Dialectical Communitarian Anarchism as the Negation of Domination: A Review of "The Impossible Community"
Professor John P.
Clark's The Impossible Community:
Realizing Communitarian Anarchism (New
York: Bloomsbury, 2013) is a masterful work, one which seeks to invert
radically the destruction of nature and oppression of humanity as prosecuted by
capitalism, the state and patriarchy by encouraging the intervention of a
mass-confluence of anarcho-communist - or communitarian anarchist -
socio-political movements. This project is only "impossible" because
its realization is heterotopic - inherently contradictory - to the prevailing
system of domination, such that it demands the abolition of hegemony in favor of
a different, liberated world: that of the "third great epoch of
history," in Clark's vision, when "humanity finally frees itself and
the earth from the
yoke of dominion." Taking equally from Buddhism as from
dialectical philosophy, Clark stresses the importance of enlightenment,
mindfulness and awakening as preconditions of revolutionary political praxis.
And although he implicitly seems to agree with the overall thesis of the (anti)catastrophist line
developed by Sasha Lilley and company, he
also affirms the productivity of a commitment to truth that squarely confronts
the profoundly shocking, traumatic and even convulsive nature of such truth:
the very first page of his preface acknowledges the sixth mass extinction in
which terrestrial life is at present entrapped and notes the "horror"
of a capitalist world in which billions go without the basic necessities of a
good life. Advancing the philosophy and practice of communitarian anarchism as
an exit from the depraved present, Clark dedicates much of his text to
examining the anti-authoritarian and cooperative spirit of humanity, as
embodied in many of the customs of pre-modern or "traditional"
societies, as in the history of Western revolutionary movements. In this sense,
Clark does well to distance himself from the Eurocentrism advanced by many
Western radical thinkers, including social ecologist Murray Bookchin, whose
imprint on The Impossible Community is otherwise nearly
palpable.
Much of Clark's introductory
commentary focuses on the problem of individual and collective human
enlightenment: The question is how to induce what Paulo Freire termed
"conscientization" (conscientização), a catalyst for a
societal awakening that would take into account normally overlooked social and
ecological problems toward the end of engaging with and ultimately resolving
them. How might a shattering intervention break the mass of humanity from much
of its observed complacency and complicity with the capitalist everyday, which,
"if we are to speak honestly, must be called a culture of extinction, a
culture of extermination, and ecocidal culture"? In response, Clark
presents a revival of classical anarchism, as developed in the thought of Mikhail
Bakunin, Pyotr Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, Gustav Landauer and Murray Bookchin,
and he works to integrate the perspectives of such theorists together with the
life-affirming aspects of various traditional cultures of the world to advance
his communitarian anarchist vision. Practically, Clark argues that the notion
of communitarian anarchism (or anarcho-communism) should be understood as
referring to activity that renders the life-world common, as against its
largely privatized nature now. In Clark's vision, a multitude of strong
international communitarian anarchist movements would work together to overturn
the historical trend toward popular disenfranchisement, as promulgated by the
expanding hegemony of state and capital seen in modernity, in favor of
decentralized participatory democracy. Philosophically resisting much of the
dominant dogmatism, nihilism, cynicism and relativism that he sees evinced by
many contemporary anarchists, Clark defends a dialectical theoretical vision
whereby the world comes to be seen as a "site of constant change and
transformation that takes place through processes of mutual interaction,
negation and contradiction." Clark declares that one of the main goals of
his Impossible Community is "to be fully and consistently dialectical,"
such that the given social reality comes under challenge and "new
possibilities for radical social transformation" are opened up. I should
note that within this vein it is strange that, next to declaring Mohandas K.
Gandhi's Sarvodaya ("common welfare") movement the "largest
anarchist-inspired movement to appear between the Spanish Revolution and the
present moment," Clark favorably cites the "radical kibbutzim"
of Palestine/Israel on two occasions in the first two chapters of the work
without noting a word about the imperialist dispossession processes directed
against indigenous Palestinians with which such kibbutzim were complicit. The
recognition that the kibbutz might function as a "tool of colonialism and
oppression" is made only in a footnote during its third and last mention
in the book's sixth chapter. One wonders how this lapse jibes with Clark's
stated desire to preserve the positive communalist customs of non-Western
cultures and overcome the strong tendencies toward Eurocentrism within much of
anarchist thought.
