DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY
vol.8, no.2,
(July 2002)
The
libertarian press, Democracy & Nature and the
‘libertarian’ ethics of Social Anarchism
THE
EDITORS
The libertarian
press has generally shown an attitude of indifference
towards Democracy & Nature in general and the project
of inclusive democracy in particular, an attitude that has
lately turned to outright hostility. Presumably, this is not
unconnected to the severe critique in D&N of what passes as
an anarchist ‘movement’ today, i.e. a set of currents (not a
movement anyway) more akin to what Bookchin rightly
castigated as life-style anarchism, than a real antisystemic
movement like the old libertarian socialist movement used to
be. To mention a few examples, the British Total Liberty
magazine, which expresses a ‘pragmatic’ view of anarchism,
published a couple of years ago a vitriolic attack against
the inclusive democracy project, mainly criticising it as
utopian because it did not involve a market mechanism and
money! ―readers
can see the full exchange
here.
Similarly, the
US-based Institute for Anarchist Studies hosts in its
website links even to broad Left networks and magazines,
such as Znet, but deliberately ignores D&N and the Inclusive
Democracy project.
Very recently,
the American Alternative Press Review
(mainly
sympathetic to life-style anarchism views) dismissed D&N as
an academic journal ‘with little relevance for radical
political movements’(!) and accompanied this distorted
picture of D&N with a dishonest critique of editorial
practices with respect to the ‘John Clark affair’, based
exclusively on the views of John Clark!
―readers
can see the full exchange
here.
Finally, in the
last issue of Social Anarchism was published an
article by John Clark in which, once again, he provides a
fully distorted picture of the events that led to the
publication in D&N of the original paper he presented at a
1995 social ecology conference (see D&N Vol. 5, No. 3,
November 1999, pp. 523-561 and Takis Fotopoulos’ reply in
the same issue pp. 561-576) rather than of his redrafted
version. As soon as we were informed about this, Takis wrote
a polite letter to the editor of SA, in which D&N even
offered an exchange between the two journals and he asked
for a right to reply. The initial reaction of the editor of
SA was that
“If you can stick to 550 words (one of our
pages) that would almost guarantee that we would run it this
spring. Longer than two pages will seriously stretch us and
I am not certain we could fit it in”. However, as Takis
thought it would be much more interesting to SA readers to
develop a brief theoretical critique of Clark's stand on
democracy and discuss, in this context, the
misrepresentation of his relation to D&N rather than simply
deal with the latter
―something
that could easily give the impression of a sterile exchange―
he sent a brief article of about 5,000 words entitled ‘John
Clark and Democracy’
―readers
can see this text
here.
However, the
editors of SA refused to publish this article on the grounds
that
“it far exceeded our available space and it was too
centered on Clark, as opposed to the underlying issues”! And
this was said at the same time that the whole point of
writing an extended article was to examine the underlying
issues! At that stage we decided to take the original offer
and Takis wrote a two-page article which was centered
on Clark’s distortions about D&N with no theoretical
discussion of his views, so that no excuse could be used
again about exceeding the prescribed length (this article is
reproduced below: ‘John Clark and Democracy & Nature’). To
our astonishment however the editors of SA refused to
publish even this brief text and, after several reminders
from our end about the case, we heard that the reason was
that the
“revision was still longer than what we had
requested and was still filled with invective”! —readers can
make up their minds about the case
here where
the entire exchange is published.
It is therefore
obvious that the editors of SA did not even have the honesty
to grant D&N the right to reply, as both Total Liberty
and APR have done, and any self-respecting journal,
‘bourgeois’ or not still does. Instead, they proceeded to an
outright attempt to censor our journal when it attempted to
defend itself against untenable accusations, which they had
no qualm in publishing in the first instance!. One can only
wonder, if this is the type of ‘libertarian’ ethics that SA
wishes to substitute for ‘bourgeois’ ethics, and thus
whether the struggle for this is worth the candle…
Takis
Fotopoulos,
Editor
Alexandros
Gezerlis,
Assistant Editor
John Clark and
Democracy & Nature
John Clark
showed once more how economical
he
is with the
truth when in his latest tirade on Murray Bookchin he found
it appropriate to distort, yet again, the events that led to
the publication of a draft of his paper in Democracy &
Nature, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy,
as well as those related to the non-inclusion of his name in
the International Advisory Board of the journal, after the
change over from Society and Nature. I will try below
to give a brief description of the facts as we recognise
them in D&N.
