Murray Bookchin - Las Formas de la Libertad Parte 1

I've been given the oportunity to talk for possibly the graetest part of an hour an I got a lot to say. And I'll try to be as brief an as [ ] if it's possible. But the subject of where are we going to go from here which it's been turn into the title "The Forms of Freedom" Is something that it's been on my mind now for literatly decades. Just itsn't 1985. And it's been particulary the case in the past few years. Where I have been obliged to think about the problem for my own experience and for my very long background in the left Where it began? The big problem I think most of us really confront release.... The problem that I ussually encounter is the fact that the people appear feel disempowered. History is taking a very nasty turn an lets be frank about it. We have claim for the world, how far back depends upon how far back you wanna look, I can even go back to the 1930's where people found have control over their lives. You live in neighbourhoods, you live in fairly extended families. Even if you live in a city like New York [and certainly also] San Francisco you have wishfully all take away all neighbourhoods, you have literally swoon mutualistic support systems, we hang out on te corner of our candy stores which are a public foro were we can have discussions of all kinds whether it would personal or political. There was when I was younger a very intense political life. It isn't solve much that television has brought people into their house and kept, take them out of the street. Because even the people at that time, well lets say particulary now, wanted to get out of the street they wouldn't know what to find, that's the problem. We have an enormously amount of corporal centralization, an enormously amount of state centralization, an enormously amount of gigantism, a tremendously amount of homogenization and not only because television. It's because something is happen specially since the 1950's wich is very [strategic.] And that is that the buyer-seller relationship, the commodity relationship has began to invade our lives. You can go home from work and when you came home from work you came into a pre-industrial society in many respects. You have your parents around you, you have your grandparents around you then you have several generations all [intervening] with each other People are not that concerne on making money of each other, they didn't invest in their family, they didn't buy an ideas. they lived a real comunity life however much it was undergoing decay And even thought you have a radio set that can hold you in the house none of those television set could today. People wanted to go outside and comunicate with each other, they have developed to have this discourse they have developed to have this intercourse which came from another age. So when you went home from your factory, wich is around of capitalize producction, or when if you went home from your office, wich is around of business and commerce, you can feel it coming to an intimate realm of personal life, of social life, of neighbourhood life. And that realm is where you can recreate yourself throught support systems. I don't mean a place of recreation I mean a place of recreation reproducing yourself and your personality and through this intimate contact it was possible to become an stronger individual even thought you lived in one collective envionment That world... has been eroded and subverted steadily by the encrunchment of the factory, of the office of the supermarket into our own personal lifes and finally into our own heads. We think... in terms of buyin and selling more and more, and I come across this repeatedly when somebody says to me "I don't buy that idea" and I wish I respond "I'm not selling it", (Laughter) and abuse this line over and over again Because it's for me the typification in the way in wich people deal with the idea deal with culture, deal with the most intimate relationship they have They invest in a marriage. Who da hell ever invested in a marriage? In a business perhaps, yes but not in a marriage. So people in a sense are been hollowed out it is not only television that is doing it. Television,as a word, is filling an increasigly empty vessel that's what happening And they're taking over the world of imagination taking over that world... that dream world... that [magnificent] dream world that the child still has in which the rest of the civilization repeatedly represses in the cause of what we call "naturation" of becoming mature Television is began to fill that in with this synthetic plugs whit this advertising with this one dimensional pictural image of what reality is all about. this terrifyng problem has made us ask the old important question that most peolpe do in an encounter with analist today. No "Why do I have a twitch?" No "Why do I have a [shiver]?" "Why is that I have this dreams that wakes me up" "Why that I wake up screaming at night" Those are the questions that you went to in the 1930's if you have a psychological problem and if you went to a therapist Now they go around and ask the question "Who am I?" "Who am I?" "What am I?" "Why am I?" And key thing that is envolved here is why they're asking "What is my place in the world" Because there is no place in the world... for people to be human again