Leftist Reading: Post-Scarcity Anarchism Part 9

Episode 129: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 - This Week]The Forms of Freedom - 0:48-The Mediation of Social Relations - 4:31[Part 10 - 11]The Forms of Freedom[Part 12 - 16]Listen, Marxist!Footnotes:30) 7:37For a discussion on the myth of the working class see “Listen, Marxist!” 31) 15:57If we are to regard the bulk of the Communards as “proletarians,” or describe any social stratum as “proletarian” (as the French Situationists do) simply because it has no control over the conditions of its life, we might just as well call slaves, serfs, peasants and large sections of the middle class “proletarians.” To create such sweeping antitheses between “proletarian” and bourgeois, however, eliminates all the determinations that characterize these classes as specific, historically limited strata. This giddy approach to social analysis divests the industrial proletariat and the bourgeoisie of all the historically unique features which Marx believed he had discovered (a theoretical project that proved inadequate, although by no means false); it slithers away from the responsibilities of a serious critique of Marxism and the development of “laissez-faire” capitalism toward state capitalism, while pretending to retain continuity with the Marxian project. 32) 27:35This is not to ignore the disastrous political errors made by many “leading” Spanish anarchists. Although the leading anarchists were faced with the alternative of establishing a dictatorship in Catalonia, which they were not prepared to do (and rightly so!), this was no excuse for practicing opportunistic tactics all along the way.