Kommunalismus

2009-10-03T04:47:00.006+02:00

Dieser Text über Nationalismus von Murray Bookchin erscheint hier demnächst in deutscher Erstübersetzung, zunächst aber die englische Originalfassung:

Nationalism and the “National Question”
MURRAY BOOKCHIN

One of the most vexing questions that the Left faces (however one may define the Left) is the role played by nationalism in social development and by popular demands for cultural identity and political sovereignty. For the Left of the nineteenth century, nationalism was seen primarily as a European issue, involving the consolidation of nation-states in the heartland of capitalism. Only secondarily, if at all, was it seen as the anti-imperialist and presumably anticapitalist struggle that it was to become in the twentieth century.

This did not mean that the nineteenth-century Left favored imperialist depredations in the colonial world. At the turn of this century, hardly any serious radical thinker, to my knowledge, regarded the imperialist powers’ attempts to quell movements for self-determination in colonial areas as a blessing. The Left scoffed at and usually denounced the arrogant claims of European powers to bring “progress” to the “barbarous” areas of the world. Marx's views of imperialism may have been equivocal, but he never lacked a genuine aversion for the afflictions that native peoples suffered at the hands of imperialists. Anarchists, in turn, were almost invariably hostile to the European claim to be the beacon of civilization for the world.

Yet if the Left universally scorned the civilizatory claims of imperialists at the end of the last century, it generally regarded nationalism as an arguable issue. The “national question,” to use the traditional phrase in which such discussions were cast, was subject to serious disputes, certainly as far as tactics were involved. But by general agreement, leftists did not regard nationalism, culminating in the creation of nation-states, as the ultimate dispensation of humanity's future in a collectivist or communist society. Indeed, the single principle on which the Left of the pre-World War I and the interwar periods agreed was a belief in the shared humanity of people regardless of their membership in different cultural, ethnic, and gender groups, and their complementary affinities in a free society as rational human beings with the capacity for cooperation, a willingness to share material resources, and a fervent sense of empathy. The “Internationale,” the shared anthem of social democrats, socialists, and anarchists alike up to and even after the Bolshevik revolution, ended with the stirring cry, “The ‘Internationale’ shall be the human race.” The Left singled out the international proletariat as the historic agent for modern social change not by virtue of its specificity as a class, or its particularity as one component in a developing capitalist society, but by virtue of its need to achieve universality in order to abolish class society ―that is, as the class driven by necessity to remove wage slavery by abolishing enslavement as such. Capitalism had brought the historic “social question” of human exploitation to its final and most advanced form. “Tis the final conflict!” rang out the “Internationale,” with a sense of universalistic commitment ―one that no revolutionary movement could ignore any longer without subverting the possibilities for passing from a “prehistory” of barbarous class interest to a "true history" of a totally emancipated humanity.

Minimally, this was the shared outlook of the prewar and interwar Left, particularly of its various socialistic tendencies. The primacy the anarchists have historically given to the abolition of the state, the agency par excellence of hierarchical coercion, led directly to their denigration of the nation-state and of nationalism generally, not only because nationalism divides human beings territorially, culturally, and economically, but because it follows in the wake of the modern state and ideologically justifies it.

Of concern here is the internationalist tradition that played so pronounced a role in the Left of the last century and the first third of the present one, and its mutations into a highly problematical “question,” particularly in Rosa Luxemburg's and Lenin's writings. This is a “question” of no small importance. We have only to consider the utter confusion that surrounds it today, as the century draws to a close ―when a savagely bigoted nationalism is subverting the internationalist tradition of the Left― to recognize its importance. The rise of nationalisms that exploit racial, religious, and traditional cultural differences between human beings, including even the most trivial linguistic and quasi-tribalistic differences, not to speak of differences in gender identity and sexual preference, marks a decivilization of humanity, a retreat to an age when the number of fingers with which people made the sign of the cross determined whether they and their neighbors would disembowel each other in bloody conflicts, as Nikos Kazantzakis pointed out in Zorba the Greek.

What is particularly disturbing is that the Left has not always seen nationalism as a regressive demand. The modern Left, such as it is today, all too often uncritically embraces the slogan “national liberation” ―a slogan that has echoed through its ranks without regard for the basic ideal voiced in the “Internationale.” Calls for tribal "identity" shrilly accentuate a group's particular characteristics to garner constituencies, an effort that negates the spirit of the “Internationale” and the traditional internationalism of the Left. The very meaning of nationalism and the nature of its relationship to statism is raising issues, especially today, for which the Left is bereft of ideas apart from appeals for “national liberation.”

If present-day leftists lose all viable memory of an earlier internationalist Left ―not to speak of humanity's historical emergence out of its animalistic background, its millennia-long development away from such biological facts as ethnicity, gender, and age differences toward truly social affinities based on citizenship, equality, and a universalistic sense of a common humanity― the great role assigned to reason by the Enlightenment may well be in grave doubt. Without a form of human association that can resist and hopefully go beyond nationalism in all its popular variants ―whether it takes the form of a reconstituted Left, a new politics, a social libertarianism, a reawakened humanism, a ethics of complementarity― then anything that we can legitimately call civilization, indeed, the human spirit itself, may well be extinguished long before nuclear war, the growing ecological crises, or, more generally, a cultural barbarism comparable only to the most destructive periods in history overwhelms us. In view of today's growing nationalism, then, few endeavors could be more important than to examine the nature of nationalism and understand the so-called “national question” as the Left in its various forms has interpreted it over the years.

A Historical Overview
The level of human development can be gauged in great part by the extent to which people recognize their shared unity. Indeed, personal freedom consists in great part of our ability to choose friends, partners, associates, and affines without regard to their biological differences. What makes us human, apart from our ability to reason on a high plane of generalization, consociate into mutable social institutions, work cooperatively, and develop a highly symbolic system of communication, is a shared knowledge of our humanitas. Goethe's memorable words, so characteristic of the Enlightenment mind, still haunt as a criterion of our humanity: “There is a degree of culture where national hatred vanishes, and where one stands to a certain extent above nations and feels the weal and woe of a neighboring people as if it happened to one's own.”[1]

If Goethe established a standard of authentic humanity here ―and surely one can demand more of human beings than empathy for their “own people”― early humanity was less than human by that standard. Although a lunatic element in today's ecology movement calls for a “return to a Pleistocene spirituality,” they would in all probability have found that "spirituality" very despiriting in reality. In prehistoric eras, probably marked by band and tribal social organization, human beings were, “spiritually” or otherwise, first and foremost members of an immediate family, secondly, members of a band, and ultimately, members of a tribe. What determined membership in anything beyond one's given family group was an extension of the kinship tie: the people of a given tribe were socially linked to one another by real or fictive blood relationships. This “blood oath,” as well as other “biological facts” like gender and age, defined one's rights, obligations, and indeed one's identity in the tribal society.

Moreover, many ―perhaps most― band or tribal groups regarded only those who shared the "blood oath" with themselves as human. Indeed, a tribe often referred to itself as “the People,” a name that expressed its exclusive claim to humanity. Other people, who were outside the magic circle of the real or mythic blood linkages of a tribe, were “strangers” and hence in some sense were not human beings. The “blood oath” and the use of the name “the People” to designate themselves often pitted a tribe against others who made the same exclusive claim to be human and to be “the People,” even among peoples who shared common linguistic and cultural traits.

Tribal society, in fact, was extremely wary of anyone who was not one of its own members. In many areas, before a stranger could cross a territorial boundary, he had to submissively and patiently await an invitation from an elder or shaman of the tribe that claimed the territory before proceeding. Without hospitality, which was generally conceived as a quasi-religious virtue, any stranger risked life and limb in a tribe's territory, so that lodgings and food were usually preceded by ritual acts of trust or goodwill. The modern handshake may itself have originated as a symbolic expression that one's right hand was free of weapons.

Warfare was endemic among our prehistoric ancestors and in later native communities, notwithstanding the high, almost cultic status enjoyed by ostensibly peaceful “ecological aborigines” among white middle-class Euro-Americans today. When foraging groups overhunted the game in their accustomed territory, as often happened, they were usually more than willing to invade the area of a neighboring group and claim its resources for their own. Commonly, after the rise of warrior sodalities, warfare acquired cultural as well as economic attributes, so victors no longer merely defeated their real or chosen “enemies” but virtually exterminated them, as witness the near-genocidal destruction of the Huron Indians by their linguistically and culturally related Iroquois cousins.

If the major empires of the ancient Middle East and Orient conquered, pacified, and subjugated many different ethnic and cultural groups, thereby making alien peoples into the abject subjects of despotic monarchies, the most important single factor to erode aboriginal parochialism was the emergence of the city. The rise of the ancient city, whether democratic as at Athens or republican as in Rome, marked a radically new social dispensation. In contrast to the family-oriented and parochial folk who had constituted the tribal and village world, Western cities were now structured increasingly around residential propinquity and shared economic interests. A “second nature,” as Cicero called it, of humanistic social and cultural ties began to replace the older form of social organization based on the “first nature” of biological and blood ties, in which individuals' social roles and obligations had been anchored in their family, clan, gender, and the like, rather than in associations of their own choice.

Etymologically, “politics” derives from the Greek politika, which connotes an actively involved citizenry that formulates the policies of a community or polis and, more often than not, routinely executes them in the course of public service. Although formal citizenship was required for participation in such politics, poleis like democratic Athens celebrated their openness to visitors, particularly to skilled craftsmen and knowledgeable merchants of other ethnic communities. In his famous funeral oration, Pericles declared, “We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality, trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; where, in education, from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness [in Sparta], at Athens we live exactly as we please and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.”[2]

In Periclean times, Athenian liberality, to be sure, was still limited by a largely fictitious notion of the shared ancestry of its citizens ―although less than it had been previously. But it is hard to ignore the fact that Plato's dialectical masterpiece, The Republic, occurs as a dialogue in the home of Cephalos, whose family were resident aliens in the Piraeus, the port area of Athens where most foreigners lived. Yet in the dialogue itself the interchange between citizen and alien is uninhibited by any status considerations.

The Roman emperor Caracalla, in time, made all freemen in the Empire “citizens” of Rome with equal juridical rights, thereby universalizing human relationships despite differences in language, ethnicity, tradition, and place of residence. Christianity, for all its failings, nonetheless celebrated the equality of all people's souls in the eyes of the deity, a heavenly “egalitarianism” that, in combination with open medieval cities, theoretically eliminated the last attributes of ancestry, ethnicity, and tradition that divided human beings from each other.

In practice, it goes without saying, these attributes still persisted, and various peoples retained parochial allegiances to their villages, localities, and even cities, countervailing the tenuous Roman and particularly Christian ideals of a universal humanitas. The unified medieval world was fragmented juridically into countless baronial and aristocratic sovereignties that parochialized local popular commitments to a given lord or place, often pitting culturally and ethically related peoples against each others in other areas. The Catholic Church opposed these parochial sovereignties, not only for doctrinal reasons but in order to be able to expand papal authority over Christendom as a whole. As for secular power, wayward but strong monarchs like Henry II of England tried to impose the “king's peace” over large territorial areas, subduing warring nobles with varying degrees of success. Thus did pope and king work in tandem to diminish parochialism, even as they dueled with each other for control over ever-larger areas of the feudal world.

