In the interest of discussions on Communalism not being limited entirely to memes, let's discuss some praxis. I'm hardly an expert, but according to Bookchin in The Next Revolution, we should become active in municipal politics. Instead of focusing on national or state level politics, we should work from the bottom and use any power we gain in local politics to create and/or empower city councils and other forms of local organization. These organizations will be open to all citizens and allow them to direct their own local issues according to their own needs. As we devolve power to these local communes, we can slowly build up an alternative power structure and make the activities of the capitalist state superfluous to the communal life. As this happens in more and more cities, we can eventually set up a network of self-governing municipalities which will aid and support one another and maybe form a confederation. This will eventually draw the capitalist state into open confrontation and revolutionary violence lest it loses its power.
Some random questions in response to this:
1) Do you believe this to be a viable form of praxis?
2) How might we get ordinary people to become politically involved on a local level to the point where they'd support these ideas and actually utilize the structures a Communalist party would create?
3) Could such a tactic be used to radicalize inner city black communities and other groups that have already experimented with local governance in response to neglect by the state?
4) How should Communalists gain municipal power? Subvert existing parties? Found an openly Communalist one?
In the interest of discussions on Communalism not being limited entirely to memes, let's discuss some praxis...
Local politics are generally full of the worts cronyism, corruption starts there and then becomes national.
Starting on the bottom will be a harder battle.
How is this possible?
Bumping it up for actual discussion
I like it. Is Bookchin /ourguy/ after all?
Man I need to sleep but I'll post in this thread later.
Bump for interest
I think a dual approach would be best, a cadre/vanguard/party/whatever that deals with setting up and supporting councils and communes, increasing their legal power and general support work. But staying out of their daily work.
Also when local posts are gained they should be used to empower the councils(like city parliament members of the local communalist org allways voting as directed by the commune).
But the very first step that Bookchin allways called for was creating reading groups and educating each other. Even leftcoms cant disagree with that.
Within an undemocratic system based not on politics (as bookchin described it) but statecraft, sure. You can't equate a system of popular assemblies with that of representative "democracy"
As far as local governments go, not really. In the US they are completely under the thumb of the state and don't control many things of importance (cops aside, though their unions are so strong governments rarely have much of an effect on them.) Forming local co-ops and such that don't work along capitalist lines is probably a good idea though, especially as the current system is serving our needs less and less every day. It seems to be flourishing in Rojava all things considered but that arose in a complete power vacuum so I don't know what people in countries that aren't failed states can learn from it.
2) How might we get ordinary people to become politically involved on a local level to the point where they'd support these ideas and actually utilize the structures a Communalist party would create?
Form reading groups, provide services for the community to enjoy (the Black Panther's free breakfast was a great idea, so good that NYC and other cities decided to provide free breakfasts to poor kids in school).
3) Could such a tactic be used to radicalize inner city black communities and other groups that have already experimented with local governance in response to neglect by the state?
Yes, (see the BPP above).
4) How should Communalists gain municipal power? Subvert existing parties? Found an openly Communalist one?
Building around existing municipal power and eventually engulfing it is probably the best bet. Subverting existing parties is also worth a shot, especially in small towns or rural areas where party machines are weak. Forming a Communalist party is a good idea for other reasons, but probably not a great way to take down the regimes currently installed.
I'm going the the Michigan Democratic Party convention next Saturday in an attempt to subvert the party that utterly dominates the city I live in. It's just putting Berniecrats in officer positions but it's probably better than nothing.
It is the only viable revolutionary strategy in the West. The working class has proven itself to be thoroughly reformist, if it is at all class conscious. Thus we are required to find a new viable realm of revolutionary struggle. This is the importance of the city.
Political involvement will be an on-going process, and the tactics used to involve citizens in assemblies will vary from city to city, I'd imagine. However, one thing that Bookchin suggests is that the assemblies serve a community-building purpose, whereby the sheer alienation that people face today is resolved through allowing them to find community in their local assembly.