Within his discussion of the
philosophy of communitarian anarchism, Clark notes the mainstream's puzzling
perpetuation of mechanisms of denial, even amid the depths of the various
interlinking crises of corporate capital. Against such uninspiring trends,
Clark argues for a "Phantom of Possibility," one that presently
haunts left-wing and ordinary consciousness alike: It is "the chance that
revolutionary, liberatory social transformation is still possible." Evaluating
the prospect for the embodied realization of such rebellious specters, Clark
here expresses pessimism for the "mass of humanity" that continues to
fail to act autonomously and radically to resolve the threats that imperil its
future existence, particularly through looming eco-apocalypse: In observing
this alarming violation of collective human self-responsibility, Clark would
seem to agree with Karl Marx, whom he cites as declaring that history
"progresses by its bad side." Gloomily, though perhaps rationally,
the author declares a "spectrum of possible ecofascisms" to be the
most likely future outgrowth of society's present structure, although his focus
clearly is on making visible the chance of a "turning" - as in the
etymology of the word revolution, a "turning around." Bracketing his
recognition of the frightening power of reactionary grass-roots movements in
the United States, Clark considers Occupy, cooperative labor, the possibility
of economic decommodification and the solidarity and marginalization of immigrant
communities as important popular counter-trends that point the way forward. At
both the individual and social levels, Clark calls for a total revolt of the
organism, one reminiscent of Herbert Marcuse's Great Refusal, whereby
individuals associate and develop autonomous alternatives that promote an
institutional framework, social ethos and social imaginary different from those
on offer from the dominant death-culture. Equating the ecological crisis with
the "ultimate intrusion of the traumatic real" into human life - a
veritable "death sentence for humanity and much of life" on Earth -
Clark raises the question of why there still is nothing approximating an
anarchist Masdar City, in reference to the project currently financed by the
Emir of Abu Dhabi in conjunction with private capital to create a waste-free,
carbon-neutral settlement for 50,000 people in the desert of the United Arab
Emirates. Given the very real existence of strong left-wing movements - for
example, as seen in the solidarity volunteerism engaged in by many youths in
New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - Clark recognizes that the
struggle continues, but, like Marx in the "Theses on Feuerbach," he
leaves open the practical question of how to change the world at this point in
the text.
One of Clark's major
contributions to anti-authoritarian struggle comes with his conceptualization
of the "third concept of liberty," a Hegelian-anarchist supplement to
the two concepts of liberty identified famously by Isaiah Berlin: negative liberty,
or freedom from arbitrary interference and coercion, and positive liberty, or
the freedom to flourish as a human and experience happiness through
self-realization. To these two - with the former historically more associated
with right-wing propertarian and liberal thought and the latter related more to
German idealism, materialism and socialism - Clark adds a third, which he takes
largely from the youthful and critical Hegel: freedom as self-determination. In
fact, such a positive concept of freedom echoes Immanuel Kant as well, given
the importance this German idealist placed on enlightenment as autonomous
reason. Hegel took this concept seriously, and in his early works the element
of Freigabe - the "renunciation of attempts to dominate and control the other"
while simultaneously "allowing the other to be ... as she determines
herself to be" - is central to his thought. Clark points to the interest
Hegel expresses in his early religious studies (the Theological Manuscripts)
for the Christian anarchist Joachimite tradition, which calls for a "third
age" in which human society would be organized along the principles of
love and solidarity. Clark integrates Hegel's youthful rejection of all
"coercion, force, and violence" into his concept of the free
community, one that is to be composed of "self-realizing beings who are
agents in their own development." Alongside Hegel, Clark here also calls
on the romantic German anarchist Gustav Landauer in theorizing his third
concept: Landauer, unlike Hegel, acknowledges the value of traditional communal
culture and, breaking importantly with progressivism, recognizes the tremendous
destruction that history can cause - in contradistinction to Hegel's mature
apologism for the various genocides and slave-regimes of history, given his
view that such brutality is a necessary prologue to the realization of reason.
