All Politics Are Municipal: A Review of “From Urbanization to Cities”
Green New Deal advocates are wise to target federal investment on the climate crisis. But a municipal focus has its own much needed place, centering renewed citizenship, direct democracy, and ecological values. Murray Bookchin can help us create more democratic, ecological societies in the local places where we live, work, and play.
Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash
Ecological politics in the twenty-first century is playing out in the world's cities. Cities use over 75 percent of the world's energy and produce more than 60 percent of humanity’s greenhouse gasses. 7 out of 10 people will live in cities by 2050, many of them increasingly vulnerable to deadly heat and rising seas. To survive and prosper over the coming decades, an agenda for and by cities is essential. Aside from our ecological crisis, democracy is developing its own problems. With authoritarian strongmen on the rise and a retreat from democracy around the globe, the twin problems of ecology and democracy are increasingly intertwined, and could become more so in a world full of resource-driven conflicts. To advance the cause of climate justice and meaningfully respond to where the ecological crisis is most pronounced, we need to expand modern conceptions of what democracy is and looks like. The municipality is a great place to start.
In his newly republished book, From Urbanization to Cities: The Politics of Democratic Municipalism, Murray Bookchin provides a vision for municipal politics based on reclaiming the city as a center for renewed citizenship, direct democracy, and ecological values. The late Bookchin, a twentieth century political philosopher, is most famous for developing a school of ecological philosophy called social ecology with a simple maxim: the ecological crisis is a social crisis. Unlike the biocentric philosophies developed during Bookchin’s time that argued for a repair of human-nonhuman relationships first and foremost, social ecologists believe humans dominating nature stems from humans dominating humans. It is by developing relationships and institutions that eliminate hierarchy and foster cooperation between other human beings, Bookchin believes, that we can develop a harmonious relationship with the rest of nonhuman nature.
For Bookchin, the city historically represented the pinnacle of democratic decision making, active citizenship, and robust communal life. What cities represent today instead, he argues, is homogenous urban sprawl that has simplified and dominated both human and nonhuman life. By catering to middle class suburbanites, commercial interests, and specializing in bureaucratic government, 20th century cities went through a process Bookchin calls “urbanization.” “Cities today,” he writes, “Are typically measured more by their success as business enterprises than cultural foci. The ability of an urban entity to ‘balance its budget,’ to operate ‘efficiently,’ to ‘maximize’ its service with minimal cost, all of these are regarded as the hallmark of municipal success. Corporate models form the ideal examples of urban models, and civic leaders take greater pride in their managerial skills than in their intellectual abilities.”
In From Urbanization to Cities, Bookchin concerns himself with themes such as the origins of the nation-state, ideal citizenship, and historical examples of direct democracy in order to reclaim the city from ongoing urbanization and implement what he calls ‘democratic municipalism’. As the introduction’s author, Sixtine Van Outryve d’Ydewalle, explains, “The political philosophy of [democratic] municipalism asks: What is the main political unit for a people to govern itself? And how should public power be exercised?” Bookchin advocates for the municipality as the political unit to realize direct democracy since this is the place where people can meet face-to-face, deliberate, and make decisions together rather than through representatives.
For Bookchin, representative or republican democracy is not real democracy since it separates people from directly making decisions that impact them, and instead relies on someone else, usually an elite, to represent people who are capable in and of themselves to govern their collective lives. These representatives become unaccountable bureaucrats, often serving corporate interests in the attempt to entrench their own power. States, for Bookchin, institutionalize hierarchy through these representatives in all levels of governance, becoming more and more unaccountable the higher you go. Direct democracy, according to Bookchin, through forms such as citizens assemblies, provide practical and effective institutions that can be implemented across the globe to counter an increasingly hierarchical republicanism and help replace the nation-state.
Two of the examples Bookchin draws on for fostering democratic municipalism come from the forms of “direct democracy” practiced in Ancient Greece and New England. In Ancient Greece, the most radical institution for democratic governance was the ekklesia, or citizen assembly. In the case of Athens, thousands of (male) Athenians would gather on a hill (the Pnyx) multiple times a month to elect officials, declare war, make proposals, among other deliberations. Once decisions were made, a group of five hundred elected citizens called the Boule were tasked with executing the resolutions made by the assembly. The distinction between the Boule, who we would refer to today as something like elected officials and administrators, and the members of the assembly, marks a clear difference in Athenian society between policy, in which citizens involved in the assembly made decisions, and administration, where a group of people are tasked with delivering on the decisions made by the assembly. In much of today's politics, administration is to serve representatives rather than any direct relationship with or responsibility to the citizens of a community. In Ancient Athens however, politics was the business of everyday people. Direct participation was taken so seriously that a police force was formed to patrol the agora (the central gathering place in Athens), targeting loiterers in order to make them attend the assemblies. Such a contrast is remarkable in a time where not even 50 per cent of the US population vote in midterm elections, and many politicians work hard to suppress those who do.
