It’s really an honor to be here. It’s very humbling [...]]]> The below lecture was presented by Dr. Daniel Chodorkoff, director of the Institute for Social Ecology, at the Annual Reunion of the Friends of the Modern School on September 20th, 1998. This article was originally printed in the Atlantic Anarchist Circle Newsletter, No.6 autumn 1998.

It’s really an honor to be here. It’s very humbling as well because, as Chris said, you all really do represent a legacy, a heritage, of freedom in education that is of more relevance and importance to the world today than perhaps at any time, certainly in recent history.

We face an unprecedented crisis of global dimensions, a social crisis, and an ecological crisis. I believe that they’re linked, and that if we are to find solutions to those interrelated crises, those solutions will only come out of education – and it has to be education of a particular type.

I would suggest to you that traditional education is not really education at all. What passes for education in our public schools and in most of our private schools, certainly in our universities and colleges today, is in fact a sort of training. It has very little to do with allowing for the unfolding of potentialities within the individual, which I see as the basis for real education. It is, rather, an attempt to create and to reproduce the structures of hierarchy and domination that are hegemonic in the larger culture. It is an attempt to train willing young minds to meet the needs of capitalism and industry by producing students who can unquestioningly go out and join the work force and become so-called “productive” members of society.

I feel that given the direction in which society is moving today, the ecological crises, the social crises that we face, the globalisation of capitalism, and the destruction of the environment that goes inherently along with that process, the last thing we need to do is reproduce that system.

We need instead to generate forms of education that help to transform that system, change its basic structures in ways that can address these interrelated crises that we find ourselves mired in. We have to understand that traditional education operates on three levels, and that those three levels reinforce each other. First there is the form of traditional education, which of course is intended to inculcate students with obedience to authority. They’re taught to sit in orderly rows in classrooms, they’re taught to respond to bells and whistles, they’re taught to never question the authority of the teacher. The teacher’s primary role in education is maintaining order in the classroom. It has very little to do with learning at all. Actually, that attempt to reproduce order, to create order, to create obedience to authority, to create compliant students who become willing workers is extremely destructive. And it’s related to the second level of traditional education, which has to do with the content – what students are actually being taught. Undeniably it’s useful for young people to learn how to read and how to write, how to do basic mathematical calculations. These are all things that will serve them well. But beyond that, there is a hidden curriculum, which is really an attempt to create in these students an unquestioning acceptance of the dominant culture. The a priori assumptions are to bring them into the very character structure of the students. And it has a devastating effect.

I’m a father of two little children, and it’s with trepidation that every day I put my little girls on the school bus and send them off to their public schools. I have certainly participated in alternative educational activities for my kids. However, my personal practice, unfortunately, is fraught with contradictions, as I think many of us are because we live in a world that doesn’t offer a ready alternative for my children. I go off every day and earn a living so I’m unfortunately not able to stay at home and school my children that way.

At any rate I can tell you, as a parent, about the impact of that education, both the form and the content of that education. It’s been very detrimental to my kids, as it has been for generations of children historically in America. And it’s through the reproduction of hierarchy, through the acceptance of authority that the society, that the culture of capitalism, ensures it’s own survival. And it’s not something that’s going to change. I sat on the school board of our local school for two years and I tried my best to introduce reforms, to raise basic questions about what we were doing with our kids there. And I can tell you that within professional education today there is not a great deal of receptivity to these ideas. Though there is wave after wave of reform, those reforms are largely driven by the needs of industry and by the central corporations. The so-called “Goals 2000″ reforms are perhaps the most recent attempt to change our schools. These are completely driven by a corporate agenda, and I find that horrifying.

And more than ever, we are seeing the corporate agenda and the corporations themselves enter into the classroom; as pre-programmed, packaged curriculums make it very easy for a teacher; using these “enrichment” opportunities for students, to bring home the message of capitalism and the corporate world. I saw this very strikingly yesterday. I took my little girls to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. We went into the Hall of Biodiversity, their latest exhibition hall. It’s a multimillion dollar exhibit that’s sponsored by the Monsanto Corporation and Citibank and the Rockefeller Fund, and so on and on and on. I can tell you that in this whole huge hall, with millions of dollars worth of exhibits intended primarily to educate young children about the need for biodiversity and the ecological crisis that the planet is facing – and it is a crisis – in this whole hall there was not a single mention of corporations and not one word about capitalism. And yet as a social ecologist I can tell you that this ecological crisis can be traced directly back to corporations and capitalism. And yet none of this enters into the discourse to which our children are exposed. And there were busloads of kids going through this hall with well-meaning teachers, no doubt. But this basic outlook is never challenged; it’s never questioned. And thus the hegemonic nature of capitalism is reinforced.

This brings us to the third level on which we have to understand traditional education, and that is the intentionality with which children are educated today. It’s not an intentionality that’s particularly concerned with the individual students and their needs and their well being and the unfolding of their particular potentialities. It’s rather a cookie-cutter model of education, which is intended to reinforce the agenda of the corporation and the capitalist system.

So what is the alternative? If we accept the idea that meaningful social change will only come about through a process of education, which is of course one of the underlying beliefs of anarchism, then we need to look very carefully at what constitutes a radical education. What would be an education that’s adequate to bring about the kind of social change necessary to revert the engines of destruction that are literally eroding five billion years of biological evolution on this planet? What would constitute a radical education? I would suggest to you that the same categories that we use in understanding traditional education have to be applied in our understanding of radical education. For an education to be truly radical we need to examine the form that that education takes. We need to examine the content of that education. What it is that is being taught? And, very importantly, we have to understand the intentionality with which this educational process is being put forth. Why? Towards what end? There is not a single solution or a single model that would constitute a radical education. As we know from looking at people who have examined childhood development, early childhood development, and adolescent development, there are various developmental stages at which particular kinds of education are appropriate.

Certainly at the level of elementary education I would suggest that the primary developmental need of students, of children, is the type of free and unfettered development and education that you were lucky to have experienced in the Modern School. And that’s very rare today. Certainly as Jerry Mintz [coordinator of the Alternative Education Resource Organisation -ed.] has pointed out in his work, as Chris has pointed out in his talk, there are oases around the world, there is a free-school here or a free-school there. But in general these noble experiments are isolated and the number of children that they reach is extremely limited. And that’s very unfortunate, because at this formative stage in children’s development the most valuable thing that we can offer them is freedom to explore, and resources they can use in that exploration. But this is not something that figures largely in the scheme of traditional education at all.

As we progress developmentally we can begin to also look at ways in which the content of the education becomes important. As students go through our high schools they are taught with text books that talk about Christopher Columbus as discovering the New World, and say very little about the oppression and the slaughter of Native Americans that accompanied that age of discovery. We see very little said about the effects of colonialism and imperialism around the world. Rather, we celebrate the great warriors and conquistadors who brought the benefits of European civilisation to the rest of the world. I would suggest that a radical education really has to invert that concept, and we have to look at the deleterious effects. We have to ensure that our students are exposed to a history that reflects a critical view of modernity and the development that we so blithely assume to be inevitable. Students need to know the history of movements like anarchism. Students need to be exposed to the lives of people like Emma Goldman, and this is not a part of a standard curriculum in any high school that I know of today.

