Murray Bookchin

From Freepedia

Murray Bookchin (born January 14, 1921) is an American libertarian socialist speaker and writer, and founder of the "Social Ecology" school of anarchist and ecological thought.

He was born in New York City and grew up as a self-described "red-diaper baby", imbued with Marxist ideology from his youth. In adolescence he gravitated towards Trotskyism, then gradually became disillusioned with the coercion he saw as inherent in conventional Marxism-Leninism. In some circles he became known for his ability to deliver devastating criticisms of Marxist ideology using conventional Marxist language. In the 1960s he was a member of the Libertarian League. In 1974 he helped found the Institute for Social Ecology.

Bookchin has remained a radical anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society. His idea of Libertarian Municipalism has had an influence on the Green Movement and anti-capitalist direct action groups such as Reclaim the Streets. He is a staunch critic of biocentric philosophies such as Deep Ecology and the biologically determinstic belief of Sociobiology.

Bookchin is the author of many works, including Post Scarcity Anarchism and The Ecology of Freedom. The Politics of Social Ecology, written together with his partner of twenty some years, Janet Biehl, covers the political realities as viewed by Bookchin and his associates towards the end of the 20th century, maps the histories of key democractic societies which influenced his political philosophy, and defines the implementation of the Libertarian Municipalism concept.

Contents 1 Quotes 2 Selected works 3 General reading 4 External link

Quotes

• "An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles." (from Ecology and Revolutionary Thought 1984)

• "Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism."

• "Capitalism is a social cancer. It has always been a social cancer. It is the disease of society. It is the malignancy of society."

• "The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking."

• "The ecological principle of unity in diversity grades into a richly mediated social principle; hence my use of the term social ecology." (from What Is Social Ecology? 1984)

Selected works

• Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971) ISBN 087867005X
• Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (1997) ISBN 187317683X
• The Limits of the City (1973) ISBN 0060910135
• Toward an Ecological Society (1980) ISBN 0919618987
• The Ecology of Freedom (1982) ISBN 0917352092
• The Modern Crisis (1986) ISBN 086571083X
• Re-Enchanting Humanity (1995) ISBN 030432843X

General reading

• Biehl, J. (1997), The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell ISBN 0304338737
• Clark, J. (1990), Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology. Green Print. ISBN 1854250019
• Marshall, P. (1992), Murray Bookchin and the Ecology of Freedom, in, Demanding The Impossible. Fontana Press. ISBN 0006862454

External link

• Murray Bookchin Archive