Yet authentic citizens were deeply involved in classical political activity in many places in Europe during the Middle Ages. The burghers of medieval town democracies were essentially master craftsmen. The tasks of their gilds, or richly articulated vocational fraternities, were no less moral than economic ―indeed, they formed the structural basis for a genuine moral economy. Gilds not only “policed” local markets, fixing “fair prices” and assuring that the quality of their members' goods would be high; they participated in civic and religious festivals as distinct entities with their own banners, helped finance and construct public buildings, saw to the welfare of the families of deceased members, collected money for charity, and participated as militiamen in the defense of the community of which they were part. Their cities, in the best of cases, conferred freedom on runaway serfs, saw to the safety of travelers, and adamantly defended their civic liberties. The eventual differentiation of the town populations into wealthy and poor, powerful and powerless, and “nationalists” who supported the monarchy against a predatory nobility ―all make up a complex drama that cannot be discussed here.

At various times and places some cities created forms of association that were neither nations nor parochial baronies. These were intercity confederations that lasted for centuries, such as the Hanseatic League; cantonal confederations like that of Switzerland; and more briefly, attempts to achieve free city confederations like the Spanish comuñero movement in the early sixteenth century. It was not until the seventeenth century ―particularly under Cromwell in England and Louis XIV in France― that centralizers of one form or another finally began to carve out lasting nations in Europe.

Nation-states, let me emphasize, are states ―not only nations. Establishing them means vesting power in a centralized, professional, bureaucratic apparatus that exercises a social monopoly of organized violence, notably in the form of its armies and police. The state preempts the autonomy of localities and provinces by means of its all-powerful executive and, in republican states, its legislature, whose members are elected or appointed to represent a fixed number of “constituents.” The citizen in a self-managed locality vanishes into an anonymous aggregation of individuals who pay a suitable amount of taxes and receives the state's “services.” “Politics” in the nation-state devolves into a body of exchange relationships in which constituents generally try to get what they pay for in a “political” marketplace of goods and services. Nationalism as a form of tribalism writ large reinforces the state by providing it with the loyalty of a people of shared linguistic, ethnic, and cultural affinities, indeed legitimizing the state by giving it a basis of seemingly all-embracing biological and traditional commonalities among the people. It was not the English people who created an England but the English monarchs and centralizing rulers, just as it was the French kings and their bureaucracies who forged the French nation.

Indeed, until state-building began to acquire new vigor in the fifteenth century, nation-states in Europe remained a novelty. Even when centralized authority based minimally on a linguistic commonality began to foster nationalism throughout western Europe and the United States, nationalism faced a very dubious destiny. Confederalism remained a viable alternative to the nation-state well into the latter half of the last century. As late as 1871, the Paris Commune called upon all the communes of France to form a confederal dual power in opposition to the newly created Third Republic. Eventually the nation-state won out in this complex conflict, and statism, in fact, was firmly linked to nationalism. The two were virtually indistinguishable from each other by the beginning of this century.

Nationalism and the Left
Radical theorists and activists on the Left dealt in very different ways with the host of historical and ethical problems that nationalism raised with respect to efforts to build a communistic, cooperative society. Historically, the earliest leftist attempts to explore nationalism as a problem obstructing the advent of a free and just society came from various anarchist theorists. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon seems never to have questioned the ideal of human solidarity, although he never denied the right of a people to cultural uniqueness and even to secede from any kind of “social contract,” provided to be sure that no one else's rights were infringed upon. Although Proudhon detested slavery ―he sarcastically observed that the American South “with Bible in hand, cultivates slavery,” while the American North “is already creating a proletariat”[3] ―he formally conceded the right of the Confederacy to withdraw from the Union during the Civil War of 1861-65.

More generally, Proudhon's confederalist and mutualistic views led him to oppose nationalist movements in Poland, Hungary, and Italy. His antinationalist notions were somewhat diluted by his own Francophilism, as the French socialist Jean Jaures later noted. Proudhon feared the formation of strong nation-states on or near France's borders. But he was also a product in his own way of the Enlightenment. Writing in 1862, he declared: "I will never put devotion to my country before the rights of Man. If the French Government behaves unjustly to any people, I am deeply grieved and protest in every way that I can. If France is punished for the misdeeds of her leaders, I bow my head and say from the depths of my soul, “Merito haec patimur”―“We have deserved these ills.”[4]

Despite his Gallic chauvinism, the “rights of Man” remained foremost in Proudhon's mind; nor was he oblivious to the fact that India and China were, in his words, “at the mercy of barbarians.”[5] “Do you think that it is French egoism, hatred of liberty, scorn for the Poles and Italians that cause me to mock at and mistrust this commonplace word nationality,” he wrote to Herzen, “which is being so widely used and makes so many scoundrels and so many honest citizens talk so much nonsense? For pity's sake . . . do not take offense so easily. If you do, I shall have to say to you what I have been saying for six months about your friend Garibaldi: «Of great heart but no brain.»”[6]

Michael Bakunin's internationalism was as emphatic as Proudhon's, although his views were also marked by a certain ambiguity. “Only that can be called a human principle which is universal and common to all men,” he wrote in his internationalist vein; “and nationality separates men, therefore it is not a principle.”[7] Indeed, “There is nothing more absurd and at the same time more harmful, more deadly, for the people than to uphold the fictitious principle of nationality as the ideal of all the people's aspirations.” What counted finally for Bakunin was that “Nationality is not a universal human principle.” Still further: “We should place human, universal justice above all national interests. And we should once and for all time abandon the false principle of nationality, invented of late by the despots of France, Russia, and Prussia for the purpose of crushing the sovereign principle of liberty.”

Yet Bakunin also declared that nationality “is a historic, local fact, which like all real and harmless facts, has the right to claim general acceptance.” Not only that, but this is a “natural fact” that deserves “respect.” It may have been his rhetorical proclivities that led him to declare himself “always sincerely the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands.” But he argued that the right of every nationality “to live according to its own nature” must be respected, since this “right” is “simply the corollary of the general principle of freedom.”[7]

The subtlety of Bakunin's observations should not be overlooked in the midst of this seeming self-contradiction. He defined a general principle that is human, one that is abridged or partially violated by asocial or “biological” facts that for better or worse must be taken for granted. To be a nationalist is to be less than human, but it is also inevitable insofar as individuals are products of distinctive cultural traditions, environments, and states of mind. Overshadowing the mere fact of “nationality” is the higher universal principle in which people recognize themselves as members of the same species and seek to foster their commonalities rather than their “national” distinctiveness.

Such humanistic principles were to be taken very seriously by anarchists generally and strikingly so by the largest anarchist movement of modern times, the Spanish anarchists. From the early 1880s up to the bloody civil war of 1936-39, the anarchist movement of Spain opposed not only statism and nationalism but even regionalism in all its forms. Despite its enormous Catalan following, the Spanish anarchists consistently raised the higher human principle of social liberation over national liberation and opposed the nationalist tendencies within Spain that so often divided Basques, Catalans, Andalusians, and Galicians from one another and particularly from the Castilians, who enjoyed cultural supremacy over the country's minorities. Indeed, the word “Iberian” rather than “Spanish” that appears in the name Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) served to express not only a commitment to peninsular solidarity but an indifference to regional and national distinctions between Spain and Portugal. The Spanish anarchists cultivated Esperanto as a “universal” human language more enthusiastically than any major radical tendency, and “universal brotherhood” remained a lasting ideal of their movement ―as it historically did in most anarchist movements up to the present day.

Prior to 1914, Marxists and the Second International generally held similar convictions, despite the burgeoning of nineteenth-century nationalism. In Marx and Engels's view, the proletariat of the world had no country; authentically unified as a class, it was destined to abolish all forms of class society. The Communist Manifesto ends with the ringing appeal: “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” In the body of the work (which Bakunin translated into Russian), the authors declared: “In the national struggles of the proletarians of different countries, [Communists] point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.”[8] And further: “The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got.”[9]

The support that Marx and Engels did lend to “national liberation” struggles was essentially strategic, stemming primarily from their geopolitical and economic concerns rather than from broad social principle. They vigorously championed Polish independence from Russia, for example, because they wanted to weaken the Russian empire, which in their day was the supreme counterrevolutionary power on the European continent. And they wanted to see a united Germany because a centralized, powerful nation-state would provide it with what Engels, in a letter to Karl Kautsky in 1882, called “the normal political constitution of the European bourgeoisie.”

Yet the manifest similarities between the internationalist rhetoric of Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto and the internationalism of the anarchist theorists and movements should not be permitted to conceal the important differences between these two forms of socialism ―differences that were to play a major role in the debates that separated them. The anarchists were in every sense ethical socialists who upheld universal principles of the “brotherhood of man” and “fraternity,”[10] principles that Marx's “scientific socialism” disdained as mere “abstractions.” In later years, even when speaking broadly of freedom and the oppressed, Marx and Engels considered the use of seemingly “inexact” words like “workers” and “toilers” to be an implicit rejection of socialism as a “science”; instead, they preferred what they considered the more scientifically rigorous word proletariat, which specifically referred to those who generate surplus value.

Indeed, in contrast to anarchist theorists like Proudhon, who considered the spread of capitalism and the proletarianization of preindustrial peasantry and craftspeople to be a disaster, Marx and Engels enthusiastically welcomed these developments, as well as the formation of large, centralized nation-states in which market economies could flourish. They saw them not only as desiderata in fostering economic development but, by promoting capitalism, as indispensable in creating the preconditions for socialism. Despite their support for proletarian internationalism, they derogated what they saw as “abstract” denunciations of nationalism as such or scorned them as merely “moralistic.” Although internationalism in the interests of class solidarity remained a desideratum for Marx and Engels, their view implicitly stood at odds with their commitment to capitalist economic expansion with its need in the last century for centralized nation-states. They held the nation-state to be good or bad insofar as it advanced or inhibited the expansion of capital, the advance of the “productive forces,” and the proletarianization of preindustrial peoples. In principle, they looked askance at the nationalist sentiments of Indians, Chinese, Africans, and the rest of the noncapitalist world, whose precapitalist social forms might impede capitalist expansion. Ireland, ironically, seems to have been an exception to this approach. Marx, Engels, and the Marxist movement as a whole acknowledged the right of the Irish to national liberation largely for sentimental reasons and because it would produce problems for English imperialism, which commanded a world market. In the main, until such time as a socialist society could be achieved, Marxists considered the formation of large, ever more centralized nation-states in Europe to be “historically progressive.”

Given their instrumental geopolitics, it should not be surprising that as the years went by, Marx and Engels essentially supported Bismarck's attempts to unify Germany. Their express distaste for Bismarck's methods and for the landed gentry in whose interests he spoke should not be taken too seriously, in my view. They would have welcomed Germany's annexation of Denmark, and they called for the incorporation of smaller European nationalities like the Czechs and Slavs generally into a centralized Austria-Hungary, as well as the unification of Italy into a nation-state, in order to broaden the terrain of the market and the sovereignty of capitalism on the European continent.

Nor is it surprising that Marx and Engels supported Bismarck's armies in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 ―despite the opposition of their closest adherents in the German Social Democratic party, Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel― at least up to the point when those armies crossed the French frontier and surrounded Paris in 1871. Ironically, Marx and Engels's own arguments were to be invoked by the European Marxists who diverged from their antiwar comrades to support their respective national military efforts at the outbreak of the First World War. Prowar German Social Democrats supported the Kaiser as a bulwark against Russian “Asiatic” barbarism ―seemingly in accordance with Marx and Engels's own views― while the French Socialists (as well as Kropotkin in Britain and later in Russia) invoked the tradition of their country's Great Revolution in opposition to “Prussian militarism.”

