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On The Problem of Scale:

A Synthesis of Kropotkin, Mumford, Boulding,

Bookchin and Schumacher

Benjamen F. Gussen

Correspondence may be addressed to Benjamin F. Gussen, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Business and

Economics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, email:b.gussen@auckland.ac.nz.

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Abstract

We analyse the writings of Peter Kropotkin, Lewis Mumford, Kenneth Boulding, Murray

Bookchin and Ernst Schumacher with the aim of synthesising them into a coherent economic

school of thought. In particular, we demonstrate their rejection of the nation state as the basic

unit for economic organisation, an assumption that has dominated economics since the

Physiocrats, and their use instead of the sovereign city as the human scale of organisation.

We identify a consistent call for replacing the nation state with city confederations.

Key words: scale, nation state, polycentricity

JEL Codes: B19, B29

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Introduction

Our main title, “On the problem of scale”, comes from a phrase that appears in E. F.

Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful. There, Schumacher explains the origin and meaning of the

phrase in the following terms: “On the problem of ‘scale,’ Professor Leopold Kohr has

written brilliantly and convincingly … Small-scale operations, no matter how numerous, are

always less likely to be harmful to the natural environment than large-scale ones, simply

because their individual force is small in relation to the recuperative forces of nature.

(Schumacher 1999, 22).

Using this problematisation of scale, this paper outlines a common diagnostic that

runs through the writings of Peter Kropotkin, Lewis Mumford, Kenneth Boulding, Murray

Bookchin and Ernst F. Schumacher. In particular, the return to local autonomy through city

confederations is seen as the sin qua non for solving the political and economic crises facing

society today.

A biological analogy runs through this paper, and builds on physiological (functional)

and morphological (structural) parallels between social organisations (including polities) and

biological organisms. We delineate this analogy in Part 1.

The common diagnostic could be described in other ways. Bookchin identifies it as

“Libertarian Municipalism” (1986, 25). Boulding (1971, 89, 83) sees this diagnostic as a

movement of dissent that characterises “institutionalism” among other movements. Mumford

discusses this dissent from the point of view of “Jewish apocalyptic writings” (1944, 41).

Kropotkin (1975, 59) sees a similar dissent in what came to be known as anarchism. This

common link can also be formulated as a delineation of crises inflicting human societies

(Schumacher 1999, 121). These crises “arise from the antinomy of order and freedom”

(Schumacher 1999, 211).

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Mumford sees the antinomy as tension between two modes of scientific enquiry. At

the beginning, these modes had a common desire to break away from the past (Mumford

1970, 21). Today, however, there is tension between these modes (Mumford 1970, 8). The

first, what Schumacher refers to as order, is characterised by abstraction leading to universal

laws (Mumford 1970, 4). Under this mode, “all complex phenomena must be reduced to the

measurable, the repetitive, the predictable, the ultimately controllable” (Mumford 1970, 30).

This in turn made “living organisms, in their most typical functions and purposes …

superfluous” as “the new science successfully turned the most significant attributes of life

into purely secondary phenomena, ticketed for replacement by the machine” (Mumford 1970,

68). The second mode, which corresponds to Schumacher’s freedom, “dwelt on the concrete

and the organic, the adventurous, the tangible” (Mumford 1970, 4). Through the second

mode, “the abstract cosmos of space and time and gravitation … was brought down to earth,

an earth teeming with life” (Mumford 1970, 16).

After 1492 and the discovery of the New World, order dominated freedom (Mumford

1970, 43). This signified “a new era of evolutionary history, one in which rapid change is a

dominant consequence” (Mumford 1972, 193). The passage to absolutism stripped away “the

constituent groups that compose any real community—the family, the village, the farm, the

workshop, the guild, the church” and “cleared the way for the uniformities and

standardizations imposed by the machine” (Mumford 1970, 81). This absolutism transposed

the specific characters of organisms and machines, and by doing so “elevated the mechanical

creature above his creator”, which “brought catastrophic potentialities …” (Mumford 1970,

97).

According to Mumford (1970, 334), from a historical perspective, the domination by

the first mode will be short lived. The first mode is “heading toward a static finality, in which

change of the system itself will be so impermissible that it will take place only through total

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disintegration and destruction” (Mumford 1970, 211).After the advent of those such as E. A.

Burtt and Erwin Schrödinger (in the mid-20th

century), the second mode began gaining

attention again (Mumford 1970, 68). This freedom mode “reverses the conventional reading

of causality, chance, statistical order, and purposeful design, and gives to the organism as a

working whole in all its indescribable capabilities the role that Descartes gave to the

machine” (Mumford 1970, 88).

The above tension between order and freedom constitutes the backbone of this paper’s

analysis. It leads us first into a critique of the orthodox view of evolution. Later in the paper,

we trace the effect of the orthodox view of evolution—one that emphasises competition, the

rise of nation states and the demise of the sovereign city. The prognosis indicates a need for a

return to smaller scale organisation around confederations of sovereign cities.

1. Evolution, Organisms and Hobbes

The starting point is a critique of the orthodox view of evolution, which emphasises

competition over cooperation. For example, Kropotkin (1904, ix, 5, 61) suggests that

evolution cannot be based on keen competition alone. Instead, there are two laws of nature:

mutual struggle or competition, and mutual aid or cooperation (Kropotkin 1904, 76). For

Kropotkin, mutual aid is a law of nature and the chief “factor of evolution” (1904, 6, 40, 46,

52). This cooperation is seen as the salient characteristic of life in societies and as “the most

powerful weapon in the struggle for life” (Kropotkin 1904, 57). It suggests a pre-human

origin of moral instincts (Kropotkin 1904, x, xii). In mutual aid, “we can find the origin of

our ethical conceptions” (Kropotkin 1904, 300). Hence, “it is evident that life in societies

would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and,

especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit” (Kropotkin

1904, 58). Ethics becomes an evolutionary exigency.

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Bookchin also emphasises “the role played by intraspecific and interspecific

cooperation in fostering the survival of life forms on the plant”, particularly the role of

“interspecific support systems that we now know to be more widespread than Kropotkin

could have imagined” (1982, 361). Equally, for Mumford, Kropotkin brought some balance

to Marx and Darwin in emphasising the “role of co-operation and mutual aid” in the “modes

of development and growth” (Mumford 1944, 332, 39).

This understanding of evolution as competition and cooperation leads to a critique of

the necessity of a strong central government, particularly as advocated by Thomas Hobbes.

