We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Thoughts on Libertarian Municipalism

Click here to access article by Murray Bookchin reposted from 2000 on Eagainst website (Greece). 

The American leftist truth-seeker spent his life going through various iterations of political orientations to arrive at what he refers to as Libertarian Municipalism as the political unit of what he calls Communalism in which confederated libertarian municipals would replace the state, a capitalist construction. Today his ideas are clearly influencing radical leaders in many strife ridden areas of the world such as Kurdish Rojava area of Syria (see this), the FARC revolutionary movement in Columbia, and among leftist Greeks who are fighting for their very survival.  
Libertarian municipalism is...based on the proposition that we now have the technology for a post-scarcity economy—one that can potentially abolish mindless toil and possibly most of the work that enters into industrial production today. In such a world, the communist ideal of “from each according to ability, to each according to needs” would be historically and technically feasible. ....

The world is changing now at a pace that is absolutely stunning. If capitalism does not destroy the biosphere, then in possibly thirty, certainly fifty years the world that survives will be changed beyond our imagination. Not only will the peasant world be gone, but so too will much of the “nature” we often call “wild.” The automation of industry will probably reach incredible proportions, and the earth’s features will be vastly transformed.