Tuesday, August 15, 2006
R.I.P. Murray Bookchin
I learnt on the weekend that Murray Bookchin died. In tribute to this veteran of the radical left, I'm blogging a review I wrote of Janet Biehl's The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism, a summary of Bookchin's social theory of urban activism which includes an interview with him.
I wrote it before I knew he had died, so please excuse my tone - I try not to speak ill of the dead, unless they truly deserve it. I have a lot of respect for Bookchin as a theorist and activist. He was merciless in his criticism of lifestyle anarchism and NGO-style reformism. My review is directed at his concept of libertarian muncipalism, or what he later called communalism. But I still value his accomplishments.
Murray Bookchin is at once sensible, thoughtful and frustrating. He’s absorbed many of the lessons of the new left, emerging unscathed from the experiments of the 60s and 70s, if a little cantankerous. However, while that rigidity may make him an unyielding opponent of lifestyle anarchism, and impart a loyalty to Marx, it also blocks him from a strategic analysis of the state, which Marxists developed.
Not crochety - Murray Bookchin
His libertarian municipalist project consists in creating local citizen assemblies, which push municipal councils for more and more powers in administrating local affairs democratically. Naturally, councils would not allow this without a fight, so to begin with, assemblies would simply exercise moral suasion: taking positions on issues that citizens could rally round. As they gained support, councils would be forced to listen and eventually grant them legal powers. Meanwhile assemblies would link up with each other, forming local, regional and finally national & international federations. This would provide the basis for confronting state power.
This is a political project, in the deep, democratic sense of the word. Bookchin is against electoral politics for all the right Marxist reasons - it's a trap to delude people into thinking they're making real change - but he doesn't reject its ideal of mass participation like so many anarchists; as he snaps, "of course, we could also join hedonistic lifestyle anarchists by running naked in the woods - and do nothing but nourish our egos."
So there's much to learn from Bookchin. But he also suffers from a number of failings: political idealism, a naivety about the capitalist state, and a vast blind spot about the nature and role of the working class.
That his project is political is also its weakness: it's only about politics. It seems plucked out of history, despite his references to ancient Athens and the Paris Commune. In the interview with him at the back of Biehl’s book, he calls for a new movement and a new society. He openly calls this a version of Trotsky's transitional program. But the program was based on actual struggles going on at the time, and how socialists relate to them. Bookchin seems to be creating his own, which is both unhelpful, and reflected in the problems sympathizers have had. For example, his interviewer mentions a Moscow municipalist meeting to which no one showed up. Bookchin's answer is to "treasure" those who do come, and recognize that most radical projects are conducted by minorities (a funny thing to say for a critic of Bolshevism). This is reflective of his reading a thread through history - democratic urban struggle - solely through the form in which it presents itself, not as a reflection of larger forces.
Without urban struggle, cities would look like this, that's not necessarily a bad thing - Superstudio
For all his loyalty to Marxism, Bookchin ignores those forces. He recognizes this project won't go unopposed, and he calls for the movement to create "citizens guards" to protect it from the state. He argues correctly that the far right does not have a monopoly on armed citizens movements - the left has created armed defence squads many times in its past.
But today, if an elected assembly attempted to form an armed defence squad, the state would crush it, utterly. And it would use that as an excuse to crush all the other assemblies. The U.S. state's record on MOVE, the Black Liberation Army and the Branch Davidians shows it won't tolerate armed opposition even from tiny sects. One could argue that armed groups would form in a different context, when the U.S. state is being undermined by popular urban forces. But an oppositional movement would need time to grow before challenging state power directly.
For example, what happens when a town council, under tremendous pressure, cedes legal control to an assembly, and the assembly decides to appropriate and convert a military factory to, say, a battery recycling plant? The national guard would step in immediately. If the assembly resisted, the might of the U.S. military would crush it. The counter-hegemony Bookchin seeks would be in its infancy by the time an armed confrontation was inevitable. If the movement was to wait, and not challenge federal and state law, it would not create counter-hegemony - unless it was to base itself on a social force that had access to power. That takes us outside of politics, to economic and social realms. It points to Bookchin's biggest weakness: a refusal to consider the organized working class as an agent of change.
