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ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
immediate physical and psychological needs and desires for food, love,
sexuality,
and nurturing. The personal dimension of the social sphere
represents a specific quality of privacy predicated on an intimate knowledge of
ourselves and of our closest relations.
In contrast, the political sphere is the space in which we assert ourselves
publicly as managers of our own community affairs. It is the space in which
we discuss, decide upon, and carry out the public policies which give form to
social and political practices of our communities. The political sphere
constitutes a specific quality of action which is distinct from the social sphere.
Marked by a quality of public responsibility, the political sphere is the place in
which we, as citizens of a town, village, or city, participate in shaping the
policies which in turn inform our everyday lives.
Clearly, this description of the social and political spheres represents a
brief sketch of what these spheres ought to be, rather than what is within our
current society. Today, these spheres are dominated and degraded by the
sphere of the State. The modem Republican state represents a hierarchical and
centralized institution that both invades and appropriates activities that should
be managed directly by citizens within the political sphere. The State coopts
the power of citizens to directly determine and administer public policies
regarding community activities such as production, technological practice,
health, and education. To secure its own power, the State wields an often
undetectable, yet constant, everyday threat of violence manifested through an
army and police force.
The State has so
thoroughly appropriated our understanding
of
‘government’ that we are scarcely aware of our estrangement from truly
autonomous political activity. Taking the State for granted as inevitable, we
retreat into the social sphere looking for a site of both survival and resistance.
TIhe Public Spin ere; ThE
Necessity
Of PolhicAl
Reconstruction
Yet in order to transform society, we cannot retreat into our social lives; we
must address political questions as well. However, most social activists fail to
sufficiently include the problem of reconstructing the political sphere within
their activist vision. Instead, they often focus exclusively on the public and
private dimensions of the social sphere.
The reasons for this are two-fold. First, the political sphere has been
replaced by what Murray Bookchin refers to as “Statecraft : a system in which
political power is placed in the hands of elected representatives (professional
politicians) who make decisions regarding public policy on behalf of a voter
‘constituency’.
Disempowered by statecraft,
and unaware
of a political
alternative, activists often turn away from questions of politics, turning instead