Benjamin Pauli and 'the New Anarchism' in Britain and the United States

'The New Anarchism in Britain and the United States: Towards a Richer Understanding of Postwar Anarchist Thought' is an interesting essay written by Benjamin Pauli in 2015. Pauli : "This article challenges the assumption that the post-war era was relatively insignificant in the development of anarchist thought. In fact, many of the most important figures within the post-war anarchist milieu in Britain and the US were concerned with questions of theory as well as practice, and their thought comprises a distinct and coherent ideological configuration of anarchism." Benjamin Pauli succeeds quite well in describing the ideas and informed practices of what he sees as 'the New Anarchism' taking a form after WWII. Still, I miss some things in it, like writing about the influences of other social ecologists than Murray Bookchin in Britain and the US, or the influences of anarchafeminist thinking in these countries (to mention only two of the currents that had quite some influence in the post-war anarchist movement of Britain and the USA). It would also have been interesting to find out how Emma Goldman influenced this 'New Anarchism'. Instead of that, Pauli has focused a bit too much on the political ideas of not only Murray Bookchin but also those of Herbert Read, Paul Goodman, Colin Ward and Noam Chomsky.

On Communalism - short introductions

Here is my own take on it: 

If you want to understand more about communalism, texts of Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl or websites like those of New Compass and Institute for Social Ecology would be the best way to go. Communalism is quite close to social anarchism but less interested in individualist or anarchosyndicalist thinking. Unfortunately, communalism will be often confused too much with the democratic confederalism of Abdullah Öcalan but that's just not the same thing, even when Öcalan has been quite influenced by the communalist ideas of Murray Bookchin.

On the idea 'dictatorship of the proletariat'

Something I wrote today: 'Not all forms of communism will defend the idea 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Council communism has not defended that idea, to give just one example. Marx and Engels called the Commune of Paris (1871) the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it rather was a democracy. Marx wanted to give the power to the proletariat, being the majority of the people. But a dictatorship rather is a minority of people having the only power. Like in the Soviet Union, where there was only a party saying it represented the proletariat, trying to legitimize its dictatorship that way. In fact, there never was a dictatorship of the proletariat in history. 'The proletariat' is just an abstraction of a group of people not at all homogeneous.'

Mark Restall, who once was active in Social Ecology London, replied to this. 

That's incorrect about council communism, e.g. see Pannekoek in Workers Councils: http://libcom.org/library/workers-councils-1-pannekoek

My reply was this: 'Well, dictatorship of the proletariat can not be identical with the labor democracy of council organization. But I guess you are right about this in some way. I seem to remember indeed now council communists advocating for 'a dictatorship of the proletariat.'

Wayne Price also replied to what I wrote. In an email to an online discussion list he stated this:

Hello Rafa,

I agree with your statement that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" has never existed, and the implication that it never could exist.  Yet your brief statement on the subject makes an error.

You present the definition: "a dictatorship rather is a minority of people having the only power." This is the current definition. But in Marx's day the phrase "dictatorship" was also used to mean the rule of a colleciive body such as a parliament, the "people," the "democracy," or a reference to the classical "dictator" of ancient Rome where someone was termporarily given power to deal with an emergency, but expected to step down after the crisis was over.  

In Hal Draper's Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Vol. III, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Draper examines all 12 times Marx or Engels used the term, "dictatorship of the proletariat."  He shows pretty conclusively that Marx used the term to mean the "rule of the working class," without any specific implication of how that rule would be organized, let alone any assumption that it would be authoritarian.  Marx specifically counterposed the idea of the dictatorship of a popular class to the idea of the followers of Blanqui of the dictatorship of their minority revolutionary party.  And, as you state, Engels referred to the ultra-democratic Paris Commune as "the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Draper's (shorter) book, The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" from Marx to Lenin, has a chapter which summarizes his conclusions from the earlier book.  It goes on to show how the term "dictatorship" was twisted to mean the rule of a minority party or just one person, mainly in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.  Of the post-Marx Marxists, virtually only Luxemberg used the phrase to mean the workers' democratic class rule.  (Draper is known to have been biased against anarchism, but his analysis of Marxism is pretty much accurate in its details.)

