negations

Por Chuck Morse (Octubre, 2007)

Traducción: Pablo Abufom S.

* * * * *

Cuando Murray Bookchin murió el 30 de Julio del año pasado, desapareció una de las figuras más ambiciosas e inspiradoras de la izquierda anti-autoritaria.

Fue un autor, educador y activista, aunque sobre todo fue un revolucionario que entregó su vida a una única y colosal tarea: idear un proyecto revolucionario que pudiera sanar las heridas de la humanidad y la separación entre ella y el mundo natural. Intentó esbozar los principios teóricos de esta tentativa; construir organizaciones capaces de transformar el mundo basándose en esos principios; y forjar un cuadro con la sabiduría necesaria para combatir por ellos y resistir los inevitables altibajos de la vida política. Tenía mucho en común con otros constructores de sectas de la izquierda socialista – como Max Shachtman, Josef Weber y Raya Dunayevskaya, por ejemplo – quienes, en sus respectivas épocas y latitudes, también intentaron rescatar la empresa revolucionaria del desastre que fue el Comunismo ruso y de las muchas calamidades del siglo XX. (1)

¿Tuvo éxito en esto?

No, no lo tuvo. No creó una nueva doctrina revolucionaria adecuada a sus fines o una, por ejemplo, que tuviera la fuerza transformadora del Marxismo. Su obra simplemente carece de la coherencia y la sutileza necesarias para alcanzar ese punto. Sus ideas tampoco han capturado la imaginación de un gran número de personas, no son parte del debate de la izquierda; nunca han tenido una influencia en la academia seria; y quienes aún abrazan de corazón sus visiones son, en efecto, un número reducido. Su legado teórico permanece en los márgenes de la vida intelectual.

Su intento de construir el marco organizacional para un movimiento revolucionario renovado encontró un destino similar: no sobrevive ninguno de los periódicos u organizaciones que inició o co-inició. El Institute for Social Ecology [Instituto de Ecología Social], que co-creó en 1974 para difundir sus perspectivas, se derrumbó en 2005 tras años de crisis fiscal y una decreciente matrícula. La Left Green Network [Red Verde de Izquierda], que co-fundó en 1989 para promover sus convicciones anti-estatistas, anti-capitalistas entre los Verdes, se disipó en 1991. El grupo Anarchos, que guió en la década de los sesenta, se disolvió hace más de una generación. Del mismo modo, ninguna de las revistas o boletines que fundó, co-fundó o inspiró existen hoy (Anarchos, Comment [Comentario], Perspectivas Verdes [Green Perspectives], Left Green Perspectives [Perspectivas Verdes de Izquierda], Left Green Notes [Notas Verdes de Izquierda] y Harbinger [Heraldo], entre otras).

Su iniciativa de crear un cuadro capaz de instituir sus perspectivas tuvo los mismos resultados. Desde la década de los sesenta, si no antes, Bookchin se rodeó de pequeños grupos de discípulos y protegidos, cuyas habilidades intelectuales y políticas quiso cultivar. Cada uno de estos grupos se desintegró en uno u otro momento y salvo un puñado, todos sus miembros se distanciaron de él políticamente. En el momento de su muerte, tenía escasos seguidores.

¿Capta esta dura evaluación – en la que juzgo a Bookchin según los estándares que él estipuló para sí mismo – la amplitud de sus logros como agente para el cambio social? No. Aunque nunca se convirtió en el Prometeo revolucionario que aspiraba a ser, dejó un patrimonio significativo – aunque más modesto y complicado. Esto es indudablemente cierto para quienes participaron en su intento de construir una secta revolucionaria. (2) Por ejemplo, yo pasé varios años colaborando con Bookchin y es una experiencia que todavía me inspira y me desafía. Fue emocionante, decepcionante y – sobre todo – expandió dramáticamente mi idea de lo que significa ser radical.

Conocí a Murray en el programa de “Ecología y Sociedad” del Instituto de Ecología Social el verano de 1989, cuando asistí a sus clases. Esto me impulsó a mudarme a su hogar adoptivo de Burlington, en Vermont, seis meses después para trabajar con él más de cerca. En ese momento, Murray trabajaba enérgicamente en la construcción de su núcleo revolucionario y alentaba a jóvenes de todo el país a que se le unieran. Apenas dos docenas de personas estaban involucrados en el proyecto cuando yo llegué. La mayoría tenía poco más de veinte años y, en general, eran altamente idealistas, devotos y serios. Gran parte había dado un giro hacia Bookchin después de haber tenido experiencias frustrantes con otras tendencias de la izquierda.

