The issue of “the material basis”
Even Bookchin had that orientation. That’s why:
His writings were part of a transition of thought, from a “red” to a “green” analysis and critique. Yet, despite his pivotal role in the initiatory phases of that process, it would turn out that Bookchin had opened doors through which he could not pass. It would be left to others to explore the full implications of the emerging ecological-communitarian radicalism.
He couldn’t pass because he was ideologically predisposed toward the old leftist idea that our liberation is “now possible” . . . now that we’ve achieved a “high level of development.”
Consider the title of his most-read book: Post-Scarcity Anarchism. There’s a whole ideological story in that title: We suffered class division of society for millennia due to material scarcity. There was contention for the limited social surplus (the basis of wealth) and the talented, aggressive, or lucky few were able to seize and control it at the expense of the subaltern classes. But then, as Marx said, industrial capitalism developed the “productive forces” to an extent that “laid the material basis” for generalized abundance. With the potential for the latter, class division could (and should) be overcome.
So: capitalism as progressive in that respect.
The “paradigm shift” to a post-Marxist radicalism says that story is bogus. Class division arose when we took the wrong turn toward productivism, developmentalism, and wealth expansion long ago. Industrial capitalism has been simply the modern, hypertrophied manifestation of that aberrant socio-economic phenomenon. We don’t need a high level of development in order to “progress” to some “next higher stage of history” where liberation becomes possible. To the contrary, most of the development just augments the power of capital and its industrial state. Our liberation is dependent upon freeing ourselves from the domination of that whole complex.
It’s done us no good. It led to what Jacque Camatte called “the wandering of humanity” through a five-millennia labyrinth of toil, contention, conquest, uprooting, and empire. It’s been the “material basis” of social injustice and ecological insanity.
