theory - graphicalhouse … struck me that one way to address this was to ask a ... walter...

‘The Glimmer of Other Worlds’ was first written forthe Alternate Currents conference at the Universityof Sheffield in Autumn 2007. It was prompted by myexperiences as a teacher attempting to explain tostudents what the idea of an alternative to capitalistarchitectural and building production might mean.

It struck me that one way to address this was to ask aseries of questions that are typical of the kind I havebeen confronted with over the years. Each questionand answer is accompanied by an image and precededby an excerpt from a series of stories I am writing onthe spatial dynamics of the Russian Revolution.

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theoryAn architectural and political manifesto addresses a specific

politically engaged meaning of alternative practice understood

as anti-capitalist resistance.

The Glimmer of Other Worlds:questions on alternativearchitectural practiceJonathan Charley

Can there be a greater spectacle or drama than the seizure of a city during the midst of a major protest or rebellion? St. Petersburg, a metropolis framed by a skyline composed of glistening cupolas and belching toxic chimneys, swayswith intoxicated expectation that a rent in time is about toappear. The cobbles crack with the sound of falling statues.Horses dangle from lifting bridges. Barricades mesh acrossstreets. A panic-stricken government official searches for his nose and briefcase. Jealous civil servants, Francophilearistocrats, and vengeful generals are feverishly engaged in settling accounts, closing their shutters and securing safe passage out of the city.1

Q1What is meant by the phrase alternative or alternativepractice?Alternative or alternate are politically neutral wordsthat suggest something to do with notions ofdifference, opposites, or choice. Like any words theyacquire their meaning through context andassociation such as in the expressions the alternativesociety, alternative medicine, or alternative technology.Here I want to deal with a very specific politicallyengaged meaning. Alternative practice understood asanti-capitalist practice. By this I mean a way of doingthings, including making buildings, which is notdefined by capitalist imperatives and bourgeoismorality. This has two aspects; first, in the sense ofresisting the environmentally damaging and sociallydestructive aspects of capitalist urban development;second, in terms of engaging with embryonic postcapitalist forms of architectural and buildingproduction [1].

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Jonathan Charley The Glimmer of Other Worlds: questions on alternative architectural practice

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Murderous young men and women are hopping over thewalls of back courts and thousands of subterraneanproletarians with molten metal teeth pour out of the yardsand factories, all of them searching for redemption. It is aperfect stage set for the outbreak of a revolution, itsilluminated enlightenment boulevards poised over ratinfested basements. Till the moment before the cannon roarsit continues to parade its cathedrals, boulevards andillustrious terraces with a Potemkin-like contempt for therest of the city. The flâneur, the prince, the banker, and thepriest cannot believe that the history of their fundamentallyimplausible city has entered a new phase in which they willbe relegated to bit parts.

Q2But aren’t you swimming against the tide, againstreceived wisdom?We should always be sceptical of received wisdom, orin its rather more dangerous guise common sense,which is often little more than ‘naturalised’ ideology.One example of this is the ‘common sense attitude’that socialism is finished and that human civilisationends with the combination of free market capitalismand liberal parliamentary democracy. It is aconclusion reinforced by the ideological consensussweeping across the political parties that neo-liberaleconomic theory is the panacea for the world’s ills.

Such ‘ideological common sense’ resembles apowerful virus that attacks the nervous systemdestroying the powers of reason. Such is the germ’sstrength that it induces a dream-like state of narcosisin the corridors of power. The rallying cries of dissentbecome ever more ethereal and faint. The memoriesof ideological disputes about alternative worlds orconcepts of society that had dominated political lifein earlier generations become increasingly opaqueuntil they take their place alongside the myths ofancient legend. Showmen and peddlers of bogusmedicine sneak along the passageways and slide intothe vacant seats of philosophers and orators.Investigative journalists and rebel spies cower in theshadows. They are visibly terrified, as if haunted byWalter Benjamin’s comment that one of the definingfeatures of fascism is ‘the aestheticisation of politics’.2

Surely this cannot be happening here? But it is, andin the Chamber of the House applause indicates thatthe garage mechanics are all agreed, there is no doubtthat the engine works. The differences of opinionrevolve around what colour to paint the bodyworkand which type of lubricant should be used to ensure the engine ticks over with regularity andpredictability. This is a profoundly depressingsituation and we should neither believe nor accept it [2].

