Communalism General

It's a dense book, and has powerful critiques of anarchism, marxism, identity politics, nationalism, lifestylism, and more. There's a lot in the book. I've read it three times, and I still take away stuff from the book and quote it regularly.

The Zapatistas are in regular contact with Apoist and also have praxis where they emphasize community-control over strict class-struggle, putting them, if not in name, in the same category as Bookchin's Communalism.

Ironally, the same can be said of the Maknovtchina, whoose praxis was much closer to Communalism than what a lot of Anarchists search for. Indeed, Makno and The Platform came under attack from other anarchists when he arrived in France for emphasising community-control over individual liberty.

That's awesome, I didn't know that. Do you happen to know any texts/articles about this connection? I study Spanish and I consider writing my thesis about the Zapatistas, but I need some kind of theoretical angle I haven't found yet.

roarmag.org/essays/chiapas-rojava-zapatista-kurds/

thanks, will check that out.

...

Here's a download:
mediafire.com/file/yi97mxw7u0m0mso/Bookchin-The_Next_Revolution(2).epub

haven't seen a pdf, sorry.

oh shit ok

Here's a pdf version if any of you prefer that.

...

Here's a fairly short pamphlet on communalism: communalismpamphlet.net

Also, memes.

I've always wanted to know what Bookchinites on Holla Forums have to raise of value against a Marxist critique (or really a Marxist critique of the very thing that brought Bookchin to first relevance: his critique of Marxism).

So the first qualm any Marxist worth his salt with have with Murray Bookchin is his explicit rejection of class struggle as the main motivator of history. This can be seen in passage such as this from "Thoughts on Libertarian Municipalism":
Passages such as this not only highlight his rejection of class struggle as the main motivator, but also display that in his communalist model, multiple classes would remain existent
– "citizens' assemblies" being a civic level of his larger libertarian municipalist model.

All these things do not simply imply a rejection of class as a necessary-to-tackle block, but set the general tone for the content of his idea: that different classes remain existent within his model, and that they should collaborate on a civic level in his libertarian municipalist milieu.

It doesn't matter: communism is a proletarian movement, guided by the historical narrative of the working class being the necessary negative of capitalism which constantly contradicts it. The only consequence of permitting other classes a place in these "citizens' assemblies" is compromise to the existing order and class collaborationism, chaining the working class to interests other than its own. If Bookchin sees these assemblies as preceding communism, then they should be assemblies that are expressions of worker power i.e. exclusively proletarian. If he sees them as a model for the future (which is fundamentally an idealist assumption) then he sees classes as existing in his "communalist society" which means it is not a communistic, let alone a post-capitalistic, one.

Let me reiterate:
because yes: Bookchin, in tactically abandoning class struggle as the motor of history, does not even have a proper basis for his supposed post-capitalistic model. He falls here into the same trap utopians fell into and continue to fall into: that we can solve the problems of capitalism with as many layers of representation and delegation as possible.

Now, I have no idea who this "Marxist" is that he's trying to make Listen(!). The things he says about Marx are wrong, and the things he says about Marxism are also wrong when they're not complete caricatures.

And on the Bookchin-Marx relation, I always found it interesting that he raised up notions of natural dialectics, when Marx and Engels themselves uncovered natural discourse themselves in their own day, e.g.: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ (literally titled "dialectics of nature").

(1/?)

Where do all these Bookchin reaction images come from anyway?

So on to dialectical naturalism, AKA putting as primary motor of history not a struggle of classes, a struggle of the ecological milieu.

Not only is this pure idealism within the framework of a materialist view: to raise in front of man's devastating historical influence on nature the prevalence of an ecological discourse, but it is also completely circular and self-defeating. In essentializing natural discourse, we see an abandonment of any sort of structuralist view of human society in favor of a theory based on ecological determinism (inevitable consequence of putting primacy on nature, in and of itself a thing man dominates, and if anything nature is entirely subject to man's architectural prowess as a species).

