| ISSUE # 7| OCTOBER 2005 |
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By Eirik Eiglad
Today, while public confidence in conventional politics seems to have touched
bedrock, traditional radical ideologies are steadily loosing their relevance
and following, and are incapable of providing theoretical guidance and practical
inspiration for new generations. Despite the last years resurgence of radical
popular initiatives and experiments in democratic participation, it seems that
the ideological degeneration that has occured on the Left has produced a vacuum
in radical theory. As a result of this, new popular movements and radical initiatives
– rejecting the secterian Left with its ossified dogmas – seems
to be lacking more profound political ideas and visions, and hence their very
sense of direction. To find relevant political ideas that can guide new popular
movements beyond the confines of the market society a is a responsibility
for all serious radicals today; indeed, it is a crucial challenge that will
decide whether we will have any hopes for a revival of a new and truly libertarian
Left.
Communalism, as it is developed by Murray Bookchin, represents a viable political philosophy for our time. Hammered out in his extensive works on social ecology, urban politics, nature philosphy, and radical theory, it constitutes ”a critique of hierarchical and capitalist society as a whole.” In sharp contrast to ”postmodern” relativism with its eclectic volatility, and to mystical ecology with its reductionist vagaries, communalism seeks to create a coherent body of thought, building on ideas from the Enlightenment as well as from the socialist and libertarian traditions. Its synthesis has created a remarkably fresh ideological alternative that remain revolutionary yet democratic; ecological yet secular; socialist yet non-hierarchical; libertarian yet political; and visionary but yet highly practical. As such, it is an attempt to rescue and further the Enlightenment struggle for a rational society – which by implication will be a humanistic and ecological society – by recovering the historical ideals of citizenship and political freedoms. As an ”explicitly political body of ideas, Communalism seeks to recover and advance the development of the city (or commune) in a form that accords with its greatest potentialities and historical traditions.” (1)
The political dimension of communalism – libertarian municipalism – is a bold attempt to create a libertarian system of government, based on confederations of free municipalities. The municipalities themselves are to be transformed into direct democracies that politically structure itself around citizens’ forums that have the power to make general decisions about public welfare and social development. In the communalist vision, these municipal popular assemblies are connected in confederal networks that make possible interregional coordination and exchange, and it also entails municipalized forms of production and distribution. This political vision does not come out of the blue, but has grown out of historical experiences of democracy and social organization. ”In a very radical sense,” Janet Biehl explains, ”libertarian municipalism goes back to the very roots of politics, to revive direct democracy and expand it, along with the rational and ethical virtues and practices that support it.” (2)
Libertarian municipalism is not merely an attempt to expand public influence on political processes, to create ”more democracy,” or a better public administration – its fight for democracy, municipalization and confederation must be understood as an integral part of the communalist struggle for a rational society, where the self-definition and self-development of humanity (qua citizenry) is made possible, creating a structure and culture for political and ethical deliberation that will give human beings a rational and creative role in the natural world. (3) As such, this political vision informs communalist attempts to institutionalize power in the service of freedom, reason and social progress. Although it presents a tangible and practical political approach, libertarian municipalism can never be properly conceived if uprooted from its foundations in social ecology, or bereft its visions of a rational society.