Despite many widespread claims that Rosa Luxemburg was more anarchistic than a committed Marxist, she actually vigorously opposed the motivations of anarchic forms of socialism and was more of a doctrinaire Marxist than is generally realized. Her opposition to Polish nationalism and Pilsudski's Polish Socialist Party (which demanded Polish national independence) as well as her hostility toward nationalism generally, admirable and courageous as it was, rested principally not on an anarchistic belief in the “brotherhood of man” but on traditional Marxist arguments ―namely, an extension of Marx and Engels's desire for unified markets and centralized states at the expense of Eastern European nationalities, albeit with a new twist.

By the turn of the century, new considerations had come to the foreground that induced Luxemburg to modify her views. Like many social democratic theorists at the time, Luxemburg shared the conviction that capitalism had passed from a progressive into a largely reactionary phase. No longer a historically progressive economic order, capitalism was now reactionary because it had fulfilled its “historical” function in advancing technology and presumably in producing a class-conscious or even revolutionary proletariat. Lenin systematized this conclusion in his famous work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Thus both Lenin and Luxemburg logically denounced the First World War as imperialist and broke with all socialists who supported the Entente and the Central Powers, deriding them as “social patriots.” Where Lenin markedly differed from Luxemburg (aside from the famous issue of his support for a centralized party organization) was on how, from a strictly "realistic" standpoint, the “national question” could be used against capitalism in an era of imperialism. To Lenin, the national struggles of economically undeveloped colonized countries for liberation from the colonial powers, including Tsarist Russia, were now inherently progressive insofar as they served to undermine the power of capital. That is to say, Lenin's support for national liberation struggles was essentially no less pragmatic than that of other Marxists, including Luxemburg herself. For imperialist Russia, appropriately characterized as a “prison of nations,” Lenin advocated the unconditional right of non-Russian peoples to secede under any conditions and to form nation-states of their own. On the other hand, he maintained, non-Russian Social Democrats in Russia's colonized countries would be obliged to advocate some kind of federal union with the “mother country” if Russian Social Democrats succeeded in achieving a proletarian revolution.

Hence, although Lenin's and Luxemburg's premises were very similar, the two Marxists came to radically different conclusions about the “national question” and the correct manner of resolving it. Lenin demanded the right of Poland to establish a nation-state of its own, while Luxemburg opposed it as economically unviable and regressive. Lenin shared Marx's and Engels's support for Polish independence, albeit for very different yet equally pragmatic reasons. He did not honor his own position on the right to secession during the Russian Civil War most flagrantly in his manner of dealing with Georgia, a very distinct nation that had supported the Mensheviks until the Soviet regime forced it to accept a domestic variant of Bolshevism. Only in the last years of his life, after a Georgian Communist party took command of the state, did Lenin oppose Stalin's attempt to subordinate the Georgian party to the Russian ―a preponderantly intraparty conflict that was of little concern to the pro-Menshevik Georgian population. Lenin did not live long enough to engage Stalin on this ―and other― policies and organizational practices.

Two Approaches to the National Question
The Marxist and Marxism-Leninist discussions on the “national question” after the First World War thus produced a highly convoluted legacy that affected the policies not only of the Old Left of the 1920s and 1930s but those of the New Left of the 1960s as well. What is important to clarify here are the radically different premises from which anarchists and Marxists viewed nationalism generally. Anarchism in the main, aside from some of its variants, advanced humanistic, basically ethical reasons for opposing the nation-states that fostered nationalism. Anarchists did so, to be more specific, because national distinctions tended to lead to state formation and to subvert the unity of humanity, to parochialize society, and to foster cultural particularities rather than universality of the human condition. Marxism, as a “socialist science,” eschewed such ethical “abstractions.”

In contrast to the anarchist opposition to the state and to centralization, not only did Marxists support a centralized state, they insisted on the “historically progressive” nature of capitalism and a market economy, which required centralized nation-states as domestic markets and as means for removing all internal barriers to commerce that local and regional sovereignties had created. Marxists generally regarded the national aspirations of oppressed peoples as matters of political strategy that should be supported or opposed for strictly pragmatic considerations, irrespective of any broader ethical ones.

Thus two distinct approaches to nationalism emerged within the Left. The ethical antinationalism of anarchists championed the unity of humanity, with due allowance for cultural distinctions but in flat opposition to the formation of nation-states; while the Marxists supported or opposed the nationalistic demands of largely precapitalist cultures for a variety of pragmatic and geopolitical reasons. This distinction is not intended to be hard and fast; socialists in pre-World War I Austria-Hungary were strongly multinational as a result of the many different peoples who made up the prewar empire. They called for a confederal relationship between the German-speaking rulers of the empire and its largely Slavonic members, which approximated an anarchist view. Whether they would have honored their own ideals in practice any better than Lenin adhered to his own prescriptions once a “proletarian revolution” actually succeeded we will never know. The original empire had disappeared by 1918, and the ostensible libertarianism of "Austro-Hungarian Marxism," as it was called, became moot during the interwar period. To its honor, I may add, in February 1934 in Vienna, Austrian socialists, unlike any other movement apart from the Spaniards, resisted protofascist developments in bloody streetfighting; the movement never regained its revolutionary elan after it was restored in 1945.

Nationalism and the Second World War
The Left of the interwar period, the so-called Old Left, viewed the fast-approaching war against Nazi Germany as a continuation of the “Great War” of 1914-18. Anti-Stalinist Marxists predicted a short-lived conflict that would terminate in proletarian revolutions even more sweeping than those of the 1917-21 period. Significantly, Trotsky staked his adherence to orthodox Marxism itself on this calculation: if the war did not end in this outcome, he proposed, nearly all the premises of orthodox Marxism would have to be examined and perhaps drastically revised. His death in 1940 precluded such an a reevaluation on his own part. When the war did not conclude in international proletarian revolutions, Trotsky's supporters were hardly willing to make the sweeping reexamination that he had suggested.

Yet this reexamination was very much needed. Not only did the Second World War fail to end in proletarian revolutions in Europe; it brought an end to the whole entire era of revolutionary proletarian socialism and the class-oriented internationalism that had emerged in June 1848, when the Parisian working class raised barricades and red flags in support of a “social republic.” Far from achieving any successful proletarian revolutions after the Second World War, the European working class failed to exhibit a semblance of internationalism during the conflict. Unlike their fathers a generation earlier, no warring troops engaged in fraternization; nor did the civilian populations exhibit any overt hostility to their political and military leaders for their conduct of the war, despite the massive destruction of cities by aerial bombers and artillery. The German army fought desperately against the Allies in the West and were prepared to defend Hitler's bunker to the end.

Above all, an elevated awareness of class distinctions and conflicts in Europe gave way to nationalism ―partly in reaction to Germany's occupations of home territories, but partly also, and significantly, as a result of the resurgence of a crude xenophobia that verged on outright racism. What limited class-oriented movements did emerge for a while after the war, notably in France, Italy, and Greece, were easily manipulated by the Stalinists to serve Soviet interests in the Cold War. Hence although the Second World War lasted much longer than the first, its outcome never rose to the political and social level of the 1917-21 period. In fact, world capitalism emerged from World War II stronger than it had been at any time in its history, owing principally to the state's massive intervention in economic and social affairs.

Struggles for “National Liberation”
The failure of serious radical theorists to re-examine Marxist theory in the light of these developments, as Trotsky had proposed, was followed by the precipitate decline of the Old Left; the general recognition that the proletariat was no longer a “hegemonic” class in overthrowing capitalism; the absence of a “general crisis” of capitalism; and the failure of the Soviet Union to play an internationalist role in postwar events.

What came to foreground instead were national liberation struggles in “Third World” countries and sporadic anti-Soviet eruptions in Eastern European countries, which were largely smothered by Stalinist totalitarianism. The Left, in these instances, has often taken nationalist struggles as general “anti-imperialist” attempts to achieve “autonomy” from imperialism, and state formation as a legitimation of this “autonomy,” even at the expense of a popular democracy in the colonized world.

If Marx and Engels often supported national struggles for strategic reasons, the Left in the twentieth century, both New and Old, has often elevated such support for such struggles into a mindless article of faith. The strategic “nationalisms” of Marxist-type movements largely foreclosed inquiry into what kind of society a given “national liberation” movement would likely produce, in a way that ethical socialisms like anarchism in the last century did not. It was ―or if not, it should have been― a matter of the gravest concern for the Old Left in the 1920s and 1930s to inquire into what type of society Mao Tse-tung, to take a striking case in point, would establish in China if he defeated the Kuomintang, while the New Left of the 1960s should have inquired into what type of society Castro, to cite another important case, would establish in Cuba after the expulsion of Batista.

But throughout this century, when “Third World” national liberation movements in colonial countries have made conventional avowals of socialism and then proceeded to establish highly centralized, often brutally authoritarian states, the Left often greeted them as effective struggles against imperialist enemies. Advanced as “national liberation,” nationalism has often stopped short of advancing major social changes and even ignored the need to do so. Avowals of authoritarian forms of socialism have been used by “national liberation” movements very much the way Stalin used socialist ideologies to brutally consolidate his own dictatorship. Indeed, Marxism-Leninism has proved a remarkably effective doctrine for mobilizing “national liberation” struggles against imperialist powers and gaining the support of leftist radicals abroad, who saw “national liberation” movements as largely anti-imperialist struggles rather than observing their true social content.

Thus, despite the populist and often even anarchistic tendencies that gave rise to the European and American New Left, its essentially international focus was directed increasingly toward an uncritical support for “national liberation” struggles outside the Euro-American sphere, without regard for where these struggles were leading and the authoritarian nature of their leadership. As the 1960s progressed, this incredibly confused movement in fact steadily shed the anarchistic and universalistic ambience with which it had begun. After Mao's practices were elevated to an "ism" in the New Left, many young radicals adopted “Maoism” unreservedly, with grim results for the New Left as a whole. By 1969, the New Left had largely been taken over by Maoists and admirers of Fidel Castro. An utterly misleading book like Fanshen, which uncritically applauded Maoist activities in the Chinese countryside, was revered in the late 1960s, and many radical groups adopted what they took to be Maoist organizational practices. So heavily focused was the New Left's attention on “national liberation” struggles in the Third world that the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1969 hardly produced serious protest by young leftists, at least in the United States, as I can personally attest.

The 1960s also saw the emergence of yet another form of nationalism on the Left: increasingly ethnically chauvinistic groups began to appear that ultimately inverted Euro-American claims of the alleged superiority of the white race into an equally reactionary claim to the superiority of nonwhites. Embracing the particularism into which racial politics had degenerated instead of the potential universalism of a humanitas, the New Left placed blacks, colonial peoples, and even totalitarian colonial nations on the top of its theoretical pyramid, endowing them with a commanding or “hegemonic” position in relation to whites, Euro-Americans, and bourgeois-democratic nations. In the 1970s, this particularistic strategy was adopted by certain feminists, who began to extol the “superiority” of women over men, indeed to affirm an allegedly female mystical “power” and an allegedly female irrationalism over the secular rationality and scientific inquiry that were presumably the domain of all males. The term “white male” became a patently derogatory expression that was applied ecumenically to all Euro-American men, irrespective of whether they themselves were exploited and dominated by ruling classes and hierarchies.
A highly parochial “identity politics” began to emerge, even to dominate many New Leftists as new “micronationalisms,” if I may coin a word. Not only do certain tendencies in such “identity” movements closely resemble those of very traditional forms of oppression like patriarchy, but “identity politics” also constitutes a regression from the libertarian and even general Marxian message of the “Internationale” and a transcendence of all “micronationalist” differentia in a truly humanistic communist society. What passes for “radical consciousness” today is shifting increasingly toward a biologically oriented emphasis on human differentiation like gender and ethnicity ―not an emphasis on the need to foster of human universality that was so pronounced among the anarchist writers of the last century and even in The Communist Manifesto.