The major issue I have with Bookchin anarchists – speaking as someone who was first influenced by Bookchin and his social ecology ideas – is their willingness to involve themselves, almost deeply, in parliamentary democracy. This is sort of the double-edged sword of Bookchin's dual power idea, wherein you're trying to build an alternative, but you also put a heavy emphasis on near-term goals, almost to the sacrifice of your long-term outlook. The consequence is that if you're continuously involving yourself in bourgeois politics, there is no time or effort actually expounded in building the other power that is supposed to be challenging those institutions in the first place.

Nothing wrong with supporting immediate measures which lessen the misery of the working class, but this is often misconstrued as "doing something now" which a lot of anarchists (and Marxists, for that matter) concern themselves with. You're not actually doing anything now, where it regards working class liberation. The other problem is that there are a lot of social ecologists involved in the Green Party, or in other small, insignificant electoral parties, and ignore the fact that the way the system is set up almost always precludes "being involved" or making any sort of significant gains. It's all just wheel spinning.

The other problem I have is that these particular followers are really prone to utopianism. It's not as bad as the people who take parecon dogmatically, but it approaches that point.

I have known some Bookchin-inspired anarchists from the libcom forums. What will immediately strike you when you converse with these anarchists is the total lack of clarity, especially with regards to bourgeois "democracy", imperialism and the difference between the left wing of capital (Trotskyists, "post-Maoists", etc.) and the communist perspective. They dislike Chomsky (I never expected this, but looking at his followers this is surprisingly the case), but in spite of this they will in the end support the same politics in light of "voting for the lesser evil" and "supporting local initiatives", thus ending up in the same cultish "extreme left" camp that they supposedly want to avoid. Few of them are truly internationalist and some will openly "critically" support Rojava or any other regime or national liberation movement that pays lip service to local autonomy while doing next to nothing for any emancipatory anti-capitalist politics.

I talked shit about Trotskyites just a paragraph ago, but Trotsky himself surprisingly provided an amazing critique of parliamentarism and the democratic principle, see: youtube.com/watch?v=uwgJidatmH8. It comes from a different angle than Bordiga did before him, but is good food for thought regardless for the libertarian left ranks who want a real challenge.

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Bookchin is not idealism. Correctly, Bookchin is naturalism (i.e. naturalist philosophy as opposed to supernaturalist). Whereas Marx's materialist conception of history sublated Hegel's idealism, Bookchin's naturalism sublated Marxist materialism.

Bookchin's entire philosophy is built on top of Marxism. People here should actually read his ideas before talking about them smh

Can you give me more to work with, such as a proper argument from source or interpretation, to back up your rationale? Rest assured, we all find your epic Bookchin funnies very entertaining but I'm here to have myself challenged; not get a 50 word reply consisting of "uh, no" in response to paragraphs spanning over two posts, thank you.

Yet I distinctly recall you being btfo by a mutualist and then just ceasing to respond, unless you just happen to use the same file name as said person.

So whereas in Marxism you have the social evolution from primitive communism to slave society, and thereby commodification and an accumulation of surplus value and thereby the emergence of class, Bookchin looks at the cultural factors in the emergence of hierarchy prior to the accumulation of surplus value and emergence of class. Bookchin develops this analysis with anthropological material that was not developed yet in Marx's time, and improves on quite a lot of Marx's ideas. So basically, Bookchin takes Marx's materialist conception of history and significantly modifies it by the dialectic of ideas (i.e. culture), and conceptualises the dialectic as an evolutionary history incorporating biological and anthropological material.

This is discussed at length in "Remaking Society", "The Philosophy of Social Ecology", and "The Ecology of Freedom".

You are conflating his tactics and end goals, he really fluctuates through his work on the importance of workers struggles, even within EoF his stance on it isnt made fully clear. Claiming that a Communalist society is class collaborationist is redicolous, by accepting that there still would be class struggle in councils under capitalism he is making clear that class conflict is still the core. Repolitzing society and drawing a clear destinction between politics and statecraft is just the a necessary step to create a movement that doesnt just die like unionism did.

