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How does capitalism impact the way institutions are structured? What implications does capitalism have on the formation of states? What do hierarchies look like?

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What is Bookchin’s quibble with Marxism and other Socialist theorists? How do these ideologies fail to “save” workers? Do you agree?

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Because of capitalism, institutions are privatized, and focus on what is good for the few, not for the many.

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Capitalism affects institutions in the sense of what their motives are. Rather than being for the people and or to give back, they are center around how much money and or power they can gain. By definition, capitalism is described as an "exchange in which objects that are made for sale and profit pervade and mediate most human relations" (Pg.18).

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"One of the most striking features of capitalism today is that in the Western world the highly simplified two-class structure – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat..."
Institutions are formed on power dynamics and are divided between the two class system (people at top vs. people at bottom)

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hierarchy is a
basic problem that can be overcome only by a libertarian socialist society.

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"Marxism's economic insights belonged to an era of emerging factory capitalism in the nineteenth century. Brilliant as a theory of the material preconditions for socialism, it did not address the ecological, civic, and subjective forces or the efficient causes the could impel humanity into a movement for revolutionary change"

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Marx failed to demonstrate how workers could fully and directly control such a state without the meditation of an empowered bureaucracy and essentially statist institutions.
-Doesn't give workers enough credit/power over their own fates (Pg. 24)

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Bookchin's quibbles with Marxism:
"the historical burden of Marxism’s authoritarianism as embodied in Bolshevism." (26)

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By emphasizing the nation-state—including a “workers’ state”—as the locus of economic as well as political power, Marx (as well as libertarians) notoriously failed to demonstrate how workers could fully and directly control such a state without the mediation of an empowered bureaucracy and essentially statist (or equivalently, in the case of libertarians, governmental) institutions. As a result, the Marxists unavoidably saw the political realm, which it designated a workers’ state, as a repressive entity, ostensibly
based on the interests of a single class: the proletariat" (Pg. 24)

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Bookchin thinks that Marx didn't get across the idea that workers could have power and control of a state.

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"Communalists would try to formulate a minimum program that calls for the satisfaction of immediate concerns, such as improved wages and shelter or adequate park space and transportation. This minimum program would aim to satisfy the most elemental needs of the people, to improve their access to the resources that make daily life tolerable" (34).

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Only focused on class conflict, not ecological, civic, and social changes (Pg. 22)

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"A libertarian municipalist movement should function, not with the adherence of flippant and tentative members, but with people who have been schooled in the movement’s ideas, procedures, and activities"(33)

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Describe the Communalist society: What role do citizens play? How are politics conducted? What does Bookchin mean by “municipal democracies” and the issue of power? What aspects of society are represented in The Fifth Sacred Thing?

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-seeks to eliminate statist municipal structures and replace them with institutions of libertarian policy (Pg. 27)
-popular democratic assemblies based on neighborhoods towns and villages
-deals with community affairs on a face to face basis, a direct democracy
-every productive enterprise falls under the purview of the local assembly, which decides how it will function to meet the needs of the community
-go to popular assemblies not as workers, but as citizens
-decision making by majority vote
-EMPHASIS ON ACTIVE, DIRECT, LOCAL GOVERNMENT

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"“a theory or system of government in which virtually autonomous local communities are loosely bound in a federation.” (26).
The workers of different occupations are a part of the popular assembly but not as workers. They are citizens whose role in this assembly is in  the best interest of society. (29)

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In a communalist society, individuals are citizens first and foremost, rather than workers or other roles that ought not define a person. Bookchin advocates for "municipal democracies," in which small communities govern themselves according to the good of the community, and work with other municipalities when necessary through cooperation in a highly decentralized political community. Municipalities would be governed by local councils, and the community would protect minority voices and opinions at all cost to encourage debate and progress.

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Aim to distribute power between all social classes and not just the top of the hierarchy who, as previously stated benefit from capitalism the most.

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"in Communalist political life, workers of different occupations would take their seats in popular assemblies not as workers – printers, plumbers, foundry workers and the like, with special occupational interests to advance – but as citizens, whose overriding concern should be the general interest of the society in which they live."

This idea of a community focused society with the interest of the whole society in mind relates to the Fifth Sacred thing in the way the North ran their society. They worked to better society as a whole instead of being concerned with their own personal gains, profit, etc. They shared resources (water source specifically) and did not worry about profit.

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Communalism resolutely
seeks to eliminate statist municipal structures and replace them with the
institutions of a libertarian polity. It seeks to radically restructure cities’ governing
institutions into popular democratic assemblies based on neighborhoods, towns,
and villages. In these popular assemblies, citizens—including the middle classes
as well as the working classes—deal with community affairs on a face-to-face
basis, making policy decisions in a direct democracy and giving reality to the
ideal of a humanistic, rational society

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Everything was equal, people had to work for the amount of money they wanted, in the northern communitues

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"Citizens should be freed of their

particularistic identity as workers, specialists, and individuals concerned

primarily with their own particularistic interests"(29)