Toward a New Internationalism
How to assess this devolution in leftist thought and the problems it raises today? I have tried to place nationalism in the larger historical context of humanity's social evolution from the internal solidarity of the tribe to the increasing expansiveness of urban life and the universalism advanced by the great monotheistic religions in the Middle Ages and finally to ideals of human affinity based on reason, secularism, cooperation, and democracy in the nineteenth century. We can say with certainty that any movement that aspires to something less than these anarchist and libertarian socialist notions of the “brotherhood of man,” certainly as expressed in the “Internationale,” is less than human. Indeed, from the perspective of the end of the twentieth century, we are obliged to ask for even more than what nineteenth-century internationalism demanded. We are obliged to formulate an ethics of complementarity in which cultural differentia mutualistically serve to enhance human unity itself, in short, that constitute a new mosaic of vigorous cultures that enrich the human condition and that foster its advance rather than fragment and decompose it into new “nationalities” and an increasing number of nation-states.

No less significant is the need for a radical social outlook that conjoins cultural variety and the ideal of a unified humanity with an ethical concept of what a new society should be like ―one that is universalistic in its view of humanity, cooperative in its view of human relationships on all levels of life, and egalitarian in its idea of social relations. While internationalist in their class outlook, nearly all Marxist attitudes toward the “national question” were instrumental: they were guided by expediency and opportunism, and worse, they often denigrated ideas of democracy, citizenship, and freedom as “abstract” and presumably, “unscientific” notions. Outstanding Marxists accepted the nation-state with all its coercive power and centralistic traits, be they Marx and Engels, Luxemburg, or Lenin. Nor did these Marxists view confederalism as a desideratum. Luxemburg's writings, for example, simply take confederalism as it existed in her own time (particularly the vicissitudes of Swiss cantonalism) as exhausting all the possibilities of this political idea, without due regard for the anarchist emphasis on the need for a profound social, political, and economic democratization of the municipalities that are to confederate with each other. With few exceptions, Marxists advanced no serious critique of the nation-state and state centralization as such, an omission that, all "collectivistic" achievements aside, would have foredoomed their attempts to achieve a rational society if nothing else had.

Cultural freedom and variety, let me emphasize, should not be confused with nationalism. That specific peoples should be free to fully develop their own cultural capacities is not merely a right but a desideratum. The world will be a drab place indeed if a magnificent mosaic of different cultures do not replace the largely deculturated and homogenized world created by modern capitalism. But by the same token, the world will be completely divided and peoples will be chronically at odds with one another if their cultural differences are parochialized and if seeming “cultural differences” are rooted in biologistic notions of gender, racial, and physical superiority. Historically, there is a sense in which the national consolidation of peoples along territorial lines did produce a social sphere that was broader than the narrow kinship basis for kinship societies because it obviously is more open to strangers, just as cities tend to foster broader human affinities than tribes. But neither tribal affinities nor territorial boundaries constitute a realization of humanity's potentiality to achieve a full sense of commonality with rich but harmonious cultural variations. Frontiers have no place on the map of the planet, any more than they have a place on the landscape of the mind.

A socialism that is not informed by this kind ethical outlook, with a due respect for cultural variety, cannot ignore the potential outcome of a national liberation struggle as the Old and New Lefts alike so often did. Nor can it support national liberation struggles for instrumental purposes, merely as a means of “weakening” imperialism. Certainly, such a socialism cannot, in my view, promote the proliferation of nation-states, much less increase the number of divisive national entities. Ironically, the success of many “national liberation” struggles has had the effect of creating politically independent statist regimes that are nonetheless as manipulable by the forces of international capitalism than were the old, generally obtuse imperialist ones. More often than not, “Third World” nations have not cast off their colonial shackles since the end of the Second World War: they have merely become domesticated and rendered highly vulnerable to the forces of international capitalism, with little more than a facade of self-determination. Moreover, they have often used their myths of “national sovereignty” to nourish xenophobic ambitions to grab adjacent areas around them and oppress their neighbors as brutally as imperialists in their own right, such as Ghana's oppression under Nkrumah of the Togo peoples in West Africa or Milosevic's attempt to "cleanse" Muslims from Bosnia. What is no less regressive, such nationalisms evoke what is most sinister in a people's past ―religious fundamentalism in all its forms, traditional hatreds of “foreigners,” a “national unity” that overrides terrible internal social and economic inequities, and most commonly, a total disregard for human rights. The "nation" as a cultural entity is superseded by an overpowering and oppressive state apparatus. Racism commonly goes hand in hand with “national liberation” struggles, such as "ethnic cleansing" and wars for territorial gain, as we see most poignantly today in the Middle East, India, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. Nationalisms that only a generation ago might have been regarded as “national liberation” struggles are more clearly seen today, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet empire, as little more than social nightmares and decivilizing blights.

Put bluntly, nationalisms are regressive atavisms that the Enlightenment tried to overcome long ago. They introject the worst features of the very empires from which oppressed peoples have tried to shake loose. Not only do they typically reproduce state-machines that are as oppressive as the ones that colonial powers imposed on them, but they reinforce those machines with cultural, religious, ethnic, and xenophobic traits that are often used to foster regional and even domestic hatreds and subimperialisms. No less important, in the absence of genuine popular democracies the sequelae of understandably anti-imperialist struggles too often include the strengthening of imperialism itself, such that the powers that have been seemingly dispossessed of their colonies can now play the state of one former colony against that of another, as witness the conflicts that ravage Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. These are the areas, I may add, where nuclear wars will be more likely to occur as the years go by than elsewhere in the world. The development of an Islamic nuclear bomb to countervail an Israeli one or of a Pakistani bomb to countervail an Indian one ―all portend no good for the South and its conflict with the North. Indeed, the tendency for former colonies to actively seek alliances with their erstwhile imperialist rulers is now a more typical feature of North-South diplomacy than is any unity by the South against the North.

Nationalism has always been a disease that divided human from human ―”abstract” as traditional Marxists may consider this notion to be― and it can never be viewed as anything more than a regression toward tribal parochialism and the fuel for intercommunal warfare. Nor have the “national liberation” struggles that have produced new states throughout the “Third World” and in Eastern Europe impaired the expansion of imperialism or eventuated in fully democratic states. That the “liberated” peoples of the Stalinist empire are less oppressed today than they were under Communist rule should not mislead us into believing that they are also free from the xenophobia that nearly all nation-states cultivate or from the cultural homogenization that capitalism and its media produce.

No left libertarian, to be sure, can oppose the right of a subjugated people to establish itself as an autonomous entity ―be it in a confederation based on libertarian municipalism or as a nation-state based on hierarchical and class inequities. But to oppose an oppressor is not equivalent to calling for support for everything formerly colonized nation-states do. Ethically speaking, one cannot oppose a wrong when one party commits it, then support another party who commits the same wrong. The trite but pithy maxim ―“My enemy's enemy is not my friend”― is particularly applicable to oppressed people who may be manipulated by totalitarians, religious zealots, and “ethnic cleansers.” Just as an authentic ethics must be reasoned out and premised on genuine humanistic potentialities, so a libertarian socialism or anarchism must retain its ethical integrity if the voice of reason is to be heard in social affairs. In the 1960s, those who opposed American imperialism in Southeast Asia and at the same time rejected giving any support for the Communist regime in Hanoi, and those who opposed American intervention in Cuba without supporting Castroist totalitarianism, stood on a higher moral ground than the New Leftists who exercised their rebelliousness against the United States predominantly by supporting “national liberation” struggles without regard to the authoritarian and statist goals of those struggles. Indeed, identified with the authoritarians whom they actively supported, these New Leftists eventually grew demoralized by the absence of an ethical basis in their liberatory ideas. Today, in fact, liberatory struggles based on nationalism and statism have borne the terrifying harvest of internecine bloodletting throughout the world. Even in recently “liberated” states like East Germany, nationalism has found brutal expression in the rise of fascist movements, German nationalism, plans to restrict the immigration of asylum-seekers, violence against “foreigners” including victims of Nazism like gypsies, and the like. Thus the instrumental view of nationalism that Marxists originally cultivated has left many “leftist” tendencies like Social Democrats in a condition of moral bankruptcy.

Ethically, let me add, there are some social issues on which one must take a stand ―such as white and black racism, patriarchy and matriarchy, and imperialism and “Third World” totalitarianism. An unswerving opposition to racism, gender oppression, and domination as such must always be paramount if an ethical socialism is to emerge from the ruins of socialism itself. But we also live in a world in which issues sometimes arise on which a leftists cannot take any position at all ―issues in which to take a position is to operate within the alternatives advanced by a basically irrational society and to choose the lesser of several irrationalities or evils over other irrationalities or evils. It is not a sign of political ineffectuality to reject such a choice altogether and declare that to oppose one evil with a lesser one must eventually lead to the support of the worst evil that emerges. German Social Democracy, by abetting one “lesser evil” after another during the 1920s, went from supporting liberals to conservatives then to reactionaries ―who finally brought Hitler to power. In an irrational society, conventional wisdom and instrumentalism can produce only ever-greater irrationality, using virtue as a patina to conceal basic contradictions both in its own position and in society.

“[L]ike the processes of life, digestion and breathing,” observed Bakunin, nationality “. . . has no right to be concerned with itself until that right is denied.”[11] This was a perceptive enough statement in its day. With the explosions of barbarous nationalism in our own day and the snarling appetites of nationalists to create more and more nation-states, I am obliged to add that “nationality” is a form of indigestion and that its causes must be vomited up if society is not to further deteriorate because of this malady.

Seeking an Alternative
If nationalism is regressive, what rational and humanistic alternative to it can an ethical socialism offer? There is no place in a free society for nation-states ―either as nations or as states. However strong may be the impulse of specific peoples for a collective identity, reason and a concern for ethical behavior oblige us to recover the universality of the city or town and a directly democratic political culture, albeit on a higher plane than even the polis of Periclean Athens. Identity should properly be replaced by community ―by a shared affinity that is humanly scaled, nonhierarchical, libertarian, and open to all, irrespective of an individual's gender, ethnic traits, sexual identity, talents, or personal proclivities. Such community life can only be recovered by the new politics that I have called libertarian municipalism: the democratization of municipalities so that they are self-managed by the people who inhabit them, and the formation of a confederation of these municipalities to constitute a counterpower to the nation-state.

