Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July
30, 2006) was an American social theorist,
author, orator, historian, and political philosopher.
A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin
formulated and developed the theory of social
ecology and urban planning, within anarchist,
libertarian socialist, and ecological thought.
He was the author of two dozen books covering
topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban
affairs, and ecology.
Among the most important were Our Synthetic
Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism
(1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982) and
Urbanization Without Cities (1987).
In the late-1990s he became disenchanted with
the increasingly apolitical lifestylism of
the contemporary anarchist movement, stopped
referring to himself as an anarchist, and
founded his own libertarian socialist ideology
called Communalism, which seeks to reconcile
Marxist and anarchist thought.Bookchin was
a prominent anti-capitalist and advocate of
society's decentralisation along ecological
and democratic lines.
His ideas have influenced social movements
since the 1960s, including the New Left, the
Anti-Nuclear Movement, the Anti-Globalization
Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and more recently,
the democratic confederalism of Rojava.
He was a central figure in the American Green
Movement and the Burlington Greens.
== Biography ==
Bookchin was born in New York City to Russian
Jewish immigrants Nathan Bookchin and Rose
(Kaluskaya) Bookchin.
He grew up in the Bronx, where his grandmother,
Zeitel, a Socialist Revolutionary, imbued
him with Russian populist ideas.
After her death in 1930, he joined the Young
Pioneers, the Communist youth organization
(for children 9 to 14) and the Young Communist
League (for older children) in 1935.
He attended the Workers School near Union
Square, where he studied Marxism.
In the late 1930s he broke with Stalinism
and gravitated toward Trotskyism, joining
the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
In the early 1940s he worked in a foundry
in Bayonne, New Jersey where he was an organizer
and shop steward for the United Electrical
Workers as well as a recruiter for the SWP.
Within the SWP he adhered to the Goldman-Morrow
faction, which broke away after the war ended.
He was an auto worker and UAW member at the
time of the great General Motors strike of
1945-46.
In 1949, while speaking to a Zionist youth
organization at City College, Bookchin met
a mathematics student, Beatrice Appelstein,
whom he married in 1951.
They were married for 12 years and lived together
for 35, remaining close friends and political
allies for the rest of his life.
They had two children, Debbie, and Joseph.From
1947, he collaborated with a fellow lapsed
Trotskyist, the German expatriate Josef Weber,
in New York in the Movement for a Democracy
of Content, a group of 20 or so post-Trotskyists
who collectively edited the periodical Contemporary
Issues – A Magazine for a Democracy of Content.
Contemporary Issues embraced utopianism.
The periodical provided a forum for the belief
that previous attempts to create utopia had
foundered on the necessity of toil and drudgery;
but now modern technology had obviated the
need for human toil, a liberatory development.
To achieve this "post-scarcity" society, Bookchin
developed a theory of ecological decentralism.
The magazine published Bookchin's first articles,
including the pathbreaking "The Problem of
Chemicals in Food" (1952).
In 1958, Bookchin defined himself as an anarchist,
seeing parallels between anarchism and ecology.
His first book, Our Synthetic Environment,
was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber
in 1962, a few months before Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring.
The book described a broad range of environmental
ills but received little attention because
of its political radicalism.
In 1964, Bookchin joined the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), and protested racism at the
1964 World's Fair.
During 1964-67, while living on Manhattan's
Lower East Side, he cofounded and was the
principal figure in the New York Federation
of Anarchists.
His groundbreaking essay "Ecology and Revolutionary
Thought" introduced ecology as a concept in
radical politics.
In 1968, he founded another group that published
the influential Anarchos magazine, which published
that and other innovative essays on post-scarcity
and on ecological technologies such as solar
and wind energy, and on decentralization and
miniaturization.
Lecturing throughout the United States, he
helped popularize the concept of ecology to
the counterculture.
His widely republished 1969 essay Listen,
Marxist! warned Students for a Democratic
Society (in vain) against an impending takeover
by a Marxist group.
"Once again the dead are walking in our midst,"
he wrote, "ironically, draped in the name
of Marx, the man who tried to bury the dead
of the nineteenth century.
