The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism by John P. Clark

Author:John P. Clark [Clark, John P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Philosophy, Political, Political Ideologies, Anarchism
ISBN: 9781441124876
Google: K3DHAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2013-06-06T21:13:35+00:00

The microecology of community

Over the past generation of radical social theory, we have heard a great deal more about the “microphysics of power” than we have about the microecology of community. The popularity of the former approach is, I think, less a reflection of the inherent superiority of post-structuralist concepts than a symptom of the defensive nature of oppositional culture in our time. A heavy focus on the “physics” of the system of power, and the depiction of social action in terms of various “strategies” and “tactics” shaped largely in reaction to this system betrays a certain level of capitulation to a dominant mechanistic, objectifying order. There has been a widespread assumption—not only among postmodernist and post-structuralist theorists, but also among political activists—that the historical destiny of opposition is essentially a future of permanent struggle against the system of power. For many, the highest aspirations of oppositional culture seem to lie in small tactical gains within a fundamentally immovable system and in the forms of enjoyment and creativity possible through struggles within the vast labyrinth of power.

The ideology of permanent struggle embodies some important truths about our creative resources in the face of domination, but unless these truths are placed within a larger, more affirmative problematic, they easily become a recipe for disillusionment and nihilism. Such a larger problematic underlies the microecology of community. This approach undertakes a careful exploration of the nature and possibilities of community at the molecular level of society, and directs our hopes and efforts toward a project of regenerating human society and liberating human creative powers through engagement in that project. It sets out from the assumption that society, no matter how mechanized and objectified it might become, always remains an organic, dynamic, dialectically developing whole, the product of human creative activity in interaction with the natural world. Society is shaped by human thought, imagination, and transformative activity, and not least of all, the result of the kind of primary relationships that human beings enter into with one another. Reflection on the processes (especially at the micro level) through which society and culture are generated can help change ones self-image from that of mere critical observer of the social system, the generalized social object, to that of active participant in shaping the world through the various contributions that one makes to social reproduction, social disintegration, social creation, and social regeneration.

It has been suggested that the most immediate concern in a renewed radical politics must be the creation of strong, thriving communities of solidarity and liberation. Such a community is one that is engaged deeply in the quest for communal freedom in the sense developed here. It is in the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through force, violence, and coercion with a system of voluntary, mutualistic cooperation. It is in the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through exploitation, manipulation, and instrumentalization for the sake of power with a system of personal and communal self-realization. And it

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