It could, I suppose, however Bookchin rejected identity politics. For Bookchin, politics based on biologially oriented criteria like ethnicity, gender, age, etc… Were a regression away from the potential of a universal humanity. A politics based on identity, and especially ethnic identity, runs the risk of potentially becoming parochial (i.e. short-sighted) in its interests. That is NOT to say that the issues that black communities face today should be ignored. On the contrary, they are issues that we must address precisely because they are issues that our fellow humans face.
Bookchin advocates for a program of minimum demands, transitional demands, and maximum demands. So for example, minimum demands are what allows us to get into power, or at the very least start a movement. These are demands that are immediately relevant to the lives of citizens in a given community, and can cover a broad range of categories (e.g. pollution, gentrification, quality of urban life, culture, etc.). So a good idea is to start with the immediate concerns of individuals in a given city, and by addressing these minimum demands we can begin to build a movement and potentially even get people elected as aldermen or mayors in city governments. From there we can begin introducing transitional demands, such as the establishment of economic dual-power, the replacement of the police with a civic guard, the legislation of decision making power for municipal assemblies into law, etc. Transitional demands are the demands that allow us to transition to our maximum program: a Commune of communes.
You've read Murray Bookchin — now read Christopher Alexander, it's beautifully complementary. Here's a teaser, of sorts: ribbonfarm.com
Also, I would like to include a bit of a global perspective, as I think what's happening in Rojava holds big potential for the rest of us, be it in the West or other oppressed groups in need of autonomy.
1) Partially so, but we're in the information age and global participation in the evolution of "projects" like Rojava is a game changer. Instances of communalism can pop up wherever, whenever, and we, as an international community, are able to help them fend off the inevitable harassment from incumbent state governments. This is a tremendous leverage in evolution (and selection) of communalist projects in practice. I believe that this, too, will be a big part of our praxis (by "our" I mean engaged internet communities). Some of these bold foreign initiatives will be our forerunners and will carry the torch for us as we participate in gaining ground in the West.
There's so much that's possible now that wasn't there when his theory was being worked out. We can participate both locally and globally and if you live within a free travel zone like EU you can create new localities. Bottom up is still the way to go, but the internet permits a zeitgeist that makes it (increasingly) difficult to squash or cripple initiatives, especially the more gentler ones.
2/3) I won't speculate about the specifics, but suffice to say, there seems to be an appetite for change beyond ordinary political parameters.
4) In the short term I think there's great potential in voting in politicians, from any parties (left or right) that will tip the scales in the favor of communalist practices. I'd imagine the spirit of Sanders grassroots movement will persist, maybe even stronger, as the democrats try to reinvent themselves. Time for the "google murray bookchin" memes.
More about spread and gaining ground:
(Also, see 1)) I see its spread as a viral pattern. I can't imagine what the most effective measures will be, since the internet has shaked up the landscape (see 2016 election social media warfare), but the greatest luxury of first world participants in communalistic ideas is that we're permitted to fail, and as long as we have our safety nets, we can fail often and do so gracefully. The different dynamic of bottom up growth model is that it permits a Darwinian model of sorts, where we don't need to resort to eschatological ideations of a violent overthrow.
However, I think the most important evolution/development of the idea and discovery of its practice will happen in places like Rojava, as they operate largely independently without safety nets. What's happening with international support for Rojava is a big deal and I believe this crowdsourced, decentralized "vanguard" hints at how powerful international leverage might become.
I predict that Rojava will either get crushed or be integrated into the Syrian state. Kurds are just too weak and hated by all their neighbors to be able to stick around after the ISIS problem is dealt with. Failures like this or communalistic experiments in first world countries will just serve to discredit the ideology.
How do you think Bookchin's proposed assembly system would work ? Reading about Rojava, it just seems too complicated and alienating for common people (4 levels of assemblies, delegates that can only support what their assembly agreed upon, 8 different working groups withing each assembly, consensus). Im afraid about the political process being unefficent or taken over by communalist party cadres. While I think face-to-face democracy is important (and should be retained on the level of commune), cant we just take care of everything else (the confederate level, the city, municipality,etc.) by an app, or digital voting?
