The Murray Bookchin Reader

Author: Janet Biehl
Publisher: Black Rose Books Ltd.
ISBN: 9781551641188
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
This collection provides an overview of the thought of the foremost social theorist and political philosopher of the libertarian left today. Best known for introducing ecology as a concept relevant to radical political thought in the early 1960s, Murray Bookchin was the first to propose, in the innovative and coherent body of ideas that he has called "social ecology", that a liberatory society would also have to be an ecological one. His writings span five decades and encompass subject matter of remarkable breadth. Bookchin's writings on revolutionary philosophy, politics and history are far less known than the specific controversies that have surrounded him, but deserve far greater attention. Despite Bookchin's critical engagement with both Marxism and anarchism, his political philosophy, known as libertarian municipalism, draws on the best of both for the emancipatory tools to build a democratic, libertarian alternative. His nature philosophy is an organic outlook of generation, development, and evolution that grounds human beings in natural evolution yet, contrary to today's fashionable anti-humanism, places them firmly at its summit. Bookchin's anthropological writings trace the rise of hierarchy and domination out of egalitarian societies, while his historical writings cover important chapters in the European revolutionary tradition. Consistent throughout Bookchin's work is a search for ways to replace today's capitalist society--which disenchants most of humanity for the benefit of the few and is poisoning the natural world--with a more rational and humane alternative. The selections in this reader constitute a sampling from the writings of one of the most pivotal thinkers of our era.

The Philosophy of Social Ecology

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354413
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.

Working Classics

Author: Peter Oresick
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252061332
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
A diverse collection of 169 poems by 74 poets writing about blue- collar America at work. Arrangement is by author, with indexing that gives access by subjects such as accidents, after work, bosses, various industries, retirement, sabotage, pride in work. The theme of work is a central and evocative one, and this collection brings its importance home.

Toward an Ecological Society

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354456
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
Visionary essays from a founder of the modern ecology movement. In this collection of essays, Murray Bookchin's vision for an ecological society remains central as he addresses questions of urbanism and city planning, technology, self-management, energy, utopianism, and more. Throughout, he opposes efforts to reduce ecology to a toothless “environmentalism,” a task as vital today as when these essays were first published. Written between 1969 and 1979, the essays in this collection represent a fascinating and fertile period in Bookchin’s life. Coming out of the unfulfilled promise of the sixties and trying to develop a revolutionary critique of social life that avoided the pitfalls of Marxism, he was entering his creative intellectual peak. He was laying the foundations of a truly social ecology: a society based on decentralization, interdependence, democratic self-management, mutual aid, and solidarity. Presented with clarity and fervor, these key works contain the kernels of concerns that would occupy him until his death in 2006. This edition also includes a new foreword by Dan Chodorkoff, someone who was with Bookchin at the founding of his Institute for Social Ecology and who understand his work better than anyone.

The Government of No One

Author: Ruth Kinna
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141984678
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
'The standard book on anarchism for the twenty-first century. Written with brio, quiet insight and clarity' Carl Levy A magisterial study of the history and theory of one of the most controversial political movements Anarchism routinely gets a bad press. It's usually seen as meaning chaos and disorder -- or even nothing at all. And yet, from Occupy Wall Street to Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky to David Graeber, this philosophical and political movement is as relevant as ever. Contrary to popular perception, different strands of anarchism -- from individualism to collectivism -- do follow certain structures and a shared sense of purpose: a belief in freedom and working towards collective good without the interference of the state. In this masterful, sympathetic account, political theorist Ruth Kinna traces the tumultuous history of anarchism, starting with thinkers and activists such as Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman and through key events like the Paris Commune and the Haymarket affair. Skilfully introducing us to the nuanced theories of anarchist groups from Russia to Japan to the United States, The Government of No One reveals what makes a supposedly chaotic movement particularly adaptable and effective over centuries -- and what we can learn from it.

Remaking Society

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780896083721
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
Argues that the solution to today's global ecological crisis depends on decentralized democratic communities, ecologically safe technologies, organic agriculture, and humanly scaled industries

Contemporary Anarchism

Author: Terry M. Perlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351319302
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Book Description
Anarchism—literally, a society without government—is less a political philosophy than it is a temperament. Anarchists are defiant people who seek to organize for the purpose of destroying organization. For its adherents, anarchism means a grand struggle against evil, a plea for the "new," a secular crusade against the debasement of self, a fight against the degradation of mankind that organized society seems to represent. Anarchism is anti-politics, anti-economics, anti-authoritarianism in all forms. Anarchism is a mood of perpetual rebellion. The decade of the sixties witnessed a revival in the anarchist temperament, which Perlin finds evident in such diverse efforts as the women's liberation movement, student demonstrations, civil rights marches, free schools, the "back to the land" movement, demands for birth control and other—usually controversial-causes and activities. This new anarchism had few conscious links with the old anarchism. It was instead a response to changed conditions in the social fabric of American and European life, a reflex to the structural, cultural and psychological tensions that made those years turbulent, strife-filled and rebellious. Perlin concludes that while a revolution was not made in the sixties, a revolutionary life-style became a possibility. The spokesmen for the marginal groups whose interests achieved a new kind of legitimacy during the sixties were anarchists or their sympathizers. A representative cross-section of their writings is included in this volume.

The Modern Crisis

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354472
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 103

Book Description
Murray Bookchin’s frank assessment of the disaster we are heading toward at increasing speed is as much a work of ethics as it is of environmentalism. The four essays that comprise it share the view that, as he puts it, “our ideas and our practice must be imbued with a deep sense of ethical commitment.” Whether he is critiquing the market economy, the state, or the idea—common to both capitalists and certain left materialists—that human beings are motivated solely by greed and self-interest, Bookchin ever reminds us of the ineffable values of freedom, self-consciousness, and social harmony. Though first published in 1986, Bookchin’s framework still applies. The moral relativism of the 1980s—the politics of lesser-evils and risk vs benefit calculations—has morphed into what we now refer to as “both-sidesism” and the risk vs benefit calculations of yesterday are the 100,000 acre burn scars seen throughout the American west today. Beyond moral relativism or moral absolutism is an ecologically based ethics—one that sees our selfhood, reason, and freedom as stemming from nature’s variety and resilience. Bookchin’s social ecology refuses to separate society from nature. As such one can consider it a philosophy of participation—we cannot develop ecocommunities that aren’t participatory. We can’t save ourselves and the planet without an ethics of freedom. This edition, with a new introduction by Bookchin scholar Andy Price, is a breath of fresh air for a left that seems to have forgotten basic truths.

Social Ecology and Communalism

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
A collection of essays by the late Murray Bookchin, the acclaimed writer and activist who spent most of his life working towards a better world. The basic premise of social ecology is to re-harmonise the balance between society and nature, to create a rational ecological society - aims that are increasingly vital and increasingly a part of the mainstream political discourse. This collection of essays give an overview and introduction to his ideas.

Anarchism

Author: Daniel Guerin
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0853451753
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Book Description
"One of the ablest leaders and writers of the French New Left describes the two realms of "anarchism"--Its intellectual substance, and its actual practice through the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian Factory Councils, and finally its role in workers' self-management in modern Yugoslavia and Algeria. One sees in "anarchism" a close kinship to libertarianism of the right, with its horror of state bureaucracy and hostility toward bourgeois (liberal) democracy. Noam Chomsky, perhaps Guerin's American political counterpart, has written a concise and effective introduction which will add to the book's campus appeal. An important contemporary definition of New Left aims and their possible directions in the future." -- from back cover