negations

By Spencer Sunshine

I was very disappointed by Andy Price’s “Communalism or Caricature”, which appeared in the recent Anarchist Studies (v16, #1). Murray Bookchin was one of the most controversial anarchist figures in recent memory. The furious and often nasty debates around his work in the 1990s (much of the tone of which was set by Bookchin himself); his bitter and divisive polemic Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm; and his subsequent disavowal of anarchism, all worked to alienate so many radicals that his death has been met mostly with silence. Unbiased and neutral discussion of his work has become almost impossible. Price’s piece does not improve this situation; especially problematic is the second half, which is attack on a critical look at Bookchin’s legacy by one of his former students, Chuck Morse. Additionally, Price’s essay includes misrepresentations and errors which need to be addressed.

I will limit my comments to two claims that Price makes in his review of Chuck Morse’s essay “Being A Bookchinite”. (I will not comment on Morse’s essay itself, however, which I have my own criticisms of – criticisms which do not dovetail with Price’s.) The first comment regards Price’s mischaracterization of the criticisms of Bookchin during the 1990s. The second regards Bookchin’s teaching style and its origins in the Communist pedagogical tradition.

Price claims that Chuck Morse’s piece “follows the same patterns of much of the critiques of Bookchin of the 1990s: it offers an analysis of Bookchin and his work without paying sufficient attention to his theoretical and practical programme. Instead, Morse relies on the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin that render his revolutionary project a failure.” Price ends by reiterating that Morse “falls back into the patterns of caricature that surrounded Bookchin in the 1990s.”

This is an unscholarly dismissal of the numerous serious arguments concerning Murray Bookchin’s philosophy, particularly his relationship to Marxism, ecological philosophy, and technology. These arguments were made by a large number of intellectuals and constitute the vast majority of the “critiques of Bookchin of the 1990s.”

It is well beyond the scope of anything short of a serious monograph to chart these intellectual confrontations; interested readers should start with Andrew Light’s anthology Social Ecology After Bookchin, published by the Guilford Press in 1998. I would like to know if Price believes that Joel Kovel, Robyn Eckersley, Glenn A. Albrecht, Regina Cochrane, John Clark, Adolf G. Gunderson, David Watson, Eric Stowe Higgs, Alan P. Rudy, David Macauley and Andrew Light all rely on “the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin” which “render his revolutionary project a failure.”

Watson—one of those whom Price undoubtedly is invoking when referring to those who focused on Bookchin’s “personal failings and insidious motives”—sums up his problems with Bookchin very succinctly in the book. His concerns are with Bookchin’s conceptions of “rationality, history, and other areas, but most pointedly in his writings on technology” (page 212). Furthermore, one must wonder if Price is familiar with Light’s anthology, as his essay title echoes one of Joel Kovel’s comments regarding Bookchin himself—Kovel says that “Bookchin’s rendition of Marx is a caricature not a critique”. (page 41)

In fact, perhaps a majority of serious commentators on both left-wing ecology and anarchism expressed their disagreements with Bookchin in the 1990s. While some of the furious polemics during this time certainly did involve personal attacks, even those occurred in the context of discussions of the validity of Bookchin’s theoretical positions. Price’s misrepresentation of the arguments—in fact his refusal to even recognize them as having taken place—shows a real closure around the discussion of Bookchin’s philosophy.

***

Second, Price attacks Morse for his description of how Bookchin attempted to control the intellectual thought of his followers. Price says that:

this claim of educational ‘closure’ around Bookchin jars with Morse’s own description of the extent and scope of that education. Only a few pages earlier, Morse describes how there were regular lectures from Bookchin on his own work but how it was possible to ‘participate in weekly study groups on Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities, and other weighty topics and theorists.’ . . .

Quite how a thinker who encouraged such an education could then close his students off from other insights is left unclear. One can only assume here that Morse took his self-appointed role as a Bookchin ‘disciple’ all too literally, and that this ‘closing-off’ was a self-imposed one. The fact that Bookchin dissuaded his students from other writers or schools of thought does not automatically translate as an attempt to maintain a hold over his students. Rather, it represents the messy business of a democratic politics, and the freedom of opinion therein.

Here, Price shows an ignorance of Communist pedagogical culture, which Bookchin inherited the legacy of and reproduced himself.

In his reply to Price (“Reply to Andy Price’s ‘Communalism or Caricature’”), Morse identifies Bookchin as a “sect builder”. Bookchin was raised in the Marxist milieu of the 1930s, which featured soapboxing and bitter, public ideological debates between competing sect members (see Bookchin’s Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left for descriptions of this milieu). Bookchin kept this polemical and rhetorical style to his death, as he openly admitted.

