Murray Bookchin - Definition and Overview

Murray Bookchin

Murray Bookchin (born January 14, 1921) is an American anarchist/libertarian socialist speaker and writer, and founder of the "Social Ecology" school of anarchist and environmental thought.

He was born in New York City and grew up as a self-described "red-diaper baby", imbued with Marxist ideology from his youth. In adolescence he gravitated towards Trotskyism, then gradually became disillusioned with the coercion he saw as inherent in conventional Marxism-Leninism. In some circles he became known for his ability to deliver devastating criticisms of Marxist ideology using conventional Marxist language. In the 1960s he was a member of the Libertarian League.

Bookchin has remained a radical anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society. He was influential on the anti-globalization movement. His idea of Libertarian Municipalism has had an influence on the Green Movement.

Bookchin is the author of many works, including Post Scarcity Anarchism and The Ecology of Freedom.

Quotes

• "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."

Selected Works

• Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971)
• Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (1997)
• The Limits of the City (1973)
• Toward an Ecological Society (1980)
• The Ecology of Freedom (1982) ISBN 0917352092
• The Modern Crisis (1986) ISBN 086571083X
• Re-Enchanting Humanity (1995) ISBN 030432843X

General Reading

• Biehl, J. (1997), The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell ISBN 0304338737
• Clark, J. (1990), Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology. Green Print. ISBN 1854250019

External link

• Murray Bookchin Archive (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/Bookchinarchive.html)