This question of content is closely wedded to the form of the education. And if we are truly to create students who are able to think critically, draw their own conclusions and then contribute to a larger project of social change, it will only happen if they are given an adequate grounding in this kind of history, if they’re given the tools that they need to be able to critique the contemporary economic system. In this Biodiversity Hall, for example, at the Museum of Natural History, there was a little mention made of over-consumption. That was really put on the individual – we are all greedy consumers and that is why we have an environmental crisis. It’s because each one of us consumes too much. It’s because the world is becoming overpopulated. But there was no mention of the fact that the world today contains 500 billionaires, and that those billionaires have an annual income equal to the poorest 45% of the world’s population. That’s quite an omission, and it suggests an analysis that is inadequate, that does not prepare young people, or anyone for that matter, to make sense out of the mess that we’re in today. In fact, it mystifies it and ensures the continuation of the system in which the elite benefit from the continuation of that system. And that’s very much the intentionality of modern traditional education.

So the question of content becomes very important. At the Institute for Social Ecology we take a very different approach, and in fact our curriculum is one that encourages students to think critically about all of these areas, that exposes them to this hidden history, that attempts, if you will, to explode the myths of modernity. It encourages, and in fact demands, that students look critically not just at the impact of their individual decisions as consumers, not just at how they pollute, does not “guilt-trip” them regarding the fact that they aren’t recycling enough aluminium cans. Because in fact the pollution created by the entire population of this room over a lifetime is insignificant compared to the pollution created by one day of production at the International Paper Plant in Glens Falls, New York. We need to develop educational processes and curriculums that encourage freedom, that encourage unfettered development, and that give students exposure to the ideas, the concepts, and the critical understanding that will allow them to begin to deconstruct the mythology supporting the current system, if we are ever to deconstruct that system and replace it with something positive and life-affirming.

That brings me to the final level on which I think a radical education has to operate. And that is intentionality. We have to be very intentional about what we are doing. Believe me, there is a great deal of intent that goes behind the theory that has produced traditional education. They know exactly what they are doing. We have to be equally intentional. I’m not suggesting here that we have to be dogmatic or ideological, that we have to limit expression or limit inquiry. Rather, we have to ensure that students are allowed to explore these subversive and radical ideas, that they’re given access to the resources they need to sort things out, and that they come away with an understanding that they can make sense out of a system that thrives on the fact that it’s incomprehensible! And there are ways to make sense out of it. If we fail to provide our students, our young people today, and ourselves for that matter, with this kind of outlook, with the ability to think critically and to think independently, to question authority and to view themselves not as passive consumers but as active agents of social change, then we’ll be making a tremendous mistake. We will be condemning the world to simply reproducing, in ever-deepening levels of degradation, the system that exists today. And I think that is our task. It’s not a simple task, it’s not an easy task, but it’s a vitally important task. It’s a task that all of you, simply by your experience in the Modern School and by your ability to articulate that experience, to talk about it, to share it with other people, have already contributed to.

In closing I would simply ask that you keep the faith. That we continue to spread these ideas, that we recognise that social change will only come about through a process of education, that education is not limited to the classroom or to institutions of higher education, and that each of us, as an individual, has a responsibility to serve as an educator. Thank you.

Social ecology, as developed by Murray Bookchin, brilliantly presents a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing the crises of modernity. It is perhaps the first such comprehensive approach since Marx, and suggests a reconstructive practice which holds promise of fundamentally transforming people’s relation [...]]]> Reprinted from Renewing the Earth, John Clark, ed., (London: Green Print, 1990).

Social ecology, as developed by Murray Bookchin, brilliantly presents a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing the crises of modernity. It is perhaps the first such comprehensive approach since Marx, and suggests a reconstructive practice which holds promise of fundamentally transforming people’s relation to nature and to other people. The ultimate promise of social ecology is the reharmonization of culture and nature. A vital element in that profound transformation lies in the connection between social ecology and community development.

Community development is an often-abused concept. Perhaps the best way to begin to define it is to state what it is not. As I use the term, community development is not the delivery of services to a needy population by professionals. This is the traditional model put forward for decades by professional development agencies. It is the War on Poverty model that views communities as battlefields on which “strategic resources” must be brought to bear. It calls for bureaucratic intervention on a massive scale to improve education, health care, housing, nutrition, economic opportunity, and other facets of a community’s life. Needless to say, these goals must be incorporated into any meaningful approach to community development. The problem lies with the methodology, the process whereby these noble ends are achieved.

True community development cannot rest on a foundation of outsiders delivering services. Such an approach inevitably fosters dependence on external “experts” and “resources”. This dependency hinders the development of indigenous leadership, broad participation and local self-reliance. Ultimately, it often degenerates into a form of social control, strengthening subordination to the dominant culture, furthering the homogenization of communities, and reinforcing centralization of power and policymaking in the hands of outsiders. This approach leads to the disempowerment of communities and citizens, not their development.

Nor can we understand community development in the terms presented by the Reagan administration. Their position is reactionary to the core, and lacks even the good intentions of the War on Poverty approach. They suggest a policy rooted in private-sector investment and a “trickle down” effect which can lead only to exploitation, domination and community disintegration. Here too, the focus is on absorbing communities into the mainstream of the dominant culture.

The linchpin of this strategy is to offer incentives for private enterprise to “develop” a community, thus subsidizing its subjugation. Domestic “enterprise zones” have been proposed which would replicate the domination of Third World nations by corporate investments. The intention is to offer a package of tax deferments, relaxed health and safety standards, and an elimination of both anti-pollution measures and the minimum wage, in order to entice private industry to invest in economically depressed communities.

The definition of community development here is economic. The assumption is that business will provide jobs, jobs equal income, and increased income constitutes community development. Yet, the reality is that although such an approach may possibly increase income for individual community members, it is done at the cost of cultural tradition, community cohesion, a healthy physical environment, and community control of important resources.

A more benign form of private-sector development was attempted in the early 1970s under the rubric of “Black Capitalism”. Here the effort targeted individual entrepreneurs within a community and aided them in their efforts to establish small businesses. A similar expectation of prosperity “trickling down” underlay this approach. The reality of Black Capitalism was that the majority of these enterprises failed, unable to compete with their more highly capitalized, better organized corporate competition, and the few that succeeded brought prosperity only to their owners and to a handful of employees. As a result, they increased social stratification in the communities they were supposed to develop.

Another traditional approach to community development, “urban renewal” through city planning, has had an equally dismal record. The failure of ambitious plans for the rehabilitation of massive areas has been well documented. Yet, planners persist in imposing new spatial relations on neighborhoods with the expectation that their designs can create community. While architecture and planning can help to reinforce particular social relations, community development is not a “design” problem. Grandiose plans for urban renewal reflect a technocratic mentality which permeates our civilization, a belief in the quick fix of technics. Historically, people have understood that design requires an integration into the social life of a community if it is to enhance the quality of life. There is a tradition which recognizes the holistic nature of community design, but it is largely ignored by the technocrats who populate professional planning.

The tendency of our society to seek technical fixes, technological solutions to what are essentially social problems, is a strong one, and has been carried over into community development efforts. The introduction of “alternative technologies” into the community development schemes of the 1970s constitutes a case in point. Alternative technology was given a central role in a variety of pilot projects for community development during the Carter administration. But the model of introduction was, in too many cases, one of experts setting up technical systems without significant community participation. As a result, certain ghetto neighborhoods are now littered with rusting solar collectors, nonfunctional windmills, and graffiti-covered greenhouses. The “technological solution” to community development means no solution at all.