Thus, Landauer takes the World Geist (Spirit) to mean solidarity, and he calls
on humanity to work practically for liberation:
"The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another. It can be destroyed by creating new social relationships; i.e., by people relating to one another differently. ... We, who have imprisoned ourselves in the absolute state, must realize the truth: we are the state! And we will be the state as long as we are nothing different; as long as we have not yet created the institutions."[1]
Clark sees Landauer's
advocacy of a new, liberated society based on human creativity and mutual
respect as advanced in contemporary times by his comrade Joel Kovel, who in History
and Spirit (1991) envisions political transformations aiming at a Hegelian
reconciliation of society and individual, or universal and particular. Here,
Clark importantly mentions Kovel's relationship with the emerging ecosocialist
movements, particularly given the theorist's co-authoring of the 2001 "Ecosocialist
Manifesto" and the 2007 "Belem Ecosocialist
Declaration." Clark affirms the necessity
of such a melding of ecological and anti-capitalist thought, given the
self-evidently profound nature of the environmental crisis, and he soberly
declares the most likely means of addressing this world-historical problem to
be some future form of eco-fascism, if a libertarian ecosocialism does not
develop and intervene.
I will for the most part
skip consideration of Clark's fourth chapter, "Against Principalities and
Powers," which amounts to an elucidation of well-known anarchist critiques
of liberalism, an ideology that bases itself in respect for the negative
liberty mentioned above. Yet I will note two important points he makes in this
intervention: one, that liberalist philosophy fails to acknowledge social
domination in the present as deriving from an overarching system of domination
manifested principally in the hegemony of patriarchy, capital and state; and
two, that liberalism fatally ignores the domination of nature, which as Clark
rightly notes corresponds to "the most fateful form of domination
presently existing." In an intriguing amalgam of biocentric and
anthropocentric thought, Clark here argues that interference with and
destruction of the "self-activity of beings (organisms, populations,
species, ecosystems, etc.) within the biosphere" and the concomitant
prevention of "their flourishing, self-realization, and attainment of the
good" must become realities with which social anarchists should concern
themselves centrally today, toward the end of resisting life-negating trends.
Clark provides a number of
compelling reflections in "Anarchy and the Dialectic of Utopia,"
where he distinguishes among different manifestations of utopianism: utopia as
domination, utopia as escapism, and utopia as critique or (subversive) desire.
With regard to the "dominant utopia," Clark identifies some of the
salient fantasies it advances, particularly its capture of the imagination via
consumer spectacle on the one hand and the capitalist everyday labor routine on
the other. As in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the "good
life" advanced by the dominant imaginary is held out as available to
"all who buy the right commodities and know how to perpetually refashion
their very selves into the right kinds of commodities." Clark clearly
states that this false type of utopianism leads inexorably to the
"destruction of all diversity and complexity - of ecosystems, cultures,
personalities, and imaginations," and indeed ultimately tends toward the
very "reduction of the world" to a "condition of nowhere,"
through the threats hegemony poses to the future of life on Earth. As an
alternative to this type of utopianism, Clark considers the escapist utopian
forms that he finds academics and "leftist sectarians" like Leninists
and libertarian municipalists to subscribe to; utopia for them becomes an
idealist means of transcending their political frustrations with the state of
society, or even "compensation for being denied real power or having real
efficacy." Clark criticizes such escapist utopians for their contempt for
the people, given their belief that revolution will come "only [once] the
masses finally learn how to pay attention and fall in line with the intended
course of history."