Rather, communalism gets its revolutionary élan precisely from a dialectical sensibility directed towards educing real, but often neglected, potentialities in human history and in our communities. Indeed, it unifies its generalized historical insight with analysis of particular conditions and possibilities, seeking to draw out what is rational in a given development. To this end, communalists engage in practical politics seeking to uncover and build upon liberatory institutions, and reintegrate them with the civic virtues that may give them life. This developmental approach clearly comes to the fore in the communalist recognition that the ”commune lies hidden and distorted in the city council; the section lies hidden and distorted in the neighborhood and its community centers; the town meeting lies hidden and distorted in the township; and municipal confederations lie hidden and distorted in regional networks of towns and cities.” Communalists aim at ”unearthing, renovating, and building upon these hidden institutions, where they exist, and building them where they are not,” in order to ”create the conditions for a degree of social freedom unprecedented in history.” (4)
By recognizing the municipality as the prime arena for politics and citizenship, libertarian municipalism encourage participation in local public life – in order to remake and vitalize its forums, assemblies, comittees and councils – including vigorous use of elections to present and fight for communalist ideas. As a revolutionary politics, it must embody gradual steps towards its ideals, least it should lose its sense of direction and get entangled in seemingly radical reformism on the local level, or in the creation of isolated alternative enterprises. In this sense, communalist ideals must give a clear directionality to a movement for direct democracy, and communalist radicals must ensure that the movement becomes able to present its ultimate vision while fighting for its more immediate aims. (5)
The fact is that we live in an irrational social system that is producing social problems and conflicts. Although we must be engaged in day-to-day struggles to improve social conditions we cannot be content with a mere ’activism’ that is bound to be restricted by the framework of the existing social order. Taken isolated, no fundamental social or political issue can ever be fully solved under present society. To focus entirely on immediate demands – and accordingly ignore the root causes of present problems and conflicts – is, to put it straight, to compromise oneself and the prospects for a meaningful future.
Countered by a society that is diametrically at odds with the natural world in its perpetual struggle for increased profits and consumer markets, and indeed at odds with itself – marked by the sharp divisions in social hierarchies and between contesting class interests – radicals must develop an approach that seeks to fundamentally break with this social order. This will require a bold and articulate new politics aiming at ”remaking society;” its institutions, practices and values. In our fight for ideals of social freedom – and against social inequality, injustice, and ecological destruction – we cannot accept the terms laid down by the status quo, as the very social structure is sanctioning and spreading disempowerment, inequality, and despair.
As radicals we have a responsibility to make the struggle for the necessary social changes a project of popular enlightenment. For this reason, the prime objective of every issue we deal with, and indeed every campaign we enter, must therefore be of educating and radicalizing the public through our social and political activism, not primarily the specific issue itself. While engaging in immediate issues, we must therefore illuminate the necesary preconditions for uprooting the problems, and not just alleviating its impact. We must ask all the required questions related to a specific issue, as well as generalizing it and placing it in the context of other radical demands.
In the radical tradition, this is not a novel insight. At least since Marx and Engels published their famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (in February 1848), working class movements have presented and fought for a range of demands, seeking to place them in a proper historical context. (6) Struggles for reduction of the working day, improved working conditions, and the right to associate, as well as more specific issues, was connected to demands for workers control and expropriation. In particular, the various Social Democratic parties, groups and movements that emerged had a set of demands that illustrated both short-term goals, as well as revolutionary long-term goals. Still, the actual relationship between the different demands often remained unclear in practice, a problem that became more obvious as radical labor parties gained parliamentary representation and political influence. Gradually these movements increased their emphasis on the short-term goals, in due course making the commitment to a proletarian revolution only a distant ideal, fully disconnected from their actual political practice. In 1899, in his attempt to revise Marxism, Eduard Bernstein claimed that ”the final aim of socialism, whatever it may be, means nothing to me; it is the movement itself which is everything.” Although Bernstein never gained much sympathy for his ’revisionism’, his pragmatic suggestions ”was increasingly becoming the unconscious practice of his party.” (7) Social Democracy sought intensely to improve the conditions of the working class while avoiding a direct clash with the bourgeois order, and – despite its revolutionary roots – it increasingly came to mean a reformist ’minimalism’ and little more, both in Germany, the heartland of proletarian radicalism, and elsewhere. Thus classic Social Democracy gradually lost the necessary bridge between its immediate demands and its long-term visions. (8)
But such a ’minimalism’ was not limited to the proletarian parties. Simultaneously, there emerged revolutionary forms of syndicalism, seeking to transform workers associations, like trade unions and factory committees, into veritable fighting organs necessary to turn the struggle against capital into a class war. The proletariat should emancipate itself, the syndicalists argued, unhindered by the reformism of the party leadership and of compromises with the bourgeoisie, and demands for workers control became a central tenet, consistently connnected to the day-to-day struggle. Instead of the anarchist and populist committment to insurrectionism, syndicalists sought to bring down capitalism through a general strike by a broad mass of workers. Although many syndicalists have maintained that the actual endgoal would develop out of the struggle itself, by the workers and their self-activity, the trade unions was to be regarded as ”the social nucleus of a coming socialist economy.” (9) Still, its essential ouvrieriste outlook entailed a deeply rooted spontaneism and anti-intellectualism, and, despite its revolutionary visions, syndicalism became trapped in the daily struggle of the trade unions, steadily eroding its revolutionary and libertarian components. (10) Acting exclusively out of what is real and factual at any given moment inevitably relapses to Realpolitik, whether in parliamentary parties or in extraparliamentary movements.
