Today's Topics:
1. anarkismo.net: Murray Bookchin - Anarchism without the
Working Class by Wayne Price (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - December 95 Redac Web
(fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. France, Alternative Libertaire - public meeting, Coping:
Climate, against the state of emergency" on December 10 in
Clermont-Ferrand by CAL Clermont-Ferrand (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. fda-ifa: Calling to breath life into utopia (de) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Britain, glasgowanarchists: Stateless in Lesvos: screening
and Q&A with film maker by fleabite (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Indonesia, anarkis.org: Explaining Greece: Notes on Crisis
and the Role of the Left Organization (Sec. 2) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Message: 1
Anarchism Needs a Working Class Revolution ---- Murray Bookchin was an influential and
prolific writer and thinker on anarchism. Recently his work has been in the news. While he
made significant contributions, he made a major error in rejecting the working class as
important for an anarchist revolution. This article reviews why he believed this and why,
on the contrary, the working class must be a major force for a successful anarchist
revolution. ---- Murray Bookchin in 1989 ---- Anarchism Needs a Working Class Revolution
---- Although he died in 2006, Murray Bookchin is recently in the news. Staid bourgeois
newspapers report, with apparent shock, that part of the Kurdish revolutionary national
movement has been influenced by the ideas of Murray Bookchin, a U.S. anarchist (Enzinna
2015). However, I am not going to discuss this development here. My topic is not how
Bookchin’s political philosophy may apply to the Kurds in Rojava (important as this is),
but how it might apply to the U.S.A. and other industrialized and industrializing countries.
Nor will I review the whole range of Bookchin’s life and work (see White 2008). Bookchin
made enormous contributions to anarchism, especially—but not only—his integration of
ecology with anarchism. At the same time, in my opinion, his work was deeply flawed in
that he rejected the working class as playing a major role in the transition from
capitalism to anti-authoritarian socialism. Like many other radicals in the period after
World War II, he was shaken by the defeats of the world working class during the ‘thirties
and ‘forties, and impressed by the prosperity and stability of the Western world after the
Second World War. Previously a Communist and then a Trotskyist, he now turned to a version
of anarchism which rejected working class revolution.
This was not the historically dominant view held by anarchists. Bakunin, Kropotkin,
Malatesta, Makhno, Goldman, Durrutti, the anarcho-syndicalists and the
anarcho-communists—they believed that “anarchism is a revolutionary, internationalist,
class struggle form of libertarian socialism…. Syndicalism [revolutionary unionism—WP] was
a form of mass anarchism…and the great majority of anarchists embraced it.” (Schmidt & van
der Walt 2009; 170) For them, the “broad anarchist tradition” was “‘class struggle’
anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary communist anarchism….” (19)
However, in his 1969 pamphlet, “Listen, Marxist!” (republished in Bookchin 1986; 195—242),
Bookchin denounced “the myth of the proletariat.” He wrote, "We have seen the working
class neutralized as the ‘agent of revolutionary change,’ albeit still struggling within a
bourgeois framework for more wages [and] shorter hours….The class struggle…has
[been]…co-opted into capitalism…. " (202) The last collection of his writings repeats his
belief, “…The Second World War…brought to an end to the entire era of revolutionary
proletarian socialism…that had emerged in June 1848” (Bookchin 2015; 127). By an “era of
revolutionary proletarian socialism,” he did not mean there had been successful workers’
revolutions, but that there had been mass working class movements (Socialist, Communist,
and anarchist), with a number of attempted revolutions.
He wrote, “…The worker [is] dominated by the factory hierarchy, by the industrial routine,
and by the work ethic….Capitalist production not only renews the social relations of
capitalism with each working day…it also renews the psyche, values, and ideology of
capitalism” (Bookchin 1986; 203 & 206). (Why these deadening effects of industrial
capitalist production did not prevent the existence of a movement for “revolutionary
proletarian socialism” for an “entire era” from 1848 to World War II, he did not explain.)
Bookchin did not deny that there still were workers’ struggles for better wages and
shorter hours, but he no longer saw this low level class conflict as indicating a
potential for a workers’ revolution. Nor did he deny that workers might become
revolutionary, but only, he said, if they stopped thinking of themselves as workers,
focused on issues unrelated to their daily work, and regarded themselves as declassed
“citizens.”
Communalism vs. Anarchism & Marxism
Before going into why Bookchin rejected working class revolution—and why I think he was
wrong—I will mention another development of his theory. After about 40 years of calling
himself an anarchist, Bookchin decided to reject that term. Instead he re-labelled his
program, “communalism” (while still keeping the related labels of “libertarian
municipalism” and “social ecology”). In his last work (Bookchin 2015), there are essays
(written in 2002) explaining this view.
I find this rather odd, since he continued to oppose the state (as a bureaucratic-military
organization above the rest of society), denying the Marxist idea of a “transitional” or
“workers’“ state. He continued to reject capitalism and the market. He continued to
oppose all other forms of domination, oppression, and hierarchy (sexism, racism,
homophobia, imperialism, and so on), Frankly, rejecting the state, capitalism, and all
other aspects of oppression fits my definition of anarchism.
By “communalism,” he meant a “confederation” (a decentralized federation) of
ecologically-balanced neighborhoods and communities. In them both the economy and the
polity (“government” without the state) would be managed by directly-democratic citizen
assemblies, the self-organized people. Whatever might be said about this (he rejected
workers having workplace assemblies even if under the overall direction of the communal
assembly), it is a variety of anarchism. (For a full exposition of this political and
economic program, see Biehl 1998.)