Bookchin doesn't emphasize class struggle, but they emphasize a "general social interest" (of which the "working class" is the majority of, anyway), that is grounded in ecological crises. Here is an excerpt from his "Libertarian Municipalism: the New Municipal Agenda":

"The last and one of the most intractable problems we face is economic. Today, economic issues tend to center on "who owns what," "who owns more than whom," and, above all, how disparities in wealth are to be reconciled with a sense of civic commonality. Nearly all municipalities have been fragmented by differences in economic status, pitting poor, middle, and wealthy classes against each other often to the ruin of municipal freedom itself, as the bloody history of Italy's medieval and Renaissance cities so clearly demonstrates.

These problems have not disappeared in recent times. Indeed, in many cases they are as severe as they have ever been. But what is unique about our own time–a fact so little understood by many liberals and radicals in North America and Europe–is that entirely new transclass issues have emerged that concern environment, growth, transportation, cultural degradation, and the quality of urban life generally–issues that have been produced by urbanization, not by citification. Cutting across conflicting class interests are such transclass issues as the massive dangers of thermonuclear war, growing state authoritarianism, and ultimately global ecological breakdown. To an extent unparalleled in American history, an enormous variety of citizens' groups have brought people of all class backgrounds into common projects around problems, often very local in character, that concern the destiny and welfare of their community as a whole.

Issues such as the siting of nuclear reactors or nuclear waste dumps, the dangers of acid rain, and the presence of toxic dumps, to cite only a few of the many problems that beleaguer innumerable American and British municipalities, have united an astonishing variety of people into movements with shared concerns that render a ritualistic class analysis of their motives a matter of secondary importance. Carried still further, the absorption of small communities by larger ones, of cities by urban belts, and urban belts by "standard metropolitan statistical areas" or conurbations has given rise to militant demands for communal integrity and self-government, an issue that surmounts strictly class and economic interests. The literature on the emergence of these transclass movements, so secondary to internecine struggles within cities of earlier times, is so immense that to merely list the sources would require a sizable volume…"

Part two of excerpt:

"… I have given this brief overview of an emerging general social interest over old particularistic interests to demonstrate that a new politics could easily come into being–indeed one that would be concerned not only with restructuring the political landscape on a municipal level but the economic landscape as well. The old debates between "private property" and "nationalized property," are becoming threadbare. Not that these different kinds of ownership and the forms of exploitation they imply have disappeared; rather, they are being increasingly overshadowed by new realities and concerns. Private property, in the traditional sense, with its case for perpetuating the citizen as an economically self-sufficient and politically self-empowered individual, is fading away. It is disappearing not because "creeping socialism" is devouring "free enterprise" but because "creeping corporatism" is devouring everyone–ironically, in the name of "free enterprise." The Greek ideal of the politically sovereign citizen who can make a rational judgment in public affairs because he is free from material need or clientage has been reduced to a mockery. The oligarchical character of economic life threatens democracy, such as it is, not only on a national level but also on a municipal level, where it still preserves a certain degree of intimacy and leeway.

We come here to a breakthrough approach to a municipalist economics that innovatively dissolves the mystical aura surrounding corporatized property and nationalized property, indeed workplace elitism and "workplace democracy." I refer to the municipalization of property, as opposed to its corporatization or its nationalization. . . . Libertarian municipalism proposes that land and enterprises be placed increasingly in the custody of the community–more precisely, the custody of citizens in free assemblies and their deputies in confederal councils. . . . In such a municipal economy–confederal, interdependent, and rational by ecological, not simply technological, standards–we would expect that the special interests that divide people today into workers, professionals, managers, and the like would be melded into a general interest in which people see themselves as citizens guided strictly by the needs of their community and region rather than by personal proclivities and vocational concerns. Here, citizenship would come into its own, and rational as well as ecological interpretations of the public good would supplant class and hierarchical interests." - dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/libmuni.html

Also while we're posting links, I hate to link to leddit but /r/Communalists actually has a lot of information:
reddit.com/r/Communalists/

Did you see the drama when the current top mod offered to pay the totally-not-a-snitch anarcho-maoist who used to be top mod on that sub money in exchange for control? Was pretty hilarious.