On the other hand, various anarchist tendencies took a ’maximalist’ position, advocating ”direct action” and ”propaganda by the deed,” where the primary goal was not to gain political rights or economic concessions, but to provide sparks that could incite the self-confidence of the masses and ignite a popular rebellion. Indeed, in several countries ’maximalism’ came to be a label used to describe intransigent revolutionism (most notably in Russia). The Maximalists who broke off from the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the autumn of 1905 – proclaiming ”the necessity of struggling immediately for the complete realization of the maximum program, namely for complete socialism, built on an apolitical foundation” – was, in Voline’s words ”very close to anarchism.” (11) The ’non-political’ stance of the anarchists have lead to an overwhelming focus on immediate resistance and regeneration (often on the individual level), without seriously taking into account considerations of what would be the necessary and logical steps to approach the ideal society. The prominent German anarchist Gustav Landauer even claimed that ”anarchism is not a matter of the future, but of the present,” and therefore that it “is not a matter of demands, but of living.” (12) Indeed, anarchists have seldom been advancing programs apart from in the form of mere principled statements, which is logical as the anarchist society often is conceived, not in terms of human progress, but instead as a removal of ”the regression into law, government and oppression.” (13) Even major theorists like Bakunin and Kropotkin ultimately believed that anarchism would exist and flourish as soon as all states and governments were removed, as ordinary human beings possessed ”instincts” for ’revolution’, ’solidarity’ and engagement in ’mutual aid.’ But such ahistorical delusions have proven very counterproductive, and anarchists have by their ’maximalist’ position relegated themselves to a passive role in social development, insisting on idealist notions of personal intransigence, a position which in fact require extremely favorable circumstances to gain more than a tiny minority of adherents. (14)
Radicals must seek to take an active (indeed, a most central) role in the development of society, and not eschew the civic responsibilities involved. We must seek to pro-actively create the most favorable circumstances for a successful revolutionary break with the existing social order. For this reason, we must discuss and define how we can relate our most far-reaching social visions to the most pressing issues. A revolutionary politics and social approach must include many demands, ranging from the most immediate to the most visionary, and defining the relationship between these demands is essential for the development of a consistent revolutionary praxis. In order to create a new politics – potentially meaningful to broad segments of the population – that has an immediate practical relevance, while pointing beyond the status quo. Furthermore, radicals must seek to unite and express popular discontent in a political movement working consistently to educate and radicalize ordinary citizens, while fighting for actual social improvements and political progress.
Communalists argue that such a movement must make use of a revolutionary program – consciously seeking to avoid the dangers involved in both ’minimalism’ and ’maximalism’ – consisting of a system of transitional demands, addressing both the necessary and the sufficient conditions for revolutionary change. In order to address this challenge properly we should start out by defining what we consider to be the characteristics of the various demands.