Hence, Kropotkin indicates that “[t]he chief error of Hobbes … was to imagine that mankind

began its life in the shape of small straggling families” (1904, 78). Kropotkin is careful to

explain that “[f]ar from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late

product of human evolution” (1904, 79). Similarly, for Mumford (1970, 99), Hobbes starts

his analysis from two contradictory positions: while he sees men as virtual machines, he also

sees them in constant conflict until they surrender to an external sovereign. Surrender is

analogous to the behaviour of automata, which are artificial organisms, making man’s life no

more than “a motion of the limbs” (Mumford 1970, 100). For Hobbes, life is a “constant

struggle for power motivated by fear” (Mumford 1970, 102). This understanding later

resulted in the Malthus-Darwin “struggle for existence”, which emphasises competition to the

point of “exterminat[ing] all rival groups or species” (Mumford 1970, 102). Mumford sees

Hobbes’ Leviathan as the “the political order that would deliberately turn men into machines,

whose spontaneous acts could be regulated and brought under control, and whose natural

functions and moral choices would all be channelled through a single responsible centre―the

sovereign ruler or, in the bureaucratic jargon of our own day, the Decision Maker” (1970,

98). For Mumford, Leviathan reveals the ultimate tendency of despotic governments, namely

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automatism: “Despotism can succeed … only to the extent that it can turn men into

automatons” (1944, 176).

This automatism signalled the rise of the machine. For the greatest part of human

history, tools were simply an extension of the human organism. They did not exist

independently (Mumford 1934, 321). However, “[b]ecause of their independent source of

power, and their semiautomatic operation … machines have seemed to have a reality and an

independent existence apart from the user” (Mumford 1934, 322). The “chief esthetic

principle” of the machine was “the economic principle”, where the “aim of sound design is to

remove from the object … every extra part except that which conduces to its effective

functioning” (Mumford 1934, 352).

The ethics of cooperation was thus being replaced by that of the machine. The

machine “in its esthetic manifestations [has] the same effect that a conventional code of

manners has in social interactions” (Mumford 1934, 357). This transformation was the result

of “deliberate efforts to achieve a mechanical way of life: the motive … was not technical

efficiency but … power over other men” (Mumford 1934, 365). Mumford sees Hobbes’ logic

as enforcing the role of power “as the source of all other goods”, which in turn emphasises

the “state and the machine, in their dual efforts to establish law, order, and control, and to

widen the whole system by further conquests of nature and other human groups” (1970, 101).

The goal of this power system is progress: “more power, more profit, more productivity,

more paper property, more publicity―all convertible into quantitative units” (Mumford 1970,

167). There was now “only one efficient speed, faster; only one attractive destination, farther

away; only one desirable size, bigger; only one rational quantitative goal, more” (Mumford

1970, 173). Technology “produced a state of torrential dynamism, since the only from of

control effectively exercised is that of making every part undergo still more rapid change,

whilst the system itself becomes more immobile and rigid” (Mumford 1970, 287). Under this

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Hobbesian existence, the purpose of life “is to furnish and process an endless quantity of

data, in order to expand the role and ensure the domination of the power system” (Mumford

1970, 274).

Bookchin is also critical of Hobbes’ notion of the state, where Hobbes “divests nature

of all ethical content” (Bookchin 1982, 162). Bookchin indicates that in “regions with small

farmers, it was difficult to establish totalitarian states. Where their position was weakened, or

where large labor surpluses were readily available, centralized states were much more

possible and often developed” (1982, 248). Bookchin argues that “anthropology and a clear

reading of history present an image entirely antithetical to that of a grasping, Hobbesian type

of humanity” (1982, 348). Schumacher also points out Hobbes’ error in limiting mankind’s

existence to biological needs, which inevitably attracts a miserable life. Instead, for

Schumacher, “man is capax universi, capable of bringing the whole universe into his

experience” (1977, 45–46).

Boulding takes the evolutionary parallel and constructs through it an analogy between

organisms and organisations. For Boulding, there are more similarities than differences

between social organisations and organisms to justify considering the former as analogous to

a biological organism. Both are considered “behavior systems” (Boulding 1984, xvii).

However, important differences exist in reproduction and consciousness (Boulding 1984,

xvii). In biological production, energy, time and space determine the nature of ecosystems

and the species that can survive in them. However, “[o]nce the general nature of the

ecosystem has been determined … space becomes the ultimate limiting factor” (Boulding

1992, 53). Conversely, organisations must deal with the problem of consent (Boulding 1984,

xxxi). Hence, in organisations, expectations are a determinant part of behaviour (Boulding

1984, xxix). However, both behaviour systems could be understood through the process of

exchange (Boulding 1984, xix). Using this logic, Boulding goes on to indicate that a “social

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system which thrives on the exploitation of exhaustible resources does not have a long

expected life” (1984, xxi).

One of Boulding’s (1984, xxv) insights that extends from bio-systems to social

organisations is the idea of catastrophe. Pushing organisations beyond their “proper size”

(Boulding 1984, 78) inevitably results in their breakdown. We delineate this point further in

Part 2.

2. Morphology, Structure and Scale

Schumacher (1977, 20, 23) is also alive to the importance of structure, stating that

“everything in this world has to have a structure” (1999, 50, emphasis in the original), and

that “[i]n the ideal case, the structure of man’s knowledge would match the structure of

reality” (1977, 67). He sees a need for “cultural structure” as much as for “economic

structure” (Schumacher 1999, 148). He continues by explaining that “[o]ne of the chief

elements of structure for the whole of mankind is … the [political] state” (Schumacher 1999,

51, emphasis in the original), with political boarders being one of the key structural elements

of the state. Further, he argues that the “bigger the country, the greater is the need for internal

‘structure’ and for a decentralized approach to development” (Schumacher 1999, 148).

Mumford sees democracy as “necessarily most active in small communities” (1967, 236). As

soon as large numbers are involved, “democracy must either succumb to external control and

centralized direction, or embark on the difficult task of delegating authority to a cooperative

organization” (Mumford 1967, 236).

