Vale Murray Bookchin

I only heard today that Murray Bookchin (b. 1921) died nearly a month ago. He was one of the most important voices in environmentalism, anarchism and anti-authoritarian politics. Bookchin was the founder of the Social Ecology school of thought.

The best known and most influential modern anarchist intellectual, except perhaps for Noam Chomsky, Bookchin was a prolific author (Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 1971; The Ecology of Freedom, 1982), philosopher, and advocate of Libertarian Municipalism (which has had an influence on the Green Movement), as well as head of the Institute for Social Ecology.

"Murray Bookchin, a writer, teacher and activist who began his political odyssey as a Communist, became an anarchist and then metamorphosed into an influential theorist on ecology, died July 30 at his home in Burlington, Vt. He was 85.

"The cause was complications of a malfunctioning aortic valve, said his daughter, Debbie Bookchin.

"Mr. Bookchin’s environmental philosophy emerged from his leftist background. He argued that capitalism, with what he characterized as dominating hierarchies and insistence on economic growth, necessarily destroyed nature. This put him at odds with ecologists who favored a more spiritual view and with environmentalists dedicated to gradual reform.

"'Capitalism can no more be "persuaded" to limit growth than a human being can be "persuaded" to stop breathing,' he wrote in 'Remaking Society' (1990), one of his 27 books.

"Another book, 'Our Synthetic Environment' (1962), raised issues about pesticides similar to those addressed by Rachel Carson in 'Silent Spring' six months later. A decade earlier, Mr. Bookchin had warned about the dangers of chemicals in food. He also wrote under pseudonyms. His popular book 'Small Is Beautiful' was published under the name Lewis Herber.

"Mr. Bookchin’s writings had their strongest influence on Green Parties in the United States and Europe and on the radical edges of the environmental movement. His emphasis on human society and economic systems put him at odds with “deep ecologists,' who believe that humans have arrogantly usurped their position as just another species to wreak environmental havoc.

"Although he claims to be an anarchist, he writes like a Stalinist thug,' Gary Snyder, the poet and an adherent of deep ecology, said of Mr. Bookchin in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1989.

"Mr. Bookchin, in turn, called deep ecologists 'eco-fascists,' partly because they wanted to limit the population radically ..."
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Tagged: anarchism, environment, philosophy, biography