I'm with Zizek (and by extension Trotsky, I suppose) on this; people don't want to have to bother with this bullcrap. The vast majority of people just want a nice alienated government that takes care of business and is barely noticeable. People who want active involvement can become politicians.
Bookchin stated a few times that he is fine with only a limited regular participation on the basis level.
I think it could work as long as you keep hierachies flat and the administration democratic(like through rotational systems where randomly selected common people take simple roles in the administration)
But I agree that the system is in Rojava is to top heavy and complicated, and thus doesnt facilitate communal power.
(OP)
I think focusing more on local politics is a good idea. A lot of lefties overemphasize electoral politics, but the problem with that is twofold: One, it is almost always an all-or-nothing deal. You have to get a lot of momentum in order to secure a majority so you can actually make radical changes, and if the government fails to make changes (such as Syriza) you quickly lose momentum and the movement collapses. Two, all your changes can be quickly undone if you lose power. Case in point, Obama's rather meagre reforms are already being dismantled just days after Trump took office.
I think the anarchists have the right idea in this regard. It is easier to make changes on the local level, and they have the potential to outlast most governments, but I do think they fall into the opposite trap of completely disregarding anything that reeks of politics or "statism". Revolutionary socialists have this problem too.
Bookchin's idea is pretty good, though I'm not sure of how we're supposed to get to the point of devolving power to the local communes. I don't think we can get to that point just from local action alone. I'd say we need to make a compromise between building a local movement and actually trying to get into government.
The other posters make some good points. I think we need to focus on community building and educating, as well as the usual activism and organising labour.
Definitely. I don't think it's restricted to just those groups either. There's a lot of anti-capitalist sentiment among the working class, even those who are conservative. Those people could be incredible allies, if we can help them organise.
I'd say the best way would be to cooperate with other leftist groups. The differences between them aren't huge (besides, we're working towards the same goals), and locally they're usually very loosely organised, so you can pretty much do whatever you can get people to agree on. I don't think there's much point in explicitly campaigning as a communalist, especially not with a left as divided as it already is.
That could be? I mean, Tillerson has expressed some level of support and they seem to be getting a workable deal. Speaking from the perspective of an ideological test bed it's not simply a matter of whether they will get suppressed but also a matter of whether they managed to get a working system of sorts while they were operational.
If it ends in a sad way it might as well have been a bittersweet one, which people will romanticize rather than some of the blips of the 20th century that essentially became horror stories. Again, what matters a great deal is that they function well now. This is the test bed where we can observe communalistic practice of sorts. It's better to see the theory of communalism evolve onto the surface of the real world rather than just imagining it as some figment of our imagination, where perfect consistency and otherwise utopianism is permissible.
A short article explaining these ideas in somewhat more detail:
roarmag.org
I am kinda new to Communalist theory and Bookchin in general, however I've studied the Zapatistas a bit and this sounds exactly like what they have done in their autonomous communitites.
And although they haven't "set up a network of self-governing municipalities" nationwide, the system seems to be functioning well for them in Chiapas.
Anyone with more insight who could comment on this apparent connection between Bookchin's theory and the Zapatistas' practises?
Well, the Zapatistas are anarchists and Communalism has a lot of parralels with anarchist theory.
I feel like this should be fairly obvious, I mean the Bolsheviks derived their power from the soviets. Local power united can be a strong force.
bumpen theory
Bookchin acknowledges this but points out that these local cities and communities which were historically at the center of many revolutions (Paris in the various French revolutions, Barcelona in Catalonia, the Petrograd Soviet in Russia) were never taken as the basis of the movement in and of themselves but merely seen as an expression of it. To Bookchin, a city ruled by a soviet is the valuable thing in and of itself, something which should not be absorbed into something greater but stand united with other such communities in a confederation of equals.