Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (121 page)

There is however a ‘redemptive dialectic’ to this process. We have the power to create as well as the power to destroy. The technology which now helps to enslave us and destroy our environment can also provide the preconditions of freedom. But this can only be done if we radically transform our society. Where Marx posed the choice between socialism or barbarism, Bookchin suggests that we are confronted with the more drastic alternatives of ‘anarchism or annihilation’.
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It is only by creating a free and ecological society that humanity will have a future.

It is Bookchin’s principal contention that we must turn to ecology for the essential guidelines of how a free society should be organized. Ecology deals with the dynamic balance of nature, with the interdependence of living and non-living things. In its critical dimension, it shows not only how man has produced imbalances in nature but also the absurdity of his pretension to achieve mastery over the planet.

The most important principle in ecology is that overall harmony in an ecosystem is best realized in diversity. Mankind on the other hand is undoing the work of organic evolution, by replacing a highly complex, organic environment with a simplified, inorganic one. The critical message of ecology is that if we diminish variety in the natural world, we debase its unity and wholeness. Its constructive message is that if we wish to advance the unity and stability of the natural world, we must preserve and promote variety. Ecological wholeness is thus a dynamic unity of diversity in which balance and harmony are achieved by an ever-changing differentiation. Slipping from the natural order to the social realm, Bookchin asserts: ‘From an ecological viewpoint, balance and harmony in nature, in society and, by inference, in behavior, are achieved not by mechanical standardization but by its opposite, organic differentiation.’
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Anarchism is the only social philosophy which offers the possibility of achieving unity in social diversity. And just as anarchism can help realize ecological principles, so ecology can enrich anarchism. Bookchin stresses that his definition of the term ‘libertarian’ is guided by his description of the ecosystem: ‘the image of unity in diversity, spontaneity, and complementary relationships, free of all hierarchy and domination’.
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Bookchin’s transition ‘by inference’ from the scientific principles of ecology to social and moral theory of anarchism runs the logical risk of the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, that is, it tries to develop a moral imperative from an empirical observation, an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. But Bookchin makes no apology for drawing ethical imperatives from an ecological interpretation of nature. Nature itself is not an ethics, he claims, but it is the ‘matrix’ for an
ethics, and ecology can be a ‘source of values and ideals’.
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It offers the two basic moral principles of participation and differentiation in a non-hierarchical framework.

Bookchin supports his case for an objective ecological ethics in several ways. Firstly, he asserts that in so far as man is part of nature, an expanding natural environment enlarges the basis for social development. Secondly, he maintains that both the ecologist and anarchist place a common stress on the importance of spontaneity in releasing potentialities and that anarchism best approximates the ecological ideal. Thirdly, he claims that both view differentiation as measure of progress, so that
’An expanding whole is created by growing diversification and enrichment of its parts.
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Anarchism is thus scientifically vindicated and presented as the only possible alternative to the threatening ecological extinction.

Bookchin calls his revolutionary version of ecology and anarchism ‘social ecology’. It was a term used by E. A. Gutkind in his
Community and Environment
(1954) but for Bookchin the root conceptions of a radical social ecology are hierarchy and domination. Inspired by the ecological principles of unity in diversity, spontaneity and complementarity, it sees the balance and the integrity of the biosphere as an end in itself. It aims to create a movement to change the relations of humans to each other and of humanity to nature, to transform how we see nature and our place within it.

As such, Bookchin distinguishes social ecology from environmentalism which merely reflects an instrumental sensibility, views nature as a passive habitat composed of objects, and is principally concerned with conservation and pollution control. Environmentalism does not question the most basic premisses of our society based on domination and hierarchy. Bookchin also stresses its difference from so-called ‘deep ecology’ as expounded by Arne Naess, David Foreman, George Sessions and Bill Devall. Deep ecology in his view is not only a ‘black hole’ of half-baked ideas but also dismally fails to understand that ecological problems have their ultimate roots in society.
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Above all, deep ecologists do not show satisfactorily how consciousness and society have emerged from nature.

Bookchin refuses to draw up a blueprint of his ecological and anarchist society which he calls ‘ecotopia’. He does however offer some basic considerations. In the first place, cultural as well as social revolution will have to take place; this will involve nothing less than the ‘remaking of the psyche’.
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In place of all hierarchical and domineering modes of thought, a new ‘ecological sensibility’ must develop which has a holistic outlook and celebrates ‘play, fantasy and imagination’. Such a sensibility should be
accompanied by a ‘new animism’ which leads to a ‘respiritization’ of the natural world by seeing in human consciousness ‘a natural world rendered self-conscious and self-active’.
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An ‘animistic imagination’ moreover would not separate the ‘how’ of things from the ‘why’.

Secondly, in a free society it will be necessary to develop a libertarian approach to reason. Like Horkheimer and Adorno, Bookchin believes in ‘objective’ reason which makes the universe a rational and meaningful order. He is also critical of the kind of instrumental reason which turns ends into means. But he wishes to go beyond both of them ‘to integrate rationality with subjectivity in order to bring nature within the compass of
sensibility
’. In order to achieve this, ‘We must recover the continuum between our “first nature” and our “second nature”, our natural world and our social world, our biological being and our rationality.’
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A genuinely libertarian reason for Bookchin will be infused with sensibility, work in an ethical context, and recognize unity in diversity. In his later work, he called for a ‘re-enchantment’ of humanity by a ‘fluid, organismic and dialectical rationality’.
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A libertarian ethics according to Bookchin should be based on rational analysis. It sees freedom as unhindered volition and self-consciousness. A libertarian ethics therefore should be concerned more with freedom than justice, more with pleasure than happiness. The principle of justice developed by the Greeks asserts the rule of equivalence — equal and exact exchange. Inspired by the example of organic societies, freedom for Bookchin presupposes an equality based on a recognition of the inequality of capacities, needs and responsibilities. It abandons the notion of right as it provides an ‘irreducible minimum’ to survive. Freedom thus involves the equality of unequals.

