Unpublished Manuscript: Not for Circulation MURRAY BOOKCHIN FREE CITIES Communalism and the Left Edited by Eirik Eiglad Murray Bookchin FREE CITIES: Communalism and the Left Edited by Eirik Eiglad Unpublished Manuscript Not for Circulation Contents Editor’s preface: Creating Free Cities • 3 Introduction, by Murray Bookchin • 9 The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society • 13 Nationalism and the ”National Question” • 17 Nationalism and the Great Revolutions • 28 The Historical Importance of the City • 29 Anarchism as Individualism • 34 Anarchism, Power, and Government • 38 The Revolutionary Politics of Libertarian Municipalism • 43 The Future of the Left • 51 Toward a Communalist Approach • 71 Endnotes • 79 2 Creating Free Cities hat would a free municipality look like? What than 20 books – into a coherent body of ideas. Murray would its basic institutions be? What material, Bookchin died at the age of 85, on July 30, 2006. With political, and cultural preconditions must his passing we lost one of the most challenging and Wbe met before we can arrive at them, and who will be the innovative radical thinkers of the twentieth century. agents for social change? What kinds of movements and Bookchin expressed his ideas on libertarian municipalism political efforts are required to create them? These questions in a number of essays and articles, and advocated it in strike to the core of Murray Bookchin’s political project, his lectures and talks. But no book has yet appeared particularly as he refined it during the 1980s and 1990s. that collects his essays on the subject. This collection of The immediate and ultimate aim of the political approach his late political essays, I am proud to say, helps fill that he advanced is to create free cities or municipalities, and as gap.1 It should be seen, however, in relation to Bookchin’s such it is meant to provide both a clear social ideal as well full-length book on civic development, citizenship, and as a concrete political praxis. politics; From Urbanization to Cities.2 When he republished By advancing libertarian municipalism, Bookchin this monumental work in 1992 he added the essay “The hoped to see new civic movements emerge and claim Meaning of Confederalism,” and in a later edition, in 1995, control over their communities. Political involvement at further added “Confederal Municipalism: An Overview” the local level is necessary, he insisted, to guide and inspire as well as a new prologue. Bookchin was no academic, a process of municipal empowerment. This process and the and he did not write for purely scholarly purposes; his aim institutions it entails, he hoped, may provide a focal point with this work “was to formulate a new politics” and by for rallying progressive social movements to the common appending these essays he showed how he meant to inspire cause of political freedom in its most expansive sense. To a movement to give his ideas concrete reality. a very large extent, creating free cities is about developing In light of this, I initially intended this book to be an free citizens, in whose hands power over society should expanded appendix to From Urbanization to Cities, so that be squarely placed: it must reside in popular assemblies both together would constitute an overview of his political and not in bureaucracies, parliaments, or corporate thinking. In my view his late essays, collected here, make his boards. Libertarian municipalism is an attempt to create earlier works on urbanization, ecology, and revolutionary the political structures necessary for this shift in power. history even more relevant and tangible. Bookchin’s essays Democratized and radicalized, municipal confederations from the 1980s and 1990s had tried to advance libertarian would emerge, it is hoped, as a dual power to challenge and municipalism as an anarchist alternative, an effort that ultimately replace the nation state and the market. turned out to be problematical. Although for many years A lifelong radical and a fertile thinker, Murray Bookchin called himself an anarchist, pioneering its Bookchin had been politically active since the 1930s; concerns with ecology and with hierarchy, he had long had first in Communist parties, trade unions, and Trotskyist a troubled relationship with the anarchist tradition. After groups, then during the 1960s in the civil rights a bitter polemical struggle to defend what he considered movement, urban ecology projects, anarchist groups, the to be its highest social ideals against individualists, radical student movement, and community groups; and workerists, mystics, primitivists, and autonomists, he got later in the 1970s and 1980s in anti-nuclear movements tired of “defending anarchism against anarchists,” as he and the early Green movement. Only in the early 1990s put it, and publicly disassociated himself from anarchism did his health preclude further involvement in practical as such. He had spent much time and effort formulating political affairs, but he continued to write until the last and presenting libertarian municipalism as an anarchist years of his life. Bookchin’s works