Bookchin contrasted communalism to both anarchism and Marxism, saying that communalism
incorporated the best of both but went further. Actually, when making this contrast, he
tended to divide anarchism into two categories, namely “anarchism” and “revolutionary
syndicalism.” By the latter, he apparently meant all varieties of class-struggle
anarchism, not just anarcho-syndicalism. But if we remove all the working class aspects
from anarchism (erase the broad anarchist tradition), all that is left is an “anarchism”
which is individualistic, personalistic, extremist-without-being-revolutionary,
anti-organizational, “lifestylist”, and irresponsible. Which is just what Bookchin
claimed was wrong with anarchism! Bookchin denounced this reformist,
alternate-institutionalist, so-called “lifestylist,” wing of anarchism for everything
except what he had in common with it, namely rejection of working class revolution.
Similarly, with Marxism. If we remove the working class from Marx’s Marxism—if we abandon
“The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself”—
then all that is left of Marxism is its centralism, its determinism, its scientism, and
its statism. That is, what is left is the basis for Stalinist totalitarianism.
The main concept which Bookchin took from Marxism was its analysis of capitalism as a
commodity-producing system that had to expand or die. Under the pressure of competition,
each firm, and all the firms, must produce more, sell more, make more money, grow bigger,
accumulate and accumulate. Bookchin saw that the basic drive of capitalism would
inevitably threaten the need of the ecological world for balance and limits. (He wrote
this before the current generation of ecologically-minded Marxist scholars began to work
out their theories.)
Unfortunately, he did not understand that to speak of capitalism’s drive to accumulate is
to speak of its need to exploit its workers. In essence capitalism is nothing but the
capital/labor relationship—while it treats nature as of no value. The accumulation of
commodities and money comes from human labor, and from the workers being paid less than
they produce. In the commodity-economy of capitalism, the workers’ ability to work (their
“labor power”) is also a commodity, to be bought by the capitalist for less than it can
produce.
This does not necessarily mean the workers get poorer (the supposed theory of
“immiseration”). As goods are produced ever more cheaply, the workers can get more of
them while still getting less of the total they produce. It is this extra value (the
profit) which the workers produce but do not receive which is accumulated. The surplus
value permits the endless cycle of growth. Whatever Bookchin thought, the working class
remained essential and central to capitalism. Therefore it must be essential and central
to any overturn of capitalism.
When the extra declines (due to monopoly, overproduction, the tendency of the profit rate
to fall, the increased costs of accessing natural resources, etc.) then the firms will
fight for more profits. They will attack the workers and seek to lower their share of
production. So it went when the factors which permitted the 30 years of the post-World
War II prosperity ran out of steam—about 1970. Bookchin (and most of the fifties and
sixties Left theoreticians) did not expect an end to the post-war prosperity, any more
than did liberals and conservatives. Bookchin even wrote, “…World capitalism emerged from
World War II stronger than it had been in any time in its history….[There was] an absence
of a ‘general crisis’ of capitalism….” (2015; 128).
He rejected the view of both Luxemburg and Lenin (and the “ultra-left” libertarian
Marxists who were politically close to anarchism) who believed that around World War I
“…capitalism had passed from a progressive into a largely reactionary phase….” (Bookchin
2015; 124) Instead, he believed, “What the past fifty years have shown us is that the
uniquely insurgent period between 1917 and 1939 was not evidence of capitalist morbidity
and decline, as Lenin [and others!—WP] surmised. Rather it was a period of social
transition [of]…the emergence of new issues that extended beyond the largely
worker-oriented analysis of the classical Left” (149). Denying that capitalism had passed
into its epoch of reaction and decline, Bookchin did not believe that the post-war
prosperity was temporary, that the prosperity and strength of world capitalism would reach
an end, and the general crisis of capitalism would re-appear. He did not expect a renewed
attack on the workers by the capitalists—a top-down class war. (These topics are
discussed further in Price 2013.)
Bookchin’s Reasons for Rejecting the Working Class
“Contrary to Marx’s expectations, the industrial working class is now dwindling in numbers
and is steadily losing its traditional identity as a class….Present-day culture
[and]…modes of production…have remade the proletarian into a largely petty bourgeois
stratum….The proletarian …will be completely replaced by automated and even miniaturized
means of production….Class categories are now intermingled with hierarchical categories
based on race, gender, sexual preference, and certainly national or regional differences.”
(Bookchin 2015; 5)
This shows several misunderstandings of the working class perspective. Neither Marxism,
and certainly not anarcho-syndicalism, defined the “proletariat” as limited to an
“industrial working class.” Those who sell their labor power to bosses, for wages or
salaries, participating in the production of commodities and the overall production of
surplus value—they are capitalism’s workers. (The “working class” is a broader category
than just employed workers. The class also includes those who depend on employed
workers—their children and full-time homemakers—as well as retired workers, currently
unemployed workers, most college students as future workers, and so on).
“The great majority of Americans form the working class. They are skilled and unskilled,
in manufacturing and in services, men and women of all races.… They drive trucks, write
routine computer code, operate machinery, wait tables, sort and deliver the mail, work on
assembly lines, stand all day as bank tellers, perform thousands of jobs in every sector
of the economy. For all their differences, working class people share a common place in
production, where they have relatively little control over the pace or content of their
work and aren’t anybody’s boss. They produce the wealth of nations, but receive from that
wealth only what they can buy with [their] wages….When we add them all up, they account
for over 60 percent of the [U.S.] labor force” (Zweig 2000; 3).
