Libertarian Municipalism

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"An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles."

Libertarian Municipalism, also known as Bookchin Communalism, is a far left, Libertarian Socialist, socially progressive, and sometimes Anarchist ideology with an extreme emphasis on Environmentalism, based on the political, philosophical, and sociological ideas of Murray Bookchin.

Libertarian Municipalism believes in a stateless, classless, society where hierarchy is reduced as much as possible and is organized into eco-communes that participate in federalism, most private property being made communal.

History

Murray Bookchin was born to Jewish immigrants and from a very young age was heavily influenced by his Socialist Grandmother. This led him to be involved with the Young Communist League USA and hold what he would later describe as Stalinist views. However, after studying more Marxist literature in his late teens he would shift to a Trotskyist perspective. He became a factory worker and unionizer through the 1940's and over that period of time his belief in Marxism–Leninism in general began to wane, moving towards a more general Marxist position.

He began taking inspiration from more Anarchist writers like Peter Kroprotkin, particularly liking their views on hierarchy, seeing it as more wholistic than contemporary Marxists. From here he developed his idea of post-scarcity, which he intertwined with his strong views in the growing Environmentalist movement. This would culminate in his book Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), in which he would outline these beliefs. His concept of Social Ecology, that the ecological crisis is actually a social crisis, would become one of the prominent focuses of his work premiering in his most well known work, The Ecology of Freedom (1982). In which he laid out that socially dominating societal structures (specifically the State and Capitalism) lead to a society which dominates and destroys nature, instead he proposed society be organized into federations/confederations of ecological, Directly Democratic, communes. This would later become known as Communalism. He thought the best way to achieve this society was to organize communities into revolutionary, confederated, municipalities that would adhere to Communalist principles; this is known as Libertarian Municipalism.

Bookchin would begin his break with Anarchism with his 1995 work Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism in which he harshly criticized what he called Lifestyle Anarchism, but also Mysticism and Post-Modernism. This break would be cemented in 2002 with The Communalist Project, in which he declared Communalism a unique revolutionary tradition that is distinct from, but takes the best parts of, Marxism and Anarchism. Although not all adherents of Communalism consider it separate from Anarchism and as such consider themselves Anarchists. In 2004, Bookchin had brief correspondence with Abdullah Öcalan, an imprisoned Kurdish revolutionary leader and student of Bookchin, who went on to formulate Democratic Confederalism as a practical application of Communalism in Kurdistan. However, Bookchin could not communicate much with Öcalan because of a mix of his declining health and Öcalan's solitary confinement, dying in 2006.

Beliefs

Social Ecology

Social ecology is a philosophical theory associated with Bookchin, concerned with the relationship between ecological and social issues. It is not a movement but a theory primarily associated with his thought and elaborated over his body of work. It presents a utopian philosophy of human evolution that combines the nature of biology and society into a third "thinking nature" beyond biochemistry and physiology, which is argued to be a more complete, conscious, ethical, and rational nature. Humanity, by this line of thought, is the latest development from the long history of organic development on Earth. Bookchin's social ecology proposes ethical principles for replacing a society's propensity for hierarchy and domination with that of democracy and freedom.

Municipalist Strategy

In his last decades, Bookchin advocated for the creation of municipal activism, especially as direct and popular democracy. By hijacking the local, communal or municipal elections, left-libertarians could "extra-legally" (in Bookchin's terms) use the statist institutions to their own advantage, empowering their local community by giving them political power.
The communes would then find a way to confederate themselves, in order to face political repression guided by the State. It is important to say that Bookchin is not here advocating for Libertarian Possibilism nor Proudhon's Dual Power strategy. Both of them fail to understand that State can not be overwhelmed by Direct Democracy while remaining pacifist. Bookchin advocates for revolutionnary action once the tension between the federation of communes and the State apparatus is at its peak. It would be a mistake it to consider it as any form of reformism.