In addition to the rhetorical style held over from the Marxist-Leninist tradition, Bookchin also retained its powerful pedagogical structure. The Communist movement held intellectuals in a special regard. It prized their abilities to formulate policy and social critique, and spent considerable assets on educational programs, not just for the leadership (the special schools in Moscow, for example), but also for the rank and file. Bookchin himself attended the Party-sponsored Workers School in New York City. Students at these schools did not just learn the ‘classics of Marxist-Leninism’, but could also study history, philosophy, theatre and other subjects.

So how did the Party encourage such broad erudition while simultaneously controlling the patterns of thought of the students it was educating? Alan Gouldner describes this apparent inconsistency in his works The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class and Against Fragmentation. He describes the Party as a having a two-fold function: to be a vehicle for intellectuals to achieve social dominance, but at the same time to act as a vessel to restrain the intellectuals from wandering off on their own paths. (The practice of “democratic centralism” is the best-known aspect of this; open debate is allowed internally among the committed, but once a decision is made, a uniform public front must be presented, and internal debate ends.)

Pedagogically, the Communists faced the same dilemma. In order to cultivate intellectuals—real intellectuals, not just epigones and propagandists—it had to train them in Marxist epistemology and ontology. A deep understanding of what Marx was doing and why he was doing it was essential to creating “Marxists”—intellectuals who could wield a Marxist critique to understand complex social situations and create policy in response to them.

By training students in Marxism—particularly its philosophical basis—the Party handed them powerful tools. But this did not guarantee the Party had control over what the intellectuals did with these tools. In fact, having received this instruction, some students even took their training and used it to dismember Marxism itself. Gouldner himself does this by using Marxist class analysis to critically analyze Marxist political claims.

The Marxist pedagogical style included starting schools, organizing Marxist study groups (which became the nuclei for recruiting cadres), and producing newspapers. These structures could also be applied to different political ideologies; Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford, Jr.), in We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations 1960-1975 refers to his mentor Queen Mother Audley Moore, a veteran of the Communist Party. She organized revolutionary nationalist study groups which became political cadres, basing this structure on the Communist model. Lenin was particularly interested in the role of the newspaper and revolutionary movements, and his views later influenced the anarchist newspaper Love and Rage.

Murray Bookchin also utilized the Communist pedagogical style. The Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) and the study groups around it were continuations of this structure. And Bookchin himself, as Morse points out, plays the classic role of the Marxist sect builder. (One has to wonder to what extent he followed in the footsteps of Joseph Weber, his former mentor.) Like many Marxist intellectuals, Bookchin created a sect built around his ideas, and to some extent himself. The personality cults of the political leaders of Orthodox Marxism are well-known (Lenin, Stalin, Mao; and in the US, Bob Avakian), but numerous intellectuals also founded their own political sects. Raya Dunayevskaya, who like Bookchin was interested in a Hegelianized Marxism with libertarian socialist tendencies, also set up a political sect focused around herself (News and Letters). The recent split of this group is also telling: the majority faction clung to the personality cult and repetition of Dunayevskaya’s critique, while the minority wished to keep their thought fluid, open and changing. The latter lost out.

So did Bookchin control his students learning? Given the history of this pedagogical structure and direct claims from students such as Morse, this seems to be most likely. Even Morse’s list, which Price does not dispute, backs this up. The weekly study groups were on “Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities….” Hegel and Marx are the theorists that Bookchin was most indebted to, and the French Revolution and cities are two topics that were central to Bookchin’s thought. This is hardly an expansive and wide-ranging intellectual exploration.

Bookchin was left with the same quandary faced by all intellectual innovators who found a school of thought. How can they be intellectual innovators, train other intellectuals to follow in their footsteps, but then keep them in line? In this sense, Bookchin was confronted with the same dilemma as Martin Luther: having thrown off the authority of the church (or, in Bookchin’s case, the Marxist-Leninist party), and founded a new way of thinking about his intellectual tradition, how to close the floodgates to limitless innovation and reconsideration? Martin Luther of course founded his own church, and like the Roman Catholics, persecuted heretics. Bookchin trained people in his ideology, while simultaneously discouraging innovation or fundamental criticism.

Bookchin seemed to have successfully closed the door to the floodgates of innovation. The ISE has not produced a single intellectual of real distinction. The best known of the former staff, John Clark, was an anarchist intellectual long before his association with Bookchin. Chaia Heller is frequently referred to as the most prominent theoretician, but her book The Ecology of Everyday Life is little read and has had almost no impact. Cindy Milstein, a former member of Bookchin’s inner circle, is a popular anarchist writer but has not published a book and has made only minor intellectual revisions of Bookchin’s formulations. Janet Biehl has published several works closely following Bookchin’s framework and has acted as his propagandist and apologist, but has made no significant theoretical claims of her own.

