167 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
167 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
The Case for Community Power
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by Sean Donahue
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I believe that we must act; positive action is the only option left to
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us. Communities have the same rights as individuals. We must seize back
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control of our community.
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Sam Lovejoy
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farmer, environmentalist
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The people of Seabrook, New Hampshire and the surrounding communities
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never wanted a nuclear power plant. In March of 1976, by a margin of
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768 to 732, the people of Seabrook voted against the plant. Yet, state
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and federal officials allowed the construction of the plant. In the
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years that followed, people throughout southern New Hampshire and
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northeastern Massachusetts passed town meeting resolutions, filed
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lawsuits, testified at public hearings, picketed, wrote letters,
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circulated petitions, and took part in acts of civil disobedience in an
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effort to protect their own health and the health of generations to
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come. Yet, in 1990, ignoring fourteen years of protest and resistance,
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the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Seabrook Station a full-power
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operating license
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The licensing of the Seabrook nuclear power plant over the objections
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of the people who will have to live with the effects of its radiation
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for the rest of their lives was not merely an isolated travesty of
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justice, it was yet another symptom of a problem that has gripped our
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entire nation and our entire society: the decline and slow death of
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grassroots democracy. Our government has grown too big and too
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centralized to meet the needs of its people, and has grown so close to
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business and industry that it has no desire to do so.
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Beyond a certain point, growth becomes a disease. As Kirkpatrick Sale
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pointed out in his brilliant study of the role of institutional size in
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the modern American political and economic experience The Human Scale,
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once a system grows beyond a certain point , it loses efficiency.
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Mosquitoes, polar bears, and people are the size they are because that
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is the best size for them to be. A fifty foot tall mosquito would be
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crushed under its own weight. The same rule holds true for nations.
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The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of the American
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economy began when each system became to large to sustain itself.
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But size is not the only factor in the failure of the present system
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to meet the needs of individuals and communities. Small governments
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often fail their people as well. As Murray Bookchin has pointed out in
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his ground-breaking work on community-based government, the replacement
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of the face-to-face politics of the Greek polis and the New England
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town meeting with a representative government has done much to diminish
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the voice of the individual in the policy-formulation process. 5
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A community of neighbors has a sense of its own identity and a basic
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sense of the needs of its members. On the other hand, a large
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government or corporation, however progressive it may be, can't really
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have a good understanding of the individual needs of its citizens or
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employees for the simple reason that it must deal with millions of them
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at a time. Thus, in the eyes of the corporation or the state, the
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individual is merely another statistic. No one in her or his right mind
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would place a dioxin dump next to someoneUs house. Yet, itUs easy for
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a bureaucrat to place a dioxin dump next to lot 24-A, which just
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happens to be the site of the home of a family of four. The bureaucrat
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or the corporate executive isn't necessarily callous, she or he just
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can't see the trees for the forest.
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Transferring policy decisions to the hands of small citizen assemblies
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would serve as part of a larger confederation of similar assemblies,
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as Bookchin suggests, would do much to put power back into the hands of
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the people. A single national or global economy with a multitude of
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smaller, self-sufficient, communal economies linked together in a
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similar confederation7 based on their need to exchange resources. This
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would force people and communities to consider the impact of their
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decisions on others, leading them to put people and the planet before
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profits. For, as Bookchin points out in his essay, Market Economy or
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Moral Economy, our present lack of economic justice stems largely from
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the fact that the market economy depersonalizes economic transactions
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making them not a personal exchange between human beings, but a
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transfer of commodities from manufacturer to retailer, from retailer to
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consumer. The result is a completely amoral economy. Just as it was
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easier for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington to allow a
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power plant to be built in Seabrook over the townspeople's objections
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than it would have been for the town's government to do so, it is far
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easier for a multi-national corporation with a warehouse full of unused
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grain to allow a nation to starve than it is for a farmer with a silo
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full of corn to allow her/his neighbors to starve. In an economy based
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on community ownership or resources and means of productions, the needs
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of the community will always come first, and in a small community, the
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needs of the community tend to coincide with the needs of the
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individual. When the domination of one person over another inherent in
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capitalism is eliminated, the human desire to dominate the earth will
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soon fade as well.
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The confederation could also place a check on the actions of
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individual communities. If Squashville were to mistreat its own people
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or its neighbors, the other communities could cut off trade with
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Squashville, perhaps depriving themselves of squash, but also depriving
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Squashville of beets, tomatoes, onions, carrots, hemp, rice, and
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soybeans. Squashville would soon be forced to change its ways.
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The creation of self-sufficient communities would also help to stem
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the problem of rootlessness in America. The quasi-nomadic lifestyle
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People working in a self-sufficient economy will never be transferred
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or be forced to move elsewhere in search of work. Thus, both
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financially and emotionally they will have more invested in the
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community. This kind of permanence tends to lengthen the range of one's
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vision. Someone who is planning on living in a town for fifty years is
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far less likely to support the construction of a toxic landfill that
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will leak in twenty years than is someone who plans on moving in five
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years. Nor will that person be as likely to assume that if she or he
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produces the waste in the first place someone else will take care of it
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later on.
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Certainly the transition to this kind of community can't and won't
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take place overnight. But anarchism has never been a goal-oriented
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philosophy. Rather, as Noam Chomsky points out in Notes on
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Anarchism, it is a historical trend, the tendency to move towards a
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world which is freer, less violent, and more just. It is not an axis
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on a graph, but rather a tangent line forever approaching the point of
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perfection. The vision of libertarian Municipalism, thus, is one of a
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living revolution of people living the values of simplicity,
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non-violence, ecology, equality, and democracy. We can begin taking
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back control of our lives and our communities from the government and
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the corporations right now by building a new society within the shell
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of the old through building alternative institutions such as
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newspapers, food co-ops, communes, and artists collectives, and by
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advocating for home rule for communities and justice for oppressed
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peoples. The revolution begins here and now, and we cannot afford to
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let it fail.
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A previous version of this article appeared in The Merrimack Valley
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Progressive (Lawrence, MA) in September of 1992.
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Notes
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1. Quoted in Harvey Wasserman, Energy War: Reports from the Front.
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Westport (CT): Lawrence Hill & Company, 1979. p.29 (?)
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2. Bob Dylan. Subterranean Home Sick Blues on Bob Dylan's Greatest
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Hits. New York: CBS Records, 1967
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3. Seabrook Chronology. The Boston Globe. March 2, 1990. p.12
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4. Murray Bookchin. Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview Green
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Perspectives: A Social Ecology Publication (Institute for Social
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Ecology, Burlington, VT) October 1992.
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Bookchin Ecology, Anarchism , and Green Politics Burlington (VT): Left
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Green Network/ Minneapolis: Youth Greens, 1990
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Bookchin The Modern Crisis Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986
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Bookchin Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future Boston: South
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End Press, 1990
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Bookchin and Dave Foreman Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between
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Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman Boston: South End Press, 1991
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Bookchin. Post -Scarcity Anarchism. Berkeley: The Ramparts Press, 1971
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5.Bookchin. Libertarian Municipalism.
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6.ibid.
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7.ibid
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8. Bookchin. The Modern Crisis. pp.77-97.
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9. Bookchin. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. pp.31-55
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10. See Notes on Anarchism in Noam Chomsky. For Reasons of State. New
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York:
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Pantheon: 1973
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