Me volví su aprendiz deliberadamente y pronto me convertí en uno de sus principales discípulos. Fui su ayudante en el Instituto de Ecología Social en el verano de 1990, miembro del colectivo editorial de su Left Green Perspectives por un año, y trabajé como “Coordinador” de la Left Green Network con la compañera de Bookchin, Janet Biehl, entre 1990 y 1991. También formé parte de los Burlington Greens, el grupo activista que lideraba cuando llegué a la ciudad, y participé en las clases sobre historia y filosofía que daba en su casa en esa época. Además, pasé incontables horas en discusiones privadas o semi-privadas con él. Me guió, me educó y me alentó, y yo intenté apoyarlo y compadecerme de él lo mejor que pude. Nuestra relación menguó cuando dejé Vermont en 1992, aunque mantuvimos un contacto amistoso hasta su muerte.

En este ensayo exploraré mi experiencia en el círculo cercano de Bookchin. Mi objetivo es ilustrar algunas de las fortalezas y debilidades de su singular aproximación a la cuestión orgánica revolucionaria, así como mostrar cómo pudo inspirar un proyecto que – aunque puede haber parecido sectario y exagerado a quienes no formaban parte de él – fue tremendamente inspirador para un pequeño grupo de jóvenes bien intencionados, comprometidos e inteligentes que buscaban una alternativa.
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UPDATE: I have removed this article at the request of the author, who sent me five, angry emails today imploring me to take it down. He was outraged that I posted his essay on this blog without having first asked his permission to do so. His emails, like his article, were boorish and full of invective.

I would have asked permission to repost the piece if it had been marked with a copyright—which, of course, is how authors indicate that they want to restrict the circulation of their writings. Since it was not, I assumed that Eiglad would not object to its publication here, although I now see that he does. I am removing it out of consideration for Eiglad (who will hopefully learn to designate his articles more carefully in the future if, in fact, he does not want them to be reposted).

But why would Eiglad care if I published his piece on this blog when it is identical to the article on his website? What difference does it make to him? Only he can really answer that question, although I suspect this is a control issue: on this blog he would be unable to curtail a critical discussion of his essay or Bookchin generally, whereas he can exclude critics at a whim on his (temporarily unavailable) Communalism forums.

Whatever his motives, Eiglad is mistaken if he thinks that he can promote Bookchin’s ideas and silence Bookchin’s critics at the same time. That is simply not possible. Whatever lessons Bookchin has to offer–and I think there are many–will emerge only in the context of a critical analysis of his life and work. Indeed, Bookchin’s contributions will either be criticized or they will be forgotten.

[Editor's note: the following article is the first of Eiglad's projected four part
response to my "Being a Bookchinite" essay. It recently appeared
in the online journal, Communalism.]

* * *

Measures of Failure and Success: Part 1 – Reflections on Chuck Morse’s “Being a Bookchinite”

By Eirik Eiglad

… this article has been removed at the author’s behest. You can read it here.

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.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article by Andy Price reviews my Being a Bookchinite
as well as Bookchin's posthumous, Social Ecology and Communalism. It appeared in
the most recent issue of Anarchist Studies (Spring-Summer 2008). I post it here
with permission and intend to reply in the next week or so.]

- – -

Bookchin’s Social Ecology and Communalism (2007), a posthumous collection of four essays, culminates in the last theoretical piece he was to write, wherein he concludes that, ‘its often refreshing aphorisms and insights notwithstanding’, anarchism ‘is simply not a social theory’ (p.90, emphasis added). As forthright as ever, one can almost feel the hackles rising at Bookchin’s final proclamation. However, it would be all too easy here to make the same mistakes that much of the reaction to Bookchin in the 1990s made, and to read his ultimate break with anarchism as further evidence of, variously: Bookchin’s nefarious desire to be leader of the green-anarcho left; his desire to extinguish any other political creed but his own; or his fundamental personal failings that render his liberatory project dogmatic and irrelevant.

In truth, however, this caricature of Bookchin is unfair, and Bookchin’s rejection of anarchism more properly reflects the two driving forces of his half-century of radical thought: the commitment to the social expression of humanity’s creative potentiality; and the commitment to the continuing dialectical development of radical oppositional thought in light of the continuing development of capitalism. In Social Ecology and Communalism–thanks in no small measure to the excellent selection and ordering by Eirik Eiglad, who collates and introduces the collection–these two driving forces are traceable throughout and find their synthesis in the political project Bookchin outlines in his final theoretical outing.