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The Glimmer of Other Worlds: questions on alternative architectural practice Jonathan Charley

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A detailed map of the city is laid out on the table. Handssweep with a dramatic blur across the streets and squares.One of them picks up a fat pencil and begins to draw on thepaper. The fingers compose two circles, one at a fivehundred-metre radius from the Winter Palace the other at athousand metres, and proceed to plot a series of smallercircles indicating the key places and intersections to betargeted in the coming insurrection. Strategic crossroads,the railway stations, the post and telegraph offices, bridges,key banking institutions and the Peter and Paul Fortress –the map of the city becomes a battle plan.

Q3 But this is all politics, what about architecture?There are exceptions, but historically architects havetended to work for those with power and wealth. Itwas in many ways the original bourgeois professionso we should not be surprised that many aprofessional architect is happy to be employed ascapitalism’s decorator, applying the finishingtouches to an edifice with which they have no realquarrel. As for the would-be rebel, even the architect’sand builder’s cooperative fully armed with a radicalagenda to change the world for the better is requiredto make compromises in order to keep a businessafloat. All alternative practices working within the

context of a capitalist society still have to make somesort of surplus or profit if they are to survive in themarket place. This said there are ethical and moralchoices to be made. It would be comforting to thinkthat the majority of contemporary architects’ firmswould have refused to design autobahns, stadiumsand banks with building materials mined by slavelabourers in 1930s Germany. How is it then thatseemingly intoxicated by the promise of largesse andoblivious to the human degradation andenvironmental catastrophe unravelling in the Gulf,architectural firms are clambering over bodies tocollect their fees from reactionary authoritariangovernments and corrupt dictators who deny civilianpopulations basic democratic rights? Why is it that somany firms in order to satisfy a ‘werewolf hunger forprofit’ are happy to ignore the labour camps holdingbuilding workers in virtual prison conditions? Thereis no polite way of describing what amounts toamnesiac whoredom. But on this and other relatedmatters the architectural and building professionsremain largely silent, an unsettling quiet that isparalleled in Britain by the absence of any sociallyprogressive movement within the architecturalcommunity that questions and confronts theideological basis of the neo-liberal project [3].

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Tearing up the theatrical rulebooks on the relationshipbetween actors and audience, workers transform the steps of the Winter Palace into what looks like a set from an Expressionist film. A giant three-dimensional version of Lissitsky’s print ‘red wedge defeats the whites’, a collisionof cubes, pyramids and a distorted house are constructed to camouflage the pastel blue stucco facade. This is the stage on which the revolutionaries re-enact the occupation of the Royal Palace and the arrest of Kerensky’s provisionalgovernment on a nightly basis with a cast of thousands.Something special had been unleashed. It makes perfectsense. ‘We workers will no longer listen to our bosses in the factory, so why should we listen to them in the art salons and galleries? Away with the grand masters, awaywith the worship of experts, art into life, art into the street,the streets are our palettes, our bodies and tools ourimplements.’

Q4But isn’t the left dead and aren’t you trying to raiseghosts and spectres?There is perhaps an element of necromantic wishfulthinking. It is probably true that the left in Europedespite the anti-capitalist movement has scattered,punch drunk and still reeling from the ideologicalbattering ram unleashed against it. Like whipped

autumnal leaves spread across the fields after highwinds it waits for a rake to pile it into a recognisableand coherent shape. But new alliances form at thevery moment when all seems lost. The reclamation ofthe lost, buried, and hidden is the subject matter ofarchaeology. But we also need to conduct a carefularchaeological dig to reclaim the oft forgottenhistorical attempts to forge an alternative tocapitalism. Central to this project of rebuildingopposition is to rescue the word socialism from itsassociation with the violent state capitalistdictatorships of the former Soviet bloc. With carefulscrapes and incisive cuts our archaeological digreveals a library full of eminently modern andprescient ideas like equality of opportunity, socialjustice, the redistribution of wealth, the socialownership of resources, concepts that are easy tobrush off and reinvigorate. The excavations continueand we discover that anarchism far from its infantilerepresentation as an ideology of chaos anddisruption, offers other extraordinary ideas that canbe added to the library index. Infused by a resolutedefence of individual liberty, it speaks of self-management, of independent action, of autonomy,and of opposition to all forms of social power,especially that wielded by the State [4].

