Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin | |
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environmental sustainability, ecology, history of popular revolutionary movements | |
Notable ideas | Communalism, social ecology |
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Anarchism in the United States |
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Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006
Bookchin was a prominent
Biography
Bookchin was born in New York City to
From 1947, Bookchin collaborated with a fellow lapsed Trotskyist, the German expatriate Josef Weber, in New York in the
In 1964, Bookchin joined the
In 1969–1970, he taught at the Alternate U, a counter-cultural radical school based on 14th Street in Manhattan. In 1971, he moved to Burlington, Vermont, with a group of friends, to put into practice his ideas of decentralization. In the fall of 1973, he was hired by Goddard College to lecture on technology; his lectures led to a teaching position and to the creation of the Social Ecology Studies program in 1974 and the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) soon thereafter, of which he became the director. In 1974, he was hired by Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, where he quickly became a full professor. The ISE was a hub for experimentation and study of appropriate technology in the 1970s. In 1977–78 he was a member of the Spruce Mountain Affinity Group of the Clamshell Alliance. Also in 1977, he published The Spanish Anarchists, a history of the Spanish anarchist movement up to the revolution of 1936. During this period, Bookchin briefly forged some ties with the nascent libertarian movement, speaking at a Libertarian Party convention and contributing to a newsletter edited by Karl Hess. Nevertheless, Bookchin rejected the types of libertarianism that advocated unconstrained individualism.[17]
In 1980, Bookchin co-established the New England Anarchist Conference (NEAC) to organize the
During the 1980s, Bookchin engaged in occasional critiques of Bernie Sanders' mayorship in Burlington. Bookchin criticized Sanders' politics, claiming he lacked a drive to establish direct democracy, followed a Marxian deprioritization of ecology, and was a “'centralist' who narrowly focused on economic growth."[19] Bookchin and his social ecologist colleagues in the Burlington Greens, which he co-founded, criticized the Sanders administration for pushing for a luxury condo waterfront redevelopment, which was eventually rejected by Burlington voters. They advocated for a moratorium on growth, a moral economy, and social justice rooted in grassroots democracy.[20]
In 1988, Bookchin and Howie Hawkins founded the Left Green Network "as a radical alternative to U.S. Green liberals", based around the principles of social ecology and libertarian municipalism.[21]
In 1995, Bookchin lamented the decline of
He continued to teach at the ISE until 2004. Bookchin died of
Thought
In addition to his political writings, Bookchin wrote extensively on philosophy, calling his ideas dialectical naturalism.
Bookchin does not clearly define many of the key terms of his philosophy.[26]
General sociological and psychological views
Bookchin was critical of class-centered analysis of Marxism and simplistic anti-state forms of libertarianism and liberalism and wished to present what he saw as a more complex view of societies. In The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, he says that:
My use of the word hierarchy in the subtitle of this work is meant to be provocative. There is a strong theoretical need to contrast hierarchy with the more widespread use of the words class and State; careless use of these terms can produce a dangerous simplification of social reality. To use the words hierarchy, class, and State interchangeably, as many social theorists do, is insidious and obscurantist. This practice, in the name of a "classless" or "libertarian" society, could easily conceal the existence of hierarchical relationships and a hierarchical sensibility, both of which—even in the absence of economic exploitation or political coercion—would serve to perpetuate unfreedom.[27]
Bookchin also points to an accumulation of hierarchical systems throughout history that has occurred up to contemporary societies which tends to determine the human collective and individual psyche:
The objective history of the social structure becomes internalized as a subjective history of the psychic structure. Heinous as my view may be to modern Freudians, it is not the discipline of work but the discipline of rule that demands the repression of internal nature. This repression then extends outward to external nature as a mere object of rule and later of exploitation. This mentality permeates our individual psyches in a cumulative form up to the present day-not merely as capitalism but as the vast history of hierarchical society from its inception.[28]
Humanity's environmental predicament
Bookchin's book about humanity's collision course with the natural world,
Bookchin rejected Barry Commoner's belief that the environmental crisis could be traced to technological choices, Paul Ehrlich's views that it could be traced to overpopulation, or the even more pessimistic view that traces this crisis to human nature. Rather, Bookchin felt that our environmental predicament is the result of the cancerous logic of capitalism, a system aimed at maximizing profit instead of enriching human lives: "By the very logic of its grow-or-die imperative, capitalism may well be producing ecological crises that gravely imperil the integrity of life on this planet."