In addition to the institutionalized approaches that have been described over the past two decades, there have also been a variety of efforts at grassroots community development, some of which have met with more success. These efforts have largely focused on the issues of community participation and control of local institutions like school boards, planning boards, and specific programs in housing and job training. Many of their concerns and approaches to change parallel those of social ecology.

True community development, from the perspective of social ecology, must be a holistic process which integrates all facets of a community’s life. Social, political, economic, artistic, ethical, and spiritual dimensions must all be seen as part of a whole. They must be made to work together and to reinforce one another. For this reason, the development process must proceed from a self-conscious understanding of their interrelationships.

The dominant culture has fragmented and isolated social life into distinct realms of experience. The rediscovery of the organic ties between these realms is the starting point for the development process. Once they are recognized, it is possible to create holistic approaches to development that reintegrate all the elements of a community into a cohesive dynamic of cultural change. Here, social ecology draws an important principle from both nature and “primitive” society: the integrative character of life in both natural ecosystems and organic communities.

The everyday life of a community needs to be critically analyzed. Which relationships work, and which are nonfunctional? Are there traditions of mutualism and cooperation existent which can help a community to realize its goals, or must new forms be created? How can the face-to-face primary ties which characterized prebureaucratic societies be recreated in the context of contemporary community?

Is there an existing political sphere which can be expanded and/or transformed to empower the community? Town meetings, block associations, neighborhood planning assemblies, and popular referenda are all vehicles which can be revitalized through the process of community development. How do the existing governmental structures stand in relation to the community development process? The reclamation of politics by the community and the creation of an active citizenry are, from the perspective of social ecology, critical elements in community development.

How can the arts aid in community? Poetry, music, community murals, ritual drama, and literature can all help to foster a unique identity and to reinforce a community’s sensibility, if fully integrated into the process.

The spiritual element of a community is important in the developmental matrix as well. From where does a community derive its values, its ethics, and the principles which orient its development? What is its cosmology? How can it gain the inspiration needed to sustain it through the long, difficult process of cultural reconstruction?

The social realm, including family structure, women’s roles, social networks like clubs, gangs, and cliques must be examined as well. These relationships underlie many of a community’s formal elements, and provide the clearest connection to the primary ties that need to be recreated.

The integration of relational ties, the cultural traditions, myths, folklore, spiritual beliefs, cosmology, ritual forms, political associations, technical skills, and knowledge of a community is crucial. All of these elements must be brought together to provide a base for development. These extra-economic factors are the critical components almost always ignored by the traditional development approaches. But the concern of social ecology is with the development of community, not mere economics. Economic development not rooted in a comprehensive understanding of community may well have a disintegrative effect.

However, the economics of a community, and here I use the term in the broadest sense, as its productive relations, are a vitally important aspect of the project. Who owns and controls the productive resources in a community? What can it do to develop its material base, particularly in the crucial areas of food and energy production? How can technology be used in the process? Are there existing functional or vestigial cooperative economic forms or traditions that can be utilized? Food co-ops, producers’ co-ops, land trusts, common lands, and credit unions offer possibilities in this area.

In looking for models of ecological social organization, social ecology recognizes that we must consciously look to history to understand our own potential. For example, it proposes that we can separate the liberatory principles of primitive societies from their superstition, xenophobia, and ignorance. Human development and cultural evolution are not linear processes. We still carry the potential for coherent community within us. It is naive to assume that all was good in the primitive world. However, primitivity as a comparative model allows us to understand all that civilization has lost, and that our cooperative potential as a species is much greater than civilization would have us believe.

The form and sensibility of a community are both shaped by and help to shape its environment. This is equally true of tribal communities, the cities of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, the Greek polis, the cities of Renaissance Europe and the modern metropolis. In the case of the modern metropolis, however, the true substance of the relationship is clouded by the mediating effects of modern technology and the striving for “mastery” of the natural world. A sense of scale, an organic relationship to a specific environment, have all been central to the authentic sensibility which has informed community life for millennia, a sensibility which has begun to break down only in the very recent past.

This is not to deny the existence of imperial cultures in the past, but to recognize that these existed as a mode of domination, an overlay of oppression which exacted tribute from the local community. These local communities continued to provide a coherent framework for the social life of their residents, a sense of grounding and support that lay hidden beneath the veneer of empire.

It is the breakdown of local community and its total subjugation to the culture of domination which is unique to our own time. Therefore, a primary task in the process of community development is the recreation of local community, and a key component in that task is the identification of humanly scaled boundaries and the reclamation of a sense of place, be it rural village, small town, or urban neighborhood.

The creation of sensibility of a community—the self-identification of people with place, a sense of commonality, cooperation, and a shared history and destiny—is difficult to achieve, particularly in a social milieu which emphasizes individualism, competition, mobility, and pluralism. The growth of values like individuality rooted in community, cooperation, identification with place, and cultural identity are antithetical to the thrust of the dominant culture. But just as the imperial cultures of the past constituted a mode of domination rather than an authentic form of sociation, the dominant culture of our own time is merely a system of control through exploitation and manipulation. The forms which that exploitation and manipulation take have been effective in destroying community, but they have not replaced it. They have left a vacuum, a hollow place in which resonates the neurotic individualism of Western societies and the collective hopelessness of the East. It is that vacuum, with the often unconscious yearning for reconnection it produces, that the community development process must fill.

Social ecology does not propose an abstract ideal society, but rather an evolving process of change, never to be fully realized. For as soon as we approach the ideal, the ideal changes. Engaging reality with the will to transform it opens up a new realm of possibilities. This is the most profound tradition of utopian thinking, a continuation of that of nineteenth century utopian Socialists like Owen and Fourier. Although their plans incorporated fanciful elements, their concern was with a built environment that reinforces community, with an integration of agriculture, industry, social discourse, poetry, spirit, and even, in Fourier’s case, emotional diversity. The tradition finds still more explicit expression in the work of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. To this tradition, social ecology adds a consciously ecological perspective.

The utopian element in the community development process should not be misconstrued. Social ecology understands the limitations of utopia as blueprint, the tendency to retreat from the problems of reality into the cloud cuckoo land of abstract design. It also recognizes the power of utopia as inspiration and as a point of orientation in the day-to-day, incremental process of changing the world. It is the utopian process, holistic, participatory and integrative, that must inform the practice of community development.

This utopian view relies on community empowerment, the ability of a community to consciously plan for its future and to implement those plans. Empowerment can occur only through the creation of real forums for planning and policy-making, forums which are decentralized, participatory, and democratic. Communities must reclaim a public sphere which has become bureaucratized and professionalized. Old forms may be utilizable or new forms may have to be created, but without the initiative of an active citizenry no forum can serve as a vehicle for community empowerment. Empowerment must be rooted in the full participation of the citizenry in the decision-making process, the reintegration of politics into everyday life.

Social ecology also proclaims the ideal of local self-reliance, and dependence on indigenous resources and talents to the greatest extent possible. This does not, however, mean “self-sufficiency,” a condition in which no community has existed since the Neolithic. Self-reliance recognizes and encourages interdependence among communities, but emphasizes an ecologically sustainable ethos in the realms of production and consumption, decentralization in the political sphere, and a healthy respect for diversity.