Sadly, I don't know the original source. Those were just some I found.

Problem is that almost no actual socialist revolution has been based upon class-struggle and the establishment of working-classes; thus why Marx was wrong about revolutions happening where Capitalism was the most established.
Instead revolutions popped up in the global periphery, not where the proletariat was the most established, but where the peasantry for one reason or another (such as urbanization) was beginning to deteriorate.

Thus you cannot have a workerist revolution, because libertarian revolutions are mostly based on lack and destruction of work, and primarily upon primitive neolithic communitarian principles, as anthropology would show us.

You cherry-pick a whole lot to try and make him seem like a class-collaborationist; there is no reason to believe that he actually was. When saying classes in this context, it might as well refer to different economic interests duking it out in a communalist assembly, which is fully to be expected.
Even if the thesis is that class-struggle might be resolved through the implementation of direct democracy, even so there's a lot of truth to that; sure, all hierarchies can degenerate a democracy, but communalist principles can degenerate all of them; ecological struggles, race struggles, gender-struggles and indeed, class-struggle.
I believe it as Aristotle that said that the wealthy and powerful feared true democracy more than anything, because in such a system, the poor could vote away the power and wealth of the aristocrats.

I've read three of nine essays in The Next Revolution and I gotta say, Bookchin was a woke af old man. Looking forward to the remaining ones. Thank you for telling me to google Murray Bookchin enough, Holla Forums. His writing fills me with energy and I have already talked about him, what's to come and what's the alternative to many of my buddies at my college.

And before you ask, I told them to google Murray Bookchin as well. :3

Some drawfag kindly produced them

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What does Bookchin mean by the "state" exactly? How large does he envision these municipalities which should replace it to be?

Bookchin deals with "statecraft" and "politics", saying that classical Marxism and Anarchism has historically conflated the two.

He say that Marxists have deemed the state neccessary because they conflate it with social order and organiaztion, and anarchists have rejected politcs, because they believe that social organization is tantemount to hierarchy.

Municipalities should only be as large has neccessary. Large enough to make social organization of local affairs pragmatic, but not large enough that politics become alienate.
Typically and historically, this mean a maximum of 7000 people in one assembly before it breaks into other assemblies, such as seen in early Republican Rome or in Delian Greece.

I still don't really understand what he means by state. Isn't a small municipal government just a tiny state?

In Marxist terms, yes, because Marxists tend to conflate statecraft and politics, not making any distinction between horizontal and hierarchal political organization.

By "state" he refers to the hierarchal kind of organization.

Here's Bookchin's own definition:

"Any agenda that tries to restore and amplify the classical meaning of politics and citizenship must clearly indicate what they are not, if only because the confusion that surrounds the two words…. Politics is not statecraft, and citizens are not "constituents" or "taxpayers." Statecraft consists of operations that engage the state: the exercise of its monopoly of violence, its control of the entire regulative apparatus of society in the form of legal and ordinance-making bodies, and its governance of society by means of professional legislators, armies, police forces, and bureaucracies. Statecraft takes on a political patina when so-called "political parties" attempt, in various power plays, to occupy the offices that make state policy and execute it. This kind of "politics" has almost a tedious typicality. A "political party" is normally a structured hierarchy, fleshed out by a membership that functions in a top-down manner. It is a miniature state, and in some countries, such as the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, a party constituted the state itself…

… Politics, by contrast, is an organic phenomenon. It is organic in the very real sense that it is the activity of a public body – a community, if you will – just as the process of flowering is an organic activity of a plant. Politics, conceived as an activity, involves rational discourse, public empowerment, and the exercise of practical reason, and its realization in a shared, indeed participatory, activity. It is the sphere of societal life beyond the family and the personal needs of the individual that still retains the intimacy, involvement, and sense of responsibility enjoyed in private arenas of life. Groups may form to advance specific political views and programs, but these views and programs are no better than their capacity to answer to the needs of an active public body….