More positively, Clark comes
to consider the concept of utopia as critique and desire. Against the deadening
tendencies of late capitalism, Clark quotes a statement made by Hungarian
sociologist Karl Mannheim: "[W]ith the relinquishment of utopias, man
[sic] would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to
understand it."[2] Naturally,
this quote nicely mirrors the quip famously made by Oscar Wilde on the
geography of utopia: "[a] map of the world that does not include Utopia is
not worth even glancing at." In terms of geographical utopianism, Clark
presents a fascinating discussion contrasting the repressive rationalism
expressed by Kant with the sensual romanticism of Denis Diderot and Paul
Gauguin in terms of these Europeans' views of Polynesian society: the former
was horrified by the prospect of social relations like those he saw being
practiced by the "inhabitants of the South Sea Islands" -
"idleness, indulgence, and propagation" - while the latter two held
such non-Western social environments to demonstrate the historical possibility
of reconciling "pleasure, beauty, freedom, and harmony." It is clear
which of the two approaches Clark favors. Within this discussion, he
approvingly cites the thought of Charles Fourier, William Blake, William Morris
and Gary Snyder as well, and declares forthrightly that "[t]he most
liberatory utopianism affirms this existence of the eternal, the sublime, the
marvellous, as a present reality and an object of present experience." As
concrete illustrations of this point, Clark considers the beauty of the lotus
flower and the wondrous world experienced by many in childhood. He moreover
mentions Reclus' Man and the Earth, an encyclopedic examination of
radical freedom movements that have represented undercurrents to the hegemonic
course of world history, such as: "cooperative and
egalitarian tribal traditions, anarchistic millenarian movements, dissident
spiritualities, antiauthoritarian experiments in radical grassroots democracy
and communalism, movements for the liberation of women, and the radically
libertarian moments of many of the world's revolutions and revolutionary
movements."
Practically, Clark notes
some of the various impressive anarchist examples of modernity - from the
sections of the French Revolution to the Paris Commune, the soviets of the
Russian Revolution and proletarian self-management in Spain and Hungary - and
gives special consideration to the revolutionary anarchist culture developed in
Spain for a half-century before Francisco Franco's attempted coup in 1936: such
cultural anarchism included movements for "libertarian schools,
cooperatives, 'free love' advocacy, feminism, vegetarianism, nudism,
rationalism and 'free thought,' mysticism, and early ecological and pro-nature
tendencies."
In "The Microecology of
Community," Clark considers social organization theory and applies it to
the current situation in the United States. Negatively, he claims grass-roots
organization today to be "overwhelmingly in the hands of the
reactionaries," given the well-funded right-wing coordination of
fundamentalist churches and irrationalist media networks. The left largely has
failed to present any comparable base social movement since the end of the
1960s, argues Clark, when many former activists seem to have opted instead for
reformism and a "long march through the institutions." The question
today then becomes whether there will develop a convergence of mass-radical
social movements based on the principles of solidarity and liberation in time
to stave off looming socio-ecological catastrophe. Clark expresses hope in the
catalyst model of small affinity groups that aim to secure "very joyful,
fulfilling lives" for their participants and, it is to be hoped, society
at large, through an emanating radical cascade. As Clark notes, it is critical
in this sense to ask whether such a small-scale model of transformation will be
able to expand in scope and help along the struggle for a "new just,
ecological society" and a "free life in common." Clark seems to
have an optimistic answer, for he endorses the evolutionary view that both
biophilia and sociophilia are deeply rooted within us as humans, holding out
promise for the eventual intervention of a "strong and hopeful movement
for the liberation of humanity and nature."
As he moves to close The
Impossible Community, Clark provides an extended case study of the
dialectical theories he has been examining throughout the text by considering
the impacts - negative and positive - Hurricane Katrina has had on his hometown
of New Orleans. As he explains, his reflections on Katrina are written "a
bit in the spirit of a jazz funeral," for they "mourn" the
"collective tragedy" yet "speak out also for our collective
hope." Incidentally, part of his chapter on Katrina had been written as a
paper for an international conference in Milan on the thought of Reclus that
was to take place just weeks after the hurricane struck, such that Reclus
appears here as a sort of stand-in for Dante's Virgil as we descend into an
exploration of the hell of environmental destruction on the one hand and the
affirmation of anarchist resurgence on the other. Situating the impacts of the
storm systemically, Clark argues that the oil industry's methodical destruction
of Louisiana's coastal wetlands - 2,000 square miles lost in the past
half-century, as corporations extracted 20 billion barrels of oil from offshore
sources - certainly worsened the impacts Katrina had on the population of New
Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers, the state and the Red Cross also come
under fire here - quite rightly, given their well-documented ineptitude. Clark
also discusses the "disaster fascism" on hand in post-Katrina New
Orleans, given "de facto ethnic cleansing" of African-Americans, the
"mistreatment and exploitation of migrant workers," as well as
"widespread police brutality, denial of prisoners' rights, collapse of the
courts and legal system ... and [the] gutting of the health care system."