Confederations must be created to help coordinate cooperative activities between self-reliant communities, to administer those interdependent functions which are recognized, and to work to equalize resources between communities. Social ecology suggests that such confederations might form a “commune of communes,” a commonwealth which could extend from the local to the regional to the continental level and beyond, to result in an ultimate unity through diversity. In this goal, social ecology echoes the telos of natural evolution itself: a movement towards ever greater complexity and diversity within interrelated webs of life.

The tools and techniques needed to develop communities as unique cultural entities based in the concepts of ecological sustainability and local self-reliance are already available. Decentralized, community scaled technologies for energy production can help to support the kind of holistic community development envisioned by social ecology. Solar energy, wind power, and small-scale hydroelectric all offer the potential for renewable, nonpolluting sources of energy. Food-production techniques like French intensive gardening, hydroponics, bioshelter technology, aquaculture and permaculture can provide a good percentage of a community’s food needs on a year-round basis. All of these techniques are proven, and many are commercially available. Given a humanly scaled community, the integration of agriculture and industry relying on alternative technologies and advanced, ecologically sound food-production techniques could provide a viable material base for a self-reliant community.

One measure of a community’s sustainability and self-reliance lies in the relationship between town and country. Where the city has become totally alienated from the countryside as in contemporary urban society, an unhealthy relationship exists. On the one hand, the city dominates the countryside, draining it of resources for its own use; on the other hand, the city is heavily dependent on the countryside, parasitically requiring energy-subsidized forms of agriculture and transportation for its existence.

The ethos of the dominant culture has fostered a specialization of function which has excluded food production from most communities. The industrialization of agriculture has created a dangerous centralized approach to food production, in which population centers are dependent on food producers thousands of miles away for their daily sustenance. This is a situation highly vulnerable to a variety of crises, such as crop infestation, energy shortages, and disruptions in transportation. If any of these disruptions occurred, disaster would ensue. This form of food production also has destructive ecological implications, like destruction of soils, loss of genetic diversity, and vulnerability to infestation by fungi and insects.

Historically, healthy communities have achieved a balance between town and country. The Greek polis of Athens, for example, consisted of a central city and an outlying agricultural district. The medieval commune integrated gardens within its walls. Even in our own era, there has been a more balanced relationship. New York City, until the 1950s, got much of its food from Long Island and New Jersey. There were dairy farms on Staten Island, and chicken farms in Brooklyn. Today, the regional agricultural economy has broken down.

The relationship between town and country has other, nonmaterial aspects as well. The predominantly rural values of coherent communities have given way, for the most part, to the anomie and alienation characteristic of the city. The breakdown of community grows out of this basic shift in values. The Folk-Urban Continuum of Robert Redfield, Max Weber’s contrast between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, the split noted by Marx between town and country are all paradigms which express a social division that is reflected in our own time by the almost total alienation of community from its basis in nature.

The development of healthy communities requires a rebalancing of town and country, a reintroduction of the organic world into the largely synthetic environment of the city. Such an action may initially be rooted in the purely material realm, as in the introduction, through community initiatives, of green spaces, neighborhood gardens, food parks, permacultures, etc. This transformation of the physical environment and the introduction of the skills of nurturance and husbandry needed to transform the physical environment will contribute to the development of a new sense of community, which will reflect these skills as social values.

At this point, a concrete example of community development should help to illustrate the praxis of social ecology. Loisaida is the Puerto Rican section of New York’s Lower East Side where residents attempted to actualize elements of this approach in the mid 1970s. There is much to be learned from this experience. Let me describe the way that one of the community’s problems was turned into a community resource through the development process.

In Loisaida, there are over one hundred vacant lots. They were rubble-strewn dump heaps, breeding grounds for rats and *censored*roaches, an eyesore and health hazard. These lots often served as a dangerous “playground” for neighborhood children, and constituted a blight on the community. Viewed from the perspective of social ecology, however, these lots represented a precious community resource: open space. In an environment of concrete and decaying tenements, these lots, a substantial percentage of the land of the neighborhood, offered valuable sites for recreation, education, economic development, and community cultural activity.

Local activists recognized this potential and began the development process at the grass roots, organizing residents to clean up the lots and put them to constructive use. Most of the lots belonged to the city of New York, which had done nothing to improve them. The people of Loisaida combined a critical analysis of their problem with direct action. They protested to the city, and they cleaned the lots themselves and began to use them.

They converted some to “vest-pocket parks,” a concept introduced by Robert Nichols, outfitting them with benches and planting green spaces. Others were turned into playgrounds, utilizing recycled material for equipment. Swings were made from discarded lumber and old tires, Jungle Gyms were built from recycled beams. Other lots were turned into community gardens, which became a focal point for intergenerational contact. One large lot was transformed into an outdoor cultural center, La Plaza Cultural, where community poets, theater groups, and local musicians all performed. Several lots were adopted by local schools for use as teaching centers where area youths were introduced to lessons in agriculture and ecology. The transformation of the lots helped to reintroduce the natural world into this ghetto community.

These were simple actions, but their results were profound. The lots were initially transformed by people acting on their felt need to reconstruct their environment. They acted without the official sanction of the city; in fact, in some cases, it was in the face of opposition from the city. This direct action was a first step towards community empowerment.

The initiative came from within the community, from an indigenous leadership which analyzed the problem and sought a utopian (i.e., reconstructive) solution. They did not look to the city for a solution; they created their own. They contested with the city for the material base of their community, the land; and, in most cases, they gained either legal leases to the lots for token amounts of money, or outright title. Several community land trusts were created to remove particular lots from the real estate market forever, and to guarantee their continued use as a community resource. A philosophy of “doing more with less,” the motto of Charas, one of the community groups involved, served as an inspiration to the open-space movement in Loisaida.

Owing to a holistic approach, a number of other elements in the community development process grew out of these simple actions. A problem turned into a resource, and the health of the community benefited as a result. The people involved in the work gained a sense of pride and accomplishment. Several youth gangs were involved in the movement, and their experience in constructive social action helped to bring them off the street. A cooperative was formed to manufacture playground equipment from recycled items, creating jobs and income for the people involved.

The gardening groups drew on the traditions of the Jivaro, the Puerto Rican peasantry from which many of the Loisaida’s residents hail, and thus provide a connection to a living cultural tradition. They were able to draw on a cross-section of the community, young and old, which often remains alienated from the development process. The gardens grew fresh, healthy, organic produce, improving nutrition and lowering food costs for community gardeners. They enhanced the community’s self-reliance in an important symbolic way, and the training in gardening led to plans for increasing it further, through the construction of commercial rooftop greenhouses.

The establishment of the cultural plaza created an outdoor space for the celebration of Loisaida’s New York Puerto Rican culture. This helped to strengthen the identity of people often traumatized by their move to the mean streets of New York. This identity has been central to the development of an effective movement for change in Loisaida.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the open-space movement was the empowerment of the people involved. The transformation of their vacant lots drew them into a larger vision of what their community might be. The participants in the open-space joined together with other community activists working on issues like health care, education, housing, and job development. Quarterly town meetings were held to chart the progress of the movement, to coordinate and integrate their actions, and to develop a comprehensive plan for the future of the community. An alternative grassroots planning group, the Joint Planning Council, emerged to challenge the official city plan for the Loisaida community, previously a disenfranchised, demoralized ghetto, became a force to be reckoned with in New York, and emerged as a model for grassroots, ecologically oriented approaches to community development.