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Comrades, take the time to read, digest and enjoy thedeclaration on land. Savour these words, ‘the landowner’sright to possession of the land is herewith abolished withoutcompensation’. Does that not sound magnificent? It is notpoetry in the sense of Pushkin or Lermontov, but it possessesa timeless lyrical quality. We have achieved something thatno other people in human history have managed. We havesocialised the land on behalf of all of society’s members at thesame moment as occupying all the key buildings of the Stateand Capitalist Class. It is an act that if it were to all endtomorrow would nevertheless resound through the ages likethe tales of Homer and Odysseus.

Q5But I’ve heard it all before, capitalism this, capitalismthat, shouldn’t we just accept that the best we can do isto ameliorate the worst aspects of capitalist buildingproduction? I can see why one might become anti-capitalist, but shouldn’t we learn to accept that’s justthe way the world is?That is indeed how the world is. The question is do we think it should be? Is the capitalist systemreally the best way of handling human affairs andorganising how we make and use our buildings

and cities? It is true that capitalism has proved to be remarkably resilient and even in moments of profound economic crisis has managed torestructure economic life so that capitalaccumulation can recommence. Yet it remainsdominated by the contradictions that arise from a social and economic system based on the private accumulation of capital and the economicexploitation of workers. It is a three hundred year old history disfigured by slavery, colonialdomination, socio-spatial inequality, and fascism,scars that are viewed as aberrations arising fromsome other planet, rather than what they are,structural features of capitalist economicdomination. Despite this history of social andpsychological violence, we are told that theorganisation of a mythical free market in land and building services and the relentlesscommodification of all aspects of the builtenvironment are the best ways of building ourvillages, towns and cities. Simultaneously, attemptsto provide a critique or offer alternative models forsocial and economic development are dismissed asthe utopian dreams of the sleeping dead [5].

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What we have achieved through our proclamationrepresents a continuation of the struggles of Frenchrevolutionaries to give the idea of a commune, and ofcommunal property a modern urban character. And they inturn were indebted to English revolutionaries a centurybefore. It is comforting to think that a full 265 years beforeour declaration on land nationalisation, the Diggers as themilitants liked to call themselves intended once and for all to‘level men’s estates’. On a spring Sunday in 1649, a smallband of revolutionary soldiers declared the abolition of theSabbath, of tithes, magistrates, ministers and the Bible.Proceeding to collectively dig local wasteland, they loudlyproclaimed that it was not a symbolic action but a realassumption of what they considered to be their rightfulownership of common lands. It was a radical vision of thefuture in which neither God nor powerful property ownershad a place. Agricultural production outside London wouldhave been collectivised in the common interest and aprogramme launched to build schools and hospitals for thepoor throughout the country.

Q6So what are the main contradictions within thecontemporary built environment that we should tryand tackle?A by no means exhaustive list might begin as follows:1) The private ownership by capitalists of the meansof building production. 2) The unstable character ofurban development and the employment insecurity

of workers that results from the endemic cycles of boom and slump within the building industry. 3) The history of ‘geographical’ uneven developmentand socio-spatial inequality. 4) The divisive patterns of social segregation that result from theprivatisation and fortification of land and buildings.5) The way in which the commodification of everydaylife exacerbates our alienation from nature, eachother and the products of our labour. 6) Thesubordination of social need and the environmentaldestruction caused by capitalists prioritising profitsover all other requirements and desires. 7) Thetendency towards the homogenisation ofarchitecture as building producers economise so as to maintain the rate of profit. 8) Ever increasinglevels of spatial surveillance and control designed tocreate a ‘purified city’ and ensure that the process ofcapital accumulation remains uninterrupted. All ofthese characteristics and others that we could add tothe list are accepted as a price worth paying andwould have been more than recognisable concerns to social commentators a hundred years ago. (It isworth remembering that in the nineteenth centurythe construction industry was one of the test beds for laissez-faire economics.) The purpose of criticismthen is quite simple – to challenge capitalisthegemony and to open up the imagination to the possibility of a liberated concept of labour andspace [6].