One reason for the decline in U.S. hard-core industrial workers has been the expansion of
overseas production by U.S. companies. However this may effect the U.S., it has caused a
large increase in the international working class, in Asia and other of the poorer (“Third
World”) regions. This is hardly evidence against a working class perspective! Also,
Bookchin has used the examples of the Russian revolution and the Spanish 1930s revolution.
He argued from them that the most revolutionary working classes are those which have many
new workers, recently recruited from the countryside. “Generally the ‘proletariat’ has
been most revolutionary in transitional periods, when…the workers had been directly
uprooted from a peasant background….” (Bookchin 1986; 211) Supposedly this was another
reason for the U.S. workers to be conservative. But, to the extent that this is true, it
also implies that the expanding new working classes of the oppressed nations can be
expected to be militant and radical. (In Bookchin 2015, there is a chapter on nationalism
and internationalism; it says nothing whatever about the international working class or
its current expansion.)
The main support for Bookchin’s anti-proletarian view is the empirical fact that U.S.
workers as a whole do not presently support anarchism, socialism, communism, or
revolution, and do not even identify with their broad class (“is steadily losing its
traditional identity as a class”). Nor is there currently even a significant minority of
workers who are any kind of radicals. In fact, many white workers are quite conservative.
However, a class orientation does not claim that it is inevitable that the workers—or any
section of the workers—will develop class consciousness and become socialist (anarchist,
communist) revolutionaries. There are forces which push workers toward radicalization: the
gathering of workers into factories and workplaces (and, yes, into cities), there to
experience exploitation, alienation, poverty, mistreatment, unemployment, as well as the
apparently “non-class” evils of capitalism, such as war and ecological destruction. But
there are also forces which push them away from radicalization: racism, sexism,
patriotism, most religion, miseducation, etc. Better-off workers (the supposed “labor
aristocracy”) feel comfortable and do not want to risk their gains. Worse-off workers feel
demoralized and overwhelmed. Some of what Bookchin has raised, such as the possibly
conservatizing effects of working in the authoritarian conditions of a factory, might also
be considered as part of the de-radicalizing forces.
Hopefully, over time the forces leading toward class consciousness will win out, but that
is not a guaranteed outcome—not necessarily in time to prevent economic collapse, a world
war, and/or climate catastrophe. This is, after all, not a mechanical process but a matter
of choice by a great many people. “To call the proletariat a revolutionary class is a
condensation: it means a class with the historical potential of making a revolution; it is
a label for a social drive; it is not a description of current events” (Draper 1978; 51).
As even Bookchin admits, there has been an “entire era of revolutionary proletarian
socialism.” Tens of millions of workers (and peasants and others) have participated in
massive movements which claimed to be for some sort of socialism. Even the U.S. had large
workers’ struggles in the past, usually influenced by a minority of revolutionaries. I
doubt that there has been such a great change in technology that a new period of
capitalist crisis would not have a new radicalizing effect.
“…The working class, as the bottom layer of the class system, cannot stir without
objectively pointing to a program, even when it consciously rejects it: namely the
assumption of social responsibility by a democratically organized people…a program which,
concretized, means the abolition of capitalism….It is not a question of how the
proletariat can be deceived, betrayed, seduced, bought, brainwashed, or manipulated by the
ruling powers of society, like every other class. The basic point is that it is the
proletariat that it is crucial to deceive, seduce, and so on.” (Draper 1978; 47-48)
Such cross-currents in the consciousness of the workers and others cause me to agree with
Bookchin about the need for “…an organized body of revolutionaries….” (2015; 54)
Revolutions have failed due to a lack of “an accountable, recallable, confederal
leadership group that explicitly challenged all statist organizations as such” (Bookchin
1996; 10). Unlike Bookchin, I want one with a holistic class struggle anarchist program.
An organization of revolutionary anarchists would not be a party because it would not seek
to “take power” for itself by taking over the state (either the existing state or a new,
revolutionary, state). It would exist to pull together the minority of revolutionary
libertarian socialists, in order to encourage the popular formation of radically
democratic assemblies and to fight against authoritarian parties of Leninists, liberals,
social democrats, or even fascists. It would not be separate from the self-organization of
the working class but would be part of the process.
Bookchin is right that “Class categories are now intermingled with hierarchical categories
based on race, gender, sexual preference….” Actually class has always been intermingled
with these “non-class” issues, not just “now” but also during the “era of proletarian
socialism.” There have been some “vulgar Marxists” and wooden syndicalists who wrongly
regarded class as the only issue. But there is nothing inherent in a holistic class
orientation which requires ignoring these vital issues. Class interacts with, and overlaps
with, race, gender, sexual orientation, national oppression, ecology, imperialism, and so
on. (As already mentioned, for example, the ecological crisis may appear to be a
cross-class problem, since it affects everyone. But it is caused by capitalism’s drive to
accumulate, which is rooted in capitalism’s exploitation of the working class.) Schmidt &
van der Walt (2009) explore the history of anarchists dealing with gender, race, national
oppression, and other issues through community organizing, forming schools, and generally
integrating the liberation of the working class with all other struggles for liberation.
Nowhere does Bookchin discuss a main reason for looking to the working class (that is, to
the people as workers). It is strategic. As workers, the people have an enormous potential
power. Besides their numbers (being most of the national population), the workers have
their hands on the means of production, of transportation, of communication, of social
services, and of commercial transactions. The working class could shut down the country
and could start it up again in a new way, if it chose. The only comparable power the
capitalists have is their state control of the police and the military (but the ranks of
the military are mostly the sons and daughters of the working class who can be appealed to
in a working class rebellion). As “citizens,” the people have no such potential power.