Grimly, Clark also acknowledges the "troubling" thought that, however
devastating Katrina proved, New Orleans stands to face even more intense and
frequent tropical storms because of the ever-accelerating processes of global
climate change; one can think similarly of the plight of the Philippines and
many other climatically vulnerable regions of the world.
Against the twin
"disaster capitalism" and "disaster fascism" seen before,
during and after Katrina, Clark nonetheless gives space to the "disaster
anarchism" that flourished in the hurricane's aftermath, as in the
founding of the Common Ground collective and the radical volunteer work engaged
in by thousands of anti-authoritarian youths in the months that followed. In
these efforts, Clark sees the embodiment of Reclus' view of mutual aid,
"the principal agent of human progress." Indeed, as he writes
dialectically, despite the great "suffering and tragedy" inflicted by
the storm, the weeks after the hurricane "have undoubtedly been one of the
most gratifying periods in [his] life," for they demonstrated very clearly
to him "a sense of the goodness of people, ... their ability to show love
and compassion for one another, and ... their capacity to create spontaneous
community." Clark speaks to the critical opening provided by the Katrina
disaster, given the very clear "break with conventional reality" this
event signified: like John Holloway, author of Crack Capitalism, Clark
identifies Katrina very clearly as a "system crack" that provided for
the possibility of different future realities. Clark cites the commonly shared
view of many post-Katrina volunteers who held that the catastrophe provided an
unprecedented possibility to experience "the beauty, the wonder, and the
sacredness of the place, and of the people of the place." The
catastrophist shock-value of such experiences forms a critical basis for the
mass expression of a transformative disaster anarchism, Clark argues. In
breaking radically with the prevailing state of affairs, disaster anarchism
provides for the chance of "a qualitatively different way of life,"
one based in "love, compassion, solidarity, mutual aid, and voluntary
cooperation."
As another important case
study of communitarian anarchism, Clark next examines the Gandhian Sarvodaya
("common good") movement in India and the radical movement it
inspired in neighboring Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya Shramadana. Clark here illuminates
the general political philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, largely ignored despite his
world-famous advocacy of nonviolence: that of an "Indian version of
anarchism," one commensurate with the communitarian anarchism Clark is
advancing in The Impossible Community. Citing previous anarchist studies
of Gandhi's thought, Clark claims Gandhi to have desired an India freed from
state rule, private property, organized religion and police and military
forces. He sees several commonalities between Gandhianism and much of Western
anarchism, particularly given the former's support for decentralization, local
control and popular direct action, yet he notes important differences between
the two, including the Gandhian stress on spirituality, asceticism, nonviolence
and gradualism. Moreover, clearly Gandhi's philosophy emerges from a different
social and geographical context than that of Western Europe; it focuses more on
the radicalization of traditional indigenous institutions and customs than on
the insurrectional break desired by many Western anarchist theorists.
Importantly, Gandhi's concept of swaraj, or "self-rule,"
depended in large part on the devolution of power from the state to the gram
sabha, or village assembly, and the panchayat, the village committee
elected by the gram sabha. Thus did Gandhi favor the council system, or a radical
participatory democracy. Moreover, besides nonviolence, Gandhi's philosophy
emphasized the following anti-authoritarian values, as Clark recounts:
truthfulness, vegetarianism, celibacy, nontheft, nonpossession,
fearlesslessness, rejection of untouchability and the promotion of the equality
of women.
