Murray Bookchin RIP

It is with great sadness that I have found out that anarchist theoritician, the author of Listen Marxist, The Limits of the City, etc. Founder of the Social Ecology Movement and anti-Lifestylist/Anti-Post Leftist Anarchism, and general curmodgen of the anarchist movement, Murray Bookchin has passed away.I agreed with Bookchin more than I disagreed with him.

For instance he dared to challenge the tree huggers with this idea; strip mining is better than deep mining. Mining is a horrible experience for workers as we can tell from the amount of mine accidents that occur. Far safer is strip mining. While it looks awful, the fact is that for the workers who mine, it is far more effective and safe. And the land can be reclaimed. While a mine can never be reclaimed. Those who talk about strip mining raping the earth should think about the miles of deep mines that dig into the earth never to be used again for anything expect perhaps for dumping toxic and nuclear waste. Brilliant.

A toast to Murray who will be with us still in his volumous writings. And I hope will continue to influence our movement with his thoughts. Because he remains a real alternative to the dweebs like the Chuck O , Jason McQuinn and the Green Anarchists. They are intellectual fleas and woe betide our movement with them as the next generation of anarchists. Ok everyone back to the books, lets read our Bookchin to get a good grounding in modern anarchist thought.


Here is a biography/eulogy on Murray.

SOURCE http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/74070.html

Murray Bookchin, visionary social theorist, dies at 85

Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died

this Sunday, July 30.

By Brian Tokar

Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died

during the early morning of Sunday, July 30th in his home in Burlington,

Vermont. During a prolific career of writing, teaching and political

activism that spanned half a century, Bookchin forged a new

anti-authoritarian outlook rooted in ecology, dialectical philosophy and

left libertarianism.

Keywords: Analysis, Global, Political Theory,

Murray Bookchin

Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died

during the early morning of Sunday, July 30th in his home in Burlington,

Vermont. During a prolific career of writing, teaching and political

activism that spanned half a century, Bookchin forged a new

anti-authoritarian outlook rooted in ecology, dialectical philosophy and

left libertarianism.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, Bookchin built upon the legacies of utopian

social philosophy and critical theory, challenging the primacy of

Marxism on the left and linking contemporary ecological and urban crises

to problems of capital and social hierarchy in general. Beginning in the

mid-sixties, he pioneered a new political and philosophical

synthesis*termed social ecology*that sought to reclaim local

political power, by means of direct popular democracy, against the

consolidation and increasing centralization of the nation state.

From the 1960s to the present, the utopian dimension of Bookchin’s

social ecology inspired several generations of social and ecological

activists, from the pioneering urban ecology movements of the sixties,

to the 1970s’ back-to-the-land, antinuclear, and sustainable technology

movements, the beginnings of Green politics and organic agriculture in

the early 1980s, and the anti-authoritarian global justice movement that

came of age in 1999 in the streets of Seattle. His influence was often

cited by prominent political and social activists throughout the US,

Europe, South America, Turkey, Japan, and beyond.

Even as numerous social movements drew on his ideas, however, Bookchin

remained a relentless critic of the currents in those movements that he

found deeply disturbing, including the New Left’s drift toward

Marxism-Leninism in the late 1960s, tendencies toward mysticism and

misanthropy in the radical environmental movement, and the growing focus

on individualism and personal lifestyles among 1990s anarchists. In the

late 1990s, Bookchin broke with anarchism, the political tradition he

had been most identified with for over 30 years and articulated a new

political vision that he called communalism.

Bookchin was raised in a leftist family in the Bronx during the 1920s

and ‘30s. He enjoyed retelling the story of his expulsion from the Young

Communist League at age 18 for openly criticizing Stalin, his brief

flirtation with Trotskyism as a labor organizer in the foundries of New

Jersey, and his introduction to anarchism by veterans of the immigrant

labor movement during the 1950s. In 1974, he co-founded the Institute

for Social Ecology, along with Dan Chodorkoff, then a graduate student

at Vermont’s Goddard College. For 30 years, the Institute for Social

Ecology has brought thousands of students to Vermont for intensive

educational programs focusing on the theory and praxis of social

ecology. A self-educated scholar and public intellectual, Bookchin

served as a full professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey despite his

own lack of conventional academic credentials.He published more than 20

books and many hundreds of articles during his lifetime, many of which

were

translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish and other

languages.

During the 1960s - ‘80s, Bookchin emphasized his fundamental

theoretical break with Marxism, arguing that Marx’s central focus on

economics and class obscured the more profound role of social hierarchy

in the shaping of human history. His anthropological studies affirmed

the role of domination by age, gender and other manifestations of social

power as the antecedents of modern-day economic exploitation. In The

Ecology of Freedom(1982), he examined the parallel legacies of

domination and freedom in human societies, from prehistoric times to the

present, and he later published a four-volume work,The Third Revolution,

exploring anti-authoritarian currents throughout the Western

revolutionary tradition.

At the same time, he criticized the lack of philosophical rigor that

has often plagued the anarchist tradition, and drew theoretical

sustenance from dialectical philosophy*particularly the works of

Aristotle and Hegel; the Frankfurt School*of which he became

increasingly critical in later years*and even the works of Marx and

Lenin. During the past year, even while terminally ill in Burlington,

Bookchin was working toward a re-evaluation of what he perceived as the

historic failure of the 20th century left. He argued that Marxist crisis

theory failed to recognize the inherent flexibility and malleability of

capitalism, and that Marx never saw capitalism in its true contemporary

sense. Until his death, Bookchin asserted that only the ecological

problems created by modern capitalism were of sufficient magnitude to

portend the system’s demise.

Murray Bookchin was diagnosed several months ago with a fatal heart

condition. He will be remembered by his devoted family members*including

his long-time companion Janet Biehl, his former wife Bea Bookchin, his

son, daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter*as well as his friends,

colleagues and frequent correspondents throughout the world. There will

be a public memorial service in Burlington, Vermont on Sunday, August

13th. For more information, contact info(at)social-ecology.org.

Also See:

Anarchists

Anarchism

RIP/Obitruaries



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