One of Bookchin’s contributions has been his historical studies of revolutions (such as
Bookchin 1996). He summarized, “From the largely medieval peasant wars of the sixteenth
century Reformation to the modern uprisings of industrial workers and peasants, oppressed
peoples have created their own popular forms of community association—potentially the
popular infrastructure of a new society….During the course of the revolutions, these
associations took the institutional form of local assemblies…or representative councils of
mandated recallable deputies” (1996; 4). This is the basis of the revolutionary anarchist
program. Bookchin’s focus was on the popular assemblies and councils of towns and
neighborhoods. Yet in industrialized societies, since the beginning of the 20th century,
the dominant form of such assemblies and councils has been factory and workplace
committees. Repeatedly, the workers have taken over their workplaces and created
self-managing democratic assemblies, horizontally associated. After the Russian October
revolution, the Bolsheviks consolidated their rule when they defeated the factory
committees—against the opposition of anarchists and left Communists (see Brinton 2004).
However, Bookchin stated only that he was not against temporary factory committees,
provided that “the [workers’] councils are finally assimilated by a popular assembly….”
(1986; 168).
Murray Bookchin’s Strategy
Rejecting the working class, Bookchin must look elsewhere for social forces to make a
change—the revolutionary agent. In 1970 (in his first “Introduction” to Bookchin 1986), he
looked to “the counterculture and youth revolt” (32), to “hippie[s]” (27), and to
“tribalism” (25). “The lifestyle is indispensable in preserving the integrity of the
revolutionary….” (18) By the time of his second (1985) “Introduction”, he had become
disillusioned with the “counterculture”. He was moving in a direction which ultimately
became his denunciation of “lifestylism”. Instead he now looked to “the transclass
phenomena—the re-emergence of ‘the People’….” (1986; 41)
By the time of his last writings, Bookchin summed-up his view that people should not be
appealed to on the basis of their self-interest or needs but as non- class “citizens,” on
the basis of moral appeals. “…Workers of different occupations would take their seats in
popular assemblies not as workers—printers, plumbers, foundry workers, and the like…—but
as citizens, whose overriding concern would be the general interest of the society in
which they live. Citizens should be freed of their particularistic identity….and
interests” (Bookchin 2015; 20). This is a “transformation of workers from mere class
beings into citizens” (21). Of course, this “transclass” transformation is not limited to
workers but also includes managers, capitalists, politicians, and generals. Presumably,
they too would be transformed from “mere class beings into citizens”, in this communal
Popular Front.
In the ‘eighties, Ellen Meiksins Wood wrote a brilliant critique of leading British and
French Marxists who were abandoning the working class for reasons very similar to those of
Bookchin (they too had been influenced by the extended prosperity and stability after
World War II). She wrote,
“[These theories] must mean that the conditions of capitalist exploitation are no more
consequential in determining the life-situation and experience of workers than are any
other conditions and contingencies which may touch their lives….The implication is that
workers are not more affected by capitalist exploitation than are any other human beings
who are not themselves the direct objects of exploitation. This also implies that
capitalists derive no fundamental advantage from the exploitation of workers, that the
workers derive no fundamental disadvantage from their exploitation by capital, that
workers would derive no fundamental advantage from ceasing to be exploited, that the
condition of being exploited does not entail an ‘interest’ in the cessation of class
exploitation, that the relations between capital and labor have no fundamental
consequences for the whole structure of social and political power, and that the
conflicting interests between capital and labor are all in the eye of the beholder. (No
matter that this makes nonsense out of…the whole history of working class struggles
against capital)” (Wood 1998; 61).
Anarchists have long criticized Marxism for its lack of a moral aspect. Marx himself was
certainly motivated by moral passions, but it was not part of his system. As a system,
Marxism seemed to say that the workers would fight for socialism because the workers would
fight for socialism—all due to the working of the Historical Process. Nowhere does Marx
write that workers and others should be for socialism because it is morally right. However
the anarchist critique of Marxist determinism and non-moralism does not mean that we
should not look toward the self-interest of the workers. It is in their interest to stop
exploitation, and to create a free, classless, society, which are all moral goals.
Bookchin’s citizens, as part of the People, have no reason to oppose capitalism except
that it is morally right to do so. Nor do they have any strategic power to stop
capitalism, as do striking workers. There is supposedly no more reason for an African-
American working woman to be for Bookchin’s assemblies of citizens than there is for a top
manager of a big corporation or a police officer. They are all part of the “transclass
phenomena” of “the People.”
Bookchin had worked out a strategy to achieve this goal of communalism (Biehl 1998). It
was based on his analysis that the fundamental conflict in capitalist society is not
between the working class and capital, but between the local community and the
centralized, oppressive, state. He did not advocate uprisings which would throw up
revolutionary assemblies, as in the example he frequently cites of the French revolution.
Instead, he proposed that citizens would peacefully and legally create mass assemblies at
the level of villages, townships, and city neighborhoods. With the aim of making these
assemblies official, Bookchinites would run in local elections. They would seek to take
over town councils and similar bodies. They would try to change city and township
charters, in order to replace the existing city, town, village, and neighborhood
governments with popular assemblies. As much as possible, they would try to take over
local businesses and industries, to “municipalize” the economy. This would supposedly lay
the basis for a libertarian (lower case “c”) communism.
