The prevailing trend in current discussions of cities is to portray them either as places of fear and loathing or as centres of postmodern decentredness and fragmentation. In the wide ranging and iconoclastic book under review Murray Bookchin questions these trends and seeks to recapture the city as a locale in which people interact in order to live and govern themselves in a democratic and civil manner within an ethical milieu. Bookchin attempts to do this by constructing an ideal-type of the city drawing heavily upon Aristotle and the experience of Hellenic cities. For Bookchin, the Athenian city-state, despite its acknowledged draw backs, created a sphere in which an ethicopolitical system, based on daily face-toface democracy, could develop. In this context, he argues, a form of citizenship based around the notions of independence, mutuality and ethical deliberation developed. He attempts to trace the subsequent, albeit largely hidden, history of this city form via residues found in the 'communes' of medieval Europe to the Paris Commune and beyond to the present day. The decline of this `democratic city' is laid at the door of an array of forces-the rise of the centralised nation-state, nationalism, urbanization and capitalism.
For Bookchin politics (the polis) first emerged in ancient cities, it represented a space distinct from the social sphere of the family and the clan where the biological requirements of reproduction are secured. The village is the site where family and clan loyalties determine relationships. However, where villages grew or amalgamated to form cities a new space opened up in which relationships developed that were not reducible to the biological ties of family and clan. In this space new ways of thinking emerged and civic institutions developed which transcended social relationships. This space is above all an ethical one in which individuals forsake their own narrow personal interests and attempt to enter into rational debate over the construction of a general interest. The key to the development of this political space is a self-governing, informed and openminded citizenry which engages, on an almost daily basis, in face-to-face debate.
According to Bookchin this state of affairs persisted, to varying degrees, down to the Middle Ages. However, with the emergence of new cities in Europe around the sixteenth century a new threat emerged. This threat was epitomised by the development of a new form of state which embarked on a process of nation building and fostered the emergence of nationalism, a phenomena which radically changed peoples loyalties moving them away from the city to the nation. These developments also coincided with the beginnings of capitalist industrialisation. Together these processes began to destroy the basis of the democratic city creating a new form of polity, economy and culture based upon liberal individualism and the cash nexus. One of the crucial elements in this process was the destruction of the countryside and its independent yeomanry as capitalist relations and methods of production turned them into landless labourers. The city remade the countryside in its own image and destroyed it, and at the same time, in a dialectical process, destroyed the basis of the city as a democratic polity-this is what Bookchin means by urbanization.
Until relatively recently these developments remained largely external to neighbourhoods and communities allowing, to varying degrees and in various forms, the continued existence of a political space in which individuals developed relations based upon mutuality and ethico political commitments. However, in the second half of the twentieth century capitalism has penetrated this space leading to the commodification of all aspects of everyday life. At the same time politics has become increasingly professionalized, bureaucratized and focused upon the state. This has lead to the degeneration of politics into statecraft, a situation in which individuals participate in politics, if at all, via the ballot box, politicians scheme amongst themselves and politics becomes coterminous with the state.
Broadly speaking Bookchin's interpretation of the city and its history is located within an anarchist perspective, although one which does not ignore the social, political and ethical relationships (i.e. mutuality) between individuals out of which arises a distinct and living social organisation-the city. It should therefore come as no surprise that his solution is to return to a grass-roots politics based upon the municipality as the centre of a new polis. Here, on a scale where people can relate to one another, the ancient, other-regarding, selfgoverning form of citizenship can reemerge to challenge the dominance of the state and capitalism. Bookchin does not believe that this struggle will be an easy or a short one, but, as the threats by the state and capitalism to the survival of the human species become more and more intense, the basis for a broad based revival of citizenship will develop. This threat is epitomised by the destruction of the ecological basis for life as capitalism, in partnership with the state, becomes ever more destructive in its search for profits.
It would be easy to accuse Bookchin of being utopian, but this would be harsh. He is not advocating a return to isolated village life. Indeed, the notion of confederalism (a federation of municipalities) lies at the heart of his alternative. Nor does he advocate a return to the economic stone-age, he argues for a economy that is subject to popular control (i.e. a genuinely political economy not governed by self-interest and book keeping), which takes into account the issues of sustainable economic growth and the needs of other municipalities and confederations. Whether such a form of social organization is possible in the modern world remains open to question. What is also open to question is whether at the municipal level, let alone the confederational or inter-confederational levels, individuals will be willing or able to engage in a rational and disinterested debate in the search for a common interest and the good life. He is making quite basic assumptions about human nature and the possibility of over-riding conflicts of class, gender, race, etc, to construct a common interest. No doubt his rer)lv would be that as citizenship and mutuality develop within the municipal polis so too will the ability to take on an attitude of mind which brackets-off ones own presumptions and prejudices and view issues from the perspective of others. He might even argue that this is our only hope, for as we approach the millennium the alternatives are municipalism or barbarism. Unfortunately, as I view the last two hundred years of human history, I would say the odds are on barbarism. However, I am reminded of Gramsci's dictum `pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will', such a view suggests that there must be alternatives and that we should seek to construct them. Bookchin's book offers such a vision, something all too lacking in contemporary politics, of a democratic politics which deserves critical consideration.