The incorporation of the ideas of social ecology into the process of community development provided a clear demonstration of the power of Bookchin’s theories to further movements for cultural change. Social ecology represents a vital source of ideas which will increasingly find expression in an effective praxis. We must continue to develop and articulate its theories in a holistic framework, because social ecology, by virtue of its comprehensive vision and its truly radical nature, represents a challenge to the basic assumptions of our civilization. It is only by developing such a challenge that we can hope to move through our current crises toward an ecological, harmonious, and peaceful world.

The ecosphere is threatened to a degree unprecedented in humanity’s tenure on the planet. The rupture with the natural world is symptomatic of and a causal factor in the breakdown of social relations. The [...]]]> The article originally appeared in Harbinger: The Journal of Social Ecology Vol. 1 No. 1, winter 1983.

The ecosphere is threatened to a degree unprecedented in humanity’s tenure on the planet. The rupture with the natural world is symptomatic of and a causal factor in the breakdown of social relations. The consciousness of exploitation and domination extends to both people and nature and given their concurrent evolution it is unlikely that one will be eliminated exclusive of the other.

The ecology movement, at least in its most conscious manifestations, that is, parts of the antinuke, alternative technology, and ecofeminist movements, has recognized the need for a reconstructive vision that acknowledges the primary importance of these interrelations. The radical ecology movement rejects simple technical fixes as the solution to ecological problems that have their roots deeply embedded in the culture. The movement has stressed the need for a holistic approach to ecological problems and further, has suggested that basic changes in the ethos of the culture and the structure of its institutions are necessary if we are to ever achieve a truly ecological society.

Radical ecologists are attempting to create a theory and practice for such an ecological society: a reconstructive vision that they can begin to actualize in the here and now. In the creation of their reconstructive praxis they draw inspiration from many sources, including the scientific discipline of ecology, the traditional cultures of Native American peoples, and the spiritual paths of the East.

There is another tradition that informs their vision as well though unfortunately it remains largely unknown, ignored, misunderstood, or unacknowledged, even by the movement itself. It is the utopian tradition.

While using a different language and set of references, the utopian tradition in many ways parallels the concerns of the radical ecology movement. There is much in the theory and history of utopia that can help illuminate critical problems in social ecology.

What follows are reflections on that utopian tradition, a typological analysis which differentiates various strains in the tradition, and an analysis of those aspects of the tradition most relevant to the emerging praxis of the radical ecology movement.

Throughout the whole of history there have been attempts to transform the given social circumstance in basic ways, to visualize and to actualize a society more harmonious, fulfilling and clearly close to ideal than the one given. These attempts have taken a variety of forms ranging from the purely philosophical and conceptual to the reconstructive and revolutionary. In a broad sense, these efforts can be understood as part of the utopian impulse.

Utopia is a term coined by Sir Thomas More in 1515.1 He traces the root to two Greek words: outopia, translated as no place, and eutopia, the good place. The word has acquired, since Frederick Engles’ critique of “utopian” socialism in Anti-Duhring,2 the negative connotation of outopia—cloud cuckoo land. For our purposes, the term must be understood in a more neutral way: as a description of an approach to social reconstruction oriented toward the creation of an “ideal” society.

The utopian impulse is a response to existing social conditions and an attempt to transcend or transform those conditions to achieve an ideal. It always contains two interrelated elements: a critique of existing conditions and a vision or reconstructive program for a new society. Utopias usually arise during periods of social upheaval, when the old ways of a society are being questioned by new developments. Thus, Plato’s Republic3 emerged in Athens after the victory of Sparta in the Peloponnesian Wars, More’s Utopia emerged during the Age of Discovery, and the industrial revolution gave birth to numerous utopian experiments.

While these utopias and countless others are all distinct in a programmatic sense they share certain structural elements. The combination of critique and reconstructive vision has already been noted. They also share a holistic perspective, focusing on the reformation of society as a whole rather than the simple reform of specific social institutions. They tend to choose a humanly scaled community as their locus of action and elaborate their transformative vision within that context.

Utopias often display an orientation toward “happiness” defined in terms of material plenty (communal property) and “justice,” a concept defined in widely divergent terms. They frequently emphasize equality between men and women, and an integration of town and country. The themes of balance and harmony resonate throughout utopia.

Utopias develop their vision either by drawing on residual traditional elements or historic tendencies of a society that are seen as positive and elaborating and supporting those elements—as Plato took inspiration from aspects of Greek tradition—or by drawing upon and elaborating new developments, often scientific or technological, that seem to hold promise—as Francis Bacon did in New Atlantis.4

The impulse toward utopia has persisted over millennia. Paul Radin suggests that even primitive hunters and gatherers harkened toward utopia, as reflected in their dream/myths of a past Golden Age that would return in the near future.5 We see a certain continuity of utopian thought from the philosophical writings of Plato through the Christian Myth (the Garden of Eden) and Eschatology.

In more recent times, utopia has shifted from the religious to the secular arena. From the Enlightenment onward, utopia began taking a more explicitly social form. Here too though, we must distinguish between the utopias of intellect and attempts to actualize utopia through communalistic or revolutionary experiments.

In examining the broad historic tradition that comprises the utopian impulse we can develop general categories of utopias that display similar characteristics. At one end of the continuum, the literary and philosophical utopias present a theoretical “blueprint” for a perfect society, while on the other end, utopian social theories, experiments and movements make concrete attempts to bring about “utopia.”

These two approaches to utopia are described by Lewis Mumford in another context:

“One of these functions is escape or compensation; it seeks an immediate release from the difficulties or frustrations of our lot. The other attempts to provide a condition for our release in the future. The Utopias that correspond to these two functions, I shall call the Utopias of escape and the Utopias of reconstruction. The first leaves the external world the way it is; the second seeks to change it so that one may have intercourse with it on one’s own terms. In one we build impossible castles in the air; in the other we consult a surveyor and an architect and a mason and proceed to build a house which meets our essential needs; as well as houses built of stone and mortar are capable of meeting them.” 6

Philosophical and literary utopias are the work of individuals and as such tend to reflect their creators’ likes and dislikes. These idiosyncratic approaches have given rise to the cliché that “One man’s utopia is another man’s hell.” While the philosophical utopias address themselves to important social problems they tend to generate “solutions” that take the form of mechanistic plans requiring an authoritarian social structure for enforcement. They are usually hierarchical, dogmatic, static societies. (This rationalization of society and the concurrent rigidification of social hierarchies is described by Karl Popper7 and brilliantly explored in Stanley Diamond’s critique of Plato’s Republic,8 the archetypal literary utopia.)

Reconstructive utopian social movements approach the problem of creating a new social order in a more organic fashion. The emphasis at the outer edge of the continuum is on utopian process, with the actual reconstructive details of the “new society” left to the participants’ determination. At this end of the continuum we can place the various “people’s utopias” which have a long history suggested by the early slave revolts, the heretic communities such as the Gnostics (the Paterini and Lombardi in Italy), the Brotherhood of Free Spirits, the True Levelers and Diggers during the English Revolution, the revolt of Thomas Munster and other movements of the Reformation, peasant revolts, the Paris Commune, and in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries anarchist praxis in Russia, Spain, and elsewhere.