… The immediate goal of a libertarian municipalist agenda is not to exercise sudden and massive control by representatives and their bureaucratic agents over the existing economy; its immediate goal is to reopen a public sphere in flat opposition to statism, one that allows for maximum democracy in the literal sense of the term, and to create in embryonic form the institutions that can give power to a people generally … In short, it is through the municipality that people can reconstitute themselves from isolated monads into an innovative body politic and create an existentially vital, indeed protoplasmic civil life that has continuity and institutional form as well as civic content. I refer here to the block organizations, neighborhood assemblies, town meetings, civic confederations, and public arenas for discourse that go beyond such episodic, single issue demonstrations and campaigns, valuable as they may be to redress social injustices. But protest alone is not enough; indeed, it is usually defined by what protestors oppose, not by the social changes they may wish to institute. To ignore the irreducible civic unit of politics and democracy is to play chess without a chessboard, for it is on this civic plane that the long-range endeavor of social renewal must eventually be played out…" - From Urbanization to Cities

Whether or not your organization is hierarchical or horizontal you will have to suppress bourgeois class interests for an indeterminate amount of time. Class domination by one class over another using the available governing apparatus is the Marxist definition.

Requesting From Urbanzation to Cities please.

anyone got a pdf?

Yes.
It's the definition that conflates politics and statecraft, making no distinction between two rather contradictory concepts.

What is the distinction?

see

Oh bullshit semantic handwaving…nice.

He basically seems to draw politics back to its root word polis and restrict it to only the matters of self-governance on a local level, as it might have been in ancient Athens. I really don't see how this is fundamentally different from statecraft except for the scale.

Because statecraft is the active restriction and destruction of politics, as the actual political elements of the state becomes limited to a very small assembly of people.

this is what he does on a regular basis
see:

So politics is basically direct democracy on a local level and the statecraft is bad because it prevents such a thing? At that point, shouldn't you just use different terms entirely since you're not talking about anything anyone else would understand those terms to mean?

Well, his whole point is that statecraft and politics have always been distinct and even understood to be distinct in the classical era.

Sounds like he's just playing at semantics and is too focused on the non-hierarchal part and not seeing what the real problem with statism is. Mainly, its authoritarian and coercive nature and the contradictory or non-existent reasoning that it stands on. It seems like his ideal society is an ancient Athens (excluding the slaves), yet Athens still voted to murder Socrates.

If an individual cannot coerce me or a dozen or a hundred, then why can the local assembly? If I don't want to participate will I be forced to and then when the vote comes to a conclusion I don't like will I be forced to accept it?

Bookchin isn't allergic to law like you people. Persons would have rights and muh privileges guaranteed to them.
Why should one person be able to force 7000 people to change their wishes?
Not according to Bookchin.
Yes. But the rights of minorities will be constitutionally guaranteed to ensure the existence of debate and disagreement which may foster the search for truth.
This is the kind of shit that makes me believe anarkids are legitimately just dumb. Good luck getting a society to run on perfect consensus.

I LOVE that they put that all on just one page but lord is it vauge as hell.
Anyone not already versed in communalism from other sources would get to the end of the page and still not know what the hell it is.

What are you trying to prove exactly? Your eternal ass anguish?

Laws are rules backed by violence, they are inherently coercive.
Just like the rights guaranteed to all US citizens by the Constitution? Once authority and coercion is accepted it will never limit itself.
They shouldn't if those wishes pertain to their own lives, and that doesn't answer my question.
So how is it any different than anarchism?
Then it sounds like I will be forced to participate.
The smallest minority is the individual. And my comment on the US Constitution still stands.
I never mentioned that, people should simply have the choice of not complying with a decision they don't agree with, but they'll likely comply even if they voted against it. If it's important enough then there will be a way to achieve compliance peacefully, possibly through incentives, peer pressure, even disassociation if it's important enough. If violence is necessary to achieve compliance then either it's not important or someone is very bad at persuasion.