Boulding emphasises the importance of structure to economics. In discovering what

went wrong with economics, Boulding (1992, 75) points out that the real world is not

epistemologically homogenous. He stresses that “aggregates like ‘the national income,’ or

‘the level of employment,’ or ‘the price level’ are all heterogeneous conglomerations … we

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forgot that they are not simple aggregates but have a complex structure which may well be

relevant … This ‘fallacy of aggregation’ is a common one’ it is at the root of most of the

fallacies of Marxism, with its assumption of homogenous classes; of Nationalism, with its

assumption of homogenous nations; and it event accounts for the spectacular lack of

prophetic success among the brighter young economists” (Boulding 1971, 258–59). Such

aggregation is in danger of neglecting the structure of economic systems and concentrating

on aggregate size (Boulding 1984, 187). Moreover, “thinking in turns of aggregates which are

too heterogeneous” might not be workable (Boulding 1950, 175). Boulding points out that

this “fallacy of aggregation” “has been a common one in the history of social thought” (1950,

188). An example of this fallacy is the theory of international trade, “which has usually failed

to recognize the economic heterogeneity of political states” (Boulding 1950, 189). For

Boulding, “the ‘art’ of macroeconomic analysis consists largely in the breakdown of the great

aggregates of the system into smaller aggregates which are not too numerous to handle but

which are small enough so that the inevitable heterogeneity is insufficient to upset the results

of the analysis” (1950, 187).

The emphasis on structure leads in turn to scale and its constituent parts of space and

time. For Schumacher, “[t]he question of scale is extremely crucial today, in political, social,

and economic affairs just as in almost everything else” (1999, 49). Boulding points out two

“macroeconomic paradoxes”, which result in the proposition that are “true in individual

experiences but which are quite untrue for society as a whole” (1971, 259). He sees economic

aggregates and averages as paradoxical: the propositions that are true when applied to a

single individual become untrue when applied to the economic system as a whole (Boulding

1950, 173).

For Mumford “[s]pace and time, like language … help condition and direct action”

(1934, 18). In the medieval period, “[s]ize [qua scale] signifie[d] importance” (Mumford

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1934, 18). Between the 14th and 17th centuries, with the development of capitalism and the

discovery of the laws of perspective, “[s]pace as a hierarchy of values was replaced by space

as a system of magnitude” (Mumford 1934, 20). Now, “size meant not human or divine

importance, but distance” (Mumford 1934, 20). Capitalism brought “the new habits of

abstraction and calculation into the lives of city people” (Mumford 1934, 23). Unfortunately,

this abstraction, “while important to orderly research and refined symbolic representation, are

likewise conditions under which real organisms die, or at least cease to function effectively”

(Mumford 1934, 50). These scale changes brought about the “human machine”, which

required a “priesthood” for the reliable organisation of knowledge (natural and supra-natural),

and a “bureaucracy” for an elaborate structure for giving and carrying out orders. There was

now a concern with “punctuality and regularity, with the impersonal and the automatic”,

which “bound together the inventor, the scientist, the businessman, the soldier [and] the

bureaucrat” (Mumford 1972, 98).

Bookchin also emphasises the importance of the (human) scale. He sees the notion of

“human scale” as “distinctly tribalistic in character and origin” (Bookchin 1987, 28). The

case for the “human scale” is not only logistical, democratic or esthetic; rather, it is ethical

(Bookchin 1987, 36). Bookchin hence explains that the “problem of delegated power

[emerges] beyond localized social areas, [and] becomes elusive and obscure if only because it

loses its human scale” (1982, 129). Structural changes in society allowed usurping local

autonomy (Bookchin 1982, 133).

Bookchin (1982, 2) sees a catastrophic result to the problems currently experienced

by modern societies, and suggests that decentralisation and a return to the human scale are

inextricably tied to specific technology choices, such as renewable resources and bio-

agricultural practices. Similarly, Mumford refers to Kropotkin as one of the thinkers who

“realized the advantages of advanced technology―utilizing small machines with efficient

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and cheap electric power―for restoring the intimate human scale” (1967, 255). Bookchin

opines that the “dichotomy between the modern image of a materially affluent life and the

classical ideal of a life based on limit parallels the dichotomy between modern and classical

concepts of technics” (1982, 221). According to Schumacher, one of the problems of

technology is that it “recognizes no self-limiting principle—in terms … of size, speed, or

violence” (1999, 120). This needs to be countered by giving “a new direction to technological

development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means:

to the actual size of man” (Schumacher 1999, 131, emphasis in the original).

Mumford was alive to the fact that the human scale is never an absolute, but is

determined “not alone by the normal dimensions of the human body, but by the functions that

are facilitated and by the interests and purposes that are served” (Mumford 1961, plate 59).

He adds, “[t]he structure of the human body, no less than its functions and its excreta, called

forth early efforts at modification. The cutting or braiding or curling or pasting together of the

hair, the removal of the male foreskin” (Mumford 1967, 109). Schumacher continues the

same line of thinking by advocating a return to the human sale, through decentralisation and

the use of technologies amenable to small-scale production. He sees this as an optimal scale

for economic activity, which, when surpassed, would have adverse effects on humans

(Schumacher 1999, 47).

The triumph of order over freedom discussed in Part 1 is exhibited in the idea of

“mechanomorphism”, or the scientific approach, where a mechanistic explanation of organic

behaviour is seen as sufficient. However, as also indicated earlier, Mumford portends that the

dominance of this idea of “mechanomorphism” is ephemeral (1970, 95). Organisms are open

systems “subject to chance mutations and to many external forces and circumstances”, while

mechanisms are closed systems “contrived by the inventor to achieve clearly foreseen and

limited ends” (Mumford 1970, 97). Hobbes’ “zoӧmorphism”, where animal attributes are

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passed to human beings, led to distortion greater than the “anthropomorphism” it reacted

against (Mumford 1970, 99).

Boulding explains that the problem with economics is that it imitates science in being

“mechanomorphic” (1971, 38). Pointing out that the world is not a machine, Boulding quotes

Lionel Robbins as saying, “it is not an exaggeration to say that, at the present day, one of the

main dangers to civilization arises from the inability of minds trained in the natural sciences

to perceive the difference between the economic and the technical” (1971, 260).

To further our understanding of the issue, Boulding (1968) introduces five principles

of structural organisation (morphology) that illustrate how growth creates form and how form

limits growth. One of Boulding’s key insights is that the “character of a system frequently has

to change not merely because it gets big, but because it stops growing” (1968, 81). There are

two reasons why “behavior systems” (such as organisms and organisations) stop growing:

either the environment becomes less favourable (the principle of the increasingly

unfavourable environment), or the internal structure becomes less favourable (the principle of

the increasingly unfavourable internal structure) (Boulding 1984, 22–23). In essence, “as the

size of an organization or organism increases, it is impossible to maintain the proportional

structure of the organism intact” (Boulding 1984, 23). While technological change extends

the size limits for social organisations, such as improved communication or transportation

systems, such mechanical aids are not enough. There is also a need to change the internal

structure to push the envelope of change (Boulding 1984, 26). In particular, this is achieved

by new methods of specialisation (the division of labour). The increasing size “is possible

only at the cost of increasing complexity of structure” (Boulding 1984, 27).

