Murray Bookchin

American libertarian socialist and founder of social ecology who severely criticised individualist and spiritual elements within radical politics.

Iain Mackay on the huge and enduring influence that was Murray Bookchin (1921-2006)

Murray Bookchin's critique of 'mystical' deep ecologists and his contribution to the development of a pro-working class environmentalism.

Murray Bookchin's best-known leaflet, Listen, Marxist! was aimed predominantly at students influenced by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party which was heavily (and highly destructive) active in the mass Students for a Democratic Society movement in 1960s and 70s America. His criticisms of "Marxism" and Marxist terminology are not applicable to Marxism as a whole, but some do apply to the crude politics of the PLP. Despite this significant shortcoming, we reproduce the document here due to its importance in terms of the left and libertarian left in the US

Murray Bookchin's Libertarian Municipalism is an attempt to bring up to date the historical legacy of those directly democratic organs of self-management that were thrown up in times of struggle by the working class. It suggests the potential of moving towards a non-market economy with no separation between economic and political democracy.

Murray Bookchin's polemical essay against the increasingly individualist, misanthropic, mystical and anti-organisational trends in US anarchism still holds relevance today, no less in Britain than the States.