Clark writes
that he circulated several copies of the draft version of a
paper called ‘Beyond the limits of the city’ (a revised
edition of which was later published under the title
‘Municipal Dreams’ in Andrew Light’s collection, Social
Ecology after Bookchin, Guilford, 1998) in 1995 for
comments and that
“one of these quickly made its way to
Murray Bookchin who wrote for the journal Democracy and
Nature a forty-four page attack on this unpublished
manuscript” (SA p. 25). He then goes on to describe how
“after trying for several years to get the editors of D&N to
publish the final version of his article” he finally agreed
to the
publication of the unrevised draft (SA p 39) in order to
draw the conclusion that all this was presumably part of a
victimisation campaign against him because he had not
exhibited
“a certain degree of servility and continued to
gloss over the growing theoretical problems that (he) saw in
Bookchin’s own work”. For the same reason he speculates that
he was also
“removed from the International Advisory Board
of Society and Nature (later Democracy and Nature:
The Journal of Inclusive Democracy) without
consultation or even notification by the "inclusivists" in
charge” (ibid. p. 39).
However, Clarks’ description of the facts is not only utterly
economical with the truth but also completely distorted, as
several people involved in these events could testify.
First, Clark
does not mention the crucial fact that the draft of his
paper was also the full text on which the talk he gave in
Danoon (Scotland) at the Social Ecology gathering in 1995
was based. This text was circulated for comments among the
participants of this gathering (including myself).
Therefore, this was definitely not the usual circulation by
an author of a number of copies of a manuscript among
friends and colleagues for comment prior to publication
―as
Clark describes it. What followed and how a copy made its
way to Bookchin had nothing mysterious about it either. When
I read the text I saw it, (for the reasons I explained in
an expanded version of this article which was not accepted
by the editors of SA), as an outright attack on direct
democracy
―the political project of D&N— apart, of course,
from an attack on Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism. I
therefore sent a copy of this talk to Bookchin (then still a
member of the IAB) in the hope that an interesting dialogue
would
follow between Bookchin and Clark on the issue of direct
democracy and libertarian municipalism. So, when Bookchin
sent us a reply to be published in the Dialogue Section of
the journal, another member of the Editorial Board wrote to
Clark asking him formally for a permission to publish the
copy of the speech. Unfortunately, Clark was not willing to
have it published but insisted (as it was of course his
right) that we should publish instead a revised version of
it. However, as Bookchin's reply was based on the original
text of the talk, and given that when we asked him whether
he would be willing to rewrite his reply on the basis of a
revised version of Clark’s paper he refused to do so, the
editorial board decided to go ahead with the publication of
Bookchin’s critique. This was because we did not wish to
publish a final draft of Clark’s paper without Bookchin’s
reply and in the hope that Clark might change his mind later
and allow us to publish his original text —as indeed happened
a few years later. This is why we also accompanied the
publication of Bookchin’s critique with an editorial
statement declaring that
“unfortunately, we are not able to
also publish John Clark's talk since the author has not
allowed it to be reprinted” (D&N
Vol. 3, No. 3).
Second, Clark
was not ‘removed’ from the IAB of the journal. In fact, he
was a member of the IAB of Society & Nature up to the
last issue of it (Vol. 3, No. 1). However, in 1995, as the
editors announced at the u1:p>
This is the
only reason his name (together with that of another IAB
member —although for different reasons) was not included in
the new IAB —a fact which had nothing to do with Clark’s
relation to Bookchin, as he falsely describes
the events.
This becomes obvious anyway by the fact that the very issue,
which included Bookchin’s critique of Clark’s paper, also
included Bookchin’s resignation letter from the IAB,
principally, because of his disapproval of the journal’s new
direction, as was expressed in the contents of the first
issue under its new title (see D&N Vol. 3, No. 2).
Takis
Fotopoulos