Boulding hence stresses that there is an optimal scale (and structure) for every

organisation. He sees the return-to-scales phenomenon in the evolution of lungs and internal

skeletons, which allowed living organisms to break through the scale barrier. The

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mathematical principle behind this return to scale relates to the fact that doubling the length

of a structure would quadruple its area and octuplet its volume; such increasing returns to

scale must at some point turn into diminishing returns (Boulding 1971, 125). Boulding refers

to the disadvantages of scale as the “Brontosaurus Principle” (1984, 35), where organisations

become parasitic upon the society that supports them.

The problematisation of scale also relates to the concept of hierarchy. Bookchin

defines hierarchy as “the cultural, traditional and psychological systems of obedience and

command, not merely the economic and political systems to which the term class and State

most appropriately refer” (1982, 4). Bookchin (1982, 3) sees hierarchy as related to class and

the state, although “classless but hierarchical societies exist today” (Bookchin 1982, 4). He

adds, “even with the emergence of hierarchy there were still no economic classes or state

structures” (1982, 6). Boulding (1984, 53) sees a nexus between neuroticism and hierarchy.

Hierarchy is a universal characteristic of organisations that is not found in organisms

(Boulding 1984, xxxii). The necessity for this hierarchy “seems to lie mainly in the nature of

a communication system” (Boulding 1984, xxxii), although this same necessity “have created

a severe moral dilemma” (Boulding 1984, xxxiii), namely the loss of equality in a highly

stratified society. For Boulding (1984, xxxiii), both the market economy and democracy are

partial solutions to this problem.

Boulding (1971, 39) gives nine levels of hierarchy in systems: the most complex of

these are transcendental systems, which incorporate the lower eight orders. Boulding opines

that economics is centred at the second level: simple mechanical systems. However—and this

is the root cause of the malaise facing economics today—the systems from which economics

is abstracted are of the seventh and eighth orders, centred on human behaviour, both in the

individual and in societal organisation. The economics resulting from such abstraction would

hence suffer from sociological collapse in the Schumpeterian sense, since the “institutions of

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capitalism … do not develop the kind of ideology or human character which are necessary to

sustain them” (Boulding 1971, 76).

The shift from hierarchy to class societies occurred on the material and the subjective

levels (Bookchin 1982, 89). These levels “are not sharply separable” (Bookchin 1982, 90).

The material level is embodied in the emergence of the city, while the subjective level is seen

in the emergence of a repressive sensibility internalising command and obedience.

History, for Mumford, is a progression to a new scale (Mumford 1961, 199).

Conversely, for Boulding, “no single, unitary interpretation of history is satisfactory” (1984,

xxvi). Nevertheless, he sees “the history of the present era as a continuous encroachment of

politics on economics” (Boulding 1984, 49). Politics is about distributing power, which can

be achieved either through “distribution of property” or “legal and constitutional limitations”

(Boulding 1984, 51). There is also the social-psychological problem of authority and

subordination (Boulding 1984, 53). Bookchin indicates that “political structures can be no

less technical than tools and machines” (1982, 243). For Mumford, political organisation “is

either paleotechnic or pre-technic” (1934, 417). Hence, politics at the local scale “rest[s] on

ideological traditions and premises very different from those we associate with the formation

of the nation-state” (Bookchin 1987, 137). In essence, Boulding’s and Mumford’s politics is

Bookchin’s statecraft. “Statecraft consists of operations that engage the state: the exercise of

its monopoly of violence, its control of the entire regulative apparatus of society in the form

of legal and ordinance-making bodies, its governance of society by means of professional

legislators, armies, police forces, bureaucracies, and the ancillary professionals who service

its operations such as lawyers, educators, technicians, and the like” (Bookchin 1987, 243).

Politics, however, is organic, because “it is the activity of a public body―a community”

(Bookchin 1987, 243).

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Boulding describes this new scale as organisations’ rise in number, size and power,

what he refers to as the “organizational revolution” (1984, xi). Today, human energy is

devoted to a small number of large organisations, rather than the historical trend of devoting

energy to a large number of small organisations (Boulding 1984, 31). In what Mumford refers

to as the paleotechnic period (1700 to 1900 AD), “the changes … rested for the most part on

one central fact: the increase in energy. Size, speed, quantity … were all reflections of the

new means of utilizing [energy]. Power itself was at last dissociated from its natural human

and geographic limitations” (1934, 196).

The growth in the size of organisations “increases the danger of oligopoly”, which is

characterised by “cutthroat competition”. Boulding adds, “probably the most serious aspect

of this problem is the growth of the national state” (1984, 38). There was a repeated “shift in

the balance of power and authority” (Mumford 1967, 224). Our culture became power

centred (Mumford 1967, 252), and this historical “progress” has an economic side. “[A]t

bottom it was little less than an elaborate rationalizing of the dominant economic conditions”

(Mumford 1934, 185). Mumford continues, “the dominant forces of the nineteenth century,

including the authoritarian communism of Karl Marx, remained on the side of big

organizations, centralized direction, and mass production” (1967, 255–56). The increase in

organisations’ size and power has been due to a change on the supply rather than demand

side: the change “has been mainly in the skills of organization itself―a change on the supply

side, creating new social forms which has supplanted older forms” rather than a change “in

the habits and needs of man which has created new niches into which organizations … have

grown” (Boulding 1984, 17). The “bigness” that Schumacher identifies in organisations is

traced back to a “highly developed transport and communications system”, which has an

“immensely powerful effect: it makes people footloose” (Schumacher 1999, 50, emphasis in

the original ). This mobility meant that “[a]ll structures are threatened, and all structures are

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vulnerable to an extent that they have never been before” (Schumacher 1999, 51, emphasis in

the original). Schumacher (1999, 135) links this mobility to unemployment and mass

migration into cities.

Boulding (1984, 29) identifies a historical tension in social organisations between

homogeneity and diversification. The emphasis on growth is heightened in dynamic

organisations, where cessation of growth causes “a sever crisis of morale” (Boulding 1984,

30). Such organisations include the National Socialism of 1920s Germany, where the state

(the social organisation) has to be “going somewhere”. Sometimes, however, the emphasis on

growth could be to correct disproportionalities (Boulding 1984, 30).

