The issue of participation in the municipal elections

From: New banner, old ideas

It is characteristic that Bookchin has always been a proponent of the participation of anarchists in the elections of local authorities. The following confession of Dimitris Roussopoulos, publisher of the anarchist Black Rose Books, in his interview in the Greek journal Arnoumai, regarding his participation as a nominee in the elections of Montreal, Canada, is indicative:

Question: Isn't it contradictory for an anarchist to participate in elections?
Answer: That depends on the kind of the elections. I can go to the second floor of this house and bring you someone called Michael Alexandrivitch Bakunin, who writes about this issue... Let me tell you a story. When Bookchin comes he usually sleeps upstairs. It was about half past twelve when I suddenly heard him shout "Ah! Look what I've found!" He then calls me and shows me an analysis contained in a Bakunin's collection, according to which, among all levels of state organization, the municipal is closest to society and is the level where the individuals can play some role. He then asks "Do you have the collection of Maximov?" I indeed found it and a more extensive excerpt of it was there. Of course Bakunin never wrote that anarchists should participate in the elections but wanted to distinguish between the city and the state.
Therefore, Bookchin has developed this idea of local action and libertarian municipalism. As a result, I myself that have never voted in my life, I am going to participate in the elections. Bookchin caused this- damned him. "You are -he said- the most self-composed, you are well-known, you are active you should give it a try..." "Ok - I replied- I will" (5) .

Although the factor of the local special features is not necessarily the most fundamental for the issue of municipal elections, we ought to underline that the Greek social reality is completely different than that of USA or Canada. Bookchin's suggestion for the participation to the municipal elections, as an important constitutional element of the strategy for the development of a movement that is directed toward libertarian municipalism, is not of significant value if considered in the context of Greek reality, maybe of no value at all, simply because there are other facts that play a more important role. That is the case in respect to other regions. Who could possibly claim that the participation in the municipal elections is the sole way to elevate the elements of a policy that is directed towards communal autonomy, federalism and libertarian municipalism? Who could claim e.g. that the zapatist movement wrongfully abstains from participating in the municipal elections organized by the state and bases its communal organization in structures self-organized by the Zapatistas, such as the Councils of Good Government.     

It is well known that Bakunin had been a proponent of the revolutionaries involvement in the local issues even when revolution was wandering around the European countries, and he additionally made a special reference to the issue of municipal elections, as was also previously mentioned by Roussopoulos: 

Municipal Elections Are Nearer to the People. The people, owing to the economic situation in which they still find themselves, are inevitably ignorant and indifferent, and know only those things which closely affect them. They well understand their daily interests, the affairs of daily life. But over and above these there begins for them the unknown, the uncertain, and the danger of political mystification. Since the people possess a good deal of practical instinct, they rarely let themselves be deceived in municipal elections. They know more or less the affairs of their municipality, they take a great deal of interest in those matters, and they know how to choose from their midst men who are the most capable of conducting those affairs. In these matters control by the people is quite possible, for they take place under the very eyes of the electors and touch upon the most intimate interests of their daily existence. That is why municipal elections are always and everywhere the best, conform­ing in a more real manner to the feelings, interests, and will of the people. (6)

However, according to the edition of Maximov, the next excerpt of Bakunin is the following: 

But Even in Municipalities the People's Will Is Thwarted. The greater part of the affairs and laws which have a direct bearing upon the well-being and the material interests of the communes, are consummated above the heads of the people, without their noticing it, caring about it, or intervening in it. The people are compromised, committed to certain courses of action, and sometimes ruined without even being aware of it. They have neither the experience nor the necessary time to study all that, and they leave it all to their elected representatives, who naturally serve the interests of their own class, their own world, and not the world of the people, and whose greatest art consists in presenting their measures and laws in the most soothing and popular character. The system of democratic representation is a system of hypocrisy and perpetual lies. It needs the stupidity of the people as a necessary condition for its existence, and it bases its triumphs upon this state of the people's minds. (7)

Perhaps in this second excerpt of Bakunin we all identify the reality that surrounds us.

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