigorous fidelity to what popular autonomy really means.
In conclusion
I welcome Pierre Sauvêtre’s intention to promote social ecology as a vital goal for global liberation towards a new era he calls the “communocene,” but I urge his readers not to be satisfied with academic summaries or conceptual compromises. If it is to rise to the challenges of the century, communism cannot be republican or federalist in the state sense, nor can it be reduced to a policy of municipal commons.
It is the tool for a complete democratic overthrow, for a profound and emancipatory change in society. It is, in fact, the only political form and project for a free society, for a political ecology of hope: Social Ecology!
Murray Bookchin
(Burlington, Vermont — in a world where critical thinkers continue to intervene in debates after their death.)
Note:
[1]: Free adaptation inspired by Toward an Ecological Society, Introduction. “Perhaps at no time in modern history has radical thought been in such grave peril of losing its very identity as a consistent critique of the existing social order and a coherent project for social reconstruction.” & …
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.
Rebounds:
- For an eco-analysis of contemporary societies by Pierre Sauvêtre
- The book in french language: Murray Bookchin ou l’objectif communocène. Écologie sociale et libération planétaire (Murray Bookchin or the Communocene Objective)
- Against the perversion of communalism
- For a combative social ecology