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Slippery slope fallacy. The two are incomparable given the fundamental differences between the two documents and the structures that they bring about. Nothing wrong with social contracts.
The social contract guarantees individual liberty
Because bookchin does not shy away from institutions so long as they're libertarian in nature
Not at all. If you want to be part of the decision process outside of what is guaranteed to you by the social contract you are free to engage or not engage
This is pure ideology. Violence and irrational action is an inevitability, no matter what perfect ideal human you imagine will occupy this system.

It's not a fallacy if there's a clear example of it happening and a reasoning behind why. The Founding Fathers were very anal about the Constitution and how governments should obey the people and not oppress them, yet because of the nature of authority it cannot and won't limit itself, namely because the people who want and accept power and authority are the people you least want to have it. Ultimately the question is where does the legitimacy of authority and therefor laws come from? Or is it simply a matter of what's best for the majority of people and legitimacy doesn't matter? In that case can 49% of the population be slaves for the 51%? If that is too much how about 20%, or 10% or 1%? If all of those is too high then why also isn't the smallest minority, and therefor the weakest, the individual?
It guarantees nothing, individuals do, and if individuals accept coercion over others, no matter how small, then they will eventually accept greater coercion. What matters is what kind of society and organization you create because it's foundations will decide the future.
Neither do most anarchists. But it seems like our definition of libertarian is different.
Guaranteed by or forced to? I don't want a guarantee in having a vote in my oppression.
Indeed. That's why I want a system free from violence and irrational action. So that I only have to worry about murder and robbery, not war and taxation; one set is much rarer and much easier to defend against.

Nazbol communitarianism (a la Thiriart) is superior.

The founding fathers abhorred democracy, with the exception of Jefferson, and wanted to create a republic where ultimately the aristocrats would be elected into positions of power. The USA and it's constitution is designed to reflect that. Bad example, still slippery slope fallacy.
this is merely a continuation of the aforementioned fallacy.
True, that's why the foundations of this society is a social contract that creates libertarian institutions to reinforce a humanist ethic
Institutions imply a structure of power over people, though.
Is anyone forced to not be physically harmed? what an absurd question, or perhaps I merely misunderstand your point.
Literally nothing wrong with libertarian institutions facilitating restorative justice. It is irrational to not have such an institution

Saying they hated democracy is applying modern standards to Enlightenment era men who believed that universal democracy had the danger of becoming mob rule. They were far more democratic than anyone else in their time, and were partially responsible for the French Revolution.
The Constitution reflects nothing. It simply says all US citizens are guaranteed these rights and may not be infringed or only infringed under certain circumstances.
"Putting a piece of paper over a flame will catch it on fire"
"nah, slippery slope fallacy man"
And what about the Enlightenment values and ethics of Western institutions? It doesn't matter what the motives behind something is, if the institution has power then people who want power will try to get to the top, and once they do they'll want more power, which they do by expanding the areas where coercion is allowed.
Then how are they libertarian?
If people aren't allowed to be physically harmed then how are the laws and decisions of the municipality enforced?
Who defines what restorative is, or what crimes it should be applied to? Totalitarian states saw reeducation camps as restorative.