spanned a broad range politics, but anarchists, it turned out, were not interested of issues, including ecology, anthropology, technology, in these ideas, and in fact the political idea of democracy is history, politics, and philosophy. He started to write actually alien to anarchism. Several notions in anarchism about ecology and urban issues in the 1950s, and in 1964 inspired Bookchin, but his ideas about municipal wrote his seminal “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought,” government, direct democracy, and confederation could the first definitive essay on radical social ecology. Later not be contained within an anarchist framework. Breaking he was to refine his theories – through a corpus of more with anarchism, he urged left libertarian radicals to 3 Free Cities: Communalism and the Left embrace a new set of ideas, indeed a new ideology – he encourages readers to consider how to revitalize their own called it communalism – that could transcend all classical communities, how we may remake our municipalities as radical theories, both Marxist and anarchist. As an attempt great places to live – for all their citizens – and render them to revive Enlightenment radicalism, Bookchin intended politically and socially free. communalism to be a coherent ideological platform My choice of subtitle, Communalism and the Left, upon which we might develop libertarian ideas today and expresses Bookchin’s wish to frame his theories in a provide the Left with a politics. communalist framework and to define their relationship For these reasons, I realized very soon that these essays to the Left. Bookchin explains in these essays the expanded the purpose of the anthology; they gave a major achievements as well as the serious deficiencies remarkably consistent overview of Bookchin’s perspectives of various traditional radical Left ideologies, such as on communalism and its relationship to the Left in general. Marxism, anarchism, and syndicalism. For one thing, Taken together these essays not only provide an overview both socialism and anarchism have ignored the need to of Bookchin’s political ideas but explain how his political develop a political approach in the classical sense of the ideas stem from his broader historical, philosophical, and term, a politics distinct from the State on the one hand theoretical perspectives. Although the subject matter may and from the social sphere on the other. Communalism be libertarian municipalism and practical politics, their was for Bookchin an attempt to provide the ideological foundational analyses are profoundly social ecological, and framework to resuscitate the greatest Left traditions and their ideological perspective is basically communalist. to formulate a libertarian politics. I chose the title Free Cities for this anthology because I think it stimulates our understanding of the historical he idea for this book germinated when I last saw impetus behind Bookchin’s political project. In order Murray, a few months before his death. At the to achieve its ideal of a rational and ecological society, end of November 2005 Sveinung Legard and I libertarian municipalism is an effort to create free Tvisited Murray and Janet Biehl, his long-time partner cities, with an emphasis on both these words. Bookchin and collaborator, in Burlington. During our stay we had would have insisted that we interpret free not simply lengthy political discussions and undertook a substantial as “independent,” or “autonomous.” Rather, we should interview with Murray, which turned out to be the last one understand freedom in its expansive political sense, as he ever gave. At one point in our discussions, Bookchin the collective expression of human self-recognition and mentioned that he hoped to see his writings on libertarian consciousness. Similarly, cities should not be interpreted municipalism collected and published. I had already given merely as spatial centers of population or trade. For this possibility some serious thought and had specific ideas Bookchin, the historic rise of cities brought humanity the about how to put together anthologies of his writings. For kind of social framework needed to break out of the rigid some time I had been translating his works into Norwegian, tribal world and develop into truly social beings; such and had edited, anthologized, and published his political citification is a historical precondition for our notion of writings here in Scandinavia. But I had hesitated to suggest citizenship. The ideal of the free cities was a subject not an English-language anthology, since English is my second only of great historical interest but one that gave meaning language – an obvious shortcoming. Moreover, Murray had to the project for social and political emancipation. The long benefited from the support of Janet’s superior editing question that occupied Bookchin was to what extent skills; for many years, she had carefully helped prepare municipalities could become genuine arenas for political his manuscripts for publication. Hence I was reluctant to creativity, universalism, and freedom and thus give offer my assistance.