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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Libertarian Municipalism & Permaculture
  • Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:30:44 -0400

[Libertarian Municipalism & Permaculture: Could they co-exist in a
synergistic relationship, mutually beneficial to one another?]

Murray Bookchin and Libertarian municipalism

I had heard of Murray Bookchin long ago but never knew what his work was
about.

This is why the years 1950 to 1980 are so incredibly important. Amazing
thinking and how I never ran across this before is beyond me.
We should be paying more attention to the Kurds, and the Yazidis too.

Libertarian municipalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_municipalism

Libertarian Municipalism: an ideology adopted by the Kurds currently
fighting ISIS: "The overriding problem is to change the structure of
society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that is the
municipality (village) where we have an opportunity to create a
face-to-face democracy." (en.wikipedia.org)
http://www.reddit.com/r/GreenParty/comments/2jvldj/libertarian_municipalism_an_ideology_adopted_by/

Libertarian municipalism
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_municipalism

Libertarian municipalism is a political program developed by libertarian
socialist theorist Murray Bookchin, to create democratic citizens'
assemblies in towns and urban neighborhoods. The assemblies in these free
municipalities join together to replace the state with a
directly-democratic confederation.
Bookchin became an advocate of face-to-face or assembly democracy in the
1950s, inspired by writings on the ancient Athenian polis by H. D. F. Kitto
and Alfred Eckhard Zimmern. For the concept of confederation, he was
influenced by the nineteenth-century anarchist thinkers. Bookchin tied
libertarian municipalism to a utopian vision for decentralizing cities into
small, human scaled eco-communities, and to a concept of urban revolution.
Libertarian municipalism uses the strategy of dual power to create a
situation in which two powers—the municipal confederations and the
nation-state—cannot coexist.
Bookchin's The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (1986)
is an overview of the historical conflict between city and nation-state,
which also presents his municipalist program. In Burlington, Vermont,
Bookchin attempted to put these ideas into practice by working with the
Northern Vermont Greens, the Vermont Council for Democracy, and the
Burlington Greens, retiring from politics in 1990. His ideas are summarized
succinctly in Remaking Society (1989) and The Murray Bookchin Reader
(1997).[1]
While Bookchin long placed libertarian municipalism within the framework of
political Anarchism, in the late 1990s he broke with anarchism and in his
final essay, The Communalist Project (2003), identified libertarian
municipalism as the main component of Communalism. Communalists believe
that libertarian municipalism is both the means to achieve a rational
society and structure of that society.
Another program in which independent communities form a confederation was
written by the Swiss historian and philosopher Adolf Gasser.[2][3] His work
led an alternative proposal for a European community - the so-called
Council of European Municipalities and Regions - which was co-founded by
Gasser in 1951. It still exists today, but has limited power since the
centralized European model became the European organization with the real
power.

Libertarian municipalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Main article: Libertarian municipalism

Starting in the 1970s, Bookchin argued that the arena for libertarian
social change should be the municipal level. In a 2001 interview he
summarized his views this way: "The overriding problem is to change the
structure of society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that
is the municipality — the city, town, and village — where we have an
opportunity to create a face-to-face democracy."[27] In 1980 Bookchin used
the term "libertarian municipalism", to describe a system in which
libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies would oppose and
replace the state with a confederation of free municipalities.[28]
Libertarian municipalism intends to create a situation in which the two
powers—the municipal confederations and the nation-state—cannot
coexist.[27] Its supporters—Communalists—believe it to be the means to
achieve a rational society, and its structure becomes the organization of
society.

A friend of mine wrote this comment and sent it to me in email recently:
"This is the same idea that's been around since Jericho; local
self-government, mutually decided upon by all adults in the community. It's
the old New England town councils. Just with a new name. In fact it's much
the same as the idea behind Nestor Makhno's anarchism, where local villages
would all be self-governing."

Nestor Makhno - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno

Makhnovism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovism

The Nestor Makhno Archive
www.nestormakhno.info/

--
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
http://www.avantgeared.com
https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
Ello: https://ello.co/ecoponderosa <https://ello.co/ecoponderosa>
Twitter: @ecoponderosa <https://twitter.com/ecoponderosa>
Reddit: ecoponderosa
Cellphone: lfljcell@gmail.com




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