So the revolution of our own day can do nothing
better than parody, in turn, the October Revolution
of 1917 and the civil war of 1918-1920, with
its 'class line,' its Bolshevik Party, its
'proletarian dictatorship,' its puritanical
morality, and even its slogan, 'Soviet power'".
These and other influential 1960s essays are
anthologized in Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971)
In 1969-1970, he taught at 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 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 forged some ties
with the nascent libertarian movement.
"He spoke at a Libertarian Party convention
and contributed to a newsletter edited by
Karl Hess.
In 1976, he told a Libertarian activist that
'If I were a voting man, I'd vote for MacBride'
— LP nominee Roger MacBride, that is."
Bookchin's affiliations to libertarianism
during this period reflect his disillusionment
with the authoritarianism of Marxist-Leninists,
resulting in him stating in a 1979 interview
with Jeff Riggenbach that he felt closer to
free-market libertarians who defend the rights
of the individual at least when compared to
the totalitarian Marxist-Leninists.
Nevertheless, Bookchin rejected the types
of libertarianism that advocated unconstrained
individualism.In From Urbanization to Cities
(published in 1987 as The Rise of Urbanization
and the Decline of Citizenship), Bookchin
traced the democratic traditions that influenced
his political philosophy and defined the implementation
of the libertarian municipalism concept.
A few years later, The Politics of Social
Ecology, written by his partner of 19 years,
Janet Biehl, briefly summarized these ideas.
In 1995, Bookchin lamented the decline of
American anarchism into primitivism, anti-technologism,
neo-situationism, individual self-expression,
and "ad hoc adventurism," at the expense of
forming a social movement.
Arthur Verslius said, "Bookchin... describes
himself as a 'social anarchist' because he
looks forward to a (gentle) societal revolution....
Bookchin has lit out after those whom he terms
'lifestyle anarchists.'"
The publication of Social Anarchism or Lifestyle
Anarchism in 1995, criticizing this tendency,
was startling to anarchists.
Thereafter Bookchin concluded that American
anarchism was essentially individualistic
and broke with anarchism publicly in 1999.
He placed his ideas into a new political ideology:
Communalism (spelled with a capital "C" to
differentiate it from other forms of communalism),
a form of libertarian socialism that retains
his ideas about assembly democracy and the
necessity of decentralization of settlement,
power/money/influence, agriculture, manufacturing,
etc.
In addition to his political writings, Bookchin
wrote extensively on philosophy, calling his
ideas dialectical naturalism.
The dialectical writings of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, which articulate a developmental
philosophy of change and growth, seemed to
him to lend themselves to an organic, even
ecological approach.
Although Hegel "exercised a considerable influence"
on Bookchin, he was not, in any sense, a Hegelian.
His philosophical writings emphasize humanism,
rationality, and the ideals of the Enlightenment.
His last major published work was The Third
Revolution, a four-volume history of the libertarian
movements in European and American revolutions.
He continued to teach at the ISE until 2004.
Bookchin died of congestive heart failure
on July 30, 2006, at his home in Burlington
at the age of 85.
== Thought ==
=== 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.
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.
=== Humanity's environmental predicament ===
Murray Bookchin's clarion call about humanity's
collision course with the natural world, Our
Synthetic Environment, was published six months
before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.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 is not a return
to the xenophobia and constant warfare of
hunter-gatherer societies.
Bookchin likewise opposed "a politics of mere
protest, lacking programmatic content, a proposed
alternative, and a movement to give people
direction and continuity."
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."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.
=== Social ecology ===
In the history of political ecology, social
ecology is not a movement but a theory primarily
associated with Bookchin and elaborated over
his body of work.
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.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.
Bookchin 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.
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.
Life develops from self-organization and evolutionary
cooperation (symbiosis).
Bookchin writes 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.
He proposes confederation between communities
of humans run through democracy rather than
through administrative logistics.
=== Libertarian municipalism ===
Starting in the 1970s, Bookchin argued that
the arena for libertarian social change should
be the municipal level.
In "The Next Revolution", Bookchin stresses
the link that libertarian municipalism has
with his earlier philosophy of social ecology.
He writes:
"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."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."
In 1980 Bookchin used the term "libertarian
municipalism", to describe a system in which
libertarian institutions of directly democratic
assemblies would oppose and replace the state
with a confederation of free municipalities.