Athenian democracy did not come just in the form of the citizens’ assembly. Rather, Bookchin observes, democracy and political education imbued the culture and character of everyday Athens through “education in citizenship” or what is called paideia in Greek. He writes, “Excellence in public life was as crucial to an Athenian’s character development as excellence in his personal life. The polis was not only a treasured end in itself; it was the ‘school’ in which the citizen’s highest virtues were formed and found expression. Politics, in turn, was not only concerned with administering the affairs of the polis but also with educating the citizen as a public being who developed the competence to act in the public interest.” Paideia, then, served as a kind of pervasive civic schooling that imbued the culture and personal lives of each individual, developing a sense of organic responsibility towards their polis.
The citizen assembly form of democratic participation was not isolated to Ancient Greece. In fact, the United States has its own version of the ekklesia today. Where I live in Vermont (a couple of hours south of where Bookchin started the Institute for Social Ecology), my community and I are weeks away from our annual town meeting. New England-style town meetings are arguably the most democratic form of participation we have in the US, though few people have ever heard of them. Dating back to 1633, when the first town meeting was held in Massachusetts, the practice expanded to other states over the coming decades. Every year since, members from towns all across New England come together to discuss and vote on local policy, the town’s budget, elect local officials, and consider other matters that impact the people and place. Often, meetings will last well into the night, people take work off, and voters have direct control over the direction of their communities.
Votes typically happen in two ways at town meeting. First, there are floor votes, where, with an elected moderator who runs the meeting, voters speak for themselves in an open and transparent way designed for discourse among the group. Imagine hundreds or thousands of people gathered in a town hall or school in which an individual measure is taken up and any participant can voice their opposition, propose amendments, persuade others, and so on. A second method is the “Australian Ballot,” where voters vote in private booths, similar to what many of us do in November but serving more as a “direct democracy ballot” than only a vote for representatives. Most town meetings include both forms and are able to accomplish a variety of things with more direct say from citizens. This might include rewriting local taxes, creating jobs, or developing sustainability policies that the town can implement.
For instance, members of Brattleboro, Vermont’s town meeting created a Sustainability Coordinator position with the local municipality after a group of citizens brought up the proposal at their annual town meeting. In the end, the elected select-board voted against the measure, but the citizens of Brattleboro voted in favor of creating the position where it ultimately was. Another example concerns the citizens of Arlington, Massachusetts where a group of climate activists developed a policy to ban gas-hookups in new buildings. The policy was passed by the town meeting participants (only to be blocked by Massachusetts state law), providing a basis for other towns and cities across the country to organize on similar measures.
This is not to say Bookchin sees either Ancient Greek democracy or the New England town meeting as perfect. In Ancient Athens, after all, "direct democracy" was far from universal, since women and many men could not participate at all. Athens’ economy, meanwhile, was based on the labor of enslaved people who also could not participate politically. Democracy in Athens was reserved for a small, privileged class of citizens, which is far from the universal democracy advocated by Bookchin. Similarly, the New England town meeting excluded women from voting until 1920 and is based in societies whose origin can be traced to the dispossession and eradication of peoples who practiced equally, if not more, democratic political forms, such as The Iroquois Confederacy. Bookchin saw sexism and racism as among the most pernicious forms of domination in our society, where colonial powers and Ancient societies were some of its worst perpetrators. This is why Bookchin’s philosophy is rooted in addressing domination: whether capitalism, sexism, or racism, each exists to develop hierarchies for domination. For Bookchin, direct democracy cannot exist so long as hierarchy and exclusion are characteristics of any purported form of decision making. A recognition of this past, Bookchin tells us, and the choice to not replicate it through inclusive and universal forms of democratic decision making is imperative if we are to really say we have a democracy.