The danger that democratized municipalities in a decentralized society would result in economic and cultural parochialism is very real, and it can only be precluded by a vigorous confederation of municipalities based on their material interdependence. The “self-sufficiency” of community life ―even if it were possible today― would by no means guarantee a genuine grassroots democracy. The confederation of municipalities, as a medium for interaction, collaboration, and mutual aid among its municipal components, provides the sole alternative to the powerful nation-state on the one hand and the parochial town or city on the other. Fully democratic, in which the municipal deputies to confederal institutions would be subject to recall, rotation, and unrelenting public purview, the confederation would constitute an extension of local liberties to the regional level, allowing for a sensitive equilibrium between locality and region in which the cultural variety of towns could flourish without turning inward toward local exclusivity. Indeed, beneficial cultural traits would also be “trafficked,” so to speak, within and between various confederations, along with the interchange of goods and services that make up the material means of life.
By the same token, “property” would be municipalized, rather than nationalized (which merely reinforces state power with economic power), collectivized (which simply recasts private entrepreneurial rights in a “collective” form), or privatized (which facilitates the re-emergence of a competitive market economy). A municipalized economy would approximate a system of usufruct based entirely on one's needs and citizenship in a community rather than one's proprietary, vocational, or professional interests. Where a municipal citizens' assembly controls economic policy, no one individual controls, much less “owns,” the means of production and of life. Where confederal means of administering a region's resources coordinate the economic behavior of the whole, parochial interests would tend to give way to larger human interests and economic considerations to more democratic ones. The issues that municipalities and their confederations address would cease to range around economic self-interest; they would focus on democratic procedures and simple equity in meeting human needs.

Let there be no doubt that the technological resources that make it possible for people to choose their own lifestyles and have the free time to participate fully in a democratic politics are absolutely necessary for the libertarian, confederally organized society that I have sketched here. Even the best of ethical intentions are likely to yield to some form of oligarchy, in which differential access to the means of life will lead to elites who have more of the good things in life than other citizens do. On this score, the asceticism that ecomystics and deep ecologists promote is insidiously reactionary: not only does it ignore the freedom of people to choose their own lifestyle ―the only alternative in the existing society to becoming a mindless consumer― but it subordinates human freedom as such to an almost mystical notion of the dictates of “Nature” ―prescribing a “return to the Pleistocene,” to the Neolithic, or to food gathering, to cite the most extreme examples. A free ecological society ―as distinguished from one regulated by an authoritarian ecological elite or by the “free market”― can only be cast in terms of an ecologically confederal form of libertarian municipalism. When at length free communes replace the nation and confederal forms of organization replaces the state, humanity will have rid itself of nationalism.
March 5, 1993

[1] Goethe, quoted in Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: The Dial Press, 1961), p. 578.
[2] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, book 2, chapter 4.
[3] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, letter to Dulieu, December 30, 1860; in Correspondence, vol. 10, pp. 275.; republished in Stewart Edwards, ed., Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, trans. Elizabeth Frazer (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 185.
[4] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, La Federation et l’unite en Italie (1862), pp. 122-25, in Edwards, Selected Writings, pp. 188-89.
[5] Proudhon, letter to Dulieu, December 30, 1860, in Correspondence, vol. 10 (Paris, 1875), pp. 275-76; republished in Edwards, Selected Writings, p. 185.
[6] Proudhon, letter to Alexander Herzen, April 21, 1861, in Correspondence, vol. 11, pp. 22-24; in Edwards, Selected Writings, p. 191.
[7] All Bakunin quotations are from P. Maximoff, ed., The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism (New York: Free Press of Glencoe; London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1953), pp. 324-35; emphasis added.
[8] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party," Selected Works, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), p. 120.
[9] Ibid., p. 124.
[10] Despite the genderedness of these words ―the product of the era in which Bakunin lived― they obviously may be interpreted as signifying humanity generally.
[11] P. Maximoff, ed., The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism, p.325.

Ursprunglich hier erschienen: http://www.democracynature.org/vol2/bookchin_nationalism.htm

2009-10-01T01:55:00.016+02:00

Anarchismus und Macht in der spanischen Revolution ist als Anhang zum grossen 2003 veröffentlichten "Kommunalismus Projekt" Aufsatz, der hier demnächst in deutscher Erstübersetzung erscheint, ursrpünglich erschienen.

Anarchismus und Macht in der Spanischen Revolution
Von Murray Bookchin

In der heutigen Zeit, in der Anarchismus in radikalen Kreisen zum "mot du jour" geworden ist, ist eine eindeutige Unterscheidung zwischen einer auf Anarchie basierenden Gesellschaft und einer, die auf den Prinzipien der sozialen Ökologie beruht, von Nöten. Der wahre Anarchismus strebt vor allem die Emanzipation des Individuums von allen ethischen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Zwängen an. Dabei versäumt er, die sehr wichtige und konkrete Frage der Macht zu thematisieren, mit der alle Revolutionäre in Zeiten sozialen Wandels konfrontiert werden. Anstatt sich damit zu beschäftigen, wie Menschen, die in föderativen Volksversammlungen organisiert sind, Macht übernehmen und somit eine vollständig entwickelte, libertäre Gesellschaft erschaffen können, sehen Anarchisten Macht als das Böse schlechthin an, das es zu zerstören gilt. Proudhon hat beispielsweise einmal gesagt, dass er Macht so lange immer weiter aufteilen würde, bis sie nicht mehr existiere. Proudhons Intention dieser Aussage mag gewesen sein, jede Regierung soweit abzubauen, bis keine Instanz, die in der Lage wäre, Gewalt über den Einzelnen auszuüben, mehr existiere. Seine Aussage festigt jedoch die Illusion, dass Macht tatsächlich abgeschafft werden könne – eine Ansicht, die ebenso absurd ist wie die Idee, die Schwerkraft abzuschaffen.

Die tragischen Konsequenzen dieser Illusion, die den Anarchismus seit seiner Anfänge belastet, lassen sich am besten verstehen, indem man ein entscheidendes Ereignis der Spanischen Revolution aus dem Jahre 1936 näher untersucht. Am 21. Juli besiegten die katalanischen Arbeiter, insbesondere die der Hauptstadt Barcelona, General Francisco Francos Truppen und erhielten somit die vollständige Kontrolle über eine der größten und industrialisiertesten Provinzen Spaniens, viele wichtige Städte entlang der Mittelmeerküste sowie wichtige Agrarflächen eingeschlossen. Das katalanische Proletariat begann, teilweise aus einer überlieferten libertären Tradition heraus, teilweise durch den Einfluss der größten revolutionär-syndikalistischen Gewerkschaft Spaniens, der CNT-FAI, ein großes Netzwerk von Verteidigungs-, Nachbarschafts-, Versorgungs- und Transportwesenskomitees zu bilden und Versammlungen diesbezüglich einzuberufen, während im ländlichen Raum die wesentlich radikaleren Bauern (die einen großen Teil des Landvolks ausmachten) die Macht übernahmen und das Land kollektivierten. Katalonien sowie seine Bevölkerung wurden durch eine revolutionäre Miliz, die trotz ihrer meist veralteten Waffen dennoch so ausreichend bewaffnet war, dass sie eine gut trainierte und ausgerüstete Rebellenarmee und Polizei besiegt hatten, gegen mögliche Gegenangriffe geschützt. Die katalanischen Arbeiter und Bauern hatten in der Tat die bourgeoise Staatsmaschinerie zerstört und eine von Grund auf neue Regierung beziehungsweise politische Ordnung erschaffen, in welcher sie selbst die direkte Kontrolle über öffentliche sowie wirtschaftliche Angelegenheiten durch Institutionen, die sie selbst geschaffen hatten, ausüben konnten. Kurz gesagt: Sie hatten die Macht übernommen – und das nicht durch bloßes Ändern der Bezeichnungen existierender und unterdrückender Einrichtungen, sondern durch die buchstäbliche Zerstörung dieser alten Institutionen und die Erschaffung neuer, radikaler Einrichtungen, welche durch ihre Form und ihrem Wesen nach dem Volk das Recht gaben, über politische und wirtschaftliche Belange ihrer Region selbst zu entscheiden. (1)

Fast selbstverständlich gaben die militanten Mitglieder des CNT ihre Autorität zur Errichtung einer revolutionären Regierung an ihre Gewerkschaft ab und übergaben ihnen somit die politische Führung. Trotz ihres Rufs, keine Disziplin zu besitzen, war die Mehrheit der CNT-Mitglieder, auch cenetistas genannt, eher dem libertären Syndikalismus als dem Anarchismus zugeneigt und befürwortete eine gut strukturierte, demokratische, disziplinierte und koordinierte Organisation. Im Juli 1936 handelten sie nicht nur ihrer Ideologie entsprechend, sondern zeigten oft auch Eigeninitiative, wenn es um die Errichtung eigener libertärer Formen wie beispielsweise Nachbarschaftsräte und –versammlungen sowie Betriebsversammlungen ging. Mit einer großen Bandbreite an äußerst ungebundenen Komitees durchbrachen sie die vorbestimmten Formen, die der revolutionären Bewegung durch dogmatische Ideologen auferlegt worden waren.

Am 23. Juli, zwei Tage nach dem Sieg der Arbeiter über den örtlichen frankistischen Aufstand, trat in Barcelona ein regionales katalanisches Plenum der CNT zusammen, um über die politische Ordnung, deren Ausarbeitung die Arbeiter in die Hände der Gewerkschaft gelegt hatten, zu beraten. Einige Abgeordnete der militanten Region Bajo de Llobregat (ein Randbezirk Barcelonas) forderten mit Nachdruck die Ausrufung des libertären Kommunismus durch das Plenum und somit das Ende der alten politischen und sozialen Ordnung. Die Arbeiter, die angeblich durch die CNT vertreten wurden, boten folglich dem Plenum an, ihnen die Macht zu übergeben, die sie erobert hatten und welche durch die kämpfenden Mitglieder der Gesellschaft bereits verändert worden war.

Durch die Annahme der Macht, die ihr angeboten wurde, wäre das Plenum verpflichtet gewesen, die gesamte gesellschaftliche Ordnung in einem sehr bedeutenden und strategisch wichtigen Gebiet Spaniens, welches nun de facto unter der Kontrolle der CNT stand, zu verändern. Auch wenn diese, ebenso wie die "Pariser Kommune", nicht von langer Dauer gewesen wäre, hätte ein solcher Schritt eine "Barcelona Kommune" hervorrufen können, die längerfristig in Erinnerung geblieben wäre. Aber zum Erstaunen vieler militanter Mitglieder der Gewerkschaft waren die Mitglieder des Plenums abgeneigt, diesen entscheidenden Schritt zu gehen. Die Vertreter der Region Bajo de Llobregat sowie das militante CNT-Mitglied Juan García Olivier versuchten, das Plenum davon zu überzeugen, die Macht, die sie bereits besaßen, zu behalten. Federica Montseny und Diego Abad de Santillán (zwei Anführer der CNT) überredeten jedoch das Plenum mit ihrer Redekunst und ihren Argumenten, diesen Schritt nicht zu unternehmen, indem sie ihn als "bolschewistische Machtübernahme" denunzierten.

Der erheblichen Bedeutung dieses Fehlers sollte volle Beachtung geschenkt werden, da diese den inneren Widerspruch der anarchistischen Ideologie aufzeigt. Durch die fehlende Unterscheidung zwischen politischer Ordnung und Staat sahen die Anführer der CNT (die zum Großteil von den Anarchisten Abad de Santillán und Montseny geleitet wurde) eine Arbeiterregierung fälschlicherweise als kapitalistischen Staat an und verzichteten somit zu einer Zeit auf die politische Macht in Katalonien, zu der sie bereits über sie verfügten. Durch die Ablehnung der Ausübung der Macht, die sie bereits erlangt hatten, schaffte das Plenum nicht die Macht als solche ab – es gab sie vielmehr aus den eigenen Händen in die ihrer heimtückischen "Verbündeten". Es bedarf keiner besonderen Betonung, dass die alten herrschenden Klassen diese fatale Entscheidung bejubelten und im Herbst 1936 langsam damit begannen, eine Arbeiterregierung in einen "bourgeoisen demokratischen" Staat umzugestalten. Dadurch wurden die Türen für ein immer autoritärer werdendes, stalinistisches System geöffnet.