In practical terms, the
Sarvodaya movement continued to work in Gandhi's spirit after his assassination
in 1948, promoting economic transformation in India through the application of
the ideas of bhoodan and gramdan ("gift of the land"
and "gift of the village"), such that millions of acres of land have
been voluntarily redistributed as collective property to be managed by landless
peasants and villages themselves. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, Gandhi's philosophy
has inspired the impressive rise of the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement, which,
like the neo-Zapatistas of Chiapas, has promoted a "community-based,
participatory, and ecologically conscious development movement" involving
millions of people. Finding its basis more in Buddhism than in Gandhi's
Hinduism, Sarvodaya Shramadana stresses four basic virtues: upekkha, or
mental balance; metta, or good will toward all beings; karuna, or
compassion for the suffering of all beings; and mudita, or sympathetic
joy for all those liberated from suffering. As with Gandhi, Dr. A.T.
Ariyaratne, founder of Sarvodaya Shramadana, is described as moving away from
hegemonic technocratic and state-oriented development models in favor of the
embrace of the "spiritual and ethical traditions" of Sri Lanka,
particularly the self-help and mutual aid practiced at the local level. The
movement also seeks to transform Sri Lanka into a commonwealth of village or
community republics; concretely, it aids communities in bringing self-determined
development projects to fruition. Additionally, Sarvodaya Shramadana has
organized massive peace meditations, People's Peace Dialogues and Youth Peace
Camps amid the devastation of the nearly three-decade-long civil war that raged
in the country until 2009. Clark closes this section by noting the vast gap in
wealth of community and self-management between places like Sri Lanka and the
United States. He looks forward to the day when the villages of Sri Lanka will
"send teams of advisors to the West to help it come to terms with its
communitarian underdevelopment, and begin to discover a way out of its
political poverty." Finally, he calls on Western radicals to "make
more serious attempts to learn from societies in which a long history of communal
practice and a deeply rooted sense of social solidarity make possible exemplary
experiments in social cooperation."
Before turning to
consideration of Clark's final chapter, I would here like to note some
problematic aspects of his discussion of Gandhianism and the Sarvodaya movement
in India. Clark deals with Gandhi's pacifism in only a handful of paragraphs in
"The Common Good," and he gives the Mahatma the benefit of the doubt
when counterposing the nonviolence of satyagraha
("truth-force") with the horrible violence faced in recent years by
indigenous adivasi communities at the hands of paramilitaries acting in the
interests of mining companies and the Indian state. On this, Clark merely says
that "a case can be made that Gandhi himself would have rejected a rigid
adherence to [strict pacifism] in situations such as this one" and drops
the question entirely. There is no mention made in Clark's chapter of the armed
resistance undertaken by the Naxalites in central India for the past several
decades, nor is the example of left-wing militant Bhagat Singh or the Telangana
insurrection of 1946-51 against the indigenous land-owning aristocracy
discussed at all. These lapses I find troubling, if not somewhat disingenuous.
Moreover within this vein, Clark's presentation of Gandhi's advocacy of
voluntary land redistribution is not terribly critical. Although Clark does
acknowledge that Gandhi's strategy is flawed, in that the good will of the
wealthy likely will not result in the abolition of exploitation, there is little
sense in his account that contemplation of such a deluded approach - which so
radically contradicts the Western anarchist emphasis on the outright
expropriation of capitalists and feudalists by revolutionary workers, whether
urban or rural - should lead us precisely to call into question the putatively
anarchist nature of Gandhi's political philosophy. Clark fails to discuss or
even mention the fact that Gandhi's views on the caste system evolved over
time, such that in the 1920s before meeting the Dalit radical intellectual Dr.
