Municipal socialism has been an unstable concept historically.1 While directly associated with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the lives of workers in cities, its proponents drew on traditions of utopian communalism that antedated, or at least coincided with, the onset of industrialism. While it is most commonly thought of as a species of social democratic politics, municipal socialism also came to be identified with the direct seizure of power in cities, as in the Paris Commune, or more ephemerally in the political context of urban general strikes – Seattle or Winnipeg in 1919, for instance – or with the defence of Republican cities like Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War.2 The classic incarnation of municipal socialism appeared with the onset of ‘Red Vienna’ and the election of a social democratic city council and mayor in May 1919.3 Revolutionary practice of what might be thought of as ‘municipal socialism’ often consorted with anarchists’ visions of working-class self-governance.