These are the more libertarian forms of utopia, to varying degrees participatory, democratic and non-hierarchical, and all dynamic and transformative in their approach.

In Mumford’s words:

“The Utopia of reconstruction is what its name implies: A vision of a reconstituted environment which is better adapted to the nature and aims of the human beings who dwell within it than the actual one; and not merely better adapted to their actual nature, but better fitted to their possible development.”

“By a reconstructed environment I do not mean merely a physical thing. I mean in addition a new set of habits, a fresh scale of values, a different net of relationships and institutions.”9

At a variety of points between the extremes, we can place the ideal constitutions, planned communities, intentional communities, communes, and revolutionary movements. They conform to a general definition of utopia that includes the combination of critique and reconstructive program—a holistic vision of the new society that insists on the integration of the various psychological, social, economic, political, and spiritual aspects of society.

The tradition of the reconstructive “people’s utopias” is an old one, predating the literary and philosophical. It is in all probability a tendency that predates written history. “People’s utopias” have been efforts on the part of groups of people to actualize their utopia rather than to relegate it to a lost paradise or to defer it until death. They have been concerned with a total restructuring of society from the bottom up. These efforts have taken the form of the institution of the new social order either through the creation of separatist intentional communities or through active revolutionary opposition to the old order.

The communitarian efforts of the classic “utopians”—St. Simeon, Fourier, and Robert Owen—were an outgrowth of the idiosyncratic “systems” usually associated with the literary tradition. Yet they did attempt to bring their utopias into being and in so doing laid the foundations for modern socialist thought, which can itself be understood as a further expression of utopia. On the other end of the continuum of “people’s utopias” stand the revolutionary anarchist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

One way of defining utopian social movement in the nineteenth century is by examining the distinction between these movements and the “scientific socialism” of their chief critics, Marx and Engels. The Marxist critique of utopian socialism is most clearly expressed by Engels in Anti-Duhring.10 He acknowledges the contributions made by Fourier, St. Simeon, and Owen toward the formulation of the basic ideas of socialism. In Engels’ words, “In St. Simeon we find a comprehensive breadth of view, by virtue of which almost all the ideas of later socialists, that are not purely economic, are found in him in embryo…”11 Of the utopians in general he states, “We delight in the stupendously grand thought and germs of thought that everywhere break out through their phantastic covering.”12

It is the “phantastic covering” of St. Simeon’s system of which Engels was critical. He argued that St. Simeon’s utopia, a unification of science and industry in a “New Christianity” in which the bourgeois are transferred into public servants by the spirit of reason and cooperation, was an expression of a period when industrial capitalism and its ensuing class antagonisms were still in an undeveloped state. Though he recognized an embryonic class consciousness in St. Simeon’s overriding concern for “the class that is the most numerous and most poor,”13 ultimately St. Simeon is seen to be dominated by the historical situation that stimulated his theory. “To the crude conditions of capitalist production and the crude class conditions corresponded crude theories.”14

Fourier is praised by Engels for his astute and biting criticism of French society. However, in Engels’ words, “Fourier is at his greatest in his conception of the history of society. He divides its whole course, thus far, into four stages of evolution—savagery, barbarism, the patriarchate and civilization.”15 Engels sees in Fourier’s historical ideas an application of dialectics analogous to Kant’s use of the method in natural science. Yet, Fourier, despite his brilliant insights into the workings of society and history, projected a complete system as the solution to France’s social problems. Engels said, “These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.”16

Yet, by dismissing Fourier’s “phantasies” Engels and others dismissed the most prescient and provocative aspects of Fourier’s thought: his emphasis on the emotional content of life in his utopia, a whole psychodynamic dimension displaying a set of concerns with the nonmaterial quality of everyday life. Unfortunately, this did not reemerge as a major theme in socially reconstructive thought until the 1960s, when it was once again developed by theorists such as Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown.

The idiosyncratic element in these utopian systems was, in Engels’ view, inevitable. As with the literary and philosophical utopias, they were the works of individual thinkers who saw the new society arising out of reason and self-conscious activity, divorced from a specific historical period and level of economic development. They were an expression of the likes and dislikes of their creators, conditioned by their subjective views and expressing their own absolute truths. Unfortunately, in his search for “science” and in his insistence on a narrowly defined class analysis, Engels rejects some of the more profound aspects of the French utopian tradition.

Robert Owen was a formulator of systems as well, but the industrial capitalism of nineteenth-century England, where Owen put his theories into practice, was significantly more developed than in France. Owen, who began his career as a social reformer from the unlikely position of factory manager, gradually came to believe that socialism was the only means of guaranteeing justice to the working class he saw battered and degraded by the new system of production. Owen made the transition from philanthropist to socialist upon his realization that “the newly created gigantic productive forces, hitherto used only to enrich individuals and to enslave the masses, offered the foundations for a reconstruction of society; they were destined, as the common property of all, to be worked for the common good of all.”17 He saw private property, religion, and the present form of marriage as the obstacles to the institution of his ideal society. While his attempt to actualize his ideal in the form of a communist community in Indiana met with failure, he was a major influence on the British working class. Owen’s communism, grounded in the materialist view that people were a product of their heredity, but moreover their environment, was still an appeal to reason. Rather than looking to the proletariat to emancipate themselves, he demonstrated the logic of his system and hoped to convince the bourgeoisie through that logic.

This brings us to another crucial point in Engels’ critique of the utopians. He states that despite a genuine concern for the working class, “one thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat, which historical development had in the meantime produced.”18 Here Engels is referring to the failure of St. Simeon, Fourier and Owen to represent the interests of the proletariat exclusively, based on their lack of perception of what he saw as the deep, irreparable chasm which developed between bourgeois and proletariat under the impetus of industrial capitalism. There can be no doubt that all three were concerned with the plight of the working class but they did not envision the new society born of a confrontation between classes over control of the means of production. Theirs was not a truly revolutionary socialism; they still believed in the ideal of reason, which lay at the root of the bourgeois revolutions, and in the ability of reason to bring about the new social order. The essence of Engels’ critique of the utopians lies not with their formulation of the basic ideals of socialist theories, but with their lack of understanding of the process by which the new society may be brought into being and their idiosyncratic projections of what form the new society will take.

After the classic utopians, socialism began to take on an identity as a revolutionary movement, first in France, later in other European nations. This development followed two distinct paths, the “scientific” socialism of Marx and Engels, and a continued “utopianism” best presented by the anarcho-syndicalist Proudhon and the anarcho-communists Bakunin and Kropotkin. Both positions were influential among the emerging workers’ movement; Marx’s influence was strongest in Germany and England where an industrial proletariat had developed and, according to Marx’s theory, the material conditions were sufficiently evolved to allow for the development of socialism. The anarchists’ theories were embraced by workers’ movements in France, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, where the craft tradition of the small workshop and individual producer had not entirely given way to the factory system necessary for the creation of a true industrial proletariat.

The Marxists and anarchists were the two major forces in the first International Working Men’s Association. Though doctrinal differences had surfaced before the formation of that organization (most notably in the dispute between Marx and Proudhon, sparked in part by Proudhon’s refusal to collaborate with Marx) it was in the International that the issues which divided the Marxist “scientific” socialists and anarchist “utopians” clearly surfaced.

