Leftist Reading: Post-Scarcity Anarchism Part 10

Episode 130:This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.You can find the book here:https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book[Part 1 - 4]Post-Scarcity AnarchismEcology and Revolutionary Thought[Part 5 - 8]Towards a Liberatory Technology[Part 9]The Forms of Freedom-The Mediation of Social Relations[Part 10 - This Week]The Forms of Freedom-Assembly and Community - 0:13-From “Here” to “There” - 18:11[Part 11 - 15]Listen, Marxist!Footnotes:33) 16:47Marx, it may be noted, greatly admired the Jacobins for “centralizing” France and in the famous “Address of the Central Council” (1850) modeled his tactics for Germany on their policies. This was short-sightedness of incredible proportions—and institutional emphasis that revealed a gross insensitivity to the self-activity and the self-remaking of a people in revolutionary motion. See “Listen, Marxist!” 34) 23:24It was not until the 1860s, with the work of Bachofen and Morgan, that humanity rediscovered its communal past. By that time the discovery had become a purely critical weapon directed against the bourgeois family and property. 35) 25:29Here, indeed, “history” has something to teach us—precisely because these spontaneous uprisings are not history but various manifestations of the same phenomenon: revolution. Whosoever calls himself a revolutionist and does not study these events on their own terms, thoroughly and without theoretical preconceptions, is a dilettante who is playing at revolution. 36) 26:41What Wilhelm Reich and, later, Herbert Marcuse have made clear is that “selfhood” is not only a personal dimension but also a social one. The self that finds expression in the assembly and community is, literally, the assembly and community that has found self-expression—a complete congruence of form and content. 37) 29:27Together with disseminating ideas, the most important job of the anarchists will be to defend the spontaneity of the popular movement by continually engaging the authoritarians in a theoretical and organizational duel.Citations:26) 7:27W. Warde Fowler, The City State of the Greeks and Romans (Macmillan & Co.; London, 1952), p. 168. 27) 9:55Edward Zimmerman, The Greek Commonwealth, 5th ed. (Modern Library; New York, 1931), pp. 408–9.