As more localities were transformed into communal assemblies, they would supposedly
associate with each other, beginning to form an overall confederation. (However, they
would not try to take over state-wide or national governments by elections; Bookchin
rejected that as statist reformism.) These spreading communal entities would undermine the
state and capitalism. At some point, the state and capitalist class would try to stop the
process. There would be a clash, nonviolent or violent, depending on circumstances. If the
communal confederation won, it would be a revolution!
With all due respect for Murray Bookchin’s insights and achievements, I regard this as a
crackpot fantasy. The idea of building local assemblies and associations is a version of
community organizing, which anarchists are for. But the municipal government is part of
the state; trying to get elected to it has the same problems which anarchists have always
pointed to in the efforts of Marxists and others to get elected to any level of
government. In Kropotkin’s words, “…The anarchists refuse to be party to the present-State
organizations….They do not seek to constitute, and invite the workingmen not to
constitute, political parties in the parliaments….They have endeavored to promote their
ideas directly amongst the labor organizations and to induce those unions to a direct
struggle against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary legislation”
(Kropotkin 2002; 287).
While it tends to be easier for insurgents to take over local governments, local
governments also have the least amount of power—compared to state and national
governments. If a town adopts an anti-capitalist program, both local and national business
will pull out, sabotaging the local economy. Meanwhile towns and cities are legally
chartered by the state government and are officially creatures of that government. If the
local regime gets too radical, the state government will take it over. In my lifetime, New
York City’s budget was taken over by a special state agency supposedly due to financial
problems. Right now, school systems and city governments have been seized by courts and
state governments. The idea that people could vote-in libertarian municipalism at a local
level is as reformist as the idea that they could vote-in socialism at the national
level—and as unworkable (consider the current example of Syriza in Greece).
Attempts by Bookchin and his followers to use this strategy have failed (the Kurds in
Rojava seem to be using a different strategy; again, nothing in this essay is meant as a
comment on the situation in Rojava). The anarchist milieu, whatever its problems, has not
taken up libertarian municipalism either. This may be the reason Bookchin finally declared
that he was no longer an anarchist. To be fair, revolutionary class-struggle anarchism has
not had any recent successes either. Yet it does have a great history and seems to be on
an upswing internationally.
Conclusion
Murray Bookchin was a prolific and influential theorist. He made an important integration
of anarchism with ecological thought, as well as with aspects of Marxism. He showed that
the ecological crisis is rooted in the drive of capitalism to accumulate. He developed a
model of a post-capitalist society which should be studied and thought about, not as a
blue-print or a new orthodoxy, but as raising ideas for how a libertarian socialism might
work. He made other contributions, such as his historical studies of revolutions. In this
essay, I have barely touched on the vast body of his work. But I do not agree with the
statement by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party that Bookchin “was the greatest social scientist
of the 20th century” (Enzinna 2015; 46).
Bookchin made a fundamental error in rejecting the working class as at least one of the
major forces in making a revolution. He did not understand the centrality of the workers
to capitalism, and therefore their interest in ending it, and their potential power to do
that, in alliance with all oppressed people. Along with this, he misinterpreted the nature
of the period. He saw the post-war boom as a new stage in capitalist development, rather
than as a temporary stabilization of a deeply crisis-ridden system. His own analysis of
the ecological crisis should have demonstrated this. Rejecting the working class, he
looked to non-class, cross-class, forces, of imagined, abstract, “citizens,” motivated
only by imagined, abstract, moral concerns. As part of their strategy, they would change
capitalism by getting elected to local governments. Such a perspective cannot create a
movement, let alone a revolution.
References
Biehl, Janet, with Bookchin, Murray (1998). The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian
Municipalism. Montreal/NY: Black Rose Books.
Bookchin, Murray (1986). Post-Scarcity Anarchism (2nd rev. ed.). Montreal/Buffalo: Black
Rose Books.
Bookchin, Murray (1996). The Third Revolution; Vol. 1: Popular Movements in the
Revolutionary Era. London/NY: Cassell.
Bookchin, Murray (2015). The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of
Direct Democracy; Essays by Murray Bookchin (Ed.: Debbie Bookchin & Blair Taylor).
London/NY: Verso Books.
Brinton, Maurice (2004). “The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1917—1921: The State and
Counter-Revolution.” In For Workers’ Power; The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton (ed.:
David Goodway). Oakland CA/Edinburgh UK: AK Press. Pp. 293—378.
Draper, Hal (1978). Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution; Vol. II: The Politics of Social
Classes. NY/London: Monthly Review Press.
Enzinna, Wes (12/29/2015). “The Rojava Experiment.” The New York Times Magazine. Pp. 38—45.
Kropotkin, Peter (2002). Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings (ed. Roger
Baldwin). Mineola NY: Dover Publications.
Price, Wayne (2013). The Value of Radical Theory; An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s
Critique of Political Economy. Oakland CA: AK Press.
Schmidt, Michael & van der Walt, Lucien (2009). Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class
Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism; Vol. 1. Oakland: AK Press.
White, Damien F. (2008). Bookchin: A Critical Appraisal. London: Pluto Press.
Wood, Ellen Meiksins (1998). The Retreat from Class; A New ‘True’ Socialism. London/NY: Verso.
Zweig, Michael (2000). The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret. Ithaca
NY/London UK: Cornell University Press/ILR Press.