Es sollte noch darauf hingewiesen werden, dass das historische Plenum der CNT nicht einfach nur die Macht, welche die eigenen Gewerkschaftsmitglieder unter erheblichen menschlichen Verlusten errungen hatten, zurückwies. Durch die Ablehnung der Mitbestimmung an wesentlichen Bestandteilen des sozialen und politischen Lebens versuchte es, die Realität durch einen Tagtraum zu ersetzen – nicht nur durch die Ablehnung der Macht, welche die Arbeiter bereits in die Hände der CNT gelegt hatten, sondern auch durch die Leugnung der Legitimität von Macht und die Verdammung der Macht als solche, sogar in einer libertären, demokratischen Form, zu einem unverminderten Bösen, das vernichtet werden muss. Weder das Plenum noch die CNT-Führung wussten im Einzelnen oder Allgemeinen, was es "nach der Revolution", um den Titel einer utopischen Abhandlung von Abad de Santillán als Widerspruch zu seinem eigenen Verhalten im Plenum zu verwenden, zu tun galt. Die CNT hatte viele Jahre lang Revolutionen und Aufstände propagiert. In den frühen 1930er Jahren hatte sie immer wieder zu den Waffen gegriffen, ohne jedoch jemals in der Lage gewesen zu sein, die spanische Gesellschaft tatsächlich zu verändern. Aber als sie dann letztendlich die Möglichkeit hatte, einen bedeutenden Einfluss auf die Gesellschaft auszuüben, war sie so verblüfft über den Erfolg ihrer proletarischen Mitglieder, ihre rhetorischen Ziele auch wirklich erreicht zu haben, dass Verwirrung und Ratlosigkeit überhandnahmen. Diese Reaktion war jedoch kein Nervenversagen, es war ein Versagen des theoretischen Verständnisses der CNT-FAI bezüglich der Maßnahmen, die nötig gewesen wären, um die Macht, die sie bereits innehatten, zu behalten – ja, die sie sogar fürchteten zu behalten (und welche sie gemäß dem logischen Konzept des Anarchismus niemals hätten erhalten dürfen), da das Ziel die Abschaffung der Macht war und nicht ihre Aneignung durch das Proletariat und das Landvolk.

Wenn wir etwas aus diesem entscheidenden Fehler der CNT-Führung lernen können, dann ist es die Tatsache, dass Macht nicht abgeschafft werden kann – sie wird immer ein Bestandteil des sozialen und politischen Lebens sein. Macht, die sich nicht in den Händen der Massen befindet, muss unweigerlich in die ihrer Unterdrücker fallen. Es gibt keinen geheimen Ort, an den man sie verbannen kann, keinen Zauber, der sie verschwinden lässt, keinen übermenschlichen Bereich, in dem sie verwahrt werden könnte – und keine simplifizierende Ideologie, die sie mit Hilfe von moralischen und mystischen Beschwörungsformeln in Luft auflösen kann. Selbsternannte Radikale können versuchen diese Tatsache zu ignorieren, so wie es die Anführer der CNT im Juli 1936 taten, jedoch wird sie bei jeder Versammlung und jeder öffentlichen Aktivität im Verborgenen vorhanden sein und bei jeder Massenversammlung wieder und wieder auftreten.

Auch wenn ich Gefahr laufe mich zu wiederholen, möchte ich dennoch erneut betonen, dass das wahrhaftig entscheidende Problem, mit dem der Anarchismus konfrontiert wird, nicht die Frage ist, ob Macht weiterhin existiert, sondern, ob sie sich in den Händen einer Elite oder in denen des Volkes befindet und ob sie fortschrittlichen libertären Idealen entspricht oder den reaktionären Kräften dient. Anstatt die Macht, die der CNT durch ihre eigenen Mitglieder angeboten wurde, zurückzuweisen, hätte das Plenum diese akzeptieren und somit die von ihren Mitgliedern bereits geschaffenen, neuen Institutionen legitimieren und befürworten sollen, um somit die wirtschaftliche und politische Macht des spanischen Proletariats und Landvolks aufrecht erhalten zu können.

Stattdessen wurden die Spannungen zwischen metaphorischen Forderungen und schmerzhafter Realität letztendlich so unerträglich, dass im Mai 1937 resolute Arbeiter der CNT in Barcelona in einen offenen Kampf mit dem bourgeoisen Staat verwickelt wurden – einen kurzen, aber blutigen Krieg innerhalb des Bürgerkriegs. (2) Dieser endete schließlich mit der Niederschlagung des letzten großen Aufstands der syndikalistischen Bewegung durch den bourgeoisen Staat und forderte Hunderte, wenn nicht sogar Tausende Opfer unter den Kämpfern der CNT. Wie viele Menschen dabei getötet wurden, werden wir wohl niemals erfahren – wir wissen allerdings, dass die in sich widersprüchliche Ideologie, die Anarchosyndikalismus genannt wird, anschließend große Teile ihrer Errungenschaften, welche sie im Sommer 1936 erreicht hatten, verlor.

Sozialrevolutionäre, die das Macht-Problem nicht einfach von sich weisen, müssen die Fragestellung, wie man der Macht eine konkrete institutionelle und emanzipatorische Form geben kann, aufgreifen. In Bezug auf diese Frage zu schweigen oder sich hinter längst veralteten Ideologien, die in Bezug auf die heutige kapitalistische Entwicklung bedeutungslos geworden sind, zu verstecken, bedeutet, Revolution nur als Spiel anzusehen und die unzähligen Kämpfer, die bereit waren, alles zu opfern, um diese zu erreichen, zu verhöhnen.

Copyright "The Murray Bookchin Trust"

Anmerkungen
1. Diese revolutionären Syndikalisten konzipierten die Mittel, mit denen sie diese Transformation als eine Form der direkten Aktion verwirklichen konnten. Im Gegensatz zu den Ausschreitungen, dem Steine werfen und der Gewalt, die viele Anarchisten heutzutage als "direkte Aktion" ansehen, verstanden sie unter diesem Begriff gut organisierte und konstruktive Aktivitäten, welche direkt mit der Regelung der öffentlichen Angelegenheiten verbunden waren. Für sie bedeutete der Begriff der direkten Aktion die Bildung einer politischen Ordnung, die Errichtung öffentlicher Institutionen sowie die Ausarbeitung und Inkraftsetzung von Gesetzen, Verordnungen und Ähnlichem – Dinge, die wahre Anarchisten als eine Beschneidung des persönlichen "Willens" beziehungsweise der persönlichen "Autonomie" ansahen.

2. Im Laufe des Jahres hatten die Anführer der CNT erkannt, dass ihre Zurückweisung der Machtübernahme im Auftrag des katalanischen Proletariats und Landvolks nicht zugleich einen Machtverlust für sie als Individuen bedeutete. Etliche Führungskräfte der CNT-FAI waren sogar bereit, sich an dem bourgeoisen Staat als Minister zu beteiligen und hatten im Mai 1937, als die Mitglieder ihrer Gewerkschaft im Kampf von Barcelona unterdrückt wurden, ein Amt inne.

Copyright "The Murray Bookchin Trust"

Anhang:
Literatur zum Thema "Libertärer Kommunalismus" von Murray Bookchin:
Die Grenzen der Stadt, Berlin: Verlag Eduard Jakobsohn 1977 [Engl. u. d. T.: The Limits of the City, 1974]
Hierarchie und Herrschaft. Hrsg. von Bernd Leineweber und Karl-Ludwig Schiebel, Berlin: Verlag Karin Kramer 1981
Thesen zum Kommunalismus, in: Schwarzer Faden. Vierteljahresschrift für Lust und Freiheit, H. 19 (1985), S. 15-22
Die Ökologie der Freiheit. Wir brauchen keine Hierarchien, Weinheim und Basel: Beltz Verlag 1985
Die Neugestaltung der Gesellschaft. Pfade in eine ökologische Zukunft, Grafenau: Trotzdem Verlag 1992 [Engl. u. d. T.: Remaking Society, 1990]
Die Agonie der Stadt. Städte ohne Bürger oder Aufstieg und Niedergang des freien Bürgers, Grafenau: Trotzdem Verlag 1996 [Engl. u. d. T.: From Urbanization to Cities. Toward a New Politics of Citizenship, 1996]
The Third Revolution. Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, London und New York: Cassell 1996
Social Ecology and Communalism, Oakland, CA: AK Press 2007

Link zur englischen Originalfassung:
http://www.communalism.org/Archive/02/ap.print.html

2009-10-01T01:06:00.022+02:00

Kommunalisierung:
Die Wirtschaft als Eigentum der Kommunen*
Murray Bookchin

In meinem Artikel "Thesen zum libertären Kommunalismus" vertrat ich die Ansicht, daß sich zusammen mit jeder Gegenkultur, die zu der vorherrschenden Kultur existiert, auch Gegeninstitutionen zu den vorherrschenden existierenden Institutionen entwickeln müssen, damit eine dezentralisierte, föderative und von den Bürgern einer Kommune ausgehende Macht entstehen kann, welche die Kontrolle über das soziale und politische Leben, das zur Zeit noch vom zentralisierten, bürokratischen Nationalstaat beansprucht wird, erlangt.

Über weite Teile des 19. und fast der Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts waren die radikalen Ideologien in den Fabriken das altbewährte Zentrum einer vom Volk ausgehenden Macht; dort wurden die Kämpfe zwischen Lohnarbeit und Kapital ausgefochten. Die Fabrik als Ort der Machtfrage anzusehen, basierte auf der Ansicht, daß die industrielle Arbeiterklasse der hegemoniale Vertreter für einen radikalen gesellschaftlichen Wandel war und daß sie durch ihre eigenen Klasseninteressen "angetrieben" wurde, den Kapitalismus zu "stürzen" – um die Sprache des Radikalismus dieser Ära zu benutzen – meist durch bewaffnete Aufstände und revolutionäre Generalstreiks. Danach würde ein eigenes System der sozialen Verwaltung aufgebaut werden – entweder in der Form eines Arbeiterstaates (Marxismus) oder in Form von föderativen Betriebsräten (Anarchosyndikalismus).

Blickt man aus der heutigen Zeit in die Geschichte zurück, so ist zu erkennen, daß der Spanische Bürgerkrieg in den Jahren 1936 bis 1939 der letzte historische Versuch einer scheinbar revolutionären europäischen Arbeiterklasse war, diesem Modell zu folgen. In den 50 Jahren, die seitdem (nahezu bis zu dem Monat dieser Aufzeichnung) vergangen sind, ist es offensichtlich geworden, daß die große revolutionäre Welle der späten dreißiger Jahre zugleich Höhepunkt und Ende der Ära des proletarischen Sozialismus und Anarchismus darstellte; einer Ära, die bis zu den ersten Arbeiteraufständen der Geschichte zurückreicht: beispielsweise dem Aufstand der Pariser Handwerker und Arbeiter im Juni 1848, bei dem Barrikaden in der französischen Hauptstadt unter roten Fahnen errichtet wurden. In den darauf folgenden Jahren, insbesondere nach den 1930ern, schlugen die eingeschränkten Versuche, dieses altbewährte Modell der proletarischen Revolution zu wiederholen, fehl (Ungarn, Tschechoslowakei, Ostdeutschland und Polen); tatsächlich verschwanden die tragischen Anklänge dieser großartigen Beweggründe, Ideale und Bemühungen in den Geschichtsbüchern.