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Here in Russia, some workers and peasants have interpretedthe new laws quite literally and have appropriated buildings,land and machinery in a quite spontaneous manner throughdirect action. Take for instance this proclamation nailed toposts and hoardings in the Ukraine ‘To all the workers of thecity and its environs! Workers, your city is for the presentoccupied by the Revolutionary Insurrectionary (Makhnovist)Army. This army does not serve any political party, anypower, and any dictatorship. On the contrary it seeks to freethe region of all political power, of all dictatorship. It strivesto protect the freedom of action, the free life of the workersagainst all exploitation and domination. The MakhnovistArmy does not therefore represent any authority. It will notsubject anyone to any obligation whatsoever. Its role isconfined to defending the freedom of the workers. Thefreedom of the peasants and the workers belongs tothemselves, and should not suffer any restriction.’

Q7How do I begin to think about different forms ofpractice?The first thing is to draw a map or a matrix of thethings you think are important and locate yourselfwithin it. Capitalism might appear relentless in theingenious ways in which it carves up the world, butso are our abilities to resist it. If generally speakingthe ruling ideas of any epoch tend to be those of theruling class, there have always been other histories.These are the unsung stories of individuals and socialclasses engaged in the struggle to realise the hopethat another world is possible. Where one looks forinspiration tends to be idiosyncratic, very much ajourney that has to do with what you read, where you

travel, who your teachers are and your identity interms of race, class and gender. These are all lensesthrough which a view of the world is either clarifiedor obscured. One way of thinking about forms ofresistance is to compose a simple map of a capitalisteconomy that describes the process of productionand exchange through which the built environmentis made and comes into use. This is helpful because itallows us to locate and plan strategies for alternativepractices in a coordinated and coherent fashion. Sofor instance, if we think of the ‘sphere ofproduction’, we might discuss the struggles ofarchitects, building workers, and planners toorganise and envision a different way of makingbuildings and cities. If we think of the ‘sphere ofexchange and consumption’ we might look to thestruggles by tenants, users, and consumers tomanage and use our built environment in a non-capitalist manner. Implicit in this model is that weplace the activities of architects within a broadercontext and indeed it is fairly meaningless to talk ofan ‘alternative architectural practice’ that is anti-capitalist unless it takes into account that what anarchitect does is only one small link in the chain ofcommand by which buildings eventually emerge outof the ground. An example in Britain of how thismight be realised can be found in the activities ofLubetkin, Tecton, and A.T.O. They endeavoured toproduce an architecture of social commitment thatwas meticulously designed and engineered. Theyworked closely with tenants and other organisationsin the building industry and simultaneouslyengaged with the struggle against fascism [7].

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And so Comrades, we have a unique situation on our hands.We have the very real opportunity to fundamentally rethinkwhat we understand by urban construction. The land hasbeen nationalised, the operations of the real estate marketand the phenomena of differential rents have been abolished,building workers have expelled the contractors and set updemocratic workers’ collectives on site and in factory, thebourgeois state has been smashed – and so we can now turnto the vexed question of what we should build on the ruins ofthe capitalist city? There are it seems two immediate ways ofaddressing the problem. The first is a directly political andeconomic issue that concerns questions about the ownershipand control of how buildings will be produced and used. Thesecond is a qualitative question that concerns what types ofbuildings and spatial organisation we should be thinkingabout and what form they might take.