The differences revolved around three interrelated questions concerning class analysis, organizational form, and the role of the state.

Though the anarchists recognized a severe class antagonism and had discarded the classic utopian’s view that the bourgeois would reform themselves, they did not accept Marx’s notion that the only truly revolutionary class was an industrial proletariat, organized and disciplined by the factory system. They posited the concept of revolutionary activity arising from a multiplicity of classes: workers, to be sure, but also peasants, déclassé intellectuals and students, and even the sans culottes, that lumpen element for whom Marx had nothing but contempt. The Marxists criticized this position as petit bourgeois. Indeed, in Proudhon we do see a naive belief in the ability of the workers to create the new society without a direct confrontation with the owners, but Bakunin and Kropotkin both clearly express a belief in class struggle as the means of carrying out the “social revolution.” The dispute lies then not with the concept of class struggle, but with the composition of the classes that make the revolution.

The second major dispute was based on two very different concepts for organizing the socialist movement. Marx saw the need for a rigid, disciplined, centralized party organization that would take as its model that most efficient form of organization yet devised, the factory system. Workers, organized and disciplined by the industrial processes, would find the embryo of the new society within the sweatshop of the old and use any means possible, including parliamentary activity, to end its exploitation. The anarchists were highly critical of this approach. They saw it as a repetition of the bourgeois pattern in the sense that it was hierarchical, authoritarian and stifling to people’s individual initiative. They believed that this approach, though it might bring economic justice, would perpetuate the larger structures of bourgeois society. They were not simply concerned with ending exploitation, an essentially economic concept, but with ending domination as well, a broader social concern. They opted for an organizational model that was decentralized, egalitarian, non-hierarchical and committed to a strategy of direct action. The anarchists believed that the means and ends of their movement could not be separated: that the form of organization for building the new society must be congruent with the forms they wished to create in that new society.

This dispute over organizational forms is directly connected to the third major area of disagreement: the role of the state. Marx called for the creation of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would seize state power, and through a transitional period, pave the way for the “withering away of the state.” The anarchists were convinced that rather than withering away, such a state would make its highest priority its own perpetuation. They proposed the dissolution of the state per se, and its replacement by a decentralized federation of autonomous production units and communities, which under direct self-management would coordinate the economic and social life of what was formerly the state.

With the communist anarchists Bakunin and Kropotkin, we see a new definition of utopia emerge. They were not concerned with blueprinting the ideal society for inherent in their approach was an aversion to “systems” and preconceived utopias. Rather they tried to develop a process whereby a multiplicity of new societies could form themselves. They had a strong belief in cultural diversity as a value to be encouraged for its own sake. They recognized in the vestiges of authentic community life that survived the state, as well as the new organizations created by the workers, the embryo of the new society. They visualized communism developing in accordance with the specific cultural tradition of each community, and each community, though participating in a regional and national economy, retaining a distinct cultural identity and the greatest degree of autonomy possible, without sacrificing that degree of coordination necessary to insure the smooth functioning of an industrial society. They saw the creation of a network of such self-managed communities, social and economic units as a substitute for the state. The anarchist vision of the new society took much of its inspiration from what they saw as the authentic social life and culture of the people. They envisioned personal responsibility and self-conscious ethical behavior taking the place of law. They called for the creation of “people’s assemblies” as the basic unit of governance. (Kropotkin offers the Folk Mote of the Medieval commune, the Russian Mir, or peasant village commune, and the cantonal structures of Switzerland as possible models.) The anarchists developed concepts of leadership that were substantially different from those which ruled bourgeois society. Their ideal was much closer to communal and traditional leadership roles, with leaders emerging in specific situations because of specific skills, and with responsibility and decision making ultimately lying with the collectivity. The anarchists’ brand of communism was close to the communal economic base characteristic of pre-state peoples. They envisioned the creation of self-reliant communities which integrated industry and agriculture, town and country, and work and play. They projected the collectivization of the means of production under the direct control of the workers and peasants, not mediated by the state—as it is under a policy of nationalization—and coordinated on the local, regional and, ultimately, planetary level by a process of federation. Their ethos was from each according to their abilities, to each according to their need. The anarchists are a clear extension of the tradition of the people’s utopia. Yet, despite their differences, and despite the denial of many Marxists, in a sense, so too is Marx himself.

If we view utopia as a cultural development that replaces the political association of the state as the organizing principle of society with a multiplicity of authentic social and economic associations, we gain a perspective which allows us to understand the utopian element in Marxism. While Marx never spelled out his “utopia” in concrete terms, he maintained that the new society must emerge from forms already present in the old. Certain writings are pregnant with implications of the form a post-revolutionary development might take. As Martin Buber points out, Marx’s formulations concerning the “withering away of the state” point in a direction similar to that suggested by the anarchists.19 In 1844 in his essay “Critical Glosses,” after discussing revolution as the last “political” act, Marx says, “But when its organizing activity begins, when its ultimate purpose, its soul emerges, socialism will throw the political husk away.” Marx’s belief in the ability of and need for the proletariat to seize direct control of the organs of production is reflected in his attitude toward the Paris Commune of 1871, (also claimed as a model by the anarchists) which he praises as an expression of “the self-government of the producers.” Marx believed that ultimately “the communal constitution would have rendered up to the body social all the powers which have hitherto been devoured by the parasitic excrescence of the State which battens on society and inhibits its free movement.”

Contradicting his own statements that capitalism must organize the forces of production before socialism can emerge, Marx indicates in his letter to Vera Zasulitch20 concerning the prospects of adopting the cooperative tradition of the Mir, the Russian peasant community, as a basis for socialism, that such communal forms would prove valuable as models for the new society and in fact might be able to transcend the development of capitalism and move directly into communism. Here Marx was not advocating a return to primitive village communism, but rather the integration of the tradition of cooperation and communal ownership at a higher level of development into the new society.

Further indication of the utopian element in Marx’s theories can be found in the section of the Grundrisse discussing pre-capitalist economic formations. Marx’s descriptions of the institutions of primitive communism and their evolution into those of capitalism communicate a sense of the respect that he had for those earliest economic forms. In the dialectical formulations concerning the emergence of socialism from capitalism, it is possible once again to get a sense of the reemergence of the communist impulse, latent in society for epochs, on a higher level, set free by the development of material conditions that provide the preconditions for socialism. The impulse is not a mechanical application of tribal, communal organization but an unfolding of the same human potential in a new set of economic conditions.21

Marx does not look to a change in human nature as the catalyst to bring socialism into being, but rather to the maturation of material conditions. In reference to the Paris Commune he says, “It has no ideals to realize, it has only to set free those elements of the new society which have already developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society.” Marx avoided any but the sketchiest intimations of what the “developed elements” might be, beyond the organization of the proletariat provided by the factory system, but he leaves no question as to the composition of the new society. It is “classless” in the sense that the class antagonisms between proletariat and bourgeois will be resolved by the elimination of the bourgeoisie, and it will be organized by the workers themselves. Marx’s critical attitude toward the early utopians and all socialists who proposed complete “systems” for the new society is reflected in his unwillingness to draw his own blueprint. He focuses his attention instead on the process through which the new society can be actualized. It is, significantly, in the realm of process that his vision departs from the tradition of utopianism.

