It is really hard to believe, but adherents to rival utopian visions can
have nasty splits just like "Marxist-Leninists". Evidence of this is
contained in the most recent copy of "Democracy and Nature", a journal
formerly known as "Society and Nature". The International Managing Editor
is Takis Fotopoulos.
In the "Dialog" section of the issue, the editors air their dirty laundry.
Murray Bookchin, a member of the advisory board along with other
luminaries such as Noam Chomsky, Andre Gunnar Frank and Cornelius
Castoriadis, is tendering his resignation. Bookchin is the guru of the
social ecology movement, which --crudely put-- is a mixture of anarchism
and environmentalism. He lives in Vermont and posts jeremiads against
capitalism to his followers near and wide.
"Very disturbingly, Takis and I have even drifted apart on the issue that
long held us together, libertarian municipalism. (I now strongly prefer
the word 'libertarian' over 'confederal' municipalism because
'libertarian' has a revolutionary political content, rather than merely a
structural and logistical one.) His current advocacy of a personal voucher
system and an 'artificial market' (whatever happened to a
libertarian-communist moral economy?), and his notion that libertarian
municipalism could somehow creep up on the bourgeoisie and erode the power
of the state are highly disturbing to me. These notions divest libertarian
municipalism of its confrontational stance toward the state in the form of
a revolutionary dual power. I did not propound this theory of politics to
see it mutate into Bernsteinian evolutionary social democracy."
Bookchin's "libertarian municipalism" is offered as an alternative to the
Marxist vision of a transformation of society led by the working-class.
"Social ecology would embody its ethics in a politics of confederal
municipalism, in which municipalities cojointly gain rights to
self-governance through networks of confederal councils, to which towns
and cities would send their mandated, recallable by delegates to adjust
differences."
Okay, let's see if we can get this right. Capitalism will be replaced by a
more humane system through the incremental replacement of capitalist
chunks of real estate by new egalitarian units. Today we have liberated
Putney, Vermont and Madison, Wisconsin. Next week we have a shot at taking
over Dallas, Texas. When all the liberated towns and cities culminate in a
system of "dual power", then the bourgeoisie can be overthrown. Victory
will be celebrated by eating dishes of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
What is that Takis Fotopoulos believes in that so exercised Bookchin?
(Don't let it go beyond PEN-L, but I've heard rumors that Bookchin is in a
permanent snit and almost anything will set him off.) The fight is over
models and nothing else. Bookchin clings to one model, while Takis to
another.
In his "Outline of an Economic Model for an Inclusive Democracy",
contained in the very same issue, Fotopoulos makes a sales presentation
for this breakthrough in model-creation. He starts off by trying to parry
the thrust that he knows I have in store for him:
"Although it is up to the citizens' assemblies of the future to design the
form an inclusive democracy will take, I think it is important to
demonstrate that such a form of society is not only necessary, so that the
present descent to barbarism can be avoided, but feasible as well. This is
particularly important when the self-styled 'left' has abandoned any
vision that is not based on the market economy and liberal 'democracy',
which they take for granted, and has dismissed an alternative visions as
'utopian' (in the negative sense of the word.)"
Hmmm. I think that there is a problem of utopianism, but his definition of
the 'left' would seem to exclude me since I am opposed to the market. In
any case, the notion that "feasible" visions of socialism is the world is
waiting for certainly does appear "utopian" to me. It is the same vision
that Schweickart, Pat Devine, Cockshott-Cottrell and Hahnel-Albert share.
Each is vying with the other to present a model that works on all planes:
economic, political and ethical. The problem, however, is that class
struggle will dictate the contours of a new socialism, not excellent
working models.
Fotopoulos takes swipes at Hahnel-Albert in his article, who are of course
rival utopians. He believes that their schema invites bureaucracy because
it provides for some state agency that invites people to state what their
consumer "needs" are. Agencies, as we know from bitter experience, can
turn into utter monstrosities. One day they will ask you whether you want
pleats in your trousers or not. The next day they will be sending you to
prison for stating the wrong preference.
Fotopoulos' schema revolves around the issuance of vouchers.
"Basic Vouchers (BVs) are used for the satisfaction of basic needs. These
vouchers, which are personal and issued on behalf of the confederation,
entitle each citizen to a