Q8So where do we look for alternative models to thecapitalist production of the built environment?I think that it is timely that we critically reflect onthe legacy of social democracy and historicalmoments when the socialist movement has beenstrong enough to tip the balance of the ‘use-exchange’ value of the commodity in favour of socialneed. In twentieth-century Britain there were twoperiods worth recalling. The first was the epoch ofmunicipal socialism a hundred years ago manifest inthe architectural programmes of Local Authorities.In London this gave birth to the first significantexperiments in the production of rented socialhousing. In Glasgow it brought about theconstruction of an extraordinary network of publicand social facilities across the city that included

bathhouses, schools, and libraries. Emboldened bythe growing strength of the Trade Union movement,it was the first time that the state had directlyintervened to regulate and sponsor the productionof buildings with an explicit social mission. Thesecond period coincided with the foundation of theWelfare State and the post Second World Warnational programme to build a new infrastructure ofeducational, social and cultural facilities. While wemight question the quality of some of thearchitecture, the level of social commitment amongthe architectural community contrasts sharply withthe opportunism that dominates the professiontoday. Many a forgotten hero and heroine threwthemselves into the task of building a New Britainand however misguided some of the results mightseem, it is difficult not to be moved by their sense ofidealism. However, as we know from the ideologicalassault on the legacy of the Welfare State by bothTory and Labour administrations over the last twentyyears, the gains that are fought for sometimes overdecades can be quickly unravelled. All attempts toameliorate or develop alternative practices withinthe context of a capitalist economy eventually comeup against this contradiction. Despite this, voices canstill be heard from the frontier making demands forthe democratic social regulation of how we makeand use our built environment so as to tip thebalance of commodity production in the interests ofdisenfranchised users and social organisations.Listen closer, and you will hear distant echoes ofother more radical voices, which from the edge ofthe wilderness still dream of the socialisation of landand the building industry [8].

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In front of us we have a programme for a decentralised‘disurbanist’ type of spatial development. What wouldhappen if these plans were implemented? The idea of themonumental construction of a capital city would beconsigned to books dealing with the urban history of classsocieties. Moscow would still remain the symbolic heart ofthe country, but the social and spatial contradictions thatdominate the capitalist built environment would beeradicated. For the first time in human history, theconnection between political power and urban constructionwould be smashed. It also suggests a quite different agendafor the design of individual buildings. It implies anarchitecture that emerges out of concerns for infrastructuralnetworks, temporality, flexibility and mobility. It suggestsideas about architecture and urbanism that are open-endedrather than closed, changeable rather than static, and whichcelebrate chance, liberty and fun, an architecture that is nolonger obsessed with formal canons but thinks aboutstrategic programmes, kinetic buildings, and about anurbanism born out of an understanding of social andtechnological change.

Q9 So where do we look next?Everywhere and anywhere. I have focused on four ofthe more profound European attempts to challengecapitalist hegemony, so as to unravel thearchitectural or building programmes within them– the English revolution of the seventeenth century,the French revolutions of the eighteenth andnineteenth century, the Russian revolution in thedecade after 1917 and the Spanish revolution in themid 1930s. These are known primarily as politicaland social revolutions. However, all of them wereimplicitly spatial and opened up what Henri Lefebvrereferred to as an oeuvre on a different world in whichthe tactics of ‘spatial resistance’ were transformedand developed. Tactic one involves organisation – theexchange of ideas, the draughting of texts andmanifestos, and the forging of bonds with fellowtravellers. Next comes action – the organisation ofstrikes and the occupation of land and property as aprelude to the seizure of the city and its institutions.Third comes preparation – drawing up plans for newbuilding programmes and forms of social andspatial organisation. Fourth comes construction, thedevelopment of post-capitalist labour processes andthe practical task of converting the dream world oflimitless possibilities into a something material, realand practical [9].

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Comrade Aleksei Gan, perhaps you would like to commenton these plans? ‘Most certainly, they are worthy but still alittle timid. We should not be content with half measures, weshould unequivocally demand the complete democratisationof planning and the development of new forms of artisticlabour in which the revolutionary festival, would be re-conceptualised as a mass urban action. Imagine, my friends,an event in which the entire proletarian masses of Moscowwould be able to enact their own vision of the Communistcity of the future in real space-time, filling not only the entirecity of Moscow but even its outskirts.’