In the context of cities, the quantitative changes brought by the change in scale led to

qualitative changes (as Hegel would remind us), where the human roots of the city were

drying up. Urbs, with its emphasis on order, was now replacing polis, with its emphasis on

freedom (Bookchin 1986, 166–68). This transformation was transmitted from culture to

culture through the army (Mumford 1967, 192), and these transformations were “irrational”

(Mumford 1967, 218). For Mumford, “qualitative balance is as important as quantitative

balance” (1944, 420). The resulting institutional structure does not “tend to produce

psychologically healthy people” (Mumford 1967, 226). “Power and order, pushed to their

final limit, lead to their self-destructive inversion: disorganization, violence, mental

aberration, subjective chaos” (Mumford 1972, 133). This is so given that “the obstinate

disregard for organic limits and human potentialities undermined those valid contributions

both to the ordering of human affairs and the understanding of man’s place in the cosmos”

(Mumford 1967, 226). Mumford continues to indicate that the dismal adaptation of the post-

historic man to the pseudo-life of its mechanical collectives is “a theoretic possibility, not a

historical probability … [for] the conflict between the overrational [sic] and the irrational [is]

too great to promise more than an increasingly erratic oscillation, ending in a final

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breakdown. Whatever his powers and numbers post-historic man has a short expectation of

life” (1972, 137).

3. Civilization, Capitalism and the Nation State

Despite its physical limitations, an organic society functions with an unconscious

commitment to freedom (Bookchin 1982, 143). Organic societies lack economic classes and a

political state (Bookchin 1982, 44). For Bookchin, an organic society does not have

hierarchies, but “unity of diversity”. While not “homogenous social groups” (Bookchin 1982,

74), these societies have “intense solidarity internally and with the natural world” (Bookchin

1982, 44). Such societies were distinctly ecological, seeing living systems as “interdependent

and play[ing] complementary roles in perpetuating the stability of the natural order”

(Bookchin 1982, 5). In these organic societies, the “conception of individual autonomy had

not yet acquired the fictive ‘sovereignty’” (Bookchin 1982, 44). Later, civilization infected

these organic societies with hierarchy (Bookchin 1982, 61), causing for people to become

“instruments of production, just like the tools and machines they create” (Bookchin 1982,

65). Over time, hierarchy started to “invade less tangible fields of life”, where everything was

ranked over scales of varying degrees of superiority. Their solidarity stemmed from “social

ties based on kinship”, which were, through civilization, replaced by ties based on classes,

proprietorship and exploitation (Bookchin 1982, 96). With the breakdown of these societies,

“privilege began to replace parity, and hierarchical or class societies began to replace

egalitarian relationships” (Bookchin 1982, 116).

For Kropotkin (1904, 115), history begins with civilization and reveals struggles and

conflicts that replace old structures with new ones. Inequalities of fortune rapidly developed

(Kropotkin 1904, 139). Kropotkin (1901, 8) gives the example of Britain, which, after the

Napoleonic Wars, started producing on a large scale, but at a terrible social cost, as revealed

18

by parliamentary commissions in 1840–42. The advent of the Industrial Revolution saw the

degradation of workers (Mumford 1934, 172). Bookchin likewise traces the malaise of

society today to the expanding scope of civilization “beyond a humanly comprehensible

scale” (1982, 157). Civilization “has extended the realm of law and order far beyond its

original boundaries: it has now produced a system of uniform measurement in the all-but-

worldwide metric system: and even a rational world calendar and a supplementary universal

language are at length plainly in prospect” (Mumford 1972, 155). Therefore, civilization “is

perhaps the most physically repressive phase of all, a phase that brutally distorts the passions

and channels them into perverted and destructive forms” (Bookchin 1982, 329). Bookchin

(1987, x) traces the root cause to the process of urbanisation. Pre-modern cities instead show

a human propinquity, not only in “structural size”, but also in their ethical attributes

(Bookchin 1987, 6). According to Mumford, “[c]ivilizations are not self-contained

organisms” (1934, 107). The historical differentiation between cultures is seen as the

outcome of “a process of syncretism”, where each culture draws “freely on the cultures that

had preceded him” (Mumford 1934, 107).

Mumford sees the role of civilization as inducing change in societies, causing them to

move away from the “fossilization of tribal societies” (1944, 275). The passage to

“civilization”, which Mumford uses to denote the group of institutions that first took form

under kingship and are characterised by “the centralization of power, the separation of

classes, the lifetime division of labor” (1967, 186), was above all “a change in scale” (1967,

167). Therefore, “[i]nstead of the little neolithic [sic] shrine, there stands a towering

temple … instead of the cluster of frail, mud-walled village houses, for a score of families, a

wall-engirdled city, with a thousand or more families, no longer merely a human home, but

the home of a god: indeed a replica of Heaven. And the same change of scale shows itself in

every department, not least in the tempo of life” (Mumford 1967, 167).

19

Civilization brought unity through division and specialisation: “a new uniformity

brought about by deliberate repression: a new agreement that sprang out of a partial

reconciliation of opposites, not, as in primitive society, out of ancestral unanimity, born of a

common understanding as to the ultimate nature and purpose of life” (Mumford 1972, 38,

emphasis added). Organic societies internalised law and order, while civilization, due to the

scalar deficit, externalised them.

Mumford (1961, 347) sees the transformation from medieval to baroque institutions

as a shift from localism to centralism, from the absolutism of God to the absolutism of the

temporal sovereign and the nation state. With “massing of population into national states

which continued during the nineteenth century, the national struggle cut at right angles to the

class struggle” (Mumford 1934, 190). The nationalist movement attempted to fortify “the

political power of the unified nationalist state, that mighty engine for preserving the

economic status quo and for carrying out imperialistic policies of aggression among the

weaker races” (Mumford 1934, 290).

In Kropotkin’s work, there is a clear link between the state and capitalism, which are

“inseparable concepts” (Kropotkin 1975, 83). Therefore, just like the nation state, “[t]he

sociological dilemma of capitalism lies in the fact that it destroys, and must destroy, the

community of ascription, and it may find the community of achievement difficult to

establish” (Boulding 1971, 78). Bookchin sees the creation of the “national economy” as

shaped by forces that go beyond the nation state: the homogenisation of society ensured the

creation of a state that favoured the expansion of a market economy (Bookchin 1987, 145–

46). For Bookchin, the effect of capitalism on the city “has been nothing less than

catastrophic” (1987, 202). As a result, cities “were to lose not only their territorial form; they

were to lose their cultural integrity and uniqueness” (Bookchin 1987, 222). Boulding is also

20

alive to the “death of the city” (1971, 267), where the effect of post-civilization on civilized

societies could be as disastrous as that of civilization on pre-civilized societies (1971, 274).