Laying down the law - Minneapolis Teamsters beat up cops and scabs, 1934
He argues: "if workers' control is to become a major emphasis of our program, we will be diminishing the power of the popular assembly and thereby opening the possibility that the workplace will accrue power at the expense of the popular assembly." This would be a bad thing, because in previous upsurges, factories ended up competing against each other, particularly in CNT-controlled Spain. "If shops are permitted to formulate the policies governing their behaviour without regard for the community as a whole... [they will] follow paths that are not only divergent from... the community but also in conflict with it." What is "the community as a whole"? It doesn't exist. In revolutionary situations, the community falls away and different class positions become stark and clear. His popular assembly would be a way to cede control back to the forces of the capitalism he opposes.
This is a serious contradiction. Bookchin is not muddy on the nature of the market. He recognizes cooperatives can't change society; they either adopt the rules of the market, or they fold. If municipalities ran coops, they might have a market share large enough to compete, but as Bookchin cautions, "I don't believe the bourgeoisie would tolerate this development in the long run... Everything I'm describing involves a confrontation, sooner or later, not only with the State but with capitalism." Yet he appears to have no conception of where capitalist power comes from: the workplace, where value is produced.
His fear of worker competition dodges the question. He cites examples from workers trying to manage capitalism better. But worker control is not worker management. In times of open, generalized class struggle, worker revolutionaries don't try to produce more effectively. They try to regulate - and, if necessary, sabotage - the workplace for their own benefit. Their project is broader than a single workplace; militant worker networks (like Shop Stewards) fight cutbacks and speedup as part of a socialist political agenda, in industries and, eventually, whole economies.
Workers, peasants and soldiers unite & pose
Bookchin’s other anti-worker reasoning is utopian: workers will disappear after the revolution, when everything can be mechanized, so don’t organize them now. It avoids the issue: how do you deal with class power in the present? Workers may indeed be irrelevant post-revolution (though not, it has to be said, for a long time); so will capital, but that doesn't change the nature of our project: to challenge capitalist power.
If assemblies can do that over time, as Bookchin asserts, why not workplace organizations? They have a huge advantage: they're not class collaborationist. Or, put the opposite way: if coops can't challenge the logic of the market, how could assemblies? He admits (in as many words) people with different class interests would attend:
This is naive. Capitalist power doesn't come from the stupidity of powerful people. Real estate interests are precisely that: interests, capitalists who control huge sums of money and who can buy, bribe or threaten others to have their way. Unless the assembly was ready to make inroads on capitalist power, it would be at much at those interests' mercy as today's councils. But why would it - when it's composed of different class forces?
This flies in the face of all the evidence Bookchin chooses to ignore: the numerous class collaborationist projects, from the Popular Front to the AFL-CIOs anti-Communism, which tied workers to their masters. "Many people, I have to say, have a difficult time seeing libertarian municipalism as process. But I contend that this is exactly what we are dealing with." (169) Politics becomes process, stripped of all vested interests. Bookchin's radical vision devolves to the same tepid managerialism of the Third Way.
He admits:
He derides the alternatives of party politics, lifestyle anarchism, cooperatives and nationalism. He forgets class struggle, a Marxist politics of working class action that identifies political and economic power, and builds a counter-power that isn't compromised by other class interests. Libertarian municipalism is the civic version of De Leon’s union federations, with its confusion over the role of the state, but without its redeeming class politics. In this oversight, Bookchin forgets the real history of centuries of class struggle - messy, violent, and often confusing, but grounded in the real world of capital and labour, and their ongoing struggle for supremacy.
I wrote it before I knew he had died, so please excuse my tone - I try not to speak ill of the dead, unless they truly deserve it. I have a lot of respect for Bookchin as a theorist and activist. He was merciless in his criticism of lifestyle anarchism and NGO-style reformism. My review is directed at his concept of libertarian muncipalism, or what he later called communalism. But I still value his accomplishments.
