An Introduction to Social Ecology and Communalism
We are standing at a crucial crossroads. Not only does the age-old “social question” concerning the exploitation of human labor remain unresolved, but the plundering of natural resources has reached a point where humanity is also forced to politically deal with an “ecological question.” Today, we have to make conscious choices about what direction society should take, to properly meet these challenges.
At the same time, we see that our very ability to make the necessary choices are being undermined by an incessant centralization of economic and political power. Not only is there a process of centralization in most modern nation states that divests humanity of any ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
What is Social Ecology?
Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that these ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, without a careful understanding of our existing society and the irrationalities that dominate it. To make this point more concrete: economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious ecological dislocations we face today — apart, to be sure, from those that are produced by natural catastrophes.
If this approach seems a bit too sociological for those environmentalists who identify the primary ecological problem as being the p... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism
Defying all the theoretical predictions of the 1930s, capitalism has restabilized itself with a vengeance and acquired extraordinary flexibility in the decades since World War II. In fact, we have yet to clearly determine what constitutes capitalism in its most “mature” form, not to speak of its social trajectory in the years to come. But what is clear, I would argue, is that capitalism has transformed itself from an economy surrounded by many precapitalist social and political formations into a society that itself has become “economized.” Terms like consumerism and industrialism are merely obscurantist euphemisms for an all-pervasive embourgeoisement that involves... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Role of Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction
Social ecology developed out of important social and theoretical problems that faced the Left in the post-World War II period. The historical realities of the 1940s and the 1950s completely invalidated the perspectives of a proletarian revolution, of a “chronic economic crisis” that would bring capitalism to its knees, and of commitment to a centralistic workers’ party that would seize state power and, by dictatorial means, initiate a transition to socialism and communism. It became painfully evident in time that no such generalized crisis was in the offing; indeed, that the proletariat and any party — or labor confederation — that spoke in the name of the w... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Communalist Project
Whether the twenty-first century will be the most radical of times or the most reactionary — or will simply lapse into a gray era of dismal mediocrity — will depend overwhelmingly upon the kind of social movement and program that social radicals create out of the theoretical, organizational, and political wealth that has accumulated during the past two centuries of the revolutionary era. The direction we select, from among several intersecting roads of human development, may well determine the future of our species for centuries to come. As long as this irrational society endangers us with nuclear and biological weapons, we cannot ignore the possibility that the entire human enterprise may come to a de... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
After Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin unfortunately did not live to see the publication of Social Ecology and Communalism. July 30th, 2006, he died peacefully in his home, surrounded by family and friends.
Until his very last breath, Bookchin never abandoned his commitment to humanism and Enlightenment, and he was always a forceful representative of the great radical traditions he strove to nurture and develop. Although his impact on the ecology movement and on grassroots activism is recognized and appreciated, Bookchin’s real importance and originality has yet to be asserted. Fortunately Bookchin was not only a lifelong activist but also a prolific writer, leaving behind numerous books, essays, lectures, and interviews. Bookchin ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
[1] Murray Bookchin, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought,” originally published in the libertarian socialist periodical Comment (September 1965) and collected, together with all my major essays of the 1960s, in Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1972; reprinted Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1977). The expression “ethics of complementarity” is from my The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (San Francisco: Cheshire Books, 1982; revised edition Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1991; reprinted with a new introduction by AK Press, 2005).
[2] I am not saying that complexity necessarily yields subjectivity, merely that it is difficult to conceive of subjectivity without complexity, speci... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
