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Title: Murray Bookchin in London Author: Charlie Crute Language: en Topics: Freedom, green, Murray Bookchin, social ecology Source: Retrieved on 1 January 1999 from http://www.tao.ca/~freedom/crute.html Notes: From Freedom
Murray Bookchin, now in his early seventies, was born into a tradition
of iconoclasm. His parents had emigrated to New York after the 1905
revolution in Russia â a grandmother had been a member of the
(anti-Bolshevik) Social Revolutionary Party; he had been raised in a
tradition of opposition to authority oriented to the notion of class
oppression.
After 1917 those who, like his family, had suffered under the Tsars were
swept into the Bolshevik movement; and Bookchin joined the Communist
Childrenâs Movement in 1930 at the age of nine. The executions of the
Bolshevik leaders by Stalin led to a brief flirtation with Trotskyism;
he was much influenced in his teens by the events of the Spanish Civil
War, but he was not at that time aware of anarchism. Now, said Bookchin,
he called himself an anarchist and had done so since the 1950s although
he believed he had been one much earlier. How had the change come about?
Bookchin recalled that in his young days working people were class
conscious; they saw âthe bossesâ as their opponents; battles were fought
to gain union recognition. Political activists had to use rough
language, to be loud and forceful in debate; the atmosphere was one of
conflict. But by 1948 he became aware that the workers were becoming
assimilated by the capitalist system. The new idea was that what was
good for General Motors was good for America. In the aftermath of the
Second World War everyone had been led to expect a cornucopia. Nuclear
energy was going to bring free power, free energy, free everything. It
was going to be a marvellous world, and it could have been.
Bookchin noted the increasing penetration of the capitalist market into
everyday life: the shopping malls in New York; the chemicalisation of
food; the disappearance of the green areas he used to know, the brooks
and fields of his childhood, under ticky-tacky houses; and the workers
increasingly exploited but being bought off by the perks of free
holidays and social security.
He drifted away from the labour movement and became increasingly
concerned with larger issues of social change. From 1952, writing as
Lewis Herber, he tried to formulate a theory of the domination of nature
as stemming from a capitalist economy which he identified with
anarchism. The notion of domination, Bookchin came to realise, was based
on hierarchical human relationships which existed before the emergence
of class systems and was to be found in early organic societies. He
noted that whereas a limitation of primitive societies was parochialism
the modern city, for all its disadvantages, had broken down barriers and
had produced a kind of melting pot inconceivable thousands of years ago.
Bookchin concluded that the Marxism on which he had been brought up had
not gone deeply enough. The Marxists had taught that hierarchical
relationships were necessary even as they attacked class society. Marx
had attacked Bakunin. Seeing things in industrial terms, the Marxists
asked how a steel mill could be run without hierarchical relationships.
Bookchin came to see that such relationships were not simply economic
but were based on status, that they involved for instance the domination
of women by men, of people of colour by whites. Anarchism is concerned
to oppose the one basic concept of authority as such.
The idea of the domination of nature, said Bookchin, is a projection of
human domination onto the natural world, and the ecological crisis has
its origins in a social crisis. To resolve the ecological problems we
have to look within our own society.
In calling himself an âeco-anarchistâ he was aware that he was being
disputatious â he was disliked by a lot of the more spiritualistic
environmentalists, and he had no use for their sort of loose pantheism.
His point was that before we can eliminate antagonisms between human
societies and the natural world we must first eliminate antagonisms
between human beings. Human inequality is at the root of the biospheric
degradation of today.
The market society, said Bookchin, identifies progress with competition,
with rivalry, with the spirit of dog-eat-dog. He had come to the
conclusion that some of his earlier warnings were underestimates: the
market system has telescoped into decades environmental damage he
thought would take centuries.
The rivalry was between the big business firms in the United States and
between the EEC, America and Japan. At the Earth Summit big business
would dictate terms to the worldâs government. The individuals who
manage these firms are not people with bad intentions, but are locked
into a system, and the system has to be changed. What, then, can we do?
My suggestion, said Bookchin, is that we form a counter-power to the
State, a counter-power to the great corporations and a counter-power to
the market. By that he did not mean communes or food co-operatives which
could not challenge the giant corporations. What was needed is the
re-creation of a public sphere in which people can feel they are
members, not mere taxpayers; be citizens not constituents, go beyond
merely paying taxes and obeying the rules. He had used the term
participatory democracy, but he did not mean what John Major meant when
he talked about âempowering the citizens of Britainâ. Nor did he mean
that we should fill huge meeting places, or that we should make
decisions by referenda: Shall we invade Nicaragua? Press red button for
yes, green button for no.
He advocated neighbourhood centres, delegation of representatives under
mandate as opposed to going to our MP or Congressman; advice centres on
how to deal with the system. He warned against the dangers of
parochialism of the small community, and urged the adoption of those
forms of community that have been tried by history and seen to have
worked. Bookchinâs term for the form of politics he advocates is
Confederalism.
Bookchin concluded by warning against the âspiritual aspects of
ecologyâ. He was not, he said, against spirituality but against
spiritualism, a distinction many of his critics do not draw. People have
to live, and only when they are fed can they talk about the environment.
Unless this point is appreciated, only âthe most exotic people, who do
not shape the worldâ will discuss such matters.
Break down the cities into neighbourhoods said Bookchin; it can be more
easily done today than at the time of the French Revolution. Think of
the German Green Party, and understand that all power corrupts; form a
new non-hierarchical politics.
The real question must be, first, what kind of a society are we going to
have, and then, what is our relationship with the natural world.