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Civic Anarchism: Evolutionary Notion of Revolution, Radical Reforms, and Climate Crisis

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2023

Abstract

According to the contemporary libertarian socialist Robin Hahnel, one of the main disadvantages of anarchism compared to authoritarian socialism was that it did not have a reformist wing to pave the way for a revolutionary wing. In my paper I will introduce 'civic anarchism', the more pragmatic wing of anarchist ideology that developed in the British and North American milieu after the Second World War.

In the Czech context it began to develop especially at the beginning of the 21st century, among other things in response to the critique of lifestyle anarchism that was taken up by Murray Bookchin. Although Bookchin's evolutionary notion of revolution undoubtedly belongs to the new wing of pragmatic or civic anarchism, his uncompromising critique often lost influence on the formation of this politics.

Bookchin also uncompromisingly criticized the writings of André Gorz (especially his essay "Ecology and Politics"), who sought to lay the philosophical foundations of the ecologically oriented reformist wing of libertarian socialism. The aim of this paper is therefore to formulate a hypothetical response by Gorz to Bookchin and to find, rather than bookchinian "unbridgeable chasms", some possible philosophical and strategic grounds for a civic (eco)anarchism in the climate crisis.