The solution to this crisis, he said, is not a return to hunter-gatherer societies, which Bookchin characterized as xenophobic and warlike. Bookchin likewise opposed "a politics of mere protest, lacking programmatic content, a proposed alternative, and a movement to give people direction and continuity."[29] He claims we need:
...a constant awareness that a given society's irrationality is deep-seated, that its serious pathologies are not isolated problems that can be cured piecemeal but must be solved by sweeping changes in the often hidden sources of crisis and suffering—that awareness alone is what can hold a movement together, give it continuity, preserve its message and organization beyond a given generation, and expand its ability to deal with new issues and developments.[29]
The answer then lies in Communalism, a system encompassing a directly democratic political organization anchored in loosely confederated popular assemblies, decentralization of power, absence of domination of any kind, and replacing capitalism with human-centered forms of production.[29]
Social ecology
Social ecology is a philosophical theory associated with Bookchin, concerned with the relationship between ecological and social issues.[30][31] It is not a movement but a theory primarily associated with his thought and elaborated over his body of work.[32] He presents a utopian philosophy of human evolution that combines the nature of biology and society into a third "thinking nature" beyond biochemistry and physiology, which he argues is a more complete, conscious, ethical, and rational nature. Humanity, by this line of thought, is the latest development from the long history of organic development on Earth. Bookchin's social ecology proposes ethical principles for replacing a society's propensity for hierarchy and domination with that of democracy and freedom.[33]
It emerged from a time in the mid-1960s, under the emergence of both the
Bookchin wrote about the effects of urbanization on human life in the early 1960s during his participation in the civil rights and related social movements. He then began to pursue the connection between ecological and social issues, culminating with his best-known book, The Ecology of Freedom, which he had developed over a decade.[39] His argument, that human domination and destruction of nature follows from social domination between humans, was a breakthrough position in the growing field of ecology. He writes that life develops from self-organization and evolutionary cooperation (symbiosis).[35] Bookchin wrote of preliterate societies organized around mutual need but ultimately overrun by institutions of hierarchy and domination, such as city-states and capitalist economies, which he attributes uniquely to societies of humans and not communities of animals.[36] He proposes confederation between communities of humans run through democracy rather than through administrative logistics.[37]
Bookchin's work, beginning with anarchist writings on the subject in the 1960s, has continuously evolved. Towards the end of the 1990s, he increasingly integrated the principle of communalism, with aspirations more inclined towards institutionalized municipal democracy, which distanced him from certain evolutions of
In May 2016, the first "International Social Ecology Meetings" were organized in Lyon, which brought together a hundred radical environmentalists, decreasing figures and libertarians, most of whom came from France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland, but also from the United States, Guatemala and Canada. At the center of the debates: libertarian municipalism as an alternative to the nation state and the need to rethink activism.[40][41][42]
Kurdish movement
Bookchin's reflections on social ecology and libertarian municipalism also inspired
Municipalism and communalism
Bookchin's vision of an ecological society is based on highly participatory, grassroots politics, in which municipal communities democratically plan and manage their affairs through popular assembly, a program he called Communalism. This democratic deliberation purposefully promotes autonomy and self-reliance, as opposed to centralized state politics. While this program retains elements of anarchism, it emphasizes a higher degree of organization (community planning, voting, and institutions) than general anarchism. In Bookchin's Communalism, these autonomous, municipal communities connect with each other via confederations.[51]
Starting in the 1970s, Bookchin argued that the arena for libertarian social change should be the municipal level. In 1980 Bookchin used the term "libertarian municipalism" to describe a
Libertarian Municipalism constitutes the politics of social ecology, a revolutionary effort in which freedom is given institutional form in public assemblies that become decision-making bodies.[54]
Bookchin proposes that these institutional forms must take place within differently scaled local areas. In a 2001 interview he summarized his views this way:
The overriding problem is to change the structure of society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that is the municipality—the city, town, and village—where we have an opportunity to create a face-to-face democracy.[55]
Libertarian municipalism intends to create a situation in which the two powers—the municipal confederations and the nation state cannot coexist.[55]
Legacy and influence
Though Bookchin, by his own recognition, failed to win over a substantial body of supporters during his own lifetime, his ideas have nonetheless influenced movements and thinkers across the globe.
Among these are the Kurdish
Öcalan attempted in early 2004 to arrange a meeting with Bookchin through his lawyers, describing himself as Bookchin's "student" eager to adapt his thought to Middle Eastern society. Bookchin was too ill to accept the request. In May 2004 Bookchin conveyed this message "My hope is that the Kurdish people will one day be able to establish a free, rational society that will allow their brilliance once again to flourish. They are fortunate indeed to have a leader of Mr. Öcalan's talents to guide them". When Bookchin died in 2006, the PKK hailed the American thinker as "one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century", and vowed to put his theory into practice.[58]
His ideas, particularly those related to
"
Selected works
- Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971)
- The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years(1977)
- The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy(1982)
See also
References
- ^ Small, Mike (August 8, 2006). "Murray Bookchin" (Obituary). The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 16, 2022. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-1904859260. Archivedfrom the original on April 25, 2022. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
- ^ John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico, Environmental Philosophy, Inc, University of Georgia, Environmental Ethics v. 12 1990: 193.