This strategy can be seen as similar to other modern forms of Municipal Socialism, and the most notable example is Barcelona's one. In 2015, the political party "Barcelona En Comú" (Barcelona in Common) lead by Ada Colau won the municipal elections, but was later criticized by libertarian municipalists for falling into inefficient reformism. The party lost one seat each next municipal election after 2015, and was eventually kicked out of local main government in 2023 - while maintaining 9 seats in the municipal council.

In France, after the Yellow Vests protests, the commune of Commercy faced many debates surrounding direct democracy methodology. While some advocated for Bookchin's municipalist strategy, others wanted to achieve it without the hijacking of statist institutions. People of Commercy have chosen to differentiate these two methods by calling them respectively "Municipalism" and "Communalism" - adding even more confusion to these terms.

Variants

Municipalist Situationism

WIP

How to Draw

The Libertarian Municipalism design is based on the "Libertarian Ecosocialist flag" by u/TheIenzo. It is simply a mirrored anarcho-communist flag with a leaf across the center.

Flag of Libertarian Municipalism
  1. Draw a ball.
  2. Draw a thin leaf shape cutting across the ball from the stem at bottom right, to the tip at top left,
  3. Colour the left half of the leaf a lighter shade of green (#44AA00), and the right half, a darker shade of green (#008000).
  4. Colour the area below the leaf black (#141414), but not pure black.
  5. Colour the area above the leaf red (#D40E00).
  6. Add the eyes and congratulations, you have drawn Libertarian Municipalism!
Color NameHEXRGB
 Light Green#44AA00rgb(68, 170, 0)
 Dark Green#008000rgb(0, 128, 0)
 Black#141414rgb(20, 20, 20)
 Red#D40A00rgb(212, 10, 0)


Relationships

Friendly

Mixed

  • Marxism–Leninism - Overly economistic and authoritarian.
  • Environmentalism - I'm an ecologist, not an environmentalist! Environmentalism is liberal and rejects social ecology.
  • Marxism - Good analysis, though kind of outdated.
  • Soulism - Based views, but you are still too focused on yourself, and you are often sleeping, instead of doing something useful. Why not be at least a communal night shift janitor?
    • *waking up after long term "shift"*...Uhhh. What is that place? And why the hell is that weird guy looking at me?
  • Anarcho-Syndicalism - Certainly not all anarcho-syndicalists would be unsympathetic to, say, eco-anarchism or a communitarian anarchism that is concerned with confederations of villages, towns, and cities, but a degree of dogmatism and stodgy fixity persists among worker-oriented anarchists that I believe should hardly be characteristic of left libertarians generally.
  • Libertarianism - People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights—this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left. I don’t think I’m going to take away your community.
  • Hoppeanism - Some way you are similar to me with whole ostrakysm thing, but I hate your cultural views and pro private property stances. And WHY THE FUCK you support monarchies?
    • - For the last time, I do not support monarchy, I just say that it is wrong to say that democracy is better than monarchy.
  • Athenian Democracy - Direct democratic city states are cool and you inspired me but your views on women and slavery are horrible.
  • Green Libertarianism - Me but capitalist.

Negative

  • Corporatocracy - REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, YOU DAMN DIRTY POLLUTER! EVEN YOUR ECO MASK IS AWFUL!
  • Satirism - NO, WAIT! YOU'VE GOT THE WRONG MURRAY! IT'S HIM YOU WANT!

Further Information

For overlapping political theory see:

Libertarian Socialism, Eco-Anarchism, Localism, Democratic Confederalism,
Patchwork, Anarcho-Communism, Eco-Socialism, Marxism, Technogaianism, Social Anarchism, Anarcho-Transhumanism, Anarcha-Feminism, Total Liberationism, Participism, & Minarcho-Socialism

Literature

Online Communities

Wikipedia

Websites

Gallery

  • Original
    Original
  • Credit: u/TheLegend2T, source
    Credit: u/TheLegend2T, source
  • Credit: u/Duy_physics, source
    Credit: u/Duy_physics, source

Navigation

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