Murray Bookchin is at once sensible, thoughtful and frustrating. He’s absorbed many of the lessons of the new left, emerging unscathed from the experiments of the 60s and 70s, if a little cantankerous. However, while that rigidity may make him an unyielding opponent of lifestyle anarchism, and impart a loyalty to Marx, it also blocks him from a strategic analysis of the state, which Marxists developed.
Not crochety - Murray Bookchin
His libertarian municipalist project consists in creating local citizen assemblies, which push municipal councils for more and more powers in administrating local affairs democratically. Naturally, councils would not allow this without a fight, so to begin with, assemblies would simply exercise moral suasion: taking positions on issues that citizens could rally round. As they gained support, councils would be forced to listen and eventually grant them legal powers. Meanwhile assemblies would link up with each other, forming local, regional and finally national & international federations. This would provide the basis for confronting state power.
This is a political project, in the deep, democratic sense of the word. Bookchin is against electoral politics for all the right Marxist reasons - it's a trap to delude people into thinking they're making real change - but he doesn't reject its ideal of mass participation like so many anarchists; as he snaps, "of course, we could also join hedonistic lifestyle anarchists by running naked in the woods - and do nothing but nourish our egos."
So there's much to learn from Bookchin. But he also suffers from a number of failings: political idealism, a naivety about the capitalist state, and a vast blind spot about the nature and role of the working class.
That his project is political is also its weakness: it's only about politics. It seems plucked out of history, despite his references to ancient Athens and the Paris Commune. In the interview with him at the back of Biehl’s book, he calls for a new movement and a new society. He openly calls this a version of Trotsky's transitional program. But the program was based on actual struggles going on at the time, and how socialists relate to them. Bookchin seems to be creating his own, which is both unhelpful, and reflected in the problems sympathizers have had. For example, his interviewer mentions a Moscow municipalist meeting to which no one showed up. Bookchin's answer is to "treasure" those who do come, and recognize that most radical projects are conducted by minorities (a funny thing to say for a critic of Bolshevism). This is reflective of his reading a thread through history - democratic urban struggle - solely through the form in which it presents itself, not as a reflection of larger forces.
Without urban struggle, cities would look like this, that's not necessarily a bad thing - Superstudio
For all his loyalty to Marxism, Bookchin ignores those forces. He recognizes this project won't go unopposed, and he calls for the movement to create "citizens guards" to protect it from the state. He argues correctly that the far right does not have a monopoly on armed citizens movements - the left has created armed defence squads many times in its past.
But today, if an elected assembly attempted to form an armed defence squad, the state would crush it, utterly. And it would use that as an excuse to crush all the other assemblies. The U.S. state's record on MOVE, the Black Liberation Army and the Branch Davidians shows it won't tolerate armed opposition even from tiny sects. One could argue that armed groups would form in a different context, when the U.S. state is being undermined by popular urban forces. But an oppositional movement would need time to grow before challenging state power directly.
For example, what happens when a town council, under tremendous pressure, cedes legal control to an assembly, and the assembly decides to appropriate and convert a military factory to, say, a battery recycling plant? The national guard would step in immediately. If the assembly resisted, the might of the U.S. military would crush it. The counter-hegemony Bookchin seeks would be in its infancy by the time an armed confrontation was inevitable. If the movement was to wait, and not challenge federal and state law, it would not create counter-hegemony - unless it was to base itself on a social force that had access to power. That takes us outside of politics, to economic and social realms. It points to Bookchin's biggest weakness: a refusal to consider the organized working class as an agent of change.
