Leftist Reading: Post-Scarcity Anarchism Part 1

Episode 121:This week we’re starting a new book, Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.You can find the book here:https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book[Part 1 - This Week]Post-Scarcity Anarchism- Preconditions And Possibilities - 1:11- The Redemptive Dialectic - 11:04- Spontaneity and Utopia - 21:48[Part 2 - 4]-ProspectEcology and Revolutionary Thought[Part 5 - 8]Towards a Liberatory Technology[Part 9 - 11]The Forms of Freedom[Part 12 - 16]Listen, Marxist!Footnotes:14) 11:01It is worth noting here that the emergence of the “consumer society” provides us with remarkable evidence of the difference between the industrial capitalism of Marx’s time and state capitalism today. In Marx’s view, capitalism as a system organized around “production for the sake of production” results in the economic immiseration of the proletariat. “Production for the sake of production” is paralleled today by “consumption for the sake of consumption,” in which immiseration takes a spiritual rather than an economic form—it is starvation of life.15) 12:58The economic contradictions of capitalism have not disappeared, but the system can plan to such a degree that they no longer have the explosive characteristics they had in the past. 16) 26:04For a detailed discussion of this “miniaturized” technology see “Towards a Liberatory Technology.” 17) 29:38Despite its lip service to the dialectic, the traditional left has yet to take Hegel’s “concrete universal” seriously and see it not merely as a philosophical concept but as a social program. This has been done only in Marx’s early writings, in the writings of the great Utopians (Fourier and William Morris) and, in our time, by the drop-out youth. Citations:3) 17:27Raoul Vaneigem, “The Totality for Kids” (International Situationist pamphlet; London, n.d.), p. 1.4) 27:46Guy Debord, “Perspectives for Conscious Modification of Daily Life,” mimeographed translation from Internationale Situationiste, no. 6 (n.p., n.d.), p. 2. 5) 36:01Josef Weber, “The Great Utopia,” Contemporary Issues, vol. 2, no. 5 (1950), p. 12. 6) 38:27Ibid., p. 19 (my emphasis).