*written for www. anarkismo.net
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/28832
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Message: 2
Twenty years ago, France was paralyzed by the most massive strike movement recorded since
May 68. But it was much more than a simple work stoppage. The movement was marked by
strong political, symbolic and social dimension, and it is no coincidence that when the
following weeks, there was already talk of "December 95". ---- In December 2005, the
monthly Alternative Libertaire devoted a minidossier the anniversary of these historic
strikes: ---- That December 95 has changed ---- Interview: "The strike, we had built from
below" ---- Timeline: the four phases of movement ---- Alternative Libertaire in the fight
---- Bonus: ---- "On the self-organization in December 95", an interview, twenty years
later, two players in the fight, by the journal Social criticism.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Decembre-95
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Message: 3
After Nantes, Orleans, Rennes, Montpellier and Lorient FLOP 21 happens in the Dordogne is
this time on the side of Clermont-Ferrand, on 10 December, a collective with Alternative
Libertaire initiates Anarchist Groups and Coordination New Anti-Capitalist Party a public
meeting combining ecological urgency and emergency, and responses to these struggles cross
issues. ---- In December 2015 held in Paris on 21th Summit of Heads of States on climate
change (COP 21). For several months the leaders assure us that this is it, finally, they
will sign the agreement that will limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees by
2100. Bullshit! ---- The solutions chosen are not up to the challenges, and it is certain
that they do not even consensus among the negotiators. We sell us the idea that the
development of electric cars, biofuels etc will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
These are actually new ways for capitalists to make money by surfing on the wave of
greenwashing. Do not get smoked out by major speech on renewable energy, because the
reality is often more complex and less radiant.
In parallel with its pseudo-environmentalist discourse, the French government continues to
allow negative environmental projects: airports, destructive projects in wetlands, open
mines of gold and tungsten, and recent shale gas projects and layer of gas.
CLERMONT-FERRAND
Thursday, December 10, 2015, 20 hours
"Coping: Climate, against the state of emergency"
Jean Richepin Centre, Room 6
21 rue Jean Richepin, 63000 CLERMONT FERRAND
Contact AL Auvergne
Many environmental activists have already expressed their distrust with decisions of
governments. They are organized here and there to improve their consumption, propose
alternative environmentally friendly, encouraging short circuits ...
If these initiatives are essential to prove that another mode of production is possible,
we affirm the need to change the system in depth, out of the growth dogma and organize
collectively to get out of capitalism.
The situation of current emergency state facilitates the ban deemed troublesome events. A
show of support for migrants in Paris who defied the ban has already led to summonses and
possible lawsuits. Certain events within the COP21, are also prohibited. Environmentalists
and anti-capitalist activists are under house arrest and searched.
The government's goal, it is in any way the security of the population, as the Christmas
markets are held, but it is the one to repress all social and political challenges. We
must mobilize against this authoritarian logic capitalist and that concerns us all, but
whose disastrous first impact the poorest.
That is why we, activists of anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian organizations, we
invite you to this public meeting. many come and many!
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Faire-face-pour-le-climat-contre-l
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Message: 4
Dear friends and fellows, ---- It’s once more time for a special edition of Gai Dao. ----
For those of you who are not familiar with it, Gai Dao (chin. ‚to go a different way‘) is
a monthly magazine that gives voice to the Federation of German-speaking Anarchists (FdA).
---- It’s an autonomous project that is open to non-members of the FdA, as long as they
support the idea of anarchy and the principles of the FdA – preferably in a solidary but
critical manner. (http://fda-ifa.org/category/gai-dao/) ---- Right now we are in the midst
of preparations for a new special edition of Gai Dao, dedicated to the realization of
anarchistic ideas in everyday life – ours and those of others – as well as to analyze them
and, not least of all, examine their practicability.
The idea is to split the magazine into two separate parts – one to describe how we, here
and now, try to give life to ideas of solidary and undominated living and thus try to live
the utopia. Below, you can find a list of possible contents, but besides those you are of
course very welcome to work up your own ideas, experiences and emphases. The second part,
however, will develope a concept for an undominated society and point out possible
difficulties in organization. It could, for example, deal with the question of breached
borders or how certain (disagreeable) tasks could be assigned and carried out while
without economic enforcement.
Now this is where you come into play. For this special edition we are looking for
motivated writers with both the interest and time to join the work at one of the two
parts. To plan our magazine we need at least a rough outline of volume and number of the
texts, so we’d appreciate it if you could send as a short concept (regarding content,
volume and possibly details about text and format) before 31.12.2015. (Mailadress for your
concept and any kind of questions: sonderausgabe-gaidao@riseup.net )
We believe this magazine can become a great project and historically valuable
documentation concerning the state of the anarchistic movement within the German-speaking
area (and beyond). For this to be a success, we are dependent on your ideas and
experiences to paint a living picture of the present and devise a viable way and a
perspective for the future.
We are looking forward to your input.
Possible topics include:
Anarchistic values (what do we mean by this?)
Hierarchies/command structure
Day to day life, standards, contradictions and consequences
Pragmatic action – to what extent? Alliances, working together and the limitations of
cooperation.
Decision making?
Employment (How does our employment status fit in with our ideals? How consistent are we?)
Trade-unions?
Practical realization of anarchistic ideals, eg.:
Freestores
Squattings?
Self-administration
Alternative housing projects
Politic communes
Refugees? self-administration
A look at other countries
Link to social movement (squatting because of housing shortage, high rent, poverty etc.,
and not for social centers?)
