Murray Bookchin
Bookchin, Murray
American libertarian socialist and founder of social ecology who severely criticised individualist and spiritual elements within radical politics.
Bookchin remembered
Iain Mackay on the huge and enduring influence that was Murray Bookchin (1921-2006)
Murray Bookchin died at home on the 30th of July at the age of 85, surrounded by his family. From the 1960s onwards, Bookchin was, rightly, considered one of the world’s leading anarchist thinkers. His death, while not unexpected, is still a sad day for our movement.
Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement
Murray Bookchin's critique of 'mystical' deep ecologists and his contribution to the development of a pro-working class environmentalism.
by Murray Bookchin
The environmental movement has traveled a long way since those early Earth Day festivals when millions of school kids were ritualistically mobilized to clean up streets, while Arthur Godfrey, Barry Commoner, Paul Ehrlich, and a bouquet of manipulative legislators scolded their parents for littering the landscape with cans, newspapers, and bottles.
Listen, Marxist! - Murray Bookchin
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
Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy
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.
Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy
By: Murray Bookchin
This article originally appeared in Green Perspectives No. 2 February 1986.
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism - An Unbridgeable Chasm
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.
Written in the mid-'90s, his emphasis on collective action to achieve meaningful change over the isolation and ineffectiveness of lifestyle politics should be considered by all those tempted to see anarchism as a subculture to join rather than a practice that informs their interaction within (rather than outside of) society. libcom.org 2005
