Politics & International Relations
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an influential American anarchist and social theorist known for his work on social ecology and libertarian municipalism. He advocated for a decentralized, directly democratic political system and emphasized the importance of environmental sustainability and social justice. Bookchin's ideas continue to have a significant impact on radical political thought and activism.
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eBook - PDFSocial Ecology and the Right to the City
Towards Ecological and Democratic Cities
- Federico Venturini, Emet Degirmenci, Inés Morales, Federico Venturini, Emet Degirmenci, Inés Morales(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Black Rose Books(Publisher)
12 The Legacy of Murray Bookchin Brian Morris Introduction Although Murray Bookchin has been described as one of the most provocative, exciting, and original political thinkers of the twentieth century, it is worth noting that he is singularly ignored by many academic scholars writing on green philosophy or the history of the ecology movement (e.g. Scruton 2012; Radkau 2014), while he is invariably caricatured or reduced to a negative stereotype by anarcho-primitivists and spiritual ecologists (e.g. Black 1997; Curry 2011: 64; cf. Price 2012). In this essay I aim, therefore, to outline and re-affirm Bookchin’s enduring legacy as an important scholar, both in terms of his philosophy of nature — dialectical or evolutionary naturalism, and in terms of his radical politics —libertarian socialism or communalism. For Bookchin’s political legacy offers the only real solution to the immense social and ecological problems that now confront us, as neither communing with the spirit world (mysticism), nor the technocratic solutions offered within the current capitalist system will suffice (Roussopoulos 2015). In a recent widely acclaimed text, Facing the Anthropocene , Ian Angus writes, with respect to the present crisis of the earth system, particularly global warming, that it is “a challenge to everyone who cares about huma n-ity’s future to face up to the fact that survival in the Anthropocene requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with an ecological civiliza-tion, eco-socialism” (A ngus 2016: 20). Angus neglects to mention, of course, that this is something that Murray Bookchin extolled over 40 years ago, although, for Bookchin, this did not entail that “we need governments” (op. cit. 197) in order to create an ecological society. Bookchin, following Bakunin and Kropotkin, always felt that Marxist politics, specifically the “conquest” of state power, would lead to either reformism, or, as in Russia and China, to state capitalism and political tyranny.
eBook - PDFEnvironments, Natures and Social Theory
Towards a Critical Hybridity
- Damian White, Alan Rudy, Brian Gareau(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
(Bookchin, 1993:462) The writings of Murray Bookchin are contemporaneous with some of the very earliest moments of the postwar revival of neo-Malthusian thinking. Indeed, Bookchin’s attempt to foreground the reality of a looming “ecological cri-sis” significantly predates the writings of Ehrlich, Simon and The Limits to Growth report (see Bookchin, 1952, 1962, 1965, 1971). Yet, in contrast to all these figures, Bookchin explicitly brings the insights of critical social theory to ecological questions. His intellectual project can be summarized in three ways. First, his corpus is an attempt to draw the insights of environmental science and ecology into dialogue with critical theory (from Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School), critical regionalists and anarchist traditions (from Kropotkin to Mumford), and finally, civic republican visions of politics (such as those defended by Hannah Arendt and others introduced early on in this book). The aim here then is to argue ultimately for a radically democratic ecology . Second, Bookchin’s work can also be seen as a very early attempt to explore an entangled understanding of socio-ecological relations. His writings argue that socio-ecological processes have to be understood as dynamic and dialectical, that we need a social ecology that can capture the entanglements of society and nature (see Bookchin, 1982, 1990). Finally, Bookchin’s social ecology is distinguished by his explicit attempt to push back firmly against neo-Malthusian thinking and Promethean market liberalism. Bookchin argues that a postcapitalist transformation of social and political relations, technological Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 73 forms and cultural attitudes could allow us to envisage an ecological society marked by a world of potential abundance for all. Let us consider then how some of these arguments unfold in Bookchin’s writings.