First, we should consider our maximum demands. These are, as the very term suggests, to be our ultimate social solutions, stemming from our long-term visions of a rational society. The maximum is what is ideal. The maximum demands must therefore be considered to be our ultimate solutions to present challenges, unless our long-range policies are to be myopic (conditioned by the existing social order), and should be wholly corresponding with the very principles underlying our political activism. (15)
Second, we have to consider the nature of our minimum demands. Again, the very terminology indicates that these are our short-term solutions to immediate questions, indeed, the least we can demand. These are the concrete demands that must be raised, with a direct relevance for the political situation, emerging from the needs and opportunities of people in a given historical context. Minimum demands are dealing directly with reality as it confronts us in any given situation. In contrast to the maximum demands, minimum demands are therefore conditioned, circumstancial and relative, which is to say that it may take markedly different expressions from country to country, and region to region. Another important aspect that must be noted is the fact that no minimum demand are, in themselves, signifying a break with the social order. That is to say, minimum demands are not only responses to immediate issues, but are themselves immediately actualizeable in their social and political context.
Third, we should define what characterizes our transitional demands. To put it short, the transitional demands are the links between the minimum demands and the maximum demands in our program. While our maximum demands require fundamental social change to be actualized, our minimum demands can be achieved within the existing society – in fact, immediately – and it is essentially the task of the transitional demands to provide the programmatic link between what is possible today with what is desirable for tomorrow. They are meant to illustrate the transition from today’s realities to our ultimate social visions, and comes to life through a programmatic commitment in political practice. The ambition is to combine the principled foundation of the long-term visions with the relevance of the short-terms demands in order to create a revolutionary program making the radical movement well-equipped to exploit concrete historical opportunities in a principled manner. (16)
A communalist program must contain such a set of transitional demands ranging from the immediate to the ideal. The program must seek to address all relevant social, political, economic and ecological issues, and thereby create a political contextuality in which the movement can mature and be strengthened. While striving to solve immediate issues confronting us, the movement should seek to expand the issues so that the movement grows with the struggle. ”Whether a given reform is attained or not, the issue that generates the need for it must be expanded, cast in ever broader social terms, and linked with less obvious but related social abuses until a unified view emerges from apparently disconnected parts and challenges the validity of the existing social order.” (17) The point is exactly how to make revolutionary demands practically envisionable for the general population, and at the same time to give the struggle for concrete reforms a revolutionary content – never abandoning the educational responsibilities of the movement. To this end, the programmatic context is all-important, as it contains all elements for presenting a comprehensive range of systematized transitional demands.
For any organization seeking to ”remake society” a transitional program provides a powerful tool, by addressing relevant political questions in a manner that clarify the radical ambitions of the popular movement. Organizations must always be prepared to present a radicalized or moderated version of its political program (with variations in its transitional emphasis), but the very formulations contained in the program should be dynamic, in order to be of relevance to changing political situations. In systematizing our demands we should always retain ideological consistency, aiming at creating a program that is more than a mere agglomeration of demands. The challenge is precisely how to the express our demands in a way that corresponds to our most precious principles while offering practical guidance in actual day-to-day questions. The dynamic formulations of our demands are important to maintain the focus and the educational role of the political program.
Furthermore, from a communalist perspective, it is crucial to connect these
demands to new institutions of popular power. Radical social changes ultimately
rest upon the extent to which we manage to create new forums for civic participation
in political affairs, for the citizenry to deal with all kinds of pressing economic,
cultural and ecological issues and take control over social development. It
is particularly important that our minimum demands as often as possible should
be coined to questions of general citizens’ empowerment. The demand for
increased citizen participation and power is itself a pivotal transitional demand
that a communalist program can be structured around. At the same time, emerging
democratic municipal assemblies and councils are themselves brilliant forums
for spreading the ideas developed in the radical program.
A developed program must be used in all our activities as well as in our contacts with media. We must extensively use the program to explain our political demands and ambitions. Although the maximum demands of the movement should be highlighted whenever possible, we should make vigorous use of minimum demands to place popular focus on the radical program, and help our radical organizations gain credibility, as well as seriously addressing particular issues confronting us at any given moment. Here, I must insist, we need not a blueprint to be adapted to every and all circumstances, but rather a political approach is that is suited to deal with social change and shifting political climats and conditions. Political change is above all a historical process. Our politics must embody ”a changing and formative perspective – a concept of politics and citizenship to ultimately tranform cities and urban megalopolises ethically as well as spatially, and politically as well as economically”. (18) The politics of libertarian municipalism is above all a process, but that should not mean that we can allow ourselves to be ignorant or dismissive of the role of strategy and tactics in the political struggle: We need a conscious and directional political approach that remains flexible and creative.