Anarchistic events, bookstores etc…
Relationship anarchy and code
Education, upbringing and care taking
Schlagworte: die Utopie lebendig werden lassen
http://fda-ifa.org/aufruf-die-utopie-lebendig-werden-zu-lassen/
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Message: 5
Awareness and fundraising film screening and Q&A with film maker Guy Smallman who is just
back from Lesvos, and visiting Scotland for 2 days only. ---- Donations will be going to
support refugees in Greece. ---- Edinburgh: Tuesday, December 15 at 5:30pm ---- Hunter
Lecture Theatre, Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place, EG3 9DF ---- Glasgow:
Wednesday, December 16 at 7:00pm ---- Boyd Orr room 513 (Lecture Theatre D), University of
Glasgow ---- Eye witness report & film from the Frontline of the refugee crisis in Lesvos.
---- We are very lucky to be able to screen this short (25min) documentary shot this
November on one of the islands considered the front-line of the refugee crisis. Focusing
on the solidarity of ordinary people in the face of government-led racism and
incompetence, this film will show how the working class in Greece are defying the state
and showing their solidarity with refugees.
The director, Guy Smallman of Reelnews, will be travelling to Scotland fresh from the
press film screening and will be on hand to give a Q&A on his first-hand experiences. You
can check out his travel-blog for the project here: http://reelnews.co.uk/the-lesvos-blog/
This event is free to attend. There will be an opportunity to give a financial donations
to send to Lesvos, but it is just as important to come along and raise awareness.
Glasgow event co-hosted by Glasgow AFed and Glasgow Uni Anarchist Soc.
https://www.facebook.com/events/194379107567573/
Edinburgh co-hosted by counterinfo lab and the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh
https://www.facebook.com/events/106327519737862/
https://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/stateless-in-lesvos-screening-and-qa-with-film-maker/
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Message: 6
5 2010, remembered as the day that the Greek political snowball starts. At that time,
workers' demonstrations and a general strike against economic tightening measures explode.
These actions touted as the greatest demonstration of the Greek people since the movement
against the military regime in 1973. ---- This movement became more intense. Massa did the
occupation of Syntagma Square (downtown Athens). This mode-political model of
occupation-which later helped inspire the emergence of the movement Occupy Wall Street in
the United States, and then spread throughout the world. Social explosion was triggered by
the actions of the Greek government to cut public spending and raise taxes in response to
the supply of the bailout of 110 billion euros. Again to patch the foreign debt of Greece.
This movement is spontaneous, horizontal (no leader), democratic, and participatory. In
early 2011, the actions organized through tools and new methods are more horizontal and
participatory, through social media. This method is increasingly attracted support a
broader social movement. Do not be surprised if at the height of the people in 2011, this
movement was dubbed the "Action in May Facebook". [2]
Political action initiated by active people to reject the debt, refuse tightening economy,
the issue of violation of human rights and labor issues. The more involved more
knowledgeable of the issues raised. The issues raised to be very plural.
Campaign of direct action, blockade the homes of politicians etc., Managed to create
public distrust in the State and the Government of Greece is getting stronger.
In this situation; political and economic conditions are chaotic, coupled with the power
of the people, there are a thousand and one potential to turn towards alternative forms.
Talking about the social changes of the parameters is upheaval in the level of the
grassroots. I think almost all advocates of social change agreement about this.
Well, in the story of the country's philosophers, tetiba came Syriza. A new party (which
is rooted in the left block construction in 2004) who claim the left and combine the faces
of young politicians with populist promises. They managed to get the sympathy of the
people at large. The proof they get a majority in parliament and put its leader, Alexis
Tsipras as the Prime Minister of Greece since early 2015.
Through Syriza phenomenon we are shown two political trends of the left today: power
without changing vs power change. The first trend, the majority carried the Marxists of
all spectrum especially Socialists, Leninist, Maoist, Trotkyis, which still continues
hypnotized by the State authorities. The second trend is a colorful group consisting of
Marxists, Socialists, Anarchists. This last type is ever inspired by the Maoists,
Trotkyis, Libertarian Socialists, who finally decided to get rid of toxins authoritarian
and mix them into anarchism, like the EZLN, or Zapatista Movement, the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK), and other various movements internationalism. In short, there are two
tendencies left the now re-emerged namely, left authoritarian state and left
anti-authoritarian stateless.
Back to Syriza. Actually there are many questions for this group. What real powers to the
State, if the benchmarks are changes at the grass roots? Even Karl Marx wants to realize
society without classes, not the state without classes.
The second question which further is what has been done Syriza with state power held
today? Whether the measures taken will further relieve the people or even more miserable?
Since the beginning of the victory fanfare Syriza, the left seemed to forget-or pretend to
forget. What did the party (left) after the successful control of the government and the
State? China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cuba? [3]
Left populism, neo-Social Democrats
Strategy seize State power is not something that is phenomenal. Syriza, PODEMOS in Spain,
Corby and breast bengeknya, is not a new political phenomenon. The left has jumped into
the political power since 150 years ago. Still unclear diingatan complaints about the
communists / socialists against the social democrats in Germany that a crowd nyemplung to
the parliamentary arena and to finally gain power in various countries in Europe. Then
they got busy preaching about social reform rather than revolution. This phenomenon then
dimmed, when regimes Social-Democrats then crushed-crushed without power face twisted
regimes private capitalist fascist and lost sales from state capitalist regimes like the
Soviet Union and all turunannnya (which is also a fascist!).
The Bolshevik Party was the result of a split of the Russian Social-Democratic movement.