Libertarian municipalism intends to create
a situation in which the two powers—the
municipal confederations and the nation-state—cannot
coexist.
Its supporters—Communalists—believe it
to be the means to achieve a rational society,
and its structure becomes the organization
of society.
== 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.
Notable among these is the Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK), an organisation in Turkey which
has fought the Turkish state since the 1980s
to try to secure greater political and cultural
rights for the country's Kurds.
Though founded on a rigid Marxist–Leninist
ideology, the PKK has seen a shift in its
thought and aims since the capture and imprisonment
of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999.
Öcalan began reading a variety of post-Marxist
political theory while in prison, and found
particular currency in Bookchin's works.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."Democratic
Confederalism", the variation on Communalism
developed by Öcalan in his writings and adopted
by the PKK, does not outwardly seek Kurdish
rights within the context of the formation
of an independent state separate from Turkey.
The PKK claims that this project is not envisioned
as being only for Kurds, but rather for all
peoples of the region, regardless of their
ethnic, national, or religious background.
Rather, it promulgates the formation of assemblies
and organisations beginning at the grassroots
level to enact its ideals in a non-state framework
beginning at the local level.
It also places a particular emphasis on securing
and promoting women's rights.
The PKK has had some success in implementing
its programme, through organisations such
as the Democratic Society Congress (DTK),
which coordinates political and social activities
within Turkey, and the Koma Civakên Kurdistan
(KCK), which does so across all countries
where Kurds live.
== Major writings ==
Our Synthetic Environment (1962)
Crisis in our Cities (1965)
Desire and Need (1967)
Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971 and 2004) ISBN
1-904859-06-2.
The Limits of the City (1973) ISBN 0-06-091013-5.
The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years (1977
and 1998) ISBN 1-873176-04-X.
Toward an Ecological Society (1980) ISBN 0-919618-98-7.
The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and
Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982 and 2005) ISBN
1-904859-26-7.
The Modern Crisis (1986) ISBN 0-86571-083-X.
The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of
Citizenship (1987 and 1992) ISBN 978-0-87156-706-2
Remaking Society (1990 and 1998) ISBN 0-921689-02-0
The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on
Dialectical Naturalism (1990 and 1996) Montreal:
Black Rose Books ISBN 978-1-55164-019-8
To Remember Spain (1994) ISBN 1-873176-87-2
Re-Enchanting Humanity (1995) ISBN 0-304-32843-X.
The Third Revolution.
Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era
(1996–2003) London and New York: Continuum.
ISBN 0-304-33594-0.
(4 Volumes)
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An
Unbridgeable Chasm (1997) ISBN 1-873176-83-X.
The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian
Municipalism (1997, by Janet Biehl) Montreal:
Black Rose Books.
ISBN 1-55164-100-3.
Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left.
Interviews and Essays, 1993-1998 (1999) Edinburgh
and San Francisco: A.K.
Press.
ISBN 1-873176-35-X.
The Murray Bookchin Reader (1999; edited by
Janet Biehl) Black Rose Books.
ISBN 978-1551641188
Social Ecology and Communalism, AK Press,
(2007)
The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and
the Promise of Direct Democracy, Verso Books
(2015)
== See also ==
Outline of libertarianism
== References ==
== 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).
Biehl, Janet, The Murray Bookchin Reader (Cassell,
1997) 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", p. 602-622 in, Demanding
the Impossible.
Fontana Press.
ISBN 0-00-686245-4.
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 978-0-7453-1965-0 (HBK); 9780745319643
(pbk).
Andrew Light, ed., Social Ecology after Bookchin
(Guilfor, 1998) ISBN 1-57230-379-4.
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
Works by or about Murray Bookchin at Libcom
Works by Murray Bookchin at Marxists Internet
Archive
Works by Murray Bookchin at the Anarchist
Library
Institute for Social Ecology
"Spontaneity and Utopia", an essay by Bookchin
(1967–68)
[1], Janet Biehl's blog about Bookchin and
Rojava
"The Future of the Left", Ursula K. Le Guin's
foreword to Bookchin's The Next Revolution
(2015)