In the creation of the increasingly rigid and reified body of theoretical work that forms the basis of his political legacy (most noticeably in Das Kapital), Marx betrays his own utopian promise. In his search for a science with regular “predictable laws” and a universal, inexorable dialectic, he commits the very error for which Engels chastised the French utopians; he creates a rigid system that, despite many valuable insights, allows for no deviation and that fully incorporates Marx’s own idiosyncrasies. Despite his unwillingness to blueprint his utopia, by the “scientific” pretense of his endeavor and by thus enshrining the limitations of his thought (ultimately bourgeois, according to Murray Bookchin22), Marx doomed his followers to a betrayal of his utopian impulse.

Marx’s utopianism is in a certain sense the most interesting, provocative and inspiring aspect of his vast, often contradictory volume of work. This is the core of Marx’s humanism and the engine that drives forward his revolutionary project. It is the positivistic “science” of Marx that has prevented the realization of this utopian core, and allowed for its distortion by the various parties and sects that bear his name.

As Ernst Bloch points out:

“A distinction has to be made between the Utopistic and the Utopian; the one approaches circumstances only immediately and abstractly, in order to improve them in a purely cerebral fashion, whereas the other has always brought along the constructural equipment of externality. Of course only Utopism, as it reaches out abstractly above reality, need not fight shy of a mere empiricism that undertakes only another form of abstract apprehension below reality. A real Utopian critique can only proceed from a viewpoint that is adequate, that does not—so to speak—correct or even replace over flying by a factistic creeping.”23

Certainly, this sense of Marx’s critique of capitalism can be seen as utopian. The utopian perspective is able to provide a valuable critique because it exists outside of the given. Unlike ideology, utopia is a projection of that which does not yet exist, rather than a reflection of the ruling class and the dominant culture. As such, it is exempt from decay. In Bloch’s paraphrase, “Only that which has never yet come to pass cannot grow old.”24 Bloch concurs with the view that the urge to utopia is a primal one, discernible from the earliest epochs to the present, though represented by different forms in different historical situations. However, he sees continuity between the various aspects which utopia presents. The urge toward utopia, the vision of an ideal, harmonized society, ever shimmering on the horizon, is in Bloch’ s view an archetype which precedes even formalized mythology. Bloch identifies Marx as an heir to that tradition. It is the promise of utopia, not its specific image, which gives urgency to the Marxist project. That promise, while never crystallized, is central to understanding the dynamics of revolution.

In Marx’s own words:

“Our slogan, therefore, must be: Reform of consciousness, not through dogmas, but through analysis of the mystical consciousness that is unclear about itself, whether in religion or politics. It will be evident then that the world has long dreamed of something of which it only has to become conscious in order to possess it in actuality. It will be evident that there is not a big blank between the past and the future, but rather that it is a matter of realizing the thoughts of the past. It will be evident finally that mankind does not begin any new work but performs its old work consciously… to have its sins forgiven, mankind has only to proclaim them for what they are.”25

In terms of his critique and his implicit vision, then, even Marx (though not the Marxists of varying hues which populate the left) must be understood to contain an element that is utopian. Orthodox Marxism, as practiced by “socialist” states and parties, however, is certainly distinct from the utopian praxis of people’s movements.

“People’s movements” are an expression of a different set of organizing principles, as exemplified by the split between the Marxists and anarchists over the three interrelated questions of the constituency of the movement (proletarians versus proletarians and déclassé intellectuals, peasants, petit bourgeoisie, and lumpen elements); the structure of the movement (decentralized versus centralized); and the role of the state and politics (dictatorship of the proletariat versus decentralized federation, party versus movement, political economy versus holistic socio-economic-cultural reconstruction). Closely related to these major differences are questions about the forms of ownership and decision making (nationalism versus collectivization, central planning versus self-management). The relationship between the two positions has been complex historically and hard and fast categorization is difficult, belt these are the central questions. From the time of the Paris Commune on, we can clearly note this bifurcation. The decentralist movements, as they reject the statist framework and “political” (really parliamentary) activity as a valid means for cultural reconstruction, are the more direct line of connection to the utopian continuum.

Given the historical trajectory of the libertarian wing of the utopian tradition, it is not surprising that there has been an association of the anarchist and reconstructive aspects with the conscious elements of the radical ecology movement. Aspects of the tradition that bear a direct relation to the more conscious and radical elements in this ecology movement grow out of the theoretical congruence of concerns which transcend gross economic issues to examine the over all quality of life. The utopian (particularly anarchist) concern for a process and organization that embodies the ideals of the new society is an obvious point of connection. The most profound insights of the utopians contain a core of logic that seems almost prescient when one considers that the concerns were addressed and articulated by a movement that existed hundreds of years before the word “ecology” entered our vocabulary.

In its concern with the whole of people’s lives and its refusal to opt for the simplistic reductionism of the more mechanical “scientific view,” the utopian tradition displayed an intuitive understanding of the holistic approach embodied in ecology as a scientific discipline. The perception of society as a whole and the concern of the utopian impulse with the transformation of the whole, rather than the reform of its parts, is reflected in the understanding that grows out of the study of ecology: that there are critical interdependencies and relationships in any system, social or ecological, that create a totality greater than the sum of its parts. The integration of components, the awesome display of unity growing from the diversity of nature, provides a powerful paradigm for the understanding of social interactions. This shared outlook, this concern with whole systems, is the underlying connection between the utopian tradition and the radical ecology movement, but it is further refined by a whole set of particulars that the two share as well. It must be understood, however, that the “laws” of natural ecology that influence the vision of the ecology movement are paradigmatic, powerful metaphors for the harmonious, homeostatic reworking envisioned by the radical ecology movement.

In that reworking, we could do well to reconsider the role of utopia, for as Bloch points out,

“Utopian consciousness remains wholly without description inasmuch as the moment of its fulfillment is still outstanding—and certainly not for skeptical or agnostic reasons. Yet this Utopian consciousness does not obscure its blinding goal with solutions, let alone with more reified means from the route to that goal, and then (even on a Hegelian level) offer an absolutized half light in conclusion. Its reason for not doing that is superlatively real—the most objective correlative ground that Utopian consciousness possesses: the world substance, mundane matter itself, is not yet finished and complete, but exists in a Utopian—open state, i.e.: a state in which its self identity is not yet manifest.”

Endnotes

1. Thomas More, Utopia (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965).
2. Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1976).
3. Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955).
4. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924).
5. Paul Radin, The World of Primitive Man (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1971).
6. Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: The Viking Press, 1962).
7. Karl R. Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
8. Stanley Diamond, “Plato and the Definition of the Primitive,” In Search of the Primitive (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1974).
9. Lewis Mumford, p. 21.
10. Frederick Engels.
11. Frederick Engels, p.333.
12. Ibid. p. 335.
13. Ibid. p. 332.
14. Ibid. p. 342.
15. Ibid. p. 334.
16. Ibid. p. 330.
17. Ibid. p. 338.
18. Ibid. p. 21.
19. Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949).
20. Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin, Civil War in France The Paris Commune (New York: New World Paperbacks, 1940), p. 59.
21. Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York: International Publishers, 1964).
22. Murray Bookchin, “Marxism as Bourgeois Sociology,” Comment Vol. 1, No. 2.
23. Ernest Bloch, Philosophy of the Future (New York: Herder and Herder).
24. Ibid.
25. Marx, Karl, “Letter to Arnold Ruge” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday Publishers, 1967).