Many people left see that the Bolsheviks actually is dosial-democrat movement which then
must adapt to Russian conditions. Social-democratic version of Western Europe or Russia,
in fact, at best, only carry the reform and progress of capitalism in society, and not
revolution. Other obvious example is China, which is now the savior and the cutting edge
of capitalism.
It is actually not much different from disobedience Marxists through-party social
democratic parties in the early 19th century. Social democrats or the Second
International, which insulted-despised by many radical left, in fact, produce a sizeable
contribution in this world, practical and real. In addition to establishing a system of
liberal capitalism, they also bring a lot of economic reforms, social and ecological
useful, comparable to the high social security benefits, education, health, etc., In the
Scandinavian countries.
Do tendencies entry-into-ring-power is similar to social democrats? Are these practices
convincing Leninists that the social democrats more practical, praxis, an impact? What
made the difference? I have no idea.
90s marked the collapse of the Soviet Union into the early stories of the reform movement
left towards populism and state power back bubbling. Left circles filled with enthusiasm
attached. Look at Refondazione Communista movement in Italy [4], self-criticism of the
Communist Party of the Philippines (Communist Party of Philipines) to fractions were quite
successful snatch crumbs in parliament, Akbayan and Bayan Muna. [5]
Leninists and power has always been a story-blue. As if it needs a social revolution, but
the real power of the state was the one goal. Considered repugnant but often revered as an
act of genius.
In the early 2000s, there was a wave of so-called Pink Tide or Turn to the Left in Latin
America. [6] This era marks a political tidal wave of South America to the left pole. The
cause unpredictable: the liberalization and tightening the IMF in the region since the
1980s. But the symptoms are recurrent, rather than the more radical, it was instead a
political move to the center (centrism). Whether related or not, this trend strengthened
since the death of Hugo Chavez.
Autonomous Movement vs. Government Left
Then if I will let the readers choked-choked in lonely desert, dry without hope and
inspiration? Of course not. Syriza is not a single child copulation results of the
people's movement to the current condition of society Greece -if not exactly child of
engineering. There are other groups who are not swayed populism Syriza and prepare to
maximize the political space at the grass-roots level is not at the elite level of
political power.
In just a few weeks after the victory of Syriza at the beginning of 2015, the radical left
Greece further strengthens street actions and the actions of his immediate. [7] The group,
Alpha Kappa, one of the anti-authoritarian quite large in Greece, would encourage struggle
for political space created by this Syriza euphoria. [8]
This group considers Syriza has exceeded the initial mandate of the people's movement.
Syriza has led agenda towards power without changing the basic things that mandate, and
the things promised to bright to their constituents. Again, this is just 'bussiness as
usual' in the mechanism of elections, something that is not expected to come from the
radical left movement potential as Syriza. However Syriza managed to hypnotize the
international left, is no exception left in Indonesia, such as the writer-activist in
IndoProgress. We still remember the writer-activist kegetolan left here mengglorifikasi
Syriza. [9] The Left here forgot to analyze and explore what is really the cause of the
victory of Syriza. [10]
Frustration, and pragmatism, is also a sense of resignation, all this would never bring us
closer to liberation. Pragmatismelah which raised the Nazi party to power in Germany. Not
home win, but whether that victory brings us closer to freedom, independence and
self-confidence of the people to be more active? Because the representation of political
movements always just make people become passive waiting fate.
Syriza promises independence of EU aid, so that the Greek economy back on track. But what
happens behind the counter again concessions that harm people.
Above all, the question then is not just any economic benefit, but whether the people
closer to freedom, independence, including the independence of dependence and trust that
his fate will be changed by the party and the leaders of faraway?
So What Is to Be Done? and how the conditions of the resistance of the people in Greece now?
[continued]
The previous section - Explains Greece: Notes on Crisis and the Role of the Left
Organization (Sec. 1)
Note:
[1] The lyrics of Social Protection - Traitor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W3Yg0kSkNg
[2] Further details about the chronological and detailed description of the actions in the
years 2010-2011, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-austerity_movement_in_Greece
[3] List of Countries that until now dominated the Leninist left, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states
[4] The two fractions of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the party Akbayan
and Bayan Muna, are currently active in Parliament
http://www.philstar.com/opinion/2012-10-30/861559/
[5] Communist Party in Italy was never a conversation in the early 1990s and became the
door for discussion left block development in Indonesia.
Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Refoundation_Party
[6] More about Pink Tide lihat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_tide atau
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pink-tide-in-latin-america-an-alliance-between-local-capital-and-socialism/5333782
[7] The actions against the police and government officials under Syriza took place a few
weeks after the victory at the start 2015.
http://www.businessinsider.co.id/greeces-far-left-is-already-rioting-protesting-against-syriza-2015-2/#.VWQ7DXMU6kp
[8] The radical left began to conceptualize resistance to seize spaces available because
of political representation Syriza.
http://roarmag.org/2015/04/syriza-greece-left-movements/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28ROAR+Magazine%29
[9] One writings pitched euphoria of one of the media left in Indonesia, IndoProgress.
http://indoprogress.com/2015/01/berani-berjuang-berani-menang-belajar-dari-kemenangan-elektoral-partai-kiri-radikal-syriza-di-yunani/
[10] Such a Vox pop of voters and why choosing Syriza party.
Http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/26/why-greece-voted-for-syriza-alexis-tsipras
http://anarkis.org/menjelaskan-yunani-catatan-mengenai-krisis-dan-peran-organisasi-kiri-bag-2/
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