Q10But hang on a minute, all the experiments you refer tofailed! In fact one might argue that the most lastinglegacy in terms of socialised building construction didnot come from Russia, it came from Sweden.Yes and no. You are right that the achievements ofthe Scandinavian countries in prioritising socialneed, in building integrated transport systems,childcare facilities and good quality rentedaccommodation puts a lot of what we build to shame.However, it is a type of social democracy that manyfind rather uncomfortable and disturbing, evenspooky – too sure, too right, too regulated, tooordered. In contrast in the Barcelona of 1936, or inParis in 1871 we find something very different inwhich carnival, joy, freedom and self-determinationare the goals of political struggle rather than sensibleadministration. As Henri Lefebvre reminds us, peoplefight revolutions to be happy not to produce tons ofsteel. The question of failure and failed experimentsis an interesting one. For instance, much has beenwritten about the Paris Commune.3 Manuel Castellscalled it the most repressed rent strike in history.

Lenin and Engels thought of it as the dictatorship ofthe proletariat in action.4 Guy Debord considered itthe only successful example of revolutionaryurbanism to date, arguing that although it ended inslaughter, for those who lived through the sixmonths when the communards controlled much ofthe city it was a ‘triumph’ in that they gained anunprecedented insight into how everyday life mightbe organised in a non-capitalist manner.5 GeorgeOrwell was similarly effusive in his praise of thesituation in Barcelona when anarchists took over thecity, creating not another form of state power but anopening on a quite new world of creativepossibilities.6 Like the Paris Commune there was noreported crime in Barcelona and similar to theactions of French communards, workers inspired bya libertarianism firmly rooted in the tradition ofBakunin and Kropotkin, had actively begun toexperiment with self-government and forms of self-management before the city fell to the fascists.Although in recent times nothing quite as radical hashappened in Britain, there have nevertheless beenmany experiments in independent self-government;from the setting up of workers councils to organisedaily life during the General Strike of 1926; to thecommunes and co-operatives of the late nineteenthcentury and the post-war counter culture; to thepeace camps of the nuclear protest campaign; and tothe more recent sit-ins and occupations of theenvironmental movement. In their different waysthey all began to draw a different ‘architecture’ ofBritain. That such movements fail to achieve theiraims does not alter the fact that through suchactions the idea of a different political space is keptalive [10].

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Let me explain. The social condenser is conceived as being apart of, or all of, a building or complex, in which thedevelopment of a new way of life and of collective and co-operative organisation would be encouraged, anenvironment in which women in particular would beliberated from the burdens of domestic labour. As such acollective laundry, a childcare establishment, as well as themore general categories of the housing commune or workers’club, can be considered as social condensers. Such a theorystresses the transformative and educational possibilities ofarchitecture. As Lissitsky has commented, ‘it is to the socialrevolution, rather than to the technological revolution thatthe basic elements of Russian architecture are tied’.

Q11But what has any of this really got to do witharchitecture?Everything. Political movements that create anopportunity to experiment with new forms of socialorganisation are implicitly spatial. It is true that inboth Barcelona and Paris more obviously spatialevents took place – toppling monuments, changingthe use of churches, occupying factories, taking overtheatres, and organising rent strikes. But in the longterm if they had succeeded and lasted beyond theirfew months of existence, such forms of governmentwould have opened up quite new possibilities forboth imagining and making architecture. Successfulsocial revolutions are automatically spatial