Bookchin (1982, 190) traces the centralisation of the nation state to the French

Revolution of 1794. Before the nation state, the “basic unit of public governance was the city,

not larger entities such as the province, nation, or empire” (Bookchin 1987, 50). Now, the

state “began to assume ideological preeminence over the city” and “statecraft became the

‘politics’ of highly centralistic state structures” (Bookchin 1987, 51). For Bookchin (1987,

83), politics is a grass-root organisation embedded in localism. Bookchin cites examples from

Italian city-states, or communa, which were “above all an association of burghers

[bourgeoisie] who were solemnly unite by an oath or conjuratio” (1987, 98–99). However,

these communes did not last long, as they created economic and political differentiation,

setting popolo grosso versus popolo magro. The rich merchants hence favoured the rise of

the nation state “to restrain their unruly local barons who interfered with the free movement

of trade and their unruly laboring classes who posed a continual threat to civic oligarchies”

(Bookchin 1987, 112).

Mumford also talks about the “heresy of nationalism”, which was a “perverse rebound

from the Universal Church” (1944, 187). He is critical of Fichte and his “worship of national

history” (Mumford 1944, 291). For Mumford, the “recognition of the organic was a

corrective to the shallow rationalism of the mechanists” that characterised nationalism (1944,

351). By organic, Mumford means the common element between nationalism and naturalism,

where “man lives … by the energies and vitalities that underlie his conscious, intuitional life

and that connect him with the world of nature” (1944, 351). Mumford explains how

nationalism begins “with a sense of exclusion and ends with a desire for domination” (1944,

356).

21

Kropotkin suggests that the demise of the sovereign city was due to limiting

cooperation to a small association that distinguished between “the ‘families’ of the old

burghers and the new-comers” (1904, 217–18). Kropotkin adds that the “greatest and the

most fatal error of most cities was to base their wealth upon commerce and industry, to the

neglect of agriculture” (1904, 219). It was Roman Law that eventually brought down the

medieval city with the idea that salvation must be sought in a strongly centralised state

(Kropotkin 1904, 220). The state proceeded to weed out “all institutions in which the mutual-

aid tendency had formerly found its expression … The cities were divested of their

sovereignty, and the very spring of their inner life” (Kropotkin 1904, 226). This “absorption

of all social functions by the State necessarily favored the development of an unbridled,

narrow-minded individualism” (Kropotkin 1904, 227). It is, therefore, “hopeless to look for

mutual-aid institutions and practices in modern society” (Kropotkin 1904, 228).

For Mumford, the transformation of the city through history is recorded as a change in

scale. He explains that “[i]n the citadel the new mark of the city is obvious: a change of scale,

deliberately meant to awe and overpower the beholder. Thought the mass of the inhabitants

might be poorly fed and overworked, no expense was spared to create temples and palaces

whose sheer bulk and upward thrust would dominate the rest of the city. The heavy walls …

would give to the ephemeral offices of state the assurance of stability and security, of

unrelenting power and unshakable authority” (Mumford 1961, 65). The state brought about

standardisation, mass production and the factory system “in state-organized arsenals, most

notably in Venice, centuries before the ‘industrial revolution’” (Mumford 1970, 149). The

same role of the state can be seen in legislation passed in England in 1809 marking “the end

of domestic production by independent artisans” and giving manufacturers the freedom to

“exploit labor” and “ignore qualitative standards” (Mumford 1970, 151). Such laws not only

emphasised qualitative growth but ushered the occultation of a just distribution system

22

(Mumford 1970, 152). Now, “a monotechnics, based upon scientific intelligence and

quantitative production, directed mainly toward economic expansion, material repletion, and

military superiority, has taken the place of a polytechnics, based primarily, as in agriculture,

on the needs, aptitudes, interests of living organisms” (Mumford 1970, 155).

Schumacher questions the theory that “in order to be prosperous a country had to be

big” (1999, 46). He links this with the theory of “economies of scale”, and states that “with

industries and firms, just as with nations, there is an irresistible trend, dictated by modern

technology, for units to become ever bigger” (Schumacher 1999, 47). He looks back at his

native Germany and compares its economic fortunes under the Bismarck Reich with those of

German-speaking Swiss and Austrian citizens, finding that the latter “did just as well

economically” (Schumacher 1999, 46). He goes on to give this hypothetical:

Imagine that in 1864 Bismarck has annexed the whole of Denmark instead of only a

small part of it, and that nothing had happened since. The Danes would be an ethnic

minority in Germany, perhaps struggling to maintain their language by becoming

bilingual, the official language of course being German. Only by thoroughly

Germanizing themselves could they avoid becoming second-class citizens. There

would be an irresistible drift of the most ambitious and enterprising Danes,

thoroughly Germanized, to the mainland in the south, and what them would be the

status of Copenhagen? That of a remote provincial city. (Schumacher 1999, 53)

Mumford (1967, 258) provides an “axial” interpretation of history, which entails a

500-year cycle in culture where the human mind revolts against large-scale organisation. The

“axial” shift “often took form during a period of social disintegration, when the normal

satisfactions and the normal securities of civilized life no longer seemed possible” (Mumford

1972, 63). Axial culture is marked by “ideal allegiances that seek to promote universal

fellowship” (Mumford 1972, 156). This cyclical nature of civilization “has been the subject

23

of examination over a long period” (Mumford 1972, 93). The word “axial” includes “the idea

of ‘value’, as in the science of Axiology, and centrality, that is the convergence of all separate

institutions and functions upon the human personality” (Mumford 1967, 258). The word also

“marks … a real turning point of human history” (Mumford 1972, 57). Mumford uses “axial”

to “indicate the profound change in human values and goals that took place after the sixth

century” (Mumford 1972, 57), which ushered a “tendency to picture life itself as a constant

battle between the forces of good and evil” (Mumford 1972: 58), and resulted in “the

redefinition … of the human personality” (Mumford 1972, 59) where “values that emerge

only in the personality replace those that belonged to institutions” (Mumford 1972, 59). This

convergence upon the human personality “shifted the emphasis from mechanical organization

to human association and mutual aid; and this as Kropotkin demonstrated, had its effect upon

technics” (Mumford 1967, 261). “The first five of the second decade of centuries of our era

(1000 to 1500 AD) may thus be described as an immense attempt at securing mutual aid and

support on a grand scale, by means of principles of federation and association carried on

through all manifestations of human life and to all possible degrees” (Kropotkin 1904, 208).