In the opening essay, ‘What is Social Ecology?’ first published in 1993, we find a clear enunciation of Bookchin’s view of nature, both human and nonhuman, from which emerges his formulation of humanity’s creative potential. ‘[T]he natural world and the social’, Bookchin writes, ‘are interlinked by evolution into one nature that consists of two differentiations: first, or biotic nature, and second or social nature’ (p.29). What links these two natures is that they both ’share an evolutionary potential for greater subjectivity and flexibility’ (p.29).

That is to say that humanity is both the expression of, and is endowed with, a creative, evolutionary potentiality for increased subjectivity, flexibility, and ultimately, self-consciousness. These evolutionary materials not only rendered humanity the most self-conscious element in nature in the present but also provide it with the creative potentiality to achieve a rational ecological society in the future. Needless to say, this creative potentiality has been arrested by the destructiveness that has thus far characterised human society and its relationship with the natural world. It is to the creation of social forms that both express this creative potentiality and ameliorate the destructive that Bookchin sets his political programme.

In the two essays that follow–’Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism’ (1989), and ‘Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction’ (1996)–we can trace Bookchin’s commitment to the dialectical development of oppositional thought in light of the ever-shifting terrain of capitalism. Here, he describes the changing nature of capitalism post-1945 (p.56; p.69). During the 1950s and 1960s, capitalism began to mutate an economic system into a social system, bringing new challenges to the Left. It is from within these changes that Bookchin’s critique of the stasis of Marxism would emerge.

By the 1990s, however, the rules of engagement had changed again: capitalism was no longer solely a set of social relations but had transformed into the ‘end of history’ itself, had become enshrined as the ultimate version of human nature, a nature predicated on its ethos ‘to compete, win, and grow’ (p.73). In the light of such a shift, ideas and movements that opposed capitalism had also been deeply affected, and must therefore be subject to a constant ‘uncompromising critique’ (p.75). This uncompromising critique of the movements to which he belonged, so characteristic of Bookchin’s career, was based on this clear understanding of the extent of the changing nature of capitalism and the changes this necessitated in anti-capitalism.

Which bring us to the fourth essay, ‘The Communalist Project’ (2002), Bookchin’s final outlining of his political project. Here, the two driving motors of his work in fact become one, intertwined whole: the project to build a society that is the expression of the creative potentiality of humanity must be drawn in light of the ultimate shift in capitalism and the crisis it fosters–i.e., the threat of ecological collapse. This response, in light of the fact that capitalist crisis is now generalised (p.84)–i.e., it is not solely an economic crisis, does not solely affect one particular class–must be predicated on a direct empowerment of the citizen through the community. It is in this sense that Bookchin argues that, ‘Above all, Communalism is engaged with the problem of power’ (p.109). This engagement with power is in fact twofold. First, the empowerment of the citizen and the community would require the creation of a decentralised ‘ensemble of institutions designed to deal with the problems of consociational life in an orderly and hopefully fair manner’ (p.95). This process would not only require substantial organisation but also leadership. For Bookchin, ‘leadership always exists … [and] … a serious libertarian approach to leadership would indeed acknowledge the reality and crucial importance of leaders’ (p.111, emphasis in original), to both challenge the abusive power of present leaders and to engender the material and institutional changes necessary for the move toward communalism.

Second, in order to engender this new social reality, the members of a community would need to be materially and politically empowered, today. Therefore, Bookchin argues that ‘adherents of Communalism mobilize themselves to electorally engage in a potentially important centre of power–the municipal council–and try to compel it to create legislatively potent neighbourhood assemblies’ (p.109, emphasis added). This would constitute the ‘minimum programme’ of communalism that would aim, in the here and now, ‘to satisfy the most elemental needs of the masses, to improve their access to the resources that make daily life tolerable’ (p.114). In light of the extent of the spread of the ethos of capitalism, now enshrined as human nature itself (and to the extent that it permits no other conception of human nature) this tentative, material and political empowerment is indispensable to opening up even the idea of radical change.

These initial steps, then, are not the start of a process through which a communalist society can be legislated into existence for Bookchin, but rather the process through which the ‘maximum program’ is hopefully brought into view: they are the first tentative steps to establish ‘new rules of engagement between the people and capital’, as revolutionaries–anarchist or otherwise–start to envision and create ‘lasting organizations and institutions that can play a socially transformative role in the real world’ (p.115).