Even in eventually overcoming its direct forms of sexist and racist exclusion, New England town meeting still has its own unique problems, and some are beginning to wonder if it is an outdated or inaccessible model for decision making. This is due to limitations in who is able to attend town meeting. Although legally open to all, town meeting often happens on a weekday and participants are provided little (if any) compensation for their attendance. This serves as a deterrent for working class and poor people, and often falling along racial lines as well. Even with its flaws, town meeting historian Frank Bryan calls it a “paragon of political virtue compared to the way other people participate in politics.” Speaking from experience, town meeting is one of the rare times I felt like I was actually a part of a political democracy, rather than a subject of unaccountable and opaque bureaucracies.
Ultimately, Bookchin’s theory for instituting democratic municipalism relies on a “dual power” approach where independent municipalities rival the state through the creation of institutions and democratic forms—like assemblies—in order to regain local power and control. This approach is explicitly designed to delegitimize and hollow out the state, leading to its demise through the formation of a “commune of communes” which provides the basis for a democratic municipal confederacy. Bookchin writes, “Such a movement can be expected to begin slowly, perhaps sporadically, in communities here and there that initially may demand only the moral authority to alter the structuring of society before enough interlinked confederations exist to demand the outright institutional power to replace the State.”
While some might scoff at Bookchin’s disdain for the state, there is much that a broad coalition of people can get behind in Bookchin’s political program. Instituting robust forms of local democratic decision making and control could help alleviate the pervasive feeling and reality that republican democracy is failing. People increasingly see politicians' promises being broken and voters' voices thereby ignored. Simply advocating for “voting rights” is not sufficient to repair twenty-first century democracy. For that, we need direct democracy.
In today's world, towns and cities can begin local and national campaigns to advance direct democracy across the country and internationally. Fortunately, institutions such as citizen assemblies are gaining in popularity: one of Extinction Rebellion's key demands, for example, are citizen assemblies. Cooperation Jackson, a network of cooperatives started in Jackson Mississippi, calls for a “People’s Assembly” as a part of their Jackson-Kush Plan. Rojava (or the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) is directly influenced by Bookchin’s ideas and has implemented citizen assemblies of their own to its over 2 million citizens. Ireland’s referendum to allow abortion came directly from their citizen assembly, as well.
Beyond citizen assemblies prioritizing certain kinds of policy in assembly, there are ecological dimensions to a renewed municipal politics as well. The local and regional are where people are most familiar (and a part of) their surrounding ecosystem. In an era where renewable energy deployment, biodiversity conservation, resource use, and other environmental issues come into clearer focus, balancing these concerns becomes increasingly important. Simply assuming the federal government will stabilize these systems without robust local participation is a recipe for mismanagement. No ecosystem is exactly the same, and therefore the kind of one-size-fits-all solutions we could expect from a federal government looking to clean up our energy supply or promote biodiversity may come at the cost of better renewable sightings, preservation of flora and fauna, and community backlash. A municipally-recharged politics must take ecology as a top concern (possibly through some sort of paideia where it is needed), and is best-suited to do so.
Given the overwhelming support for climate and ecological action, there is good reason to suspect that local municipalities would increase their efforts if they had the resources, materials, and people power to do so. How such resources get transferred to municipalities from what is now a federal government with much more access to wealth, trade, and technology, is an open question that Bookchin does not fully address in the book. For those interested in such questions, Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism might provide direction.
From Urbanization to Cities is both polemical and optimistic. It represents just one element of Bookchin’s larger ecological democratic philosophy with its particular focus on the history of cities, democratic structures, and municipal program building. Bookchin’s call for a lively and liberatory municipal politics should not be ignored given our short time to avert ecological collapse and continued inaction from state governments who enable it. To revive the grassroots of society and build a better sort of society in an increasingly fraught Anthropocene, the municipal level serves as a great opportunity to engage citizens directly, build democratic structures, and provide for people while living within ecological limits.
Bookchin himself says it best:
“Objectified and fragmented, the social bond itself faces dissolution. What we call the ‘grassroots’ of society is turning into straw, and its soil—the locality or municipality—is turning into sand. Whatever evidence of 'fertility' & 'life' these roots exhibit seems the result of toxic chemicals—media, bureaucratic sinews, managerial controls—the nation-state & corporations seem to be pouring into its bedrock, just as agribusiness generates ‘food’ out of the chemically saturated sponge we call 'soil' today. Redemption must come from below, from the municipal level where the ‘underground’ culture of past times flourished, not from an ‘above’ that constitutes the very source of the problems we face."
Andrew Ahern is a freelance writer based in New England and an ecological activist who is involved with the Sunrise Movement and DSA. You can follow him on Twitter @PoliticOfNature.