On August 24, 1978, Murray Bookchin gave a lecture at the Toward Tomorrow Fair in Amherst, Massachusetts. Also speaking at that year’s gathering were several prominent thinkers, including R. Buckminster Fuller and Ralph Nader. In his speech, Bookchin argues against the ideology of futurism and for ecological utopianism. In the Q&A session, he points out that he is not against technology itself, he is against technocracy, and he also describes, in detail, his political vision for the future.
The speech is surprisingly relevant in today’s context: it’s as if he predicted the rise of fascist ideology and lifeboat ethics in the 21st century, and it feels like a direct rebuttal of Elon Musk-esque technocratic futuris... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Is it possible that the Left has been wrong about capitalist development and revolutionary change? Is it possible that 20th-century capitalism is not “moribund;” that the Russian Revolution did not usher in an “era of wars and revolutions,” as predicted by Lenin; that capitalism does not unfold according to an “immanent” dialectic in which lie the “seeds” of its own destruction? Could it be that we are in a ceaseless “ascending phase” of capitalism?
We grasp at straws — Hungary in 1956, Paris in 1968, Czechoslovakia in 1969, Poland in the early 1980s — for evidence of a revolutionary proletariat without seeing the tragic marginality of these events. We turn to Ch... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This manuscript was provided to Anarchy Archives by the author
What is Communalism?
The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism
by Murray Bookchin
Seldom have socially important words become more confused and divested of their historic meaning than they are at present. Two centuries ago, it is often forgotten, "democracy" was deprecated by monarchists and republicans alike as "mob rule." Today, democracy is hailed as "representative democracy," an oxymoron that refers to little more than a republican oligarchy of the chosen few who ostensibly speak for the powerless many.
"Communism," for its part, once referred to a cooperative society that would be based morally on mutual respect and on an economy in which each contributed to the... (From: Anarchy Archives.) This essay appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. It is from Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, edited by M.E. Zimmerman, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993
What Is Social Ecology?
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin has long been a major figure in anarchlst
and utopian political theory, theory of technology,
urbanism, and the philosophy of nature. He is the
co-founder and director emeritus of the Institute for
Social Ecology. His many books include Toward an
Ecological Society, The Ecology of Freedom, The Rise of
Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship, Remaking
Society, and The Philosophy of Social Ecology.
What literally d... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Publication of the following article is forthcoming in Murray Bookchin, Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left (San Francisco and Edinburgh: A.K. Press, 1998). The article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author and publisher. Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics
by Murray Bookchin
Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice.
Socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
-- Mikhail Bakunin
What form will anarchism take as it enters the twenty-first century? What basic ideas will it advance? What kind of movement, if any, will it try to create? How will it try to change the human sensibilities and social institutions that it has inheri... (From: Anarchy Archives.) On August 24, 1978, Murray Bookchin gave a lecture at the Toward Tomorrow Fair in Amherst, Massachusetts. Also speaking at that year’s gathering were several prominent thinkers, including R. Buckminster Fuller and Ralph Nader. In his speech, Bookchin argues against the ideology of futurism and for ecological utopianism. In the Q&A session, he points out that he is not against technology itself, he is against technocracy, and he also describes, in detail, his political vision for the future.
The speech is surprisingly relevant in today’s context: it’s as if he predicted the rise of fascist ideology and lifeboat ethics in the 21st century, and it feels like a direct rebuttal of Elon Musk-esque technocratic futuris... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This article, originally published in The Progressive, December 1991, pp. 18-21, appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author.
REFLECTIONS: Murray Bookchin
Will Ecology Become
'the Dismal Science'?
Almost a century and a half ago Thomas Carlyle described economics as "the dismal science." The term was to stick, especially as it applied to economics premised on a supposedly unavoidable conflict between "insatiable needs" and "scarce natural resources." In this economics, the limited bounty provided by a supposedly "stingy nature" doomed humanity to economic slumps, misery, civil strife, and hunger.
Today, the term "dismal science" appropriately describes certain trends in the ecology movement-trends tha... (From: Anarchy Archives.) This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author.
GREEN PERSPECTIVES
Price:$1.00
A LEFT GREEN PUBLICATION
Number 10 September 1988
P.O. Box 111 Burlington, VT 05402
Yes!--Whither Earth First?
Editors' Note: The following article was written nearly a year ago in response to a supplement in the November I, 1987, issue of Earth First! The greater part of the supplement attacked the author, Murray Bookchin, for some six columns. After an orgy of personal recriminations, unfounded accusations. and sheer falsehoods, Earth First! refused to print this response. Its existence was merely mentioned in passing in a later issue by the editor of Earth First!, Da... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