That Bookchin fostered an exciting intellectual atmosphere at the ISE is beyond question. As to whether Bookchin fostered true intellectual query—or just fostered followers—is something that Chuck Morse has explored, much to the consternation of certain guardians of Bookchin’s posthumous flame.

Bookchin himself superseded his previous teachers and struck out on his own intellectual journey; by doing so he added to the rich tapestry of radical thought. In the same manner, those who Bookchin trained need to set out on their own and find their own voices. Morse is raising the question as to why this hasn’t happened; Price is trying to close this discussion down.

See also:

* Reply to Andy Price’s “Communalism or caricature” by Chuck Morse

* C.N. Tell: Praying the Hail Murray, Again by C.N. Tell

* Communalism or caricature: patterns of Bookchin critique by Andy Price

* Being a Bookchinite by Chuck Morse

By Chuck Morse

Murray Bookchin dedicated his life to building a revolutionary challenge to the existing social order. He elaborated complex doctrines that pointed to a different future, he formed organizations to advocate for his ideas, and he tried to educate militants who would, he hoped, fight for his views.

Bookchin was ultimately unable to mount a new revolutionary challenge, although nearly everyone who participated in his attempt to do so was inspired, frustrated, and transformed by the experience. I tried to describe some of this in my Being a Bookchinite, an essay that struck a chord among many who had been touched by Bookchin in one way or another. Readers seemed particularly grateful for its balance of praise and critique, a rarity in the literature on Bookchin.

However, Andy Price, a British academic who recently reviewed my piece in Anarchist Studies, had a very different response. Though he accepts all of my favorable remarks about Bookchin without comment, he challenges every observation in my essay that might put Bookchin in an unfavorable light. He argues that my criticisms–though not my praise–are methodologically unsound and presuppose a misreading of Bookchin’s work.

His primary objection is that I rely on “the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin that render his revolutionary project a failure.” An essay, he says, on the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin’s revolutionary project should not contain “personal recollection and gossipy insinuation.” What is required is a “detailed examination of [Bookchin’s] principles and the practice they necessitate.”

There are actually several issues here. I believe that I can resolve one–the accusation that I insinuated something–by simply reminding Price that I articulated my views quite frankly and did not seed my essay with hints or suggestions. There were no hidden messages.

His statement that personal recollections should be excluded raises a more complicated question, although I wish he would have explained—rather than simply asserted—his claim. In the absence of an explanation, I can only reply by stating that I find that analyses that relate ideas to practice are richer than those that treat ideas alone, particularly in the case of someone like Bookchin, who not only wrote but also lived as a revolutionist. I suspect that this is why personal recollections were so important to Bookchin (think, for example, of the extensive autobiographical interviews in Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left) and why Janet Biehl is writing his biography.

However, Price’s contention that I failed to examine Bookchin’s ideas and the “practice they necessitate” is erroneous. I described Bookchin’s views on nature and history and social change and related them directly to the political experience that I shared with him. I also linked his broader ideals to his political practice in very specific, concrete terms when I identified Bookchin as a sect builder.

Price not only questions the general framework of my essay, but also my reading of Bookchin’s work.

For instance, he objects to my statement that Bookchin was silent on white supremacy and racism and never addressed either topic in any but the most cursory fashion. This, for him, is my most “specious accusation yet.” He writes:

In terms of the claim that Bookchin was ‘silent’ on race, then the whole of Bookchin’s writings on hierarchy and domination set themselves to a critique of these concepts in their entirety, including the hierarchy and domination that exists between ethnic groups. To argue for the dissolution of hierarchy as such in society is to argue for the end of white supremacy.

It is true that Bookchin argued against hierarchy as such, but opposition to hierarchy in general is not a substitute for an analysis of its particular forms, such as racism and white supremacy, which have their own origins and trajectory. Although Murray wrote extensively about patriarchy, gerontocracy, the emergence of the state, and other hierarchies, he never advanced an analysis of racism or white supremacy. In fact, he never devoted a single article or book, or even a significant portion of an article or book, to either topic.

Price also takes exception to my claim that Bookchin disregarded the material conditions of social change. To refute me, he cites a passage in which Bookchin calls for changes in material conditions.

Of course, Bookchin called for the transformation of material conditions but, theoretically, he prioritized cultural over material factors. He was also a voluntarist, who believed that social change was primarily about wanting it. These commitments run throughout his work, from his writings on natural evolution, to his historical studies, to his political essays. In fact, the “The Communalist Project,” which contains only passing commentary on social structures but a detailed discussion of ideological issues, is a good example.

How would Price have us respond to Bookchin’s work? If his (completely uncritical) review of Social Ecology and Communalism is an indication, he would have us venerate Bookchin as an immaculate martyr to the revolutionary cause. In fact, I suspect that what really troubles Price is that I had the temerity to advance any criticism at all: that, instead of heralding him as a thinker and activist of world-historical import, I treated him as an important but imperfect revolutionist. In my view, this approach is much more satisfying because it humanizes Bookchin and thus, if nothing else, renders his achievements all the more impressive. Indeed, as a deity, we would have to dismiss him as a miserable failure; as a man, who was flawed and embedded in his times like the rest of us, he was extraordinary.

