Nightmares of Reason

Appendix: An American in Paris
Appendix: An American in Paris 1 When Murray Bookchin writes that there is an issue “that I find so offensive and so outrageously false that I feel obliged to examine it in some detail,” you can count on a good show. No one takes umbrage on quite the colossal scale that he does. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is incomprehensible counsel for the Director Emeritus. The issue he finds so offensive and so outrageously false — John P. Clark’s ridicule of an item on Bookchin’s revolutionary resume — holds promise for running his vital signs right off the Richter scale. So I, too, propose to examine it in some detail. As the Director Emeritus explains, “On other occasions I have noted that I witnessed street struggles in Paris between the French police (the CRS) and radical protesters in mid-July 1968.” A pity he does not reference these “other occasions” so we could... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 20
Chapter 20. Conclusion: Whither Anarchism, Indeed? “Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old, and people dislike it” — Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Whither anarchism? If that’s the question, it is one for which Bookchin has no answer. In “The Left That Was,” the appendix to SALA, he reiterates that the classical left is forever defunct. Long ago he announced that “the traditional workers’ movement will never reappear.” He does not discuss the social composition of the “millions of people today” who experience “the sense of powerlessness” which renders them “a potentially huge body of supporters” of anarchism. Who are they? They cannot be bourgeois, for the bourgeois are by definition the enemy. They cannot be proletarians, for the proletariat, according to Bookchin... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 19
Chapter 19. Murray Bookchin, One-Dimensional Man My first time around, in Anarchy after Leftism, I gave Bookchin’s history of recent anarchism the scant attention it deserves. This time I’ll screwtinize it in more detail. Basically it goes like this. At the economic base, there are periods of “apparent capitalist stabilization” or “capitalist stability,” of “social peace,” and then there are periods of “deep social unrest,” sometimes giving rise to “revolutionary situations.” When capitalism is crisis-ridden, Social Anarchism “has usually held center stage” as far as anarchism goes. When capitalism is, or seems to be, stabilized — the ambiguity is a big help to the argument — then the Lifestyle Anarchists come to the fore to flaunt their cultural and individual eccentricities. Unlike most of the ex-Director’s theses, this one is testable. But he did not test i... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 18
Chapter 18. The Organization of Power After ignoring the topic since 1971, the Director Emeritus abruptly places the organization question on the agenda: Those who wish to overthrow this vast system will require the most careful strategic judgment, the most profound theoretical understanding, and the most dedicated and persistent organized revolutionary groups to even shake the deeply entrenched bourgeois social order. They will need nothing less than a revolutionary socialist movement, a well-organized and institutionalized endeavor led by knowledgeable and resolute people who will foment mass resistance and revolution, advance a coherent program, and unite their groups into a visible and identifiable confederation. As recently as Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism , Bookchin wrote nothing about revolutionary organization, not even as a virtue of “The Left That Was.”... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 17
Chapter 17. Anarchist Communism versus Libertarian Municipalism Previous chapters demonstrate that libertarian municipalism, at the ground level, will be oligarchic and probably oppressive toward local minorities. At the level of the wider society, its federations and multiples of federations will be slow, cumbersome, internally unworkable, cumulatively elitist, and either too powerful or not powerful enough. Inevitably the system will evolve the features of the system it was supposed to supplant. It is objectionable, first, as being a blueprint for the future, and second, as a blueprint with too many pages missing. It has to be the most mundane utopia ever conceived — at once an affront to sense and sensibility. But is it anarchist? Of course not, but here is a direct demonstration. Aside from the federalist frills, the ideology calls for a sovereign, self-governing local assembly, the Commune. Eminent anarchists, as we saw in Chapte... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 12. Nightmares of Reason Unconscious irony has become a hallmark of Late Bookchinism, the Highest Stage of Leftism. Well-known examples include Bookchin’s denunciations of leftists with alluring academic careers just as the then-Director retired from an alluring academic career; his scathing contempt for John P. Clark’s “cowardly” hiding behind a pseudonym the way Bookchin did in the 60s; his personalistic abuse of individuals he accuses of personalism; his vilification of other writers for appearing in the same yuppie publications he’s been published by or favorably reviewed in; his denunciation of the political use of metaphor in a book whose title, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridge... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 5. Stone Age or Old Age: An Unbridgeable Chasm For many years now the Director Emeritus has exhibited, as I have mentioned, a personalistic preoccupation with old age. Often his opinions are scarcely sublimated emotions — for example, his transparently autobiographical anxiety that “the lives of the old are always clouded by a sense of insecurity.” And only an insecure (and paranoid) old man could suppose that one of the groups against which mass discontent is channeled by reactionaries is — besides the usual suspects (racial minorities, the poor, etc.) — “the elderly.” As so often, Bookchin echoes his beloved Athenians, this time the Aristophanes character who says: “Isn’t old a... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 10. Before the Law The Director Emeritus is full of — surprises. He takes David Watson to task for “denigrat[ing] the development of writing” — actually, all Watson did was deny the “dogma of the inherent superiority of the written tradition” to the oral tradition. The irony (as always, unnoticed) is that speaking and listening are inherently sociable, whereas “reading — silent reading — is manifestly antisocial activity.” Astonishingly, Bookchin’s defense of literacy takes the form of an affirmation of law: Before the written word, it should be noted, chiefs, shamans [!], priests, aristocrats, and monarchs possessed a free-wheeling liberty to improvise ways to requir... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 16. Fantasies of Federalism One of its proponents insists that face-to-face direct democracy has to meet a very demanding standard: The first and most important positive act of political recognition which a participatory democracy must pay to its members is to give each of them frequent and realistic opportunities to be heard, that is to say, access to assemblies sufficiently small so all can reasonably be assured time to speak, and to matters of sufficient moment to command practical attention. Bookchin’s standard is just as high: The Greeks, we are often reminded, would have been horrified by a city whose size and population precluded a face-to-face, often familiar relationship between citizens... In making collective decisi... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

“The general level of insight now is more educated, curiosity is wide awake, and judgments are made more quickly than formerly; so the feet of them which shall carry thee out are already at the door” — Hegel A Word from the Author In 1997, C.A.L. Press published my Anarchy after Leftism, which took the form of a point by point (or tit for tat) refutation of Murray Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (A.K. Press [who else?] 1996). In the course of the writing, which occupied two months in 1996, I had the occasion to consult some previous books by the Director Emeritus, as I was sure that he was contradicting most of his previous positions. He was. What only his inner circle then k... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)