The last four centuries saw “the first radical breakthrough in this cyclic scheme

[which] displaced the archaic and axial [sic] components of Old World culture as ruthlessly

as the cities of the ancient river civilizations displaced the village culture of the neolithic [sic]

period” (Mumford 1972, 94). Ancient river civilizations had already “reached a degree of

complexity, standardization, flexibility, autonomous organization, and controlled abundance

far beyond the achievements of the most advanced present-day machines” (Mumford 1972,

3). For Bookchin (1982), the complexity of our society is only technical; on a cultural level,

we are no more complex than earlier societies. Capitalism has not produced a more

“sophisticated” substitute to the societies of medieval Europe (Bookchin 1982, 216).

24

4. The Resurrection of City Confederations

Over time, the power over other men that flowed from mechanomorphism resulted in a

reversal, where “the organic [began] to dominate the machine” (Mumford 1934, 367). There

was now “a qualitative change … from mechanical interest to … social interest” (Mumford

1934, 427). Schumacher identifies a tendency to “attain smallness within bigness” once the

size of organisations (including polities) reaches a “great size” (1999, 47). However, he also

emphasises “the duality of the human requirement when it comes to the question of size:

there is no single answer” (Schumacher 1999, 48, emphasis in the original). During the 19th

century, “the number of self-governing societies, organizations, associations, corporations,

and communities had markedly increased: and regional entities, once suppressed by the

national state or the despotic empire, were beginning to re-assert their cultural individuality

and their political independence” (Mumford 1970, 237). There is a struggle to reintroduce

institutions of mutual aid and support (Kropotkin 1904, 283).

The most effective form of organisation is where society is “polylithic” rather than

“monolithic”, with many centres of power and an overall organisation with limited power to

underwrite the system (Boulding 1984, 81). Boulding points out that “[i]n its ideal type

Capitalism is a ‘polylithic’ society, Communism is ‘monolithic’” (1971, 80). Schumacher

suggests that in “small-scale” organisations, “private ownership is natural, fruitful, and just”.

Conversely, in “medium-scale” organisations, “private ownership is unnecessary”, as

“voluntary surrender of privilege” is not likely to occur where there is “a large number of

anonymous” members. In “large-scale” organisations, private ownership is “not only unjust

but also an irrational element which distorts all relationships” within the organisation

(Schumacher 1999, 225). Schumacher sees “nationalization” (1999, 226) as a response to the

irrationality of private ownership in large-scale organisations, which accentuates the danger

of over-centralisation (1999, 229). For Boulding, “[t]he case for capitalism is the case for

25

smallness of scale; the case against Communism is the case against the Brontosaurus―that

beyond a certain point, increase in the scale of organization results in a breakdown of

communications … the scale barrier is reached long before we get to an organization the size

of Soviet Russia” (1971, 126).

For Bookchin, “Kropotkin’s work … provides us with a robust framework for

recovering some sense of the vitality [of the] municipal world … as an alternative to the

nation-state” (1987, 152). Kropotkin is aware of the importance of the city as a historical hub

for economic activity. He hence states that the “city organized itself as a federation of both

small village communities and guilds” (Kropotkin 1904, 177). Historically, “[s]elf-

jurisdiction … meant self-administration. But the commune was not simply an ‘autonomous’

part of the State … it was the State itself … it was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed

with no others” (Kropotkin 1904, 178-79). Kropotkin is quick to point out that “[a] mediaeval

city was not a centralized State” in regards to its interior organisation, “because the middle

ages knew no more of the present centralisation of functions than of the present territorial

centralization” (1904, 181). “To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the

chief aim of the mediaeval city; and labor … was its chief foundation” (Kropotkin 1904,

181). For Kropotkin, “[t]he feeling of union within the confederation is kept alive by the

common interests of the tribes …” (1904, 140). Kropotkin suggests that the self-jurisdiction

of the city developed out of the special jurisdiction in the marketplace (1904, 190). He sees a

tension between current economic theories and localism, but identifies the former as

“political metaphysics” never submitted to the “test of experiment” (Kropotkin 1904, 255).

According to Mumford, the city is a “complex social invention” (1967, 251) and a

“complex orchestration of time and space” (1938, 4). Bookchin (1987, 15) sees the origin of

the city arising from villages attaining a critical mass of undefinable size, he also sees the rise

of cities as a product of “cultic practices” (1987, 21) rather than technological discoveries.

26

The earliest cities were “largely ideological creations of highly complex, strongly affiliated,

and intensely mutualistic communities of kin groups, ecological in outlook and essentially

egalitarian and nondomineering [sic] in character” (Bookchin 1987, 24).

Bookchin points out that the argument against municipal autonomy is that social life

is too complex and needs the logical and administrative services of the nation state. For

Bookchin, this argument “does not stand up very well against historical and contemporary

evidence” (1987, 228–29). In particular, the rise of large organisations does not destroy small

ones, due to what Boulding calls the Principle of Interstices: “In a pile of large stones,

especially if these are fairly regular and round in shape, there will be interstices―holes which

can be occupied by stones of smaller sizes, right down to grains of dust” (1971, 129).

Kropotkin is also aware of the resilience of small-scale organisation. Even under a system of

keen competition, the middle-size farm can compete with the large, since “it is not

manufacturing wheat on a grand scale which pays best” (Kropotkin 1901, 79). He adds:

When we examine the every-day life of the rural populations of Europe, we find that,

notwithstanding all that has been done in modern States for the destruction of the

village community, the life of the peasants remains honeycombed with habits and

customs of mutual aid and support; that important vestiges of the communal

possession of the soil are still retained; and that, as soon as the legal obstacles to rural

association were lately removed, a network of free unions for all sorts of economical

purposes rapidly spread among the peasants. (Kropotkin 1904, 262)

Bookchin agrees that our economic wellbeing depends on cities rather than nation

states, adding that “[i]deologically, we tend to justify this historical degradation of our status

as political beings by invoking the ‘nation’ as the basic and most elemental unit of social life,

an entity that is itself of very recent origin” (1987, 227). For Bookchin, the nation state “has

impeded the development of much that is uniquely human … disempowering the individual

27

and rendering him or her a … self-degraded being” (1987, 228). The solution lies in

municipal freedom, which is the “basis for political freedom and political freedom is the basis

for individual freedom―a recovery of a new participatory politics structured around free,

self-empowered, and active citizens” (Bookchin 1987, 228).