B. R. Ambedkar, the Mahatma held the caste system in an uncritical light,
declaring it to be the "natural order" of Hindu society. In 1921,
indeed, Gandhi declared that he was "opposed to all those who are out to
destroy the caste system."[3]
Clark's closing chapter,
"Beyond the Limits of the City," is composed of rather severe
criticisms of the mature political philosophy of his former friend and mentor
Murray Bookchin, an approach the latter termed libertarian municipalism. For
all the critique to which Clark subjects Bookchin's late philosophy - granted,
some of it certainly justified - it is important to note here the profound
political commonalities between the two thinkers. It is unfortunate - and once
again disingenuous - that Clark fails to acknowledge the great influence
Bookchin has had on the development of his own perspectives, and indeed on many
of the principal points set forth in The Impossible Community! To take
but one example of this dynamic, the very list of "revolutions within
revolutions" that Clark cites favorably in his chapter on utopia - the
"impressive historical examples" that "continue to inspire the
radical imagination," from the section assemblies of the French
Revolution, self-management in the Paris Commune, the soviets of the Russian
Revolution and the embodied anarchism of the Spanish and Hungarian revolutions
- is literally the same one Bookchin repeatedly pointed to in his writings as
hopeful historical developments that validated his dialectical social-anarchist
approach. Yet Clark fails to mention Bookchin at all in this discussion. It
would seem that Clark has allowed his issues with Bookchin's late views to
paper over the great deal the two have in common: near the outset of this last
chapter, Clark defines Bookchin's ultimate political goal as being "the
creation of a free, ecological society in which human beings pursue
self-realization through participation in a nondominating human community, and
further planetary self-realization by playing a cooperative, nondominating role
within the larger ecological community." Rather obviously, these lines
also describe the author's political tasks in The Impossible Community
rather well, but Clark never explicitly acknowledges that.
As I have suggested, some of
the criticisms Clark makes of Bookchin's libertarian municipalism are justified.
Bookchin was rather infamous for his sectarianism, and Clark illuminates this
tendency well in his discussion of the rejection Bookchin and his partner Janet
Biehl made of the 1991 Draft Program of the Left Green Network, which called
for a 95 percent reduction in the Pentagon budget, a universal $10 minimum
wage, a workers' superfund and a 30-hour work-week, among other things.
Bookchin and Biehl refused to support the proposal, for it did not mandate the
elimination of the remaining 5 percent of the military budget. Clark argues
that the main reason they rejected the program, though, was that the Left
Greens did not adopt libertarian municipalism as their specific socio-political
approach - in this, he likely has a point. Moreover, Clark makes the legitimate
point that the mere devolution of decision-making power to "the
People" may very well not result in the anti-authoritarian, rational
outcomes Bookchin expects from an application en masse of his libertarian
municipalist approach. Indeed, with regard to the United States, Clark worries
that a libertarian municipalist politics could well have "extremely
reactionary consequences" within certain geographical contexts,
considering the likelihood of a popular extension of anti-immigrant and anti-poor
legislation, capital punishment and religious impositions, to name a few
examples. In the last few pages of the text, Clark ultimately leaves the
question open as to whether people's power is an appropriate strategy to pursue
at present, but he does not suggest any alternatives here for realizing the
admittedly "admirable goals" of libertarian municipalism. It is
highly unlikely that he is implying support for some sort of enlightened
Leninist vanguard here, but if the way forward is not through the people - then
what?
In closing, I will say that
Clark raises some good points against Bookchin's libertarian municipalism,
particularly in challenging his former mentor's questionable assumption that
popular empowerment has an "almost miraculous" ability to nullify the
negating socio-cultural values that have been ingrained so long by capitalist
hegemony. Yet I am unconvinced that this consideration is reason enough to
reject an approach to politics summarized well in the famous slogan of the
Black Panthers: "All Power to the People!" Rationality and humanity
will not arrive spontaneously through the machinations of state, capital and
patriarchy, as Clark makes clear throughout his text. Despite my problems with
aspects of his final two chapters in The Impossible Community, Clark's
intervention with this book represents a crucial contribution to the struggle
against domination and for liberation - with neither side of this struggle
lacking evident justification in our day.
[1] Gustav Landauer, Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader,
ed. and trans. Gabriel Kuhn (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010), 214.
Copyright, Truthout.
Javier Sethness is a
libertarian socialist and rights-advocate, author of Imperiled Life: Revolution against Climate
Catastrophe and For a Free Nature: Critical
Theory, Social Ecology, and Post-Developmentalism. His essays and articles have appeared in Climate and Capitalism,
Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, MRZine, Countercurrents, and Perspectives
on Anarchist Theory. Currently, he is writing a political and intellectual
biography of Herbert Marcuse. He blogs on various aspects of the crises of
capital at Notes Toward an
International Libertarian Eco-Socialism.