Whereas organic societies lived in a condition of limited needs, advanced industrial societies are now in a position to choose freely their needs. We are faced with the broadest freedom known thus far:
’the autonomous individual’s freedom to shape material life in a form that is … ecological, rational, and artistic’.
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Because of this freedom we are able to go beyond need to desire, happiness to pleasure: where happiness is the mere satisfaction of physical needs, pleasure by contrast is the satisfaction of sensuous and intellectual desires. It is a spiritual as well as a physical condition, since the essence of ecology for Bookchin is ‘a return to earthy naturalism’.
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Bookchin maintains that human intervention in nature is inevitable since human nature is part of nature: our second social nature has evolved from our first biological nature. Ecological ethics definitely involves ‘human stewardship’ of the planet. Man can play his part in the management of the ecological situation by fostering diversity and spontaneity and in organic
evolution by helping to realize its potential life forms. But he agrees with the ecologist Charles Elton that such intervention should not be like a game of chess but more like steering a boat.
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Knowledge of ecology is not a question of power but of insight. In an ecological society, the ‘second nature’ of human society would help actualize the potentiality of ‘first nature’ to achieve ‘mind and truth’. Ultimately, it would transcend both first and second nature into a new domain of ‘free nature’ which is both ethical and rational. Bookchin argues that we should therefore talk not in terms of natural evolution but of ‘participatory evolution’.
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In practical terms, Bookchin suggests that his ‘ecotopia’ would be made up of a confederation of self-governing communes. Each commune would govern itself through a form of direct democracy. Like the Greek
polis
, it would be a face-to-face democracy without representation or delegated authority. Administrative tasks might be rotated but fundamental policies would be made in popular assemblies open to all. Society would become a ‘body politic’ in the sense that the citizens would be in direct control of the social process. Such a direct democracy would offer the most advanced form of direct action and the emphasis in ‘self-management’ would be on the ‘self.

In the economic sphere, Bookchin’s ‘ecotopia’ would practise ‘anarcho-communism’ which presupposes the abolition of private property, the distribution of goods according to individual needs, the dissolution of commodity relationships, the rotation of work, and a reduction in the time devoted to labour.
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Old ideas of justice, based on exchange value and the rule of equivalence, would be replaced by the ideal of freedom which recognizes the equality of unequals. Need, the agony of the masses, would give way to desire, the pleasure of individuals. And needs would no longer be dictated by scarcity or custom, but become the object of conscious choice.

Distribution would thus be based on usufruct, complementarity and the irreducible minimum. According to Bookchin, it would be an advance on nineteenth-century anarchism since usufruct is a more generous principle than the communist maxim ‘to each according to his needs’. It would also go beyond Proudhon’s appeal to contract to regulate relationships without the law. However freely entered, contract is inevitably based on the notion of equivalence, ‘a system of “equity” that reaches its apogee in bourgeois conceptions of right’.
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Every contract reflects a latent antagonism, and lacks an understanding of care and complementarity. No contracts would therefore be made in Bookchin’s free society; all would receive the basic minimum to live and give freely without considerations of return. The market economy would be transformed into a ‘moral economy’ in which people would change the way they relate to each other.
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Care,
responsibility and obligation would be the new watchwords, not interest, cost or profitability.

Bookchin calls the basic units of his federated society of communes ‘ecocommunities’. Tailored to the local ecosystem, they would approximate local or regional autarky, with a balanced mix of small-scale agriculture and industry. Small for Bookchin is not only beautiful but also ecological, humanistic and above all emancipatory. They would try and restore ‘natural arts’ to ‘artificial crafts’.
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Above all, they would form confederations in harmony with their ecosystems, bioregions and biomes. Bookchin envisages them artistically tailored to their natural surroundings:

The communities would develop ‘ecotechnologies’, using flexible and versatile machines which not only make use of local materials and energy sources with the minimum of pollution but favour diversity in the ecosystem and consciously promote the integrity of the biosphere. Bookchin not only stresses the cultural and social context of technology but maintains that technology is not morally neutral, like a knife which can either cut bread or murder. It is not merely a means to an end but a system which embodies specific meanings and values. He distinguishes between technics as a system of objective social forces and technical rationality, which is a system of organization and a way of knowing. There can be authoritarian and libertarian technics, exemplified in a factory as opposed to a craft workshop.

Bookchin advocates an emancipatory technology which acknowledges its ethical dimension as in the Greek notion of
techne
and sees each form as part of an organic whole. It involves developing a technological imagination which considers matter as an ‘active substance’ developing ‘meaningful patterns’ and not a dead collection of atoms.
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An emancipatory technology would also be decentralized, subject to democratic control and compatible with ecological values. It would be small and appropriate, linked to the human scale, but above all would be rooted in the new culture and develop new meanings as well as designs.