In order to maintain a utopian dimension of our political work, where we are guided by ethically rooted ideals of how society should be organized, radical activists must seek to form organizations with clear principles and coherent theories. After all, as Eric Voegelin once pointed out, ideals are ”fragments of utopia.” Through a consistent political practice organizations will make its ideals shine through. Practical political work thus also becomes a way to defend ones principles, and never let ”single issues” to ”come in the way”, and obscure the long-ranging goals of the radical movement. The important is to grasp opportunities in a principled way: and present ideals as something concrete and possible. Not only do we need a theory that is processual and utopian, but we need dedicated organizations comitted to democratic politics, and the painstaking task of democratizing municipality after municipality, and region after region.
In presenting the program we should be sensitive towards cultural, political and economical changes. All our minimum demands are dependent upon material and cultural factors, and to a great extent so are our transitional demands, at least concerning focus and emphasis. Historical conditions and the level of popular consciousness define the transitional degree of our political program. We must take account of what is feasible today, in assessing our concrete priorities. Certainly, at opportune moments we must seek to ”give history a push” and initiate the revolutionary break with the existing social order. But revolutionary movements should be careful not to marginalize itself, but seek to present their utterly radical demands in a way that corresponds with popular opinion. A delicate balance must be struck between being ahead of the general public, and being completely remote from it: Genuine revolutionary organizations are always in advance of popular opinion and historical events, but their advanced ideas must be presented in comprehensible terms. Programmatic demands help to keep a practical focus in a variety of historical circumstances.
We must initiate the process for the recreation of the public sphere, and reclaim direct citizens control over municipalities. From a communalist perspective it is obvious that popular empowerment remains the pivotal demand on a transitional program, the very demand on which the others ultimately depend. A communalist program should be developed for all regions in order to transform them into direct democracies. The aim of the communalist movement must be to reform and strengthen municipalities, and gradually create a new institutional framework for genuine grassroots power. In time, through these structures we can challenge and confront the nation state and centralized economic corporations. ”Libertarian municipalism seeks to exacerbate the tension between municipalities and the State, to become an oppositional dual power that will, under propitious conditions, abolish the State for a confederal system of social administration.” (19)
For too long now, the Left has let go of the political initiative, and are engaging only in purely defensive actions and strategies. The ’maximum aim’ of most popular movements and radical theorists seem merely be to defend and win back the gains of traditional Social Democracy, or to carve out temporary ”liberated zones” that in no way challenge the current system. Yet there has emerged a growing public interest in participatory democracy and local political experiments. Left libertarians should not let go of this opportunity to create a meaningful new politics, and fill the vacuum created by the demise of the old Left.”Another world is possible” it is often pronounced in the new movements. This is indeed true, but only if we are prepared to enter the public arena to set the agenda, and advance an offensive Left politics. Radical participation in local elections is the Rubicon that Left libertarians have to cross, in order to gain ground for a range of transitional demands pointing toward a genuinely free and egalitarian society.
1. Murray Bookchin, ”The Communalist Project”, in Communalism: International Journal for a Rational Society #2 (February 2002). Emphasis in original.
2. Janet Biehl, The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998), p. 11. This book is an accessible and concise introduction to the political ideas of communalism.
3. Bookchin claims that in a truly rational and ecological society, humanity will become ”nature rendered self-conscious.” This, as Bookchin has pointed out, presently exists only as a potentiality: ” We are no more nature rendered self-conscious than we are humanity rendered self-conscious.” See Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982; republished with a new introduction, Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1991), p. 315–316.
4. Biehl, Politics of Social Ecology, p. 143. Indeed, the libertarian municipalist aim at democratizing today’s republican systems by defending and expanding citizen’s freedoms and rights, and at radicalizing this democracy by also giving it a social, cultural and economic agenda, follows from this dialectical incentive.