- ^ Bookchin, Murray. "The Future of the Left," The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy. New York: Verso Books, 2015. pp. 157–158.
- ^ Biehl, Janet. "Bookchin Breaks with Anarchism Communalism October 2007: 1". theanarchistlibrary.org. Archived from the original on July 30, 2020. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
- ^ "The Murray Bookchin Reader: Introduction". Archived from the original on October 14, 2007.
- ^ "The Murray Bookchin Reader: Intro". Dwardmac.pitzer.edu. Archived from the original on September 6, 2011. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
- ^ a b "Anarchism in America documentary". YouTube. January 9, 2007. Archived from the original on November 14, 2021. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
- ^ Price, Andy. The Independent "Murray Bookchin, Political philosopher and activist who became a founder of the ecological movement" August 19, 2006". The Independent. London. August 19, 2006. Archived from the original on June 18, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (August 7, 2006). "Murray Bookchin, 85, writer, Activist and Ecology Theorist Dies August 7, 2006". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 31, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Light 1998, p. 27.
- ^ Paull, John (2013) "The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring" Archived November 3, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Sage Open, 3(July):1–12.
- ^ "A Short Biography of Murray Bookchin by Janet Biehl". Dwardmac.pitzer.edu. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
- ^ "Ecology and Revolution". Dwardmac.pitzer.edu. June 16, 2004. Archived from the original on August 29, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
- ^ "Listen, Marxist!". Nasalam.org. Archived from the original on August 29, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
- ^ Walker, Jesse (July 31, 2006) Murray Bookchin, RIP Archived October 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Reason
- ^ "Reflections: Murray Bookchin". dwardmac.pitzer.edu. Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-19-934248-8.
- from the original on June 27, 2023. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
- ^ Vote Green leaflet https://www.scribd.com/doc/229304919/Vote-Bea Retrieved February 24, 2024
- ^ Biehl, Janet (March 22, 2015). "The Left Green Network (1988–91)". Ecology or Catastrophe. Archived from the original on March 25, 2015. Retrieved November 16, 2019.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (August 7, 2006). "Murray Bookchin, visionary social theorist, dies at 85". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 1, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
- Black Rose Books. p. x.
- ^ Bookchin, Murray (1982). The Ecology of Freedom. US: Cheshire Books. p. 20.
- ^ See Re-Enchanting Humanity, London: Cassell, 1995, amongst other works.
- ^ Curran 2007, p. 174.
- ^ Murray Bookchin. The Ecology of Freedom: the emergence and dissolution of Hierarchy. Cheshire Books: Palo Alto. 1982. p. 3 [ISBN missing]
- ^ Murray Bookchin. The Ecology of Freedom: the emergence and dissolution of Hierarchy. Cheshire Books: Palo Alto. 1982. p. 8 [ISBN missing]
- ^ ISBN 978-1781685815.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-904859-49-9. Archived(PDF) from the original on November 24, 2020. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- ^ Bookchin, Murray (2007). "What is Social Ecology?" (PDF). psichenatura.it. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 27, 2015. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- ^ Light 1998, p. 5.
- ISBN 978-0-12-803114-8. Archived from the original on September 21, 2023. Retrieved July 22, 2018 – via Google Books.
- ^ "On Bookchin's Social Ecology and its Contributions to Social Movements". social-ecology.org. 2018. Archived from the original on September 29, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- ^ a b Light 1998, p. 6.
- ^ a b Light 1998, p. 7.
- ^ a b Light 1998, p. 8.
- ^ McKay, Iain. An Anarchist FAQ. AK Press: Oakland. 2008. pp. 65.[ISBN missing]
- ^ Light 1998, pp. 5–6.
- ^ "Questions pour un autre futur" [Questions for another future] (in French). Le Courrier. July 25, 2016. Archived from the original on May 27, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- ^ "Rencontres Internationales de l'Écologie Sociale – 27 28 et 29 mai 2016 Lyon" [International Meetings of Social Ecology – 27 28 and 29 May 2016, Lyon] (in French). Passerelle éco. March 16, 2016. Archived from the original on February 23, 2023. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- ISBN 978-90-481-3745-9.
