Clark John P. - Impossible Community

CONTEMPORARY ANARCHIST STUDIES

A series edited by

Laurence Davis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Uri Gordon, Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Israel

Nathan Jun, Midwestern State University, USA

Alex Prichard, London School of Economics, UK

Contemporary Anarchist Studies promotes the study of anarchism as a framework for understanding and acting on the most pressing problems of our times. The series publishes cutting edge, socially-engaged scholarship from around the world bridging theory and practice, academic rigor and the insights of contemporary activism.

The topical scope of the series encompasses anarchist history and theory broadly construed; individual anarchist thinkers; anarchist-informed analysis of current issues and institutions; and anarchist or anarchist-inspired movements and practices. Contributions informed by anti-capitalist, feminist, ecological, indigenous, and non-Western or global South anarchist perspectives are particularly welcome. So, too, are manuscripts that promise to illuminate the relationships between the personal and the political aspects of transformative social change, local and global problems, and anarchism and other movements and ideologies. Above all, we wish to publish books that will help activist scholars and scholar activists think about how to challenge and build real alternatives to existing structures of oppression and injustice.

International Editorial Advisory Board:

Martha Ackelsberg, Smith College

John Clark, Loyola University

Jesse Cohn, Purdue University

Ronald Creagh, Universit Paul Valry

Marianne Enckell, Centre International de Recherches sur lAnarchisme

Benjamin Franks, University of Glasgow

Judy Greenway, University of East London

Ruth Kinna, Loughborough University

Todd May, Clemson University

Salvo Vaccaro, Universit di Palermo

Lucien van der Walt, University of the Witwatersrand

Charles Weigl, AK Press

The Impossible Community

Realizing Communitarian Anarchism

John P. Clark

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com

First published 2013

John P. Clark, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-2487-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clark, John P., 1945

The impossible community : realizing communitarian anarchism / John P. Clark.

pages cm. (Contemporary anarchist studies)

ISBN 978-1-4411-4225-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4411-8547-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Anarchism. 2. Socialism. I. Title.

HX833.C562 2013

335.83dc23

2012051337

CONTENTS

This book is about the quest for the free community, the community of liberation and solidarity. It seeks to convey the message that we need to think more deeply and carefully about the meaning of free community, and about the obstacles that stand in the way of its realization. Above all, it seeks to convey the message: create it now.

Underlying this work is a sense of horror and a sense of hope. The horror arises from the fact that humanity is in the process of inflicting on the planet the sixth great mass extinction in the history of life on earth, while at the same time we have the means to flourish without devastating the biosphere. The horror arises from the fact that over a billion human beings live in absolute poverty, suffering from chronic malnutrition and other ills, while we have much more than an adequate material basis for a good life for all. A question underlying everything here is why we continue to live in a state of denial and disavowal, and how we might emerge from that state.

The hope comes from the fact that we have long had an answer to these questions, and some have begun to make that answer a reality. The effective response to such an extreme denial of reality was discovered thousands of years ago. This response is that, first, we must do whatever is necessary to awaken ourselves from our deadened state, and to open ourselves up to reality, to others, to nature, to the things themselves. Second, we must dedicate ourselves to a path of liberation and solidarity. And third, we must find, here and now, a community of others who have taken the risk of awakening, and who are following the same path, for this the only way that the path can be sustained.

This work is inspired above all by the experience of community and solidarity. I would like to express my deep gratitude for the knowledge, support, and inspiration I have received from the many small groups, communities, cooperatives, publishing projects, research groups, and collectives in which I have participated, or to which I been close personally, over the years, and which have in various ways helped shape my thoughts and feelings about community.

Among these are A Rivista Anarchica, Black Pearl Mutual Aid and Pleasure Club, Blue Iris Sangha, Borsodis Coffeehouse, Broadway Food Co-op, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Centro Studi Libertari, Common Ground Collective, Community Co-op, Crescent City Anti-Authoritarians, Delta Greens, Divergences, Earth First!, Ecosocialist Horizons, Fifth Estate, Freeport Watch, Free University of New Orleans, Frontyard Cooperative Preschool, Glad Day Books, Harvest Moon Co-op, Industrial Workers of the World, Innovative Education Coalition, Institute for Social Ecology, Iron Rail Bookstore & Library, Lha Charitable Trust, Libertaria, Louisiana Himalaya Association, Loyola Greens, Mesechabe, New Orleans Food Co-op, New Orleans Food Not Bombs, New Orleans Free School Network, New Orleans Friends Meeting, New Orleans Libertarian Alliance, New Orleans Philocaf, New Orleans Social Ecology Group, NOLA Anarchists, North American Anarchist Studies Network, Pax Christi New Orleans, Occupy NOLA, Oystershell Alliance, Planet Drum Foundation, Psychic Swamp, Research on Anarchism, Seventh Ward Soul Patrol, Solidarity Economy Group, Street Named Desire Collective, University Cooperative Preschool, and the ZigZag Study Group.

Portions of this book were published previously. We are grateful to the following publications and presses for their generous permission to reprint the text.

To Situations: Project of the Radical imagination, a publication of The CUNY Graduate Center for portions of : Critique of the Gotham Program.

To Manchester University Press for portions of : Anarchy and the Dialectic of Utopia.

To Capitalism Nature Socialism for portions of : The Common Good.

To Perspectives in Anarchist Theory for portions of : Bridging the Unbridgeable Chasm.

To Guilford Press for portions of : Beyond the Limits of the City.

To the Journal of Environmental Thought and Education and Sougou Ningengaku (Synthetic Anthropology) for portions of

In contemporary political theory, libertarianism and communitarianism are looked upon more or less as opposite ends of the political spectrum. Thus, this work, which is in large part the elaboration of a libertarian communitarianism, might be met with a certain skepticism, and, indeed, might even be seen as entirely self-contradictory. But such skepticism would reveal more than anything the unfortunate limits of contemporary political discourse, and, more particularly, those of its dominant Anglo-American forms of expression. The actual existence of a phenomenon is a powerful argument in favor of its possibility. And there is, in fact, a long tradition of libertarian communitarian thought, a tradition that possesses considerable coherence and consistency. There exists, moreover, a vast range of historical phenomena that have inspired this tradition, and which instantiate many of its claims concerning social possibilities. The goal here is not only to continue this tradition and defend it, but also to explore what it would mean to realize its most radical implications. It is to show how a radically anarchistic conception of freedom and a radically communitarian conception of solidarity complement and fulfill one another. It is to show, to paraphrase Bakunin, that liberty without solidarity is privilege and injustice, while solidarity without liberty is slavery and despotism. It is to defend the thesis that it is to the degree that these values are synthesized in the free community that both injustice and despotism can be avoided.