Compared to monarchies they were progressive. No one is disputing that. What is in dispute is comparing the sort of government that they made with the one we propose.
The constitution lays the basic framework for how the federal government operates, it's duties and responsibilities and the rights given to the people under said federal governments rule. The framework created allowed for the problems we have today
No idea what you're trying to communicate here.
Which is why the framework is set up so as to not create an elite outside of society ruling over society, i.e. a state, and keeps power firmly in the hands of the polis. There is not "top" to get to, and western institutions don't really value or embody enlightenment values, or else they would not be tools for oligarchs and plutocrats.
Because they give power to the people. Power is not something that can be eliminated, only directed towards emancipatory and libertarian ends.
What? My question was meant to be taken as an absurdity to highlight the absurdity of your question, not as a serious train of thought. If you're asking how laws are upholded, it is ultimately the responsibility of the polis to decide that. If they decide force is to be used then so be it. Force is merely a tool that can be used towards authoritarian of libertarian means. Is killing a slaveholder and freeing his slaves something that anarchists are now against? Should we be against armed revolution now?
From wikipedia: "Restorative justice is an approach to justice that personalizes the crime by having the victims and the offenders mediate a restitution agreement to the satisfaction of each, as well as involving the community. This contrasts to more punitive approaches where the main aim is retributive justice or to satisfy abstract legal principles. Victims take an active role in the process. Meanwhile, offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions, taking the opportunity to right their wrongs and redeem themselves, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community.[1] In addition, the restorative justice approach aims to help the offender to avoid future offenses. The approach is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offense against an individual or community, rather than the State.[2] Restorative justice that fosters dialogue between victim and offender has shown the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability.[3]"

The point is the one they proposed warped into something they would've never supported. How can you be sure the same won't happen to you?
And part of the framework explicitly disallowed many things the US gov does now.
You're saying I'm using a slippery slope fallacy when I'm saying that one action directly leads to another result; just like something putting a piece of paper over a flame will catch it on fire.
Even the absence of an elite doesn't prevent the public from being intrusive and violent. There was no elite involved when witch hunts or lynchings happened. These things can happen regardless of any system in place, but if they do happen it'd be a whole lot worse if there was a system in place for them to exercise the authority and resources of a practical state.
Not truly, of course, but they do in words and in their origins.
That's true, and the state is ultimately an instrument of power, but it is an instrument that is so dangerous and has caused so much harm that it'd be best if it was destroyed. In a way it's a bit like the One Ring from LotR, in that it tempts you into thinking you can do good with it, when ultimately it will always end with evil.
What gives them that authority? Is it simply a might makes right kind of thing? If so how is that reasoning any different than the kind authoritarians use?
Both are uses of force in self-defense and in liberation. Presumably in a world where Communalism has been enacted the revolution would have ended and humans would have been liberated, and the question becomes what replaces the old system and how to organize, and that is what Communalism is supposed to answer. I believe that a tool as dangerous as force can only be safely used in self-defense/liberation; instances where force has already been used and the only way to defend oneself is also with force. Any other problems, including the ones in how to organize people, can be solved without force, and should be, because if a problem that can be solved without force is solved with, then there is no real reason to not solve any problem with force if it is the easier option.
I understand what restorative justice is. I'm saying that if violence is allowed to be used in the pursuit of something as vague as "justice" then it can be used in any circumstance where "justice" is the goal. Or in specifically restorative justice, used in order to "restore" whatever the community thinks is lacking, in cases where the individual has transgressed against the community, and the community being the one who holds power, it is also the one who decides what a transgression is.

Because that's overly simplistic thinking that does not take into account the actual concrete differences between the systems proposed.
Because the US was built on statecraft, not politics, since it's inception. The framework to enforce and interpret the constitution is inherently flawed because of this.
No, you're making a false comparison to a different set of circumstances and concluding from that that the same is inevitable in this case, instead of judging it on a case-by-case basis.
"No, you're making a false comparison to a different set of circumstances and concluding from that that the same is inevitable in this case, instead of judging it on a case-by-case basis."
Ethics are a form of practice, not merely words
I never advocated keeping the state. A state is an institution of power but not all institutions of power are states.
The people give it authority through their own democratic will. To compare libertarian institutions that empower the communities through democratic action to that of authoritarian institutions that do not express democratic will is absurd.
Nobody suggested organizing people through force. Democracy cannot be organized through force. The problem of an individual trying to exact power over that of the democratic will is something that can and should be addressed with force when necessary.
Justice is not a vague concept, justice is based upon agreed ethics and rights. In this case they are humanist ethics and rights

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