eBook - PDF- Brian Morris(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Black Rose Books(Publisher)
Such an ecological future would imply the development of libertarian practices based on affinity groups, direct democracy and direct action, not on electoral politics or the formation of political parties. Always affirming his commitment to the anarchist trad-ition, which he felt had prevented him from sliding into academicism, neo-Marxism and ultimately reformism, Bookchin saw his early writings as providing an ethical holism, rooted in objective values that emerge from a creative synthesis of ecology and anarchism (1980: 31). Bookchin’s social anarchism and his advocacy of a decentralized eco-logical society, has been the subject of numerous critiques, by deep ecologists (e.g. Eckersley 1992), by eco-communitarian liberals (e.g. Clark 1998) and by neo-Marxists (Kovel 2002). For Kovel going ‘beyond Bookchin’ entails an unholy alliance between Marxism and mysticism (spiritualism), and his advocacy of an ‘eco-socialist transformation’ involves electoral politics, the ‘seizure of state power’ by some ‘green’ political party, and some form of THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF Murray Bookchin 196 market economy. His colleague John Clark has a similar vision of an eco-communitarian realpolitik; namely some form of representative government with a coercive legal system, administrative bodies that dictate social policy, and a market economy. Robyn Eckersley likewise, as with other deep ecolo-gists, has little to offer other than conventional politics – the liberal democratic state and a market economy (capitalism), which for Bookchin, of course, is at the root of the ecological crisis! Repudiating Marxism, mysti-cism, electoral politics and the market economy, it is small wonder that Bookchin dismissed his many critics as backsliding into political reformism. In turn they dismiss Bookchin’s social anarchism as ‘utopian’, and suggest some accommodation – as with the above critics – with the ‘real’ world of state politics and capitalism.
eBook - PDFLeaders from the 1960s
A Biographical Sourcebook of American Activism
- David De Leon(Author)
- 1994(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
During the 1970s and 80s, Bookchin continued his political activity, but began focusing increasingly on the project of developing an ecological social theory, and on propagating the message of social ecology through education. From 1974 to 1983 he was Professor of Social Theory in the School of En- vironmental Studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey. In 1974 he founded the Institute for Social Ecology at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and Served as its director until 1980, after which he became director emeritus. Most important, he developed the principles of social ecology in a series of important works in philosophy and social theory, most notably, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Toward an Ecological Society, The Ecology of Freedom (his mag- num opus), and The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship. In these works, Bookchin develops social ecology into a comprehensive 300 LEADERS FROM THE 1960S ecological philosophy, based on the fundamental ecological principle of or- ganic unity-in-diversity, and on a dialectical approach that sees all of reality as a process of self-development and self-transcendence. Social ecology, in affirming such a dialectical holism, rejects both the social divisions and the dualistic ideologies that have been central to the history of domination. In opposition to the dualism of hierarchical society, social ecology proposes a principle of ecological wholeness that sees the entire course of planetary evolu- tion as a process aiming at increasing diversity and emergence of value. Social ecology thus forms part of a long teleological tradition extending from the ancient Greeks to the most advanced twentieth-century process philosophies. Bookchin avoids the term "teleology" because of its deterministic connotations and its association with a hierarchical worldview. Yet, what is affirmed is that the entire process of development of life and mind has "directiveness," and is a movement toward the greater unfolding of value.
eBook - PDFGlobal Environmental Politics
Power, Perspectives, and Practice
- Ronnie D. Lipschutz(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- CQ Press(Publisher)
Bookchin’s work provides ample evidence of this. kind of globalized capitalism that distances production from consumption and externalizes pollution and other forms of environmental degradation. 41 There will be production and trade, but its limited scale will result in a much smaller environmental burden on nature. Second, people will be closer to na-ture and much more sensitive to the effects of their activities on the world around them. People will transform nature—Bookchin believes this is both necessary and good—but the result will be a rational, technically based cul-ture, refined by spiritual and intellectual insights but not determined by them, and sensitive to and concerned about nonhuman nature. 42 For some of his critics, Bookchin’s ecoanarchism is too humanistic and political and does not give enough importance to the place of humans in na-ture. Its links to both Enlightenment rationality and socialism are evident in his commitment to a science-based understanding of nature and the possi-bilities of positive transformation of humans and nature together. Bookchin also highlights the struggle to achieve human freedom from state and capital through a form of class struggle, albeit one very different from traditional Marxism. And although he is conscious of the role of power in fostering domination, he seems to treat power as something that will, like Marx’s fa-bled state, wither away in the fullness of time. This seems unlikely. Social Naturalism: Peace Is in Our Nature. By contrast with ecoanarchism, social naturalism views culture and nature as bound together in a kind of so-cial community. In this community, cooperation among humans and between humans and nature should be organic and harmonious, as it is in nature. So-cial naturalism’s origins are to be found in nineteenth-century romantic views, and its proponents have adopted Prince Kropotkin’s notion of mutual aid and cooperation between species as the basis for community.
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