revolutions that create new pre-conditions for theproduction of architecture. This is bothorganisational in meaning, in the sense of co-operatives of builders, architects and tenants (e.g. theidea of socialism as a network of collectives and co-operatives), and object orientated in the imaginationof new types of buildings and forms of spatialorganisation. The most sustained attempt to do thiswas in the Soviet Union in the decade after theBolshevik revolution. Unlike in Spain and Franceopportunities arose not just to ‘negate’ capitalismbut to spatialise a socialist democracy, to organise asocialist building industry, and to create and carryout socialist programmes for architecture. Buildingworkers actively campaigned to abolish the wagessystem, to eradicate Taylorism, to dismantle ‘oneman’ management and to develop a labour processbased around production communes. Architectsdesigned sophisticated housing communes thatliberated women from domestic labour, workers’clubs for Trade Unions, and settlements thatcontradicted the idea of a city of concentratedpolitical power. The fact that by the end of the 1920sthe programme of the Soviet avant-garde had beenlargely destroyed does not diminish its significance.It is there to remind us that to engage politically withthe idea of another world is possible is a pre-condition ofimagining ‘another architecture’ and a genuinelyalternative practice. Architecture is already political;the point is to change its politics [11].

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Notes1. My Fragments of a Moscow Diary are

an unpublished series of storiesthat document my 20 years ofvisiting and working in the cityfrom 1984 to 2004. It comprises fourseparate chapters; Kolya’s Memoir,1900-1953, the memories of abuilding worker; Conversations withDima, an architect who descendsinto madness; Postcards from the LastSoviet Tourist; and Lecture to SocialistArchitects Part I, II, and III. These areall fictional pieces based onarchival research and real events.

2. ‘The logical result of Fascism is theintroduction of aesthetics intopolitical life’. Walter Benjamin,‘The Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction’ inIlluminations (New York: Schocken,1985), p. 241.

3. The Paris Commune in particularis one of those events that everypolitical theorist and essayist hasat some point passed comment on.It has generated dozens of booksand thousands of pages thatendeavour to capture its essenceand legacy. To this day opinionsremain divided not just betweenthe political left and right butwithin the left itself. Althoughduring its brief existence theCommunards never had time toactually build anything, like allsuch insurrections and socialmovements it was implicitlyspatial. What I call the ‘spatialtactics of political resistance’

included such things as theoccupation of the city, theorganisation of rent strikes, theconstruction of barricades, thedemolition of symbols ofoppression and the appropriationof buildings to hold workers’meetings. For a useful anthology of left wing analyses see The ParisCommune of 1887. The View from theLeft, ed. by E. Schulkind (London:Cape, 1972). For some of the longerwell-known works see WalterBenjamin, ‘Paris, Capital of theNineteenth Century’, in Reflections(New York: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1978), pp. 146–162.M. Bookchin, The Third Revolution,Popular Movements in theRevolutionary Era, Vol. II (London:Cassell, 1998), pp. 192–251. P.Kropotkin, The Commune of Paris,1880 (London: Freedom Pamphlets,1895).

4. V. I. Lenin, ‘The State andRevolution. Experience of the ParisCommune, 1871’ (1918), in SelectedWorks (Progress Publishers:Moscow, 1977), pp. 286–299. K.Marx, introduction by F. Engels,‘Civil War in France’, in Marx andEngels, Basic Writings on Politics andPhilosophy, ed. by L. Feuer (London:Fontana, 1969), pp. 389–430.

5. G. Debord, A. Kotanyi, R. Vaneigem,‘Theses on the Paris Commune’, inThe Situationist International,Anthology, ed. by K. Knabb(California: Bureau of PublicSecrets, 1981), pp. 314–317.

6. Equally controversial is the legacyof the Barcelona commune of 1936.George Orwell visited the cityduring this period and publishedhis thoughts in his Homage toCatalonia (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 2000), originallypublished in 1938. For a goodintroduction to the history ofanarchist thought see PeterMarshall, Demanding the Impossible:The History of Anarchism (London:Fontana, 1993). For reprints oforiginal anarchist manifestoesfrom the Spanish Civil War, seeDaniel Guerin, No Gods, No Masters,An Anthology of Anarchism, vol. II(Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998).

Illustration creditarq gratefully acknowledges: Author, all images

BiographyJonathan Charley lives in Glasgow. He teaches at the Department ofArchitecture at Strathclyde where he has run a design studio for manyyears. He has published and lecturedwidely on the politics and socialhistory of architecture and urbanism.

Author’s addressDr Jonathan CharleyDepartment of Architecture131 RottenrowUniversity of StrathclydeGlasgow, g41 2qx

uk

[email protected]

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