In Social Ecology and Communalism, then, we get a glimpse, uncluttered of the polemics of the 1990s, of the explicitly social nature of the whole Bookchin programme: philosophically, in his commitment to the social expression of humanity’s creative evolutionary potential; and politically in his commitment to confronting the realities of the power required to start this process, today. This social focus and the commitment to the dialectical development of radical thought are the fundamentals of Bookchin’s revolutionary programme, and it is from these fundamentals (rather than dubious motivations or personal failings) that stem his critiques of the less-socially focused aspects of anarchism. Anyone with any lingering doubts about Bookchin’s motivations should read this concise yet comprehensive collection.

Unfortunately, the second piece under review here, Chuck Morse’s essay, ‘Being a Bookchinite’, almost completely neglects these fundamentals. In doing so, it 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 (p.3). Based on the three years he spent studying and working in close association with Bookchin (1989-92)–which began after he ’self-consciously apprenticed’ himself to Bookchin and became ‘one of his core disciples’ (p.5)–Morse offers to ‘illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of his [Bookchin's] particular approach to revolutionary organising’ (p.6).

He begins by outlining ‘three of the cardinal tenets of membership of Bookchin’s core circle’ (p.10). These were: an emphasis on education, as a result of which, Morse tells us, he received an unparalleled education under Bookchin (p.10, fn.13); the unique framing of politics as a moral activity, which ‘fostered an unusually strong commitment to honesty, accountability, and the principled discussion of ideas’ (p.12); and a commitment to a ‘boldness’ of political engagement, fostering the notion of a small group of people being able to change the world if willing to take risks (p.14). For Morse, however, these cardinal tenets also presented ’significant problems’ (p.18).

In terms of the emphasis on education, Morse argues that the centrality of Bookchin as the educator, and the principle focus on his thought, ‘tended to close us off from insights that other traditions and thinkers had to offer’ (p.18). His followers believed that Bookchin had found the principles of social development that could replace capitalism and avert ecological disaster, and therefore ‘Bookchin’s ideas played a quasi-religious role for us and he became something of a prophet’ (p.18). From this, since they believed that ‘Bookchin advanced the truth, other theorists advanced deceptions by default’ (p.18, emphasis in original). Moreover, Bookchin ‘often dissuaded us from exploring other writers who–he seemed to fear–might threaten his hold on us’ (p.19).

However, 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 also possible to ‘participate in weekly study groups on Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities, and other weighty topics and theorists’ (pp.11-12). Indeed, ‘there were so many study groups, of such high quality, that people used to say that we had started an underground university’ (p.12). Many of these groups were student led, but Bookchin had encouraged them directly: he counselled his students ‘not only to explore key revolutionary thinkers and events, but also to acquaint ourselves with major moments in the Western tradition’, in order to ‘assimilate the best aspects of this legacy into our movement’ (pp.10-11). Moreover, he tells us that ‘the extraordinary breadth of historical and theoretical references in his [Bookchin's] work seemed to show this was possible’, and proved to Morse that ‘no idea was too abstract or event too remote to be incorporated into our transformative project’ (p.11).

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.

Later, Morse himself openly concedes there is no evidence for this kind of intellectual domineering in Bookchin, but does so only to launch an even more problematic criticism: ‘Although I never saw Bookchin demand obsequiousness’, Morse states, ‘he encouraged it indirectly’, as ‘he constantly spoke of his ill-health and implied that his death was imminent’ (p.21). For Morse, Bookchin’s discussions of his own mortality are all the more problematic as Bookchin did this ‘when I first met him in 1989, almost two decades before his actual death’ (p.21). The insinuation here of some kind of mortal deception by Bookchin is compounded by Morse when he tells us, rather unscientifically, that ‘he has heard accounts of similar behaviour twenty years before that’, and that this created a ‘tragic aura’ around Bookchin that fostered a feeling in those around him ‘that we should treasure every moment with him’ (p.21).

In terms of what an essay on the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin’s revolutionary project should contain, we surely know that it should not be this kind of personal recollection and gossipy insinuation. Moreover, and although it is regrettable that one has to enter into this personal discussion, it should be noted in the name of fairness that Bookchin turned 70 in the period that Morse knew him (in 1991) and was in ill-health: he was three years away from his first heart attack and was increasingly crippled by osteoarthritis. Is it so surprising that a man of 70 would talk of his declining health, and even his death? And why should this present a problem? Again, this tells us less about Bookchin and his programme and more about Morse: to be lulled into obsequiousness by a septuagenarian discussing his health and death speaks more of weaknesses of the listener than those of the speaker.