5. See Eirik Eiglad, “Bases for Communalist Programs: A Philosophical, Political and Practical Approach”, Left Green Perspectives #40 (February 1999); revised and republished in Communalism: International Journal for a Rational Society #6 (March 2005).
6. Marxists have, due to Marx and Engels’ basic analysis of material preconditions as well as the necessity for a transitional period of socialism, always retained a developmental perspective in raising their socialist demands.
7. ”There is little question that the general thrust of his arguments, namely the antirevolutionary, gradual, and compromising aspects, was favored by a majority of the party”. Gary P. Steenson, ”Not one man! Not one penny!” German Social Democracy, 1863–1914 (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981), p. 212.
8. Leon Trotsky, it must be noted, levelled a similar critique against the policies of the Third International (Comintern) in the 1930s. This led Trotsky to write his programs for the French working class parties, and he remains the only socialist theorist to seriously deal with the issue of a transitional program.
9. Rudolf Rocker, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism (London: Freedom Press, 1988), p. 26.
10. Prominent anarchists like Errico Malatesta warned about the reformism inherent in syndicalism. ”In a word, Trade Unions are, by their nature reformist and never revolutionary,” he claimed. Errico Malatesta, in Umanità Nova (April 6. 1922), reprinted in Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1993), p. 117.
11. Voline, The Unknown Revolution, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1990), p. 114. The Maximalist Party did not only break with the ’minimum’ program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but also on the question of terrorism as a legitimate means in the revolutionary struggle against tsarism. The Maximalists functioned as a ”small direct action group” until they were repressed by the Bolsheviks in the early twenties.
12. Gustav Landauer quoted by Howard J. Ehrlich, in his ”Counter Institutions”, Onward, Vol. 1, Issue 1, (Summer 2000), p 13.
13. ”A society based on mutual aid is natural to man. The society in which it is not practiced is the unnatural one. Repressive institutions are imposed upon us. They need to be explained away. The free society should need no apologists.” Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer, The Floodgates of Anarchy (London: Kahn & Averill, 1970; 1979), p. 146–147.
14. I am not discussing the many self-designated currents of modern anarchism, that may be wholly communitarian, liberal, or pacifist. My focus here is rather on traditional anarchism, whose aim was to provide a revolutionary alternative (however individualist) to the bourgeois social order, not to carve out a space within it.
15. In this sense, our maximum demands should be considered as ’absolutes’, that is to say unconditioned by the actual cultural circumstances, and unmediated by pragmatic political requirements. The notion of maximum demands, it must be noted, in no way corresponds to a vulgar Marxist interpretation of ’End of History’, but merely to one’s ideals and principles. Accordingly and quite naturally, the maximum demands of Social Democrats, Syndicalists and Communalists will vary a great deal, stemming from real differences in historical analysis and political principles.
16. To a certain extent there exists no transitional demands, as this is basically the expressed relationship between the minimum and the maximum goals of the movement. Dwelling on this issue, I would claim simultaneously that there exists no independent maximum program, nor a minimum program, that can be switched back and forth under various cricumstances, but rather insist that the program at all times must be transitional – least it should be just a list of immediate demands, or a statement of principles (acknowledging of course marked differences in political emphasis due to the different circumstances in which the program is presented). A communalist program, I would argue, must at all times present such a transitional bridge between our maximum goals and our minimum demands.
17. Murray Bookchin, ”The Unity of Ideals and Practice”, originally published in Schwarzer Faden, no. 61 (1997); reprinted in Murray Bookchin, Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left: Interviews and Essays, 1993–1998 (Edinburgh and San Fransisco: AK Press, 1999), p. 321.
18. Murray Bookchin, From Urbanization to Citites: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship (London: Cassell, 1995), p. 223. Emphasis in original.
19. Murray Bookchin, in ”Interview with Murray Bookchin” by Janet Biehl, in Biehl, Politics of Social Ecology, p. 175.