- ^ New York Review of Books. Archivedfrom the original on September 1, 2020. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
- ^ Fernandez, Benjamin (July 2016). "Murray Bookchin, écologie ou barbarie" [Murray Bookchin, ecology or barbarism] (in French). Le Monde diplomatique. Archived from the original on November 17, 2016. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- ^ a b "A Dream of Secular Utopia in ISIS' Backyard". The New York Times. November 24, 2015. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016. Retrieved July 1, 2020.
- ^ a b Shilton, Dor (June 9, 2019). "In the Heart of Syria's Darkness, a Democratic, Egalitarian and Feminist Society Emerges". Haaretz. Archived from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ Malik, Kenan (October 27, 2019). "Syria's Kurds dreamt of a 'Rojava revolution'. Assad will snuff this out". The Guardian. Archived from the original on May 25, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- Pluto Books. Archivedfrom the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ Krajeski, Jenna (October 14, 2019). "What the World Loses if Turkey Destroys the Syrian Kurds". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 3, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ Baird, Vanessa (June 22, 2020). "In the Autonomous Zones". The New International. Archived from the original on July 1, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ Bookchin, Murray. Free Cities: Communalism and the Left. Archived from the original on April 25, 2022. Retrieved March 18, 2022.
- ^ Taylor, Rafael (March 22, 2016). "The New PKK: unleashing a social revolution in Kurdistan". Co-operation in Mesopotamia. Archived from the original on July 24, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2023.
- ^ Bookchin, M. (October 1991). "Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview". Green Perspectives. No. 24. Burlington, VT.
- ISBN 9781781685822.
- ^ Harbinger, a Journal of Social Ecology. Vol. 2, no. 1. Institute for Social Ecology.
- New York Review of Books. Archivedfrom the original on September 1, 2020. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
- ^ Barnard, Anne; Hubbard, Ben (January 25, 2018). "Allies or Terrorists: Who Are the Kurdish Fighters in Syria?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 1, 2020. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
- ^ a b c Biehl, Janet (February 16, 2012). "Bookchin, Öcalan, and the Dialectics of Democracy". New Compass. Archived from the original on April 1, 2016. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
- ^ de Jong, Alex (March 2016). "The New–Old PKK". Jacobin. Archived from the original on April 28, 2016. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
- ^ "From Chiapas to Rojava: The Rise of a New Revolutionary Paradigm". Hampton Institute. February 26, 2016. Retrieved October 27, 2023.
- ^ "The ghost of anarcho-syndicalism – Murray Bookchin". libcom.org. Retrieved October 27, 2023.
- ^ Biehl, Janet (October 9, 2011). "Kurdish Communalism". New Compass. Archived from the original on September 1, 2020. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
Bibliography
- Curran, Giorel (2007). 21st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalization and Environmentalism. International Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-4881-6.
- Light, Andrew, ed. (1998). Social Ecology After Bookchin. from the original on September 21, 2023. Retrieved July 22, 2018.
- Price, Andy (2012). "Social Ecology". In ISBN 978-1-4411-4270-2.
Further reading
- Price, Andy, Recovering Bookchin: Social Ecology and the Crises of Our Time, New Compass (2012)
- Biehl, Janet, Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin(Oxford University Press, 2015).
- ISBN 0-304-33874-5.
- Biehl, Janet, "Mumford Gutkind Bookchin: The Emergence of Eco-Decentralism" (New Compass, 2011) ISBN 978-82-93064-10-7
- Marshall, P. (1992), "Murray Bookchin and the Ecology of Freedom", pp. 602–622 in, ISBN 0-00-686245-4.
- ISBN 978-90-04-35689-4.
- Selva Varengo, La rivoluzione ecologica. Il pensiero libertario di Murray Bookchin (2007) Milano: Zero in condotta. ISBN 978-88-95950-00-6.
- E. Castano, Ecologia e potere. Un saggio su Murray Bookchin, Mimesis, Milano 2011 ISBN 978-88-575-0501-5.
- Damian F. White 'Bookchin – A Critical Appraisal'. Pluto Press (UK/Europe), University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0745319643(pbk).
- Neither Washington Nor Stowe: Common Sense For The Working Vermonter, by David Van Deusen, Sean West, and the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective(NEFAC-VT), Catamount Tavern Press, 2004. This libertarian socialist manifesto took many of Bookchin's ideas and articulated them as they would manifest in a revolutionary Vermont.
External links
- Murray Bookchin entry at the Anarchy Archives
- Murray Bookchin Papers at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives at New York University
- International Online Conference 2021: "100 years Murray Bookchin"
- Institute of Social Ecology (official site)