Murray Bookchin[1] (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 is the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology. murray bookchin (from [1]) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... January 14 is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Libertarian socialism is any one of a group of political philosophies dedicated to the abolition of property by restoring direct control of production and resources to the working class. ... Social ecology is, in the words of its leading exponents, a coherent radical critique of current social, political, and anti-ecological trends as well as a reconstructive, ecological, communitarian, and ethical approach to society. Social Ecology is a radical view of ecology and of social/political systems. ... Anarchism is the name for both a political philosophy and a loosely organized society, derived from the Greek αναρχία (without archons or without rulers). Thus anarchism, in its most general semantic meaning, is the belief that all forms of rulership are undesirable and should be abolished. ... Ernst Haeckel coined the term oekologie in 1866. ...

Bookchin was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants and was imbued with Marxist ideology from his youth. He joined the Young Pioneers, the Communist youth organization, at the age of nine. In the late 1930s he broke with Stalinism and gravitated toward Trotskyism, working with a group publishing the periodical Contemporary Issues in the 1950s. Then gradually became disillusioned with the coercion he saw as inherent in conventional Marxism-Leninism and became a libertarian, helping to found the Libertarian League in New York in the 1950s. Flag Seal Nickname: Big Apple Location Location in the state of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,214. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... Marxism is the philosophy, social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German, Jewish, socialist philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary. ... Stalinism is a brand of political theory, and the political and economic system named after Josef Stalin, who implemented it in the Soviet Union. ... Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. ... Coercion is the practice of compelling a person to act by employing threat of harm (usually physical force, sometimes other forms of harm). ... Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is a branch of Marxism (and it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). ... Libertarian League (contemporary) is also the name used by a number of regional groups associated with the Libertarian Party in the United States, particularly college-based organisations. ... The 1950s were the decade that traditionally speaking, spanned the years 1950 through 1959. ...

His book Our Synthetic Environment, published six months before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, described a broad range of environmental ills but received little attention because of his political radicalism. His groundbreaking essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced ecology as a concept for radical politics. Other essays from that time pioneered innovative ideas about ecological technologies. Lecturing all over 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 its takeover by a Marxist group. These and other influential 1960s essays are anthologized in Post Scarcity Anarchism. Carsons Government Photo (1940s) Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-born zoologist and marine biologist whose landmark book, Silent Spring, is often credited with having launched the global environmental movement. ... Ernst Haeckel coined the term oekologie in 1866. ... SDS Button Logo The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was, historically, a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of that countrys New Left. ...

In 1971 Bookchin moved to Vermont and in 1974 co-founded the Institute for Social Ecology in that state. He became a professor at Ramapo College in New Jersey, retiring in 1980. His 1982 book The Ecology of Freedom had a profound impact on the emerging ecology movement, both in the United States and abroad. He was active in the antinuclear movement in New England, and his lectures in Germany influenced some of the founders of the German Greens. He continued to teach at the ISE until 2004. The Institute for Social Ecology is an educational institution in the United States offering courses related to social ecology, an anti-capitalist strain of ecology closely related to anarchism. ...

Bookchin has remained a radical anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, grassroots democracy, 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 deterministic beliefs of Sociobiology. An anti-capitalist poster printed by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1911. ... Decentralisation (American: decentralization) is any of various means of more widely distributing decision-making to bring it closer to the point of service or action. ... Libertarian municipalism was a term first used by the well-known anarchist Murray Bookchin, and is used to describe a system where there would exist libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies that would oppose and replace the State with a confederation of municipalities. ... The Green movement encompasses the Green parties of various countries, and relies on the ideals of the larger ecology movement, peace movement, conservation movement, environmental movement and general trend towards environmentalism. ... Anti-capitalism is any and all opposition to capitalism. ... Direct action is a form of political activism which seeks immediate remedy for perceived ills, as opposed to indirect actions such as electing representatives who promise to provide remedy at some later date. ... Reclaim the Streets (RTS) is a group of people with a collective ideal of community ownership of public spaces. ... Biocentrism is the belief that all life, or even the whole universe living or otherwise taken as a whole, is equally valuable and humanity is not the center of existence. ... Deep ecology is a recent philosophy or ecosophy based on a shift away from the anthropocentric bias of established environmental and green movements. ... Categories: Biology stubs ... Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ...

