Notes
Many less well-known names could be added to this list, but one that in particular I would like very much to single out is the gallant leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, Maria Spiridonova, whose supporters were virtually alone in proposing a workable revolutionary program for the Russian people in 1917–18. Their failure to implement their political insights and replace the Bolsheviks (with whom they initially joined in forming the first Soviet government) not only led to their defeat but contributed to the disastrous failure of revolutionary movements in the century that followed. I frankly regard this contradiction as more fundamental than the often-indiscernible tendency of the rate of profit to decline and thereby to render capitalist exchange inoperable—a contradiction to which Marxists assigned a decisive role in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Contrary to Marx’s assertion that a s... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Further Reading
Further Reading Books by Murray Bookchin Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1971; and Oakland: AK Press, 2004. The Limits of the City. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868–1936. New York: Free Life Editions, 1977; and San Fransisco: AK Press, 2001. Toward an Ecological Society. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980. The Ecology of Freedom. Palo Alto: Cheshire Books, 1982; and San Francisco: AK Press, 2001. The Modern Crisis. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986; Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1987. The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1987. Revised edition as From Urbanization to Cities: Towards a New Politics of Citizenship. London: Cassell, 1995. Remaking Society: Paths to a G... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments Some of these essays appeared previously in other venues and we would like to acknowledge them as follows: The essay “The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society” was originally written for a Greek audience in 1992 and later published in English under the title “The Ecological Crisis, Socialism, and the Need to Remake Society” in the journal Society and Nature vol. 2, no. 3, 1994. “A Politics for the Twenty-First Century” was originally a video-transmitted speech presented to the First International Conference on Libertarian Municipalism, Lisbon, 1998. “The Meaning of Confederalism” was originally published in From Urbanization to Cities,London: Cassell, 1995. “Libertarian Municipalism: A Politics of Direct Democracy” was originally titled “Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview” and appeared in Green Perspectives, no. 24, 1991. “Cities: The Unfolding... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 9 : The Future of the Left
9. The Future of the Left By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Left envisioned itself as having reached an extraordinary degree of conceptual sophistication and organizational maturity. Generally, what was called leftism at that time was socialist, influenced to varying degrees by the works of Karl Marx. This was especially the case in Central Europe, but socialism was also intermixed with populist ideas in Eastern Europe and with syndicalism in France, Spain, and Latin America. In the United States, all of these ideas were melded together, for example, in Eugene V. Debs’s Socialist Party and in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). On the eve of World War I, leftist ideas and movements had become so advanced that they seemed positioned to seriously challenge the existence of capitalism, indeed, of class society as such. The words from the “Internationale,” “Tis the final conflict,” acquired a new concreteness and im... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 8 : Anarchism and Power in the Spanish Revolution
8. Anarchism and Power in the Spanish Revolution Today, when anarchism has become le mot du jor in radical circles, the differences between a society based on anarchy and one based on the principles of social ecology should be clearly distinguished. Authentic anarchism above all seeks the emancipation of individual personality from all ethical, political, and social constraints. In so doing, however, it fails to address the all-important and very concrete issue of power, which confronts all revolutionaries in a period of social upheaval. Rather than address how the people, organized into confederated popular assemblies, might capture power and create a fully developed libertarian society, anarchists conceive of power essentially as a malignant evil that must be destroyed. Proudhon, for example, once stated that he would divide and subdivide power until it, in effect, ceased to exist. Proudhon may well have intended that government be reduced to the minimum ent... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Communalist Project
1. 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 devast... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Meaning of Confederalism
4. The Meaning of Confederalism Few arguments have been used more effectively to challenge the case for face-to-face participatory democracy than the claim that we live in a “complex society.” Modern population centers, we are told, are too large and too concentrated to allow for direct decision-making at a grassroots level. And our economy is too “global,” presumably, to unravel the intricacies of production and commerce. In our present transnational, often highly centralized social system, it is better to enhance representation in the state, to increase the efficiency of bureaucratic institutions, we are advised, than to advance utopian “localist” schemes of popular control over political and economic l... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Cities: The Unfolding of Reason in History
6. Cities: The Unfolding of Reason in History 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. It depends upon libertarian leftists running candidates at the local municipal level, calling for the division of municipalities into wards, where popular assemblies can be created that bring people into full and direct participation in political life. Having democratized themselves, municipalities would confederate into a dual power to oppose the nation-state and ultimately dispense with it and with the economic forces that underpin statism as such. Libertarian municipalism is thus both a historical goal... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin “The Left,” a meaningful term ever since the French Revolution, took on wider significance with the rise of socialism, anarchism, and communism. The Russian revolution installed a government entirely leftist in conception; leftist and rightist movements tore Spain apart; democratic parties in Europe and North America arrayed themselves between the two poles; liberal cartoonists portrayed the opposition as a fat plutocrat with a cigar, while reactionaries in the United States demonized “commie leftists” from the 1930s through the Cold War. The left/right opposition, though often an oversimplification, for two centuries was broadly useful as a description and a reminder of dynamic balance.... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society
2. The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society In addressing the sources of our present ecological and social problems, perhaps the most fundamental message that social ecology advances is that the very idea of dominating nature stems from the domination of human by human. The primary implication of this most basic message is a call for a politics and even an economics that offer a democratic alternative to the nation-state and the market society. Here I offer a broad sketch of these issues to lay the groundwork for the changes necessary in moving toward a free and ecological society. First, the most fundamental route to a resolution of our ecological problems is social in character. That is to say, if we are faced with the prospec... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)