Next, Morse argues that the second cardinal tenet, Bookchin’s framing of politics as a moral activity, led to ‘an obsession with defending his views against threats’ (a causal link he does not explain) which led to Bookchin’s ‘endless stream of polemics’ (again, unexplained) (p.21; p.22). This ‘tendency for defensiveness’ also manifested itself in Bookchin constantly ‘inventing new names for his views’–his move from social ecology to radical social ecology, anarchism to social anarchism, and libertarian municipalism to communalism (p.22). That Bookchin changed the names of different aspects of his thought, that he was a strident polemicist is clear; that these things stem from defensiveness is not. As noted already in this review, this more accurately reflects the commitment to the dialectical development of radical thought throughout Bookchin’s career. However, Morse does not see the dialectic in Bookchin, and views Bookchin’s ultimate rejection of anarchism and his move toward communalism as ‘bitter, doctrinal carping’ (p.24).

For Morse, instead of ‘carping’, what Bookchin should have actually been doing was enjoying the ‘triumphant moment’ that the re-emergence of anarchism within the anti-capitalist movement represented, ‘given that he had done more than any other thinker to redeem the anarchist vision in the second half of the twentieth century’ (pp.23-4). It does not occur to Morse to ask: why would Bookchin forego such a triumphant moment? Why would he forego the enjoyment of seeing his work justified, of sitting back and resting on his laurels? Why not take the path of least resistance in what was clearly the autumn of his life? Again, the answers to these questions are to be found in Bookchin’s work itself, and not in the caricature that Morse falls back onto here.

Finally, the third cardinal tenet–Bookchin’s commitment to the notion ‘that a small group of people can change the world’–led for Morse to Bookchin’s ‘disregard of the material conditions of social change’ (p.18). Despite the fact that Bookchin’s commitment to the creation of an educated intelligentsia to lead social change stems from a detailed regard for the extent to which present material conditions preclude social change (as discussed above), Morse uses this claim to launch his most specious accusation yet: that Bookchin’s dismissal of the material conditions for revolutionary change was most strikingly represented by his ’silence on white supremacy and racism, which he never addressed in all but the most cursory fashion’ (p.24).

Further, Morse then goes on to tell us that he remembers ‘marvelling at how strange it was that Bookchin had settled in Vermont, the whitest state in America’ and how the organisations he built ‘were always overwhelmingly white’ (p.24). Here, the same pattern that Morse uses in his earlier insinuation repeats itself, as he tells us that ‘though I never personally witnessed what I recognised as an obvious act of prejudice, it was clear to me that Bookchin lived in a bubble’ (p.24)–i.e., just as in the case of Bookchin’s demanding of obsequiousness, prejudice is insinuated by noting its very absence.

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 ridiculous to suggest that Bookchin was silent on this issue. The instances where Bookchin discusses these hierarchies specifically are there in his work, and too numerous to list here, but we should remind ourselves in passing of his vociferous (and voluminous) late-1980s writings against those in the ecology movement who argued that population growth was the cause of the ecological crisis, writings which endlessly pointed out the implicit racism of such a position. This is to leave aside Bookchin’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

In terms of the criticism of Bookchin’s residency in Vermont, then, to attempt to draw any conclusions from the question of where a person in their fifties (as Bookchin was when he moved to Vermont, gradually, throughout 1970s)–who had lived in the US Northeast his entire life, who had a network of friends, family, political and work commitments in the region–’chose’ to live shows a complete disregard for the material conditions of social reality, not just social change; but again, on Morse’s part, not Bookchin’s. Moreover, it also overlooks one of the key political motivations for moving to Vermont in the first place: the New England town meeting tradition, which Bookchin would consistently write of (see Bookchin 1995, for example), and to which he hoped he could tap into in the construction of his new politics.

Again here, and as with the rest of Morse’s essay, an explanation of the problems he raises can be found in Bookchin’s work, in an examination of his theoretical foundations and their conclusions for radical action: there is a coherence of thought and practice in Bookchin, wherein his political programme, whether one agrees with him or not, is based upon his principles. It is here where we can, and should, put Bookchin to the test, through a detailed examination of these principles and the practice they necessitate. Unfortunately, Morse does not offer this here but rather falls back into the patterns of caricature that surrounded Bookchin in the 1990s.

The author would like to thank Janet Biehl for providing additional information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bookchin, M (1995), From Urbanisation to Cities: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship, 2nd edn., New York and London, Cassell.

ANDY PRICE
Department of Politics & Philosophy Manchester Metropolitan University

Social Ecology and Communalism
Murray Bookchin
AK Press, Edinburgh 2007
ISBN: 978-1904869499, 118 pages

Being a Bookchinite
Chuck Morse
Chuck Morse, New York 2007
27pp. (Also due to appear in the Spring 2008 issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory.)