BOOKCHIN’S NOTION OF “LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM” IS FLAWED

BOOKCHIN’S NOTION OF “LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM” IS FLAWED

1. BOOKCHIN’S VIEWS OFFER NO WAY TO RESOLVE DISPUTES

Michael Albert, author and activist, ASSESSING LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM, November, 1999, http://www.zmag.org/lmdebate.htm, ACCESSED May 10, 2001.

Why are noted anarchists proposing political institutions? Isn't that contrary to abolishing the state? Only if you accept "the interchangeability of politics with Statecraft," replies Bookchin, and advocate throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So libertarian municipalism instead proposes "large general meetings in which all the citizens of a given area meet, deliberate, and make decisions on matters of common concern." And it notes that "if the political potential of the municipality is to be fulfilled, community life must be rescaled to……a manageable size." The decision-making assemblies must contain everyone in the municipality and "meet at regular intervals, perhaps every month at first, and later weekly, with additional meetings as people [see] fit." Given their modest size, these assemblies "could meet in an auditorium, theatre, courtyard, hall, park, or even a church-indeed in any local facility that was sufficiently large to hold all the concerned citizens of the municipality." Insofar as libertarian municipalism is a vision for a new type polity, in addition to wondering why the authors don't discuss mechanisms for adjudicating disputes (the kind of thing that now leads to law suits) and handling difficult problems of enforcement-I also wonder why they feel that each citizen needs to be directly involved, face-to-face, in all decisions. While the general thrust of the assembly vision seems positive, why must it be exclusive? Why is it unwise to use other decision-making mechanisms as well, when assemblies aren't optimal? I am not sure, for example, why libertarian municipalism feels that no means of representation can ever be designed to function compatibly with popular assemblies, preserving democracy but functioning better in situations that transcend small group concerns.

Michael Albert, author and activist, ASSESSING LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM, November, 1999, http://www.zmag.org/lmdebate.htm, ACCESSED May 10, 2001.

Bookchin's warning seems correct to me, but I am not sure how the insight is incorporated in the libertarian municipalist vision. Why does libertarian municipalism take for granted (a) that all decisions should be taken by a majority vote, and (b) that the control of each institution in the society, regardless of how wide a constituency it affects, should be entirely in the hands of the assembly for the particular municipality in which it happens to reside. Put less abstractly: Why should a majority decide aspects of my life that affect only me? And why should a university or the Grand Canyon be totally under the auspices of those who happen to live where it sits?
3. BY REJECTING PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, BOOKCHIN’S IDEAS WILL FAIL

Michael Albert, author and activist, ASSESSING LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM, November, 1999, http://www.zmag.org/lmdebate.htm, ACCESSED May 10, 2001.

Watching markets gobble up everything in their path, Libertarian Municipalists fear that economic institutions per se are imperial and will try to usurp political functions by their very nature, or will at the very least create a context precluding political democracy. I think this is correct about markets, and also about central planning, for that matter, but is wrong about participatory economics. But be that as it may, what is ironic is that as a counter to the imagined inevitable imperial economy, Libertarian Municipalists propose an imperial polity, usurping economic functions not even just implicitly, or as a by-product, but in principle and as a celebrated priority. And, oddly, as a result of taking on this added function, the institutions would not only fail to do economics justly and cooperatively, but would devolve into a centralized hierarchical economic bastardization of their intended decentralized democratic form.

BOOKCHIN’S VIEWS IGNORE LABOR’S KEY ROLE

1. BOOKCHIN'S POLITICAL VISION IS FLAWED: IT IGNORES LABOR

Alan Rudy, Research Fellow, University of Alberta, Andrew Light, Doctorate in Sociology, UC Santa Cruz, "Sociology and Social Labor: a consideration and critique of Murray Bookchin," MINDING NATURE, edited by David McCauley, 1996, p. 318-319.

This paper is a critque of social ecology and Bookchin's form of political anarchism out of an emerging socialist ecological tradition, something Bookchin once claimed was a contradiction. We begin with an exposition of some of Bookchin's central ideas: his theory of the development of domination in the early evolution of human society, the importance of the transition to capitalism for human society, and his exposition of a new future for modern society rooted in his Kropotken-inspired evolutionary anarchism. The next section criticizes this work. Our central critique is that Bookchin powerfully underplays the importance of labor as a mediating force within and between the social relations of humans, and within and between humans and the nonhuman natural world. This critique is advanced in relation to some of Bookchin's positions relative to capitalism, most notably that Bookchin fails to see the importance of the qualitative change evidenced by the development of social labor under and through capitalism's uneven and combined development. The primary consequences of Bookchin's neglect of labor as a category of analysis, and of social labor as a defining characteristic of capitalism and its contradictions, are that Bookchin's natural histories are incomplete and produce a problematic analysis of historical change. These problems derive from the theoretical rigidity of his political project, which results in a skewed interpretation of material, global, and political problems.

Alan Rudy, Research Fellow, University of Alberta, Andrew Light, Doctorate in Sociology, UC Santa Cruz, "Sociology and Social Labor: a consideration and critique of Murray Bookchin," MINDING NATURE, edited by David McCauley, 1996, p. 323.

For these reasons and more, including his support of feminism, gay rights, and struggles against racism, Bookchin's contributions to left ecology must not be understated. However, while his work has been and remains important to the development of left ecology, his theory (and, too often, his polemical style) have serious shortcomings, which this paper is intended to address.
3. BOOKCHIN HAS MOVED AWAY FROM HIS VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

Alan Rudy, Research Fellow, University of Alberta, Andrew Light, Doctorate in Sociology, UC Santa Cruz, "Sociology and Social Labor: a consideration and critique of Murray Bookchin," MINDING NATURE, edited by David McCauley, 1996, p. 323-324.

While he has maintained a messianic vision of the future, Bookchin's more recent ecotopic visions have become increasingly low-technology affairs. In the early 1980's his view of technology had evolved to the point where his concerns were focused on "how we can contain (that is absorb) technics within an emancipatory society." In 1986, in his introduction to the second edition of Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Bookchin wrote that, if he were to rewrite the book, he would "temper the importance [he gave] to the technological 'preconditions' for freedom." Similarly, his perspective on scarcity, viewed "as a drama of history that our era has evolved technologically," has changed to the point "that such an interpretation is now unsatisfactory." Most recently, Bookchin has said that what must be overcome is not the contradiction between the modern potential for post-scarcity and its lack of realization but rather the "gravest most single illness of our time...disempowerment."