Abgesehen von aufständischen bäuerlichen Bewegungen in der dritten Welt nimmt niemand, außer einigen dogmatischen Sektierern, die Modelle des Junis 1848, der Pariser Kommune des Jahres 1871, der Russischen Revolution von 1917 und der Spanischen Revolution von 1936 ernst. Die Gründe hierfür liegen zum Teil in der Tatsache begründet, daß der Typ der Arbeiterklasse, der diese Revolutionen durchführte, fast vollständig durch den technologischen und sozialen Wandel verschwand, zum Teil aber auch darin, daß die Waffen und Barrikaden, die diesen Revolutionen ein Minimum an Macht verliehen hatten, angesichts des immensen militärischen Rüstzeugs der heutigen Nationalstaaten nur noch symbolischen Charakter besitzen.

Es existiert aber noch eine andere Tradition, die lange Zeit Teil des europäischen und amerikanischen Radikalismus war: der Ausbau einer libertären kommunalen Politik; einer neuen Politik, die in Kleinstädten, Stadtvierteln und Großstädten aufgebaut wurde und Bürgerversammlungen beinhaltete; eine freie Föderation von lokalen, regionalen und letztendlich kontinentalen Netzwerken. Dieses Modell, welches vor über einem Jahrhundert unter anderem durch Proudhon, Bakunin und Kropotkin (weiter)entwickelt wurde, stellt mehr als eine ideologische Tradition dar: Es tauchte wiederholt als zuverlässige und gängige Praxis bei den Comuneros im Spanien des 16. Jahrhunderts, der amerikanischen Städteversammlungsbewegung, die sich in den 1770er Jahren von Neu-England nach Charleston ausweitete, den Pariser Sektionsversammlungen der frühen 1790er Jahre und wiederholt in der Zeit zwischen der 1871er Pariser Kommune und der Madrider Bürgerbewegung in den 1960er und frühen 1970er Jahren auf.

Der libertäre Kommunalismus kommt, geradezu ununterdrückbar, immer wieder als Bewegung von unten auf, wann immer Menschen etwas verändern wollen – ungeachtet aller auf dem Proletariat basierenden radikalen Dogmen – wie zum Beispiel bei dem "kommunalen Sozialismus", dem sich die Menschen in England heute zuwenden, den radikalen kommunalen Vereinigungen in den USA und den weit verbreiteten städtischen Bewegungen in ganz Westeuropa und Nordamerika im allgemeinen. Diese Bewegungen basieren nicht mehr auf den üblichen grundsätzlichen Klassenfragen, die den Fabriken entstammten, sie beruhen auf umfassenden, anspruchsvollen Sachverhalten, die von Umwelt- über Wachstums- und Unterkunfts- bis hin zu Versorgungsproblemen reichen – Probleme, die alle Kommunen der Welt bewegen. Sie überschreiten die traditionellen Klassengrenzen und bringen Menschen in Räten, Versammlungen und Bürgerinitiativen zusammen, meist ungeachtet ihrer beruflichen Herkunft und wirtschaftlichen Interessen. Sie haben etwas erreicht, was dem traditionellen proletarischen Sozialismus und Anarchismus nie gelungen ist: Sie bringen Menschen aus dem Mittelstand sowie der Arbeiterklasse, Land- sowie Stadtbevölkerung, gelernte sowie ungelernte Personen, ja sogar konservative und liberale Menschen sowie radikale Traditionen in gemeinschaftlichen Bewegungen zusammen, so daß man tatsächlich von der Möglichkeit einer wahren Volksbewegung sprechen kann und nicht bloß von einer klassenorientierten Bewegung, bei der die Industriearbeiter immer nur die Minderheit der Bevölkerung darstellten. In dieser Art von Bewegung wird die Realität des "Volkes", auf der die großen demokratischen Revolutionen ideologisch basierten, bis sie sich in Klassen- und Gruppeninteressen teilten, implizit wiederhergestellt. Die Geschichte scheint tatsächlich das in der heutigen Welt wieder aufleben zu lassen, was einmal ein vorläufiges und vergängliches Ideal der Aufklärung war und von welchem die amerikanischen und französischen Revolutionen des 18. Jahrhunderts herrührten. Zum ersten Mal ist die Vorstellung möglich, die Mehrheit und nicht nur Minderheitsbewegungen, welche während der vergangenen zwei Jahrhunderte des proletarischen Sozialismus und Anarchismus existierten, zu einem bedeutenden sozialen Wandel zu bewegen.

Radikale Ideologen neigen dazu, diese außergewöhnlichen kommunalen Bewegungen mit Skepsis zu betrachten und versuchen, wenn möglich, diese durch traditionelle Klassenprogramme und -analysen zu vereinnahmen. Die Madrider Bürgerbewegung der 1960er Jahre wurde faktisch durch Radikale aller Bereiche des politischen Spektrums zerstört, da sie versuchten, einen aufrichtigen und weit verbreiteten kommunalen Versuch zu beeinflussen, welcher dazu gedacht war, Spanien zu demokratisieren und der menschlichen kommunalen Gemeinschaft eine neue kooperative und ethische Bedeutung zu geben. Die Madrider Bürgerbewegung wurde zu einem Terrain für die Erstarkung der politischen Bestrebungen der Sozialisten, Kommunisten und anderer marxistisch-leninistischer Gruppen, bis sie fast vollständig durch deren jeweilige Parteiinteressen unterwandert wurde.

Diese Bewegungen des libertären Kommunalismus stellen heutzutage die einzig mögliche Alternative zum Nationalstaat dar und bilden somit einen wichtigen Bereich für die Formierung einer aktiven Bürgerschaft sowie einer neuen Form der Politik, welche volksnah und persönlich ist und wahrhaftig von den Bürgern ausgeht. Diese neue Form der Politik soll an dieser Stelle jedoch nicht noch einmal untersucht werden, da bereits weitere Schriften des Autors zu diesem Thema existieren. In bezug auf die Gegenwart ist es allerdings notwendig, eine sehr wichtige Frage zu stellen: Ist der libertäre Kommunalismus lediglich ein politisches "Modell", wie umfassend das Wort "Politik" auch immer definiert wird, oder bezieht er das wirtschaftliche Leben mit ein?

Die Tatsache, daß die Sichtweise des libertären Kommunalismus unvereinbar mit der "Verstaatlichung der Wirtschaft" ist, welche nur die Rechtsbefugnis des Nationalstaates über die wirtschaftliche Macht bekräftigt, ist zu offensichtlich, um sie abzustreiten. Genauso wenig kann das Wort "libertär", wie durch die ultraliberalen Verfechter des freien Marktes (beispielsweise die Gefolgsleute von Ayn Rand und weitere) geschehen, benutzt werden, um Privateigentum und einen "freien Markt" zu rechtfertigen. Marx seinerseits zeigte eindeutig auf, daß der freie Markt zwangsläufig den oligarchischen und monopolistischen Markt mit unternehmerischen Machenschaften hervorbringt, der in jeder Hinsicht vergleichbar mit staatlicher Kontrolle ist und sich letztendlich dieser annähert.

Doch was ist mit dem syndikalistischen Ideal der "kollektivierten", selbstverwalteten Unternehmen, welche durch Zusammenschlüsse von Berufssparten auf nationaler und durch "Kollektive" auf lokaler Ebene koordiniert wurden? An dieser Stelle trifft die traditionelle sozialistische Kritik gegenüber dieser syndikalistischen Form des Wirtschaftens zu: Der industrielle oder private Kapitalist, ob nun durch Arbeiter kontrolliert oder nicht, gehört ironischerweise einer Methode der Betriebsführung an, die heutzutage durch die "Arbeitsplatz-Demokratie" und den "Belegschaftsbesitz" sehr in Mode gekommen ist und keine Bedrohung für das Privateigentum und den Kapitalismus darstellt. Auch die spanischen anarchosyndikalistischen Kollektive der Jahre 1936/37 befanden sich unter der Kontrolle der Gewerkschaften und erwiesen sich als sehr anfällig für die Zentralisierung und Bürokratisierung, welche in vielen wohlgemeinten Unternehmen nach einer gewissen Zeitspanne auftraten. In der Mitte des Jahres 1937 hatten die Arbeiter bereits die Kontrolle über die Produktion an die Gewerkschaften verloren, allen gegenteiligen Forderungen der Verfechter der CNT zum Trotz. Unter dem Druck anarchistischer Minister der katalanischen Regierung wie [Diego] Abad de Santillán näherten sie sich der verstaatlichten Wirtschaft an, die durch die marxistischen Elemente in der spanischen Linken verfochten wurde.

Wie dem auch sei, wirtschaftliche Demokratie bedeutet nicht nur "Arbeitsplatz-Demokratie" und "Belegschaftsbesitz". Viele Arbeiter würden, wenn sie könnten, lieber ihren Betrieben den Rücken kehren und einer kreativeren, handwerklichen Arbeit nachgehen, als nur an der "Planung" ihres eigenen Elends teilzuhaben. Wirtschaftliche Demokratie bedeutet im tiefsten Sinn den freien, demokratischen Zugang zu allen lebensnotwendigen Mitteln und bildet somit das Gegenstück zu politischer Demokratie, welche die Freiheit von materiellen Nöten garantiert. Wirtschaftliche Demokratie als "Belegschaftsbesitz" und "Arbeitsplatz-Demokratie" neu zu interpretieren ist eine Hinterlist der Bourgeoisie, an der sich viele Radikale unbewußt beteiligen. Dieses führt so weit, daß wirtschaftliche Demokratie nicht mehr Freiheit von der Tyrannei der Betriebe, rationalisierter Arbeit und Planproduktion bedeutet, sondern die Beteiligung der Arbeiter am Gewinn und an der Betriebsführung, was normalerweise ausbeuterische Produktion unter Beteiligung der Arbeiter ist.

Der libertäre Kommunalismus stellt einen wesentlichen Fortschritt gegenüber all diesen Entwürfen dar, indem er sich für die Kommunalisierung sowie für die Führung der Wirtschaft durch die Kommunen als Teil einer Politik der öffentlichen Selbstverwaltung der Bürger ausspricht. Während die syndikalistischen Alternativen die Wirtschaft in selbstverwaltete Kollektive reprivatisieren und somit den Weg für deren Zerfall in traditionelle Formen des Privateigentums, ob nun im Kollektivbesitz oder nicht, ebnen, politisiert der libertäre Kommunalismus die Wirtschaft und bringt sie in Allgemeinbesitz. Weder Betriebe noch die Landwirtschaft werden als getrennte Belange innerhalb der kommunalen Gemeinschaft angesehen. Ebensowenig können Arbeiter, Bauern, Techniker, Ingenieure, Facharbeiter und dergleichen ihre beruflichen Identitäten von den allgemeinen Interessen der Bürger in der Kommune trennen. Das Eigentum ist als materieller Bestandteil des libertären institutionellen Rahmens, als Teil eines größeren Ganzen in die Kommune eingebunden und wird durch die bürgerliche Gesellschaft mittels Versammlungen kontrolliert, an denen die Menschen als Bürger teilnehmen, und nicht als Interessenvertreter einer berufsbezogenen Gruppe.

Ebenso ist die Antithese zwischen Stadt und Land von großer Bedeutung und ein wesentlicher Teil der radikalen Theorie sowie der Sozialgeschichte. Der Gegensatz von Stadt und Land wird in den "Townships", den traditionellen Verwaltungseinheiten in Neuengland, in der eine Stadt als Kern ihrer landwirtschaftlichen und dörflichen Umgebung fungiert und dieser nicht entgegensteht, aufgehoben. Ein Township ist tatsächlich eine kleine Region inmitten größerer, wie etwa das "County" und die "Bioregion".

