Municipalism : synthesis between capital and community?

[FireFry]

This is the forebearing economic thought of a civilised society; municipalism. What I mean by this is a society that is liberated from multi-municipal entities, which seem to be root of our troubles. Corporations, are one of these entities. In America, the state and the municipal levels are all legally confusing as well. I think the initial American revolutionaries meant well, through establishing a collection of city-states into one union, of course, this idea has since become perverted between the different ages and when Washington abandoned the White House two terms after he defeated the British. What I'm trying to say is, it takes some while after empires are defeated for us to know how to behave like human beings again, as those repressed all their lives don't understand liberation. And once the revolutionary generation died off the revolution died with it and the Americans returned to dealing with the British. This is why Cuba will collapse when Castro's generation dies off, but Chavez's socialism is in fact a city-state municipal socialism. What I'm trying to say is, communism isn't a reality, what they really want is municipalism, but they aren't mature enough to be able to say that. They haven't learned that word yet.

One day, we will all synthesise our conflicting thoughts on each system and regard capitalism and communism as the freak societies that they are.

Socialists come pretty close to municipalists, but not close enough. Of course, within our municipals and within other municipals, treaties may be written of legal agreement. I think this is what the Greeks originally did, of course, they weren't as adaptive as the northern capital barbarians. The greeks of course, got over run by savages and imperialists from all sides and itself became a imperial power with Alexander, of course, it's age of Imperialism is long over. Just like most Western powers' ages of Imperialism are long over too, however, they're just senile and neurotically reliving the Second World War. The communists fail because they only see the BIG PICTURE, they don't see the little problems that prevent such a grandeur hero society from happening. And they also have zero problem solving skill.

The society would function something like the cities in the video game Sim City. But more ecological and sane than that even.

[FireFry]

Also, my ideas were my own originally, however, I did a google search for "municipalist" and found out that I'm not alone. Murray Bookchin seems have dedicated a large portion of his effort to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin#Life_and_writings

Of course, much of the green movement that spawned off of him was totally savage because it failed to synthesize with normal society. It will die off.

The municipalists seek to create the perfect natural human society with a high degree of industriality, ecological balance and with normal family relations. With a high-degree of anti-militancy, except in personal ecological self-defense.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Look whose ideas are reliant on "intellectual voyeurism" (and utopianism) now. :glare:

[FireFry]

Look whose ideas are reliant on "intellectual voyeurism" now.

Go back to bed, the adults are talking.

[Die Neue Zeit]

At this juncture, there came forward as a reformer a manufacturer 29-years-old – a man of almost sublime, childlike simplicity of character, and at the same time one of the few born leaders of men. Robert Owen had adopted the teaching of the materialistic philosophers: that man’s character is the product, on the one hand, of heredity; on the other, of the environment of the individual during his lifetime, and especially during his period of development. In the industrial revolution most of his class saw only chaos and confusion, and the opportunity of fishing in these troubled waters and making large fortunes quickly. He saw in it the opportunity of putting into practice his favorite theory, and so of bringing order out of chaos. He had already tried it with success, as superintendent of more than 500 men in a Manchester factory. From 1800 to 1829, he directed the great cotton mill at New Lanark, in Scotland, as managing partner, along the same lines, but with greater freedom of action and with a success that made him a European reputation. A population, originally consisting of the most diverse and, for the most part, very demoralized elements, a population that gradually grew to 2,500, he turned into a model colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were unknown. And all this simply by placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings, and especially by carefully bringing up the rising generation. He was the founder of infant schools, and introduced them first at New Lanark. At the age of two, the children came to school, where they enjoyed themselves so much that they could scarely be got home again. Whilst his competitors worked their people 13 or 14 hours a day, in New Lanark the working-day was only 10 and a half hours. When a crisis in cotton stopped work for four months, his workers received their full wages all the time. And with all this the business more than doubled in value, and to the last yielded large profits to its proprietors.

In spite of all this, Owen was not content. The existence which he secured for his workers was, in his eyes, still far from being worthy of human beings. "The people were slaves at my mercy." The relatively favorable conditions in which he had placed them were still far from allowing a rational development of the character and of the intellect in all directions, much less of the free exercise of all their faculties.

“And yet, the working part of this population of 2,500 persons was daily producing as much real wealth for society as, less than half a century before, it would have required the working part of a population of 600,000 to create. I asked myself, what became of the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and that which would have been consumed by 600,000?”

The answer was clear. It had been used to pay the proprietors of the establishment 5 per cent on the capital they had laid out, in addition to over £300,000 clear profit. And that which held for New Lanark held to a still greater extent for all the factories in England.

“If this new wealth had not been created by machinery, imperfectly as it has been applied, the wars of Europe, in opposition to Napoleon, and to support the aristocratic principles of society, could not have been maintained. And yet this new power was the creation of the working-classes.”

To them, therefore, the fruits of this new power belonged. The newly-created gigantic productive forces, hitherto used only to enrich individuals and to enslave the masses, offered to Owen the foundations for a reconstruction of society; they were destined, as the common property of all, to be worked for the common good of all.

Owen’s communism was based upon this purely business foundation, the outcome, so to say, of commercial calculation.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Engels, Friedrich.

[renegadoe]

What I really take beef with is this:


What I'm trying to say is, it takes some while after empires are defeated for us to know how to behave like human beings again, as those repressed all their lives don't understand liberation. And once the revolutionary generation died off the revolution died with it and the Americans returned to dealing with the British. This is why Cuba will collapse when Castro's generation dies off, but Chavez's socialism is in fact a city-state municipal socialism.1. I've certainly been "repressed" by capitalism, but I damn well know how to behave like a human being. It's called reason, and it's how one can understand liberation.

2. What the hell is a "revolutionary" generation, and what makes them so great that you can't finish the job yourself? Why do they mysteriously disappear, and thus we all are just SOL and have to sit back again. "Oh help, the red sun in our hearts died. Guess we're fucked."
Yours sounds remarkably like a bourgeois revolution.

3. Which makes sense with your muddled Cuba-Venezuela analogy. Cuba's state-capitalism will eventually shed its skin into blatant capitalism when their "vanguard" party decides they have the right to own what they before just ran. And that you cannot recognize Chávez' neoliberal exploitation of the oil markets because of his red beret is probably why you don't understand that Venezuela and many of her sister countries in Latin America are currently going through their age of reform. More power to them. Quite frankly, I see a South American Union as being pretty likely politico-spatial realignment in the near future - a social-democratic antithesis to the brutal accumulation in the East.


But your "own" ideas sound a lot like individualist "anarcho"-capitalism. You sound like you're on the wrong forum, man. Maybe you should stop playing Sim City and start investigating the real world.

[FireFry]

Why do they mysteriously disappear

It seems like somebody forgot the concept of death again.

[Herman]

3. Which makes sense with your muddled Cuba-Venezuela analogy. Cuba's state-capitalism will eventually shed its skin into blatant capitalism when their "vanguard" party decides they have the right to own what they before just ran. And that you cannot recognize Chávez' neoliberal exploitation of the oil markets because of his red beret is probably why you don't understand that Venezuela and many of her sister countries in Latin America are currently going through their age of reform. More power to them. Quite frankly, I see a South American Union as being pretty likely politico-spatial realignment in the near future - a social-democratic antithesis to the brutal accumulation in the East.Wow, talk about ultra-leftism and complete ignorance on the subject of ALBA and Chavez.


The municipalists seek to create the perfect natural human society with a high degree of industriality, ecological balance and with normal family relations. With a high-degree of anti-militancy, except in personal ecological self-defense.

And you mention "normal family relations". I wonder what you mean by that...