I believe that those committed to building a revolutionary alternative should work to identify Bookchin’s shortcomings and surpass them in an analysis that balances both praise and critique. Although this might seem like an act of disloyalty to the memory of a man who gave so much to so many, I am of the opinion that applying this method is actually the best way to embrace and celebrate the substance of Bookchin’s legacy. It was in that spirit that I wrote Being a Bookchinite.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: this is a response to Andy Price's "Communalism or Caricature."
I will post my own reply shortly. ~ Chuck Morse]

- - - - -

Praying the Hail Murray, Again

By C.N. Tell

Was Murray Bookchin perfect personally and politically, or was he, like all of us, a vibrant and flawed example of imperfect historical processes? Who more accurately applies the lessons of Bookchin’s intellectual and political legacy, those who are willing to courageously initiate a constructive dialogue about a major radical thinker’s strengths and weaknesses, or those who narrowly defend a body of work—including the personality and relationships of the author– against any criticism? I value Andy Price’s response to Chuck Morse’s “Being a Bookchinite” because it unwittingly affirms that the new Bookchinism is not much different than the old variety. While abstractly committed to dialectical reflection and democratic processes, Bookchinism is still practically mired in flattened anti-dialectical logic and an all too predictable dogmatic sectarianism. This is not that surprising, because, as Morse implies in “Being a Bookchinite,” dogmatism may be (gasp!) endemic to Bookchinism in general.

I will briefly focus on two major points in Andy Price’s essay. First, Price asserts that Morse’s use of personal examples is “gossipy” and therefore illegitimate. An argument for a strict personal/ political or personal/theoretical dichotomy is tricky in critical exchanges (and as I note later, Price himself does not refrain from such tactics in his own response). After all, one of the most attractive aspects of the anarchist tradition is the inclusion and centralization of the personal in politics. This includes examination of egoism, opportunism, and ulterior motives in political groups and movements. What struck me about Morse’s essay the first time I read it is that he was being gracious when using personal examples. I know that there were even more egregious examples he could have used to illustrate Bookchin’s trademark self-aggrandizement and political territorialism. These trademark personality traits were frustrating and destructive, but they could also be comical and endearing at times. It just depended on the context. This is one reason why people have complex responses to Bookchin personally and politically.

Morse was intimately involved in Bookchin’s inner circle, and I knew him to be one of Bookchin’s most intimate confidantes and loyal supporters for several years. Given this fact, Morse obviously wanted to avoid making this into a pissing match about someone’s good or bad behavior because, if that were the case, he would have provided plenty more examples. I applaud Morse for his self-restraint in choosing the so-called “personal recollections” that he shares. But far from mere recollections or insinuations, these were real lived experiences from which important political lessons can be gleaned.

Many of us who studied Bookchin’s ideas thought it would be a challenge—maybe even an impossibility–to apply a political practice cultivated in the New England town meeting tradition to complex multi-racial urban environments. That was a fairly standard issue in Burlington when I moved there in 1991, and it was one of the factors involved in people’s decisions to study other thinkers and movements and pursue political projects beyond New England’s social ecology community. Price responds that Morse’s “most specious accusation” against Bookchin is that Bookchin inadequately addresses white supremacy and race issues in his works. However, I think this is one of the most obvious points to make, and shouldn’t be considered such a dramatic accusation. Also, lacking substance in the face of Morse’s supposedly specious accusation, Price contradicts his earlier dismissal of the critical legitimacy of personal examples when he cites Bookchin’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement. If that biographical fact is fair game, then so are other biographical facts.

Clearly Morse appreciates Bookchin’s talent for understanding, as Price puts it, the “dialectical development of oppositional thought in light of the ever-shifting terrain of capitalism.” Contrary to Price’s abstract references to dialectics in the review portion of his essay, Morse’s balanced assessment of Bookchin’s contributions and failings is true dialectical criticism. He recognizes that Bookchin both acted against and was acted upon by history, including the history of white supremacy as it plays out in the movements and theories of Bookchin’s expansive time. It is this more complex framing that continues the best aspects of Bookchin’s legacy. Another “Hail Murray” tract, like Price’s, simply foregrounds Bookchin’s closed dogmatic side over the generous and open one. While it may be a harder pill to swallow, acknowledging Bookchin’s shortcomings as manifested in the personal interactions he had in groups and movements, the organizations he founded and participated in, and his writings, is an important step in the very process of historical consciousness and uncompromising critique that Bookchin so consistently championed.