There is no place in the world for people to be personal, to have a personality And for that reason we go madly and insanely after all kinds of fashions today to declare it what is a very deep sense of hollowness inside us we cover ourselves up we cover ourselves up with different [handouts] we cover ourselves up with different kinds of clothing we cover ourselves up with all kinds of accoutrements We have to wear thunderbirds to play indian or we have to wear leather jackets to be tough even though you're maybe a counter somewhere (Laughter) or you have to wear like prostitutes so you look intersting even though you're maybe a secretary somewhere All of this... We wear boots on the summertime Who da hell wear boots on the summertime? (Laughter) But all of this is meant to be interesting to ourselves because we are so hollowed out by the brake down of community by the mutual networks of supports systems By the rich articulation of the spontaneous culture [lights] that comes out of the streets and the constantly intercourse of past as well as present and hopefully future through the different generational interactions that exist and we are feced with the real problem not only whether or not we have power anymore over our lifes but who are we and why we´re alive and that becomes the great therapeutic problem in psychiatry today This points to a very deep sense of disempowerment as I said, that emerges from the large corporations that emerges from the invasion the enourmously concentration of the state and that emerges very sifnicantly from the market place into every recess into wich we can retreat 30, 40, 50 years ago or even 20 years ago The counter-culture was in attack in the 1960's to recreat again a community in which we can retreat a network in which we could again develope a sense of identity a sense of solidarity, a sense of community that it's been eroded steadily, not only by television but by the marketplace by the buyer-seller relationship by the reduction of everything to an object to a thing, to an investment that you either buy, that you sell feedback, input, output And that's the problem we face. The title "Forms of Freedom" does not fully convey what could possibly be the point of aproaching for a solution You could have a lot of freedom forms... that could become ultimately very totalitarian lets not kid ourselves. well, they can become very parochial. and we swap around town meetings for argument sake and what can be more intimate, what can be more communal than a town community of the kind that is usually idealized in New England After all, that was a town meeting that gave us the nuclear [free zone] shore 180 Vermont towns along with several Massachussets town mettings We will still have the cuestion again not only of the forms but what would be the content? This very same town mettings can go very reactionary as well as progressive. So I'm talking about "The Forms of Freedom" I want to make one thing very [plane] I'm also talking about what this forms would be filled in with Without the freedom that has forms you're not gonna have freedom If you don't have the container of a glass of water... then the water will lie all over the table and finally [stuck] to the ground and ultimate evaporate you must have the container, the "Forms" But what you put on those forms could be very toxic or they can be very libertarian So when I talk about "Forms of Freedom" I always make that reservation What are we going to put in the way of this "Forms"? What are we going to fill this forms with? And what kind of people... are going to be, as a word, "catalize" by this forms into rich personalities, what kind of communities will create this networks of support underpin personality, and giving us the feeling of straight that we are standing on a basis from wich we proyect ourselves as individuals; culturaly, sexualy, in terms of gender, ethnically, in all our different phases of life and the different roles that we play We have had a very rich history of free forms We have, in fact, had a very rich history that I will call "Libertarian" not in the sense of the libertanian party or the right wing libertanians that is a word that has been stolen The peolpe on the right call themselves libertarians or "propertarians" (Laughter) Their main concern is to own property as the basis for freedom they're not interested in freedom, they're interested in what they call "liberty" Liberty means their right to turn land into real estate Liberty means their right to own [an earth] with forest and cut them out if you want to Liberty means, and there's nothing wrong with liberty in a moral expanded sense but it is so tight to property, that it means literatly only in the community That is not what I mean with the word libertanian In fact the word libertanian was invented literally by Elisee Reclue in the 1890 when the word anarchist become illegal in France because of terrorist activities Elisee Reclue who was a very close friend of the russian anarchist Michael Bakounine [and it's just worth mentioning this in passing] How to invent a word for "anarchist" because if you call yourselve an anarchist the police will immediately pick you up and throw you into jail You couldn't call you a periodical anarchist, you couldn't call you self-anarchist, you couldn't use the word in any