None of this denies the authoritarian elements of Marx's program:  that the working class should organize itself to take over the centralized state (either by elections or by revolution) and use it to nationalize and centralize the economy. However much Marx aimed at a socialist democracy, this program was bound to lead to state capitalism and bureaucratic rule, as the anarchists pointed out at the time.

Solidarity,

Wayne

And then also Mason Herson-Hord replied: 

Rafa, you write that "dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be identical with the labor democracy of council organization." I don't believe this is true -- this is precisely what council communists argued was the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the failed German Revolution many council communist militants used the phrases "dictatorship of the councils" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" interchangeably. They believed that the council system was the ideal institutional form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And in my reading of council communist texts I have never come across one who rejected the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is a fundamental concept to Marxist politics, and those that adopted the label of council communist during the time when it was a living movement were all staunchly Marxist to a fault.

My most recent texts...

My most recent text in English is a book review. “Enlightenment and Ecology: The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century” (Black Rose Books, 2021). You can find it here. And here is one I wrote just before the covid crise broke out in Belgium (didn't see that coming unfortunately, to be honest): 'The Future of Social Ecology in Belgium'.

Belgian climate movement still growing

Yesterday the largest climate march ever in Belgium took place. Large climate protests have been attracting many young people for almost two months now, even when many people of all ages are in the streets protesting. With the ecology movement (or climate movement) becoming a large mass movement in Belgium, I have noticed that the ideas of Murray Bookchin and other social ecologists have become even more relevant than before. It's not only the ecological Left that is on the rise in Belgium but also the ecological Right. Yes, the Right is slowly becoming environmentalist too. Even when it rather keeps close connections with industrial lobby groups (investing in fossil fuels or other things that are harmful for the planet) and climate scepticists. The Belgian Right is becoming more interested in "nuclear energy solutions" and new climate technology (whether it already exists or not), stopping overpopulation, electric cars and climate taxes (for the rich as well as the poor).

An interview with feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

on Liberal Cannibalism

Murray Bookchin on science

'Yes, I'm a product of Western culture; I believe in the importance of rationality, and yes, I believe that science is a way of arriving at the truth about objective reality. That hardly means that I think the world should be turned into a huge factory or a scientific laboratory, or even that science is the exclusive way to learn about reality. It's true that scientists can be bought and sold as easily as stockbrokers and lawyers, but science is also a very solid way of learning about reality, and it can't be regarded as totally conditioned by social factors, including bourgeois interests.' Murray Bookchin, 1999

Social Ecology on "social media" pages

You could use some links to failbook webpages with nice articles and texts directly linked to Social Ecology?

You can find a short list here:
Murray Bookchin
Institute for Social Ecology
European Institute for Social Ecology
Social Ecologists active in the west of Europe
Radical Assemblies, Popular Assemblies and Libertarian Municipalism
Post-Scarcity Economy

and my own "social media" page here

2015 general election in England: some results and turnout

More than one third of the people able to vote did not turn out to vote. Greens scored the best results for their party, in votes, in the north and certainly the south of England. The Far Right UKIP, scored the best results for itself, in votes, in the east of England.
The elections became mostly a playground for the Right, parliamentary elections easily do in the UK where there is not only a significant lack of representation and real democracy. Mainstream media, with tabloids etc., in England are probably the worst in the whole west of Europe.
You can find an interesting analysis of the Labour party by Amit Singh, called 'The most embarrassing part of the election? Seeing people mistake Labour for a left-wing party' here.

Find out more about it all, but only if you really want to, here.

Texts of Murray Bookchin

Most of the texts of Murray Bookchin that can be found online are here

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