His book From Urbanization to Cities (originally published as The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship) traces the democratic traditions that influenced his political philosophy and defines the implementation of the libertarian municipalism concept. A much smaller work, The Politics of Social Ecology, written by his partner of twenty years, Janet Biehl, briefly summarizes these ideas. In 1999 Bookchin broke with anarchism and placed his ideas into the framework of communalism. Libertarian municipalism was a term first used by the well-known anarchist Murray Bookchin, and is used to describe a system where there would exist libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies that would oppose and replace the State with a confederation of municipalities. ... Janet Biehl (1953 - ) is one of the premier authors on social ecology. ... Communalism is a modern term that describes a broad range of social movements and social theories which are in some way centered upon the community. ...

In addition to his political writings, Bookchin wrote extensively on his philosophical ideas, which he called dialectical naturalism. The dialectical writings of Hegel, which articulate a developmental philosophy of change and growth, seemed to him to lend themselves to an organic, even ecological approach. His later philosophical writings emphasize humanism, rationality, and the ideals of the Enlightenment. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... The Age of Enlightenment refers to the 18th century in European philosophy, and is often thought of as part of a period which includes the Age of Reason. ...

His last-published work is The Third Revolution, a magisterial four-volume history of the libertarian impulse in European and American revolutionary movements. He is currently retired and living in Vermont.

Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Murray Bookchin

• "Our Being is Becoming, not stasis. Our Science is Utopia, our Reality is Eros, our Desire is Revolution." (from Desire and Need, 1967)
• "An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles." (from Ecology and Revolutionary Thought, 1965)
• "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)
• "This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of 'revolutionizing themselves and things,' much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People's Labor Party 'revolutionaries' is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of 'proletarian morality' replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little 'Red Book' and other sacred litanies." (from Listen, Marxist! in Post Scarcity Anarchism, 1971)
• "If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)... Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be." (from The Ecology of Freedom, 1982.)

Image File history File links Wikiquote-logo-en. ... Wikiquote logo Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ... Peter Kropotkin Prince Peter Alexeevich Kropotkin (In Russian Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин) (December 9, 1842 - February 8, 1921) was one of Russias foremost anarchists and one of the first advocates of what he called anarchist communism: the model of society he advocated for most of his life was that of a communalist society...

Partial bibliography

• Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971 and 2004) ISBN 1-904859-062.
• The Limits of the City (1973) ISBN 0060910135
• The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years (1977 and 1998) ISBN 1-873176-04-X
• Toward an Ecological Society (1980) ISBN 0919618987
• [2]The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982 and 2005) ISBN 1904859267.
• The Modern Crisis (1986) ISBN 086571083X
• The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (1987 and 1992) ISBN
• The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism (1990 and 1996) Montreal: Black Rose Books. ISBN
• To Remember Spain (1994) ISBN 1873176872
• Re-Enchanting Humanity (1995) ISBN 030432843X
• 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 187317683X
• The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (1997) Montreal: Black Rose Books. ISBN 1551641003.
• 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.

References

• Janet Biehl (1997), The Murray Bookchin Reader.(An Anthology) Cassell ISBN 0-304-33874-5.
• Marshall, P. (1992), Murray Bookchin and the Ecology of Freedom,p.602-622 in, Demanding The Impossible. Fontana Press. ISBN 0006862454

Janet Biehl (1953 - ) is one of the premier authors on social ecology. ...

External links

• Murray Bookchin Archive
• Libertarian Communist Library Murray Bookchin holdings
• Institute for Social Ecology (ISE)
• Heal & Transcend the Cleavage between Humanity & Nature - Flickr group in the spirit of Bookchin
• 'The Prehistory of Post-Scarcity Anarchism: Josef Weber and the Movement for a Democracy of Content (1947-1964)' by Marcel van der Linden, Anarchist Studies Vol 9, no.2, (2001).
• Radical Ecology and Class Struggle: A Re-Consideration