Das beschriebene Konzept der Kommunalisierung der Wirtschaft muß von der Verstaatlichung sowie der Vergesellschaftung unterschieden werden – erstere führt zu bürokratischer und hierarchischer Kontrolle und letztere zum voraussichtlichen Entstehen einer privatisierten Wirtschaft in einer kollektivierten Form und dem Fortbestehen von Klassen- oder Kastenidentitäten. Die Kommunalisierung bewirkt, daß sich die Wirtschaft faktisch von einem privaten oder einzelnen zu einem öffentlichen Einflußbereich ausweitet, indem die Wirtschaftspolitik durch die gesamte Gesellschaft gestaltet wird – insbesondere, da die Bürger von Angesicht zu Angesicht an dem Erreichen von allgemeinen menschlichen Interessen arbeiten und somit einzelne berufsbezogene Interessen überwunden werden. Die Wirtschaft wird dadurch aufhören, lediglich eine Wirtschaft im wörtlichen Sinne zu sein – sei es als Geschäfts-, Markt-, kapitalistisches oder durch Arbeiter kontrolliertes Unternehmen. Sie wird zu einer wahrhaft politischen Ökonomie, einer Wirtschaft der Polis oder der Kommune. In diesem Sinne wird die Wirtschaft wirklich kommunalisiert und politisiert. Die Kommune, genauer gesagt, die Körperschaft der Bürger in der kommunalen Versammlung, integriert sie als einen Aspekt der öffentlichen Angelegenheit und verhindert somit die Möglichkeit der Privatisierung der Wirtschaft zu eigennützigen Unternehmen.

Doch was kann die Kommunalisierung davor bewahren, ein eingeschränkter Stadtstaat von der Art, wie sie im späten Mittelalter auftraten, zu werden? Wer an dieser Stelle garantierte Lösungen dieses Problems erwartet, wird sie nicht finden, abgesehen von der Leitrolle des Bewußtseins und der Ethik zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen. Wenn man aber nach Gegentendenzen Ausschau hält, so existiert eine zu postulierende Antwort. Der wichtigste Einzelfaktor, der zu dem spätmittelalterlichen Stadtstaat führte, war seine innere hierarchische Unterteilung. Diese war nicht nur die Folge der Vermögensunterschiede, sondern auch der Standesränge, die ihren Ursprung zum Teil in der Abstammung, aber auch in beruflichen Unterschieden hatten. So wie die Stadt ihre kollektive Einheit verlor, teilten sich auch ihre Angelegenheiten in private und öffentliche Unternehmen auf und selbst das öffentliche Leben als solches wurde privatisiert und in "blue nails" oder Plebejer, die Stoffe in Städten wie Florenz färbten, und der arroganten Handwerkerschicht, die hochwertige Ware herstellten, unterteilt. In der privatisierten Wirtschaft war der Vermögensstand sehr ausschlaggebend, da materielle Unterschiede die Art der hierarchischen Differenzen ausweiten und fördern konnten.

Die Kommunalisierung der Wirtschaft neutralisiert nicht nur die beruflichen Unterschiede, welche die öffentlich kontrollierte Wirtschaft beeinträchtigen könnten, sie schafft ebenso kommunale Verteilungsnetzwerke für die lebensnotwendigen materiellen Mittel. "Von jedem gemäß seiner Möglichkeiten, für jeden gemäß seiner Bedürfnisse" wird als Teil der sogenannten öffentlichen Sphäre und nicht nur als kommunales Credo ideologisch institutionalisiert. Sie ist nicht nur ein Ziel, sondern eine Art des politischen Wirkens – eine, die strukturell durch die Kommune mit ihren Versammlungen und Vertretungen verkörpert wird.

Zudem kann keine Kommune das Erreichen wirtschaftlicher Unabhängigkeit erhoffen oder sollte dies anstreben, es sei denn, sie hofft, abgekapselt und eingeschränkt zu sein, jedoch nicht autark. Daher ist es wichtig, daß die Föderation der Kommunen – die Kommune der Kommunen – sowohl wirtschaftlich als auch politisch in eine gemeinsame Sphäre von öffentlich verwalteten Ressourcen verändert wird. Gerade weil die Verwaltung der Wirtschaft eine öffentliche Handlung darstellt, wird sie nicht zu einem privatisierten Wechselspiel der Unternehmen, sondern entwickelt sich zu einem föderativen Zusammenwirken der Kommunen. Das bedeutet, daß die eigentlichen Elemente des sozialen Zusammenwirkens von realen, potentiellen oder privatisierten Bestandteilen zu institutionellen, realen, öffentlichen Bestandteilen ausgedehnt werden. Die Föderation wird per definitionem zu einem öffentlichen Projekt und dies nicht nur wegen der gemeinsamen Bedürfnisse und Ressourcen. Wenn es einen Weg gibt, die Entstehung eines Stadtstaates zu verhindern, ohne von eigennützigen, gutbürgerlichen "Kooperativen" zu sprechen, dann ist es die Kommunalisierung des politischen Lebens, welche so vollkommen ist, daß die Politik nicht nur die öffentliche Sphäre umfaßt, sondern auch die lebensnotwendigen materiellen Mittel.

Es ist nicht utopisch nach der Kommunalisierung der Wirtschaft zu streben. Ganz im Gegenteil, sie ist praxisnah und durchführbar, wenn wir nur unseren Verstand so frei benutzen, wie wir versuchen, in unserem Leben Freiheit zu erlangen. Unser Lebensraum ist nicht nur der Ort, an dem wir unseren Alltag leben, er ist ebenso der tatsächliche wirtschaftliche Ort, an dem wir arbeiten, und seine natürliche Umgebung ist die tatsächliche ökologische Umgebung, die uns herausfordert, im Einklang mit der Natur zu leben. Dort können wir damit beginnen, nicht nur die ethischen Bande, die uns zu einer aufrichtigen ökologischen Gesellschaft verknüpfen werden, zu entwickeln, sondern auch die materiellen Bande, die uns zu fähigen, ermächtigten und selbstversorgenden – wenn nicht sogar unabhängigen – Menschen machen können. Sofern eine Kommune oder eine lokale Föderation von Kommunen politisch vereint ist, bleibt sie trotzdem eine recht zerbrechliche Form der Gemeinschaft. Sofern sie jedoch die Kontrolle über ihr eigenes materielles Leben besitzt, allerdings nicht im Sinne einer Gemeinde, die sich in einen privatisierten Stadtstaat verwandelt, so hat sie wirtschaftliche Macht und somit auch eine ausschlaggebende Stärkung ihrer politischen Macht.

* Teile dieses Artikels wurden der neuen und ergänzten Ausgabe des Buches "The Limits of the City" von Murray Bookchin entnommen (Montreal, Black Rose Books, 3981 Ste.-Laurent Blvd., Montreal H2W IY5, Quebec, Canada, 1986). [Zuerst erschienen u. d. T.: Municipalization. Community Ownership of the Economy, in: Green Perspectives. Newsletter of the Green Program Project, February 1986, Nr. 2; siehe auch: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/gp/perspectives2.html#2.]

1Theses On Libertarian Municipalism, in: Our Generation, Jg. 16 (Spring-Summer 1985), Nr. 3-4, S. 9-22; erhältlich bei: Our Generation, 3981 Ste.-Laurent Blvd., Montreal H2W IY5, Quebec, Canada.

2 Um einen Überblick über die 50 Jahre nach dem Spanischen Bürgerkrieg zu erhalten, siehe meine Artikel: On Spanish Anarchism, in: Our Generation, 1986, und The Spanish Civil War. After Fifty Years, in: New Politics, Jg. 1 (Spring 1986), Nr. 1, New Series; erhältlich bei: New Politics, 328 Clinton St., Brooklyn NY 11231. Für Hintergrundinformationen zu dem Thema siehe: Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists. The Heroic Period 1868-1936, (Harper & Row); To Remember Spain-The Anarchist and Syndicalist Revolution of 1936, (AKPress) und Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution-Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, Volume 4 S. 95-236, (Continuum Publishing).

3 Dies war schon immer die größte Schwäche der revolutionären Bewegungen der Arbeiterklasse und führte in den wenigen Fällen, in denen sie teilweise erfolgreich waren, zu schmerzlichen Bürgerkriegen.

4 Vgl. The Greening of Politics. Toward a New Kind of Political Practice, in: Green Perspectives, January 1986, Nr. 1; Popular Politics vs. Party Politics, in: Green Program Project Discussion Paper. Vgl. auch The Limits of the City.

5 Die Absurdität, zu glauben, daß man die großen Unternehmen so umgestalten bzw. davon überzeugen könnte, daß Habgier und Profit quasi "moralisiert" würden, ist ein typisches Beispiel für die liberale Naivität, die sogar in der tausendjährigen Geschichte des Katholizismus nicht erreicht wurde. Filme wie "The Formula" lehren uns mehr über unternehmerische "Moral" und "Produktivität" als die Masse an Büchern und Artikeln, die von den vielen reformistischen Zeitschriften veröffentlicht werden.

6 Vgl. Lewis Mumfords großartige Erörterung der Townships in Neuengland in "The City in History" (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World 1961, S. 331-333). Mumford behandelt die Townships leider als eine Form der Vergangenheit. Mein Interesse an diesem Thema stammt von Studien in meinem Heimatstaat Vermont, in dem, trotz vieler Veränderungen, die Integration von Stadt und Land noch immer territorial und legal durch Stadtversammlungen institutionalisiert wird. Obwohl diese politische Form in Neuengland immer mehr abnimmt, sind ihre Durchführbarkeit sowie ihr Wert ein Gegenstand der Geschichtsschreibung, nicht der theoretischen Mutmaßung.

7 [Anm. d. Übers.: in etwa "Landkreis".]

Anhang:
Literatur zum Thema "Libertärer Kommunalismus" von Murray Bookchin:
Die Grenzen der Stadt, Berlin: Verlag Eduard Jakobsohn 1977 [Engl. u. d. T.: The Limits of the City, 1974]
Hierarchie und Herrschaft. Hrsg. von Bernd Leineweber und Karl-Ludwig Schiebel, Berlin: Verlag Karin Kramer 1981
Thesen zum Kommunalismus, in: Schwarzer Faden. Vierteljahresschrift für Lust und Freiheit, H. 19 (1985), S. 15-22
Die Ökologie der Freiheit. Wir brauchen keine Hierarchien, Weinheim und Basel: Beltz Verlag 1985
Die Neugestaltung der Gesellschaft. Pfade in eine ökologische Zukunft, Grafenau: Trotzdem Verlag 1992 [Engl. u. d. T.: Remaking Society, 1990]
Die Agonie der Stadt. Städte ohne Bürger oder Aufstieg und Niedergang des freien Bürgers, Grafenau: Trotzdem Verlag 1996 [Engl. u. d. T.: From Urbanization to Cities. Toward a New Politics of Citizenship, 1996]
The Third Revolution. Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, London und New York: Cassell 1996
Social Ecology and Communalism, Oakland, CA: AK Press 2007

Eine pdf Datei des deutschen Textes ist hier zu finden:

http://www.freigeistmusic.org/Bookchin-deutsch.pdf

Der Link zur englischen Originalfassung:
MUNICIPALIZATION: Community Ownership of the Economy
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/gp/perspectives2.html