Murray Bookchin - Las Formas de la Libertad Parte 1
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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