Laying down the law - Minneapolis Teamsters beat up cops and scabs, 1934
He argues: "if workers' control is to become a major emphasis of our program, we will be diminishing the power of the popular assembly and thereby opening the possibility that the workplace will accrue power at the expense of the popular assembly." This would be a bad thing, because in previous upsurges, factories ended up competing against each other, particularly in CNT-controlled Spain. "If shops are permitted to formulate the policies governing their behaviour without regard for the community as a whole... [they will] follow paths that are not only divergent from... the community but also in conflict with it." What is "the community as a whole"? It doesn't exist. In revolutionary situations, the community falls away and different class positions become stark and clear. His popular assembly would be a way to cede control back to the forces of the capitalism he opposes.
This is a serious contradiction. Bookchin is not muddy on the nature of the market. He recognizes cooperatives can't change society; they either adopt the rules of the market, or they fold. If municipalities ran coops, they might have a market share large enough to compete, but as Bookchin cautions, "I don't believe the bourgeoisie would tolerate this development in the long run... Everything I'm describing involves a confrontation, sooner or later, not only with the State but with capitalism." Yet he appears to have no conception of where capitalist power comes from: the workplace, where value is produced.
His fear of worker competition dodges the question. He cites examples from workers trying to manage capitalism better. But worker control is not worker management. In times of open, generalized class struggle, worker revolutionaries don't try to produce more effectively. They try to regulate - and, if necessary, sabotage - the workplace for their own benefit. Their project is broader than a single workplace; militant worker networks (like Shop Stewards) fight cutbacks and speedup as part of a socialist political agenda, in industries and, eventually, whole economies.
Workers, peasants and soldiers unite & pose
Bookchin’s other anti-worker reasoning is utopian: workers will disappear after the revolution, when everything can be mechanized, so don’t organize them now. It avoids the issue: how do you deal with class power in the present? Workers may indeed be irrelevant post-revolution (though not, it has to be said, for a long time); so will capital, but that doesn't change the nature of our project: to challenge capitalist power.
If assemblies can do that over time, as Bookchin asserts, why not workplace organizations? They have a huge advantage: they're not class collaborationist. Or, put the opposite way: if coops can't challenge the logic of the market, how could assemblies? He admits (in as many words) people with different class interests would attend:
other citizens in the assembly will probably still be fairly cautious and conservative. It is the job of libertarian municipalists to debate with these citizens... to counter their objections, and to explain the broader social and political forces at work in society... Let us suppose that real estate interests go to an assembly meeting in order to sell the community on a particular development... [we] have to try to stop them by demonstrating in detail the dangers that these proposals pose for their fellow citizens - and in the process, hopefully, they will educate them.
This is naive. Capitalist power doesn't come from the stupidity of powerful people. Real estate interests are precisely that: interests, capitalists who control huge sums of money and who can buy, bribe or threaten others to have their way. Unless the assembly was ready to make inroads on capitalist power, it would be at much at those interests' mercy as today's councils. But why would it - when it's composed of different class forces?
This flies in the face of all the evidence Bookchin chooses to ignore: the numerous class collaborationist projects, from the Popular Front to the AFL-CIOs anti-Communism, which tied workers to their masters. "Many people, I have to say, have a difficult time seeing libertarian municipalism as process. But I contend that this is exactly what we are dealing with." (169) Politics becomes process, stripped of all vested interests. Bookchin's radical vision devolves to the same tepid managerialism of the Third Way.
He admits:
I am not describing an easy process. But if it is utopian to fight for the municipalization of the economy and the formation of libertarian confederated municipalities, what alternative do we have today?... how else are we going to square the demand for the "commune of communes" - the traditional libertarian slogan of socialists, anarchists, and communists - with our politics?
He derides the alternatives of party politics, lifestyle anarchism, cooperatives and nationalism. He forgets class struggle, a Marxist politics of working class action that identifies political and economic power, and builds a counter-power that isn't compromised by other class interests. Libertarian municipalism is the civic version of De Leon’s union federations, with its confusion over the role of the state, but without its redeeming class politics. In this oversight, Bookchin forgets the real history of centuries of class struggle - messy, violent, and often confusing, but grounded in the real world of capital and labour, and their ongoing struggle for supremacy.