More about The Impossible Community we found elsewhere at one publisher's site
About The Impossible Community
The Impossible Community confronts a critical moment when social and ecological catastrophe loom,
the Left seems unable to articulate a response, and the Right is monopolizing
public debates. This book offers a reformulation of anarchist social and
political theory to develop a communitarian anarchist solution.
It argues that a free and just social order requires a radical transformation of the modes of domination exercised through social ideology and institutional structures. Communitarian anarchism unites a universalist concern for social and ecological justice while recognizing the integrity and individuality of the person. In fact, anarchist principles of mutual aid and voluntary cooperation can already be seen in various contexts, from the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina to social movements in India.
This work offers both a theoretical framework and concrete case studies to show how contemporary anarchist practice continues a long tradition of successfully synthetizing personal and communal liberation. This significant contribution will appeal not only to students in anarchism and political theory, but also to activists and anyone interested in making the world a better place.
Table Of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: In search of the impossible community
2. Critique of the Gotham Program: From libertarian socialism to communitarian anarchism
3. The third concept of liberty: Theorizing the free community
4. Against principalities and powers: Critique of domination versus liberalization of domination
5. Anarchy and the dialectic of utopia: The place of no place
6. The microecology of community: Toward a theory of grassroots organization
7. Bridging the unbridgeable chasm: Personal transformation and social action in anarchist practice
8. Disaster anarchism: Hurricane Katrina and the shock of recognition
9. The common good: Sarvodaya and the Gandhian legacy
10. Beyond the limits of the city: A communitarian anarchist critique of libertarian municipalism
Bibliography
Index
Reviews
“In this often insightful and illuminating book John P Clark sets out his vision for a radically democratic 'communitarian anarchism'...Clark's deep commitment to the anarchist ethics that he advocates, and his work in putting them into effect, lend weight to the distinction between ethics as working ideals and the kind of 'abstract moralism' he criticises...This book is valuable for several important reasons...Clark adeptly deploys Marx, Hegel, Aristotle, Enlightenment Philosophers, Zizek and a host of other modern and ancient thinkers, making this work erudite and rich.” – Chris Tomlinson, Red Pepper Magazine
“In The Impossible Community, John Clark proposes something that is sorely lacking in today's landscape: the prospect of going beyond our obsessions with catastrophe in all its guises (environmental, geopolitical, financial, etc.) to the exploration of new forms of social organization based on voluntary anarchist cooperation. John Clark is able to bring to bear his immense erudition and experience with alternative modes of social organization, both historical and geographical, and thus can lead us, like Ariane with her thread, out of the labyrinth of our present-day paralysis.” – Ronald Creagh, Professor Emeritus, Universite Montpellier 3, France, Endorsement
“At a time of growing social and ecological crisis, John Clark is a very welcome voice, bringing hope with his version of communitarian anarchism. He writes very vividly and persuasively, whether it be general theory or particular case studies. The Impossible Community should be widely discussed and realized since it shows brilliantly a way out of our present predicament.” – Peter Marshall, author of Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, Nature's Web: Rethinking our Life on Earth, and Riding the Wind: Liberation Ecology for a New Era, Endorsement
“The Impossible Community is a magnificent book, distilled from a lifetime of radical practice. I know of no other work that so successfully integrates rigorous philosophical inquiry with on-the ground struggle. Generous and compassionate in spirit, fierce in critique, prodigious in learning, and universal in scope, this celebration of the anarchist way is a beacon of hope for our afflicted times.” – Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature, Endorsement
“A text that is wide-ranging and challenging in the best sense of the word. It fuses passion, will, and reason. It combines deep theory with practical examples of social transformation. Where there is sustained complex analysis, it is not gratuitous, it is pertinent to the overall argument, demonstrating how anarchism's account of social solidarity alongside a creative individualism is not Idealist, abstract, or contradictory. The intricate arguments are well illustrated by the latter, more descriptive and reflective chapter on the Katrina tragedy, and the sections on contemporary communal movements in the Indian sub-continent. As such, The Impossible Community makes a valuable contribution to those interested in the growing anarchistic social movements and how they link the local to the global.” – Benjamin Franks, www.e-ir.info
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