For Schumacher, “regionalism”, or “developing all regions within a country”, is the

“most important subject on the agenda of all larger countries today” (1999, 55). This

approach calls for the use of “intermediate technology” geared towards local production and

local use (Schumacher 1999, 146). For Boulding, economic development is the “process of

transition from one type of organization of society to another”, where “the society of complex

machines and organizations” becomes the dominant type (1971, 178–79). For Mumford,

“[e]conomic regionalism is necessary to provide for a varied social life, as well as to provide

for a balanced economy” (1934, 389), where “the advantages of modern industry will be

spread, not chiefly by transport―as in the nineteenth century―but by local development

(1934, 388). Mumford suggests that “[o]ne of the great benefits of individualized national

and regional cultures is that, if the opportunities are consciously seized, these potential

alternatives can be experimented with under varied conditions and their advantages

compared” (1970, 159). Emphasis would be on qualitative riches rather than qualitative

abundance, which would bring an economy of plentitude (Mumford 1970, 396). The best

examples of plentitude exist in quite primitive communities (Mumford 1970, 401).

Mumford cites Holland and Switzerland as good examples of how the federated

power and unified government problems could be resolved—for him, they are examples

“destined to spread ever further through the world” (1944, 174; 1961: 340). Similarly,

Bookchin discusses the Swiss Confederation and the short-lived “sectional assemblies in the

Great French Revolution” as examples of direct democracy in large cities in modern times

(1987, 115). Kropotkin also looks favourably at the “communal estates in Switzerland”

28

(1904, 239). Bookchin suggests that “municipal confederation” were a “distinct, indeed

dramatic, alternative to the formation of the nation-state” (1986, 21).

Schumacher offers structural principles for large-scale political states. He offers the

Principle of Subsidiarity, where decision-making is embedded within the lowest

organisational level to fulfil such an obligation (Schumacher 1999, 205), the Principle of

Vindication, where the subsidiary unit “must be defended against reproach and upheld”

(Schumacher 1999, 207), and the Principle of Identification, where each subsidiary unit must

have fiscal independence (Schumacher 1999, 209).

The solution of scale must be tied to “emancipatory social structures and

communitarian goals” (Bookchin 1982, 260). These are lined to ideas of confederacies of

cities (Bookchin 1987, 147–50). Bookchin links this solution of scale correction to the

different conception of causation seen in complexity theory today, where causation is not

“mechanical” but “organic” and we see “an emerging process of self-realization” (1982, 283).

The instabilities evident in today’s societies are not due to “intrinsic complexity” (Bookchin

1982, 311). Such complexity can be removed by “social principles, institutions, and an

ethical commonality” (Bookchin 1982, 314) that emphasise the human scale and a return to

small-scale technologies. Bookchin advocates institutions that are based on “face-to-face,

protoplasmic [empowering] relationships, not around representative, anonymous, mechanical

relationships” (1982, 336).

Kropotkin’s solution is that “every commune must be absolutely free to organize

itself, politically and economically, as it likes, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbors”

(1975, 72). For Bookchin, the “ultimate source of sovereignty” (1987, 230) is embedded in

local organisation, in the commune. Localism would be possible only where citizens are

“regarded as competent to participate directly ‘in the affairs of state,’ indeed what is more

important, [they are] encouraged to do so” (Bookchin 1987, 259). Bookchin hence calls for

29

the “municipalization of the economy”, where the economy “is managed by the community

as part of a politics of self-management” (1987, 262).

According to Mumford, “[t]he political unification of mankind cannot be realistically

conceived except as part of [an] effort at self-transformation” (1972, 139). Such unification

would reject “purely extraneous and technical kind of universalism” (Mumford 1972, 142)

and instead seeks “to enrich and enhance … the human values that differentiation has brought

into existence” (Mumford 1972, 142). Further unification does not lie in “further

development of mechanical collectives on a planetary scale” (Mumford 1972, 142), but in

taking note “of the fibrous structure of society”, in the “doctrine of evolution” (Mumford

1972, 148).

Envoi

Our analysis of Kropotkin, Mumford, Boulding, Bookchin and Schumacher suggests a

problematisation of scale, where the rise of the nation state portends a structural collapse

analogous to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction at the end of the Mesozoic era. Evading

such collapse would require restructuring inter-communal relations around cities and away

from the epistemological privilege attached to the nation state.

The proposition of federations of cities is reminiscent of a Sanhedrin (סנהדרין) view of

the world, where nation states are replaced by sovereign cities, similar to those in biblical

Israel. The proposition is for a resurrection of city sovereignty, lost at the dawn of civilization

when polities embarked on centralising political power and fulfilling Hobbes’ vision of a

strong centralised government. The result would be analogous to the city federation that de

Spinoza described in his rendition of sovereignty (1951).

Our discourse in this paper was largely descriptive collage; we refrained from

evaluative statements. Therefore, the message is very simple: a body of literature fits together

30

in what could be seen as an independent economic school of thought without attempting to

discuss its strength and weaknesses, at least at this juncture.

The common link in this school of thought could be described in many ways.

Boulding, for example, identifies it as a movement of dissent that characterises

“institutionalism”, among other movements. He sees Veblen, Commons and Mitchell as the

best representatives of this school of dissent (Boulding 1971, 89, 93). Not surprisingly, they

also are seen as pioneers in importing a biological analogy to economic analysis (Buchanan

and Yoon, 1994). Mumford discusses this dissent from the perspective of “Jewish apocalyptic

writings”, where a “vision of death spreads over this world”; this, in turn, induces a

welcoming of “the night because it appears to bring the dawn nearer” (1944, 41). Kropotkin

sees a similar dissent in what came to be known as anarchism, namely a “protest … against

the external force” that thrust itself upon the “institutions of communal life” (1975, 59).

Whatever we decide to attribute to the common link that brings the school together,

we are bound to note its emphasis on city confederations that would ultimately bring political

unification on a global scale. Such unification, as Mumford would remind us, is not through a

top-down approach, but one where local autonomy takes the lead in policy prescription at all

scales. In this world, nation states become redundant. Sovereign cities replace nation states on

the “international” stage.

31

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