Popular Education for a Free Society
Whether the twenty-first century will be the most radical of times or the most reactionary—or will simply lapse into a gray era of dismal mediocrity—will depend overwhelmingly upon the kind of social movement and program that social radicals create out of the theoretical, organizational, and political wealth that has accumulated during the past two centuries …
Continue reading “Harbinger Vol. 3 No. 1 — The Communalist Project”
he extent to which radical versions of environmentalism underwent sweeping metamorphoses and evolved into revolutionary ideologies when the New Left came of age is difficult to convey to the present generation, which has been almost completely divorced from the ebullient days of the New Left, not to speak of all the major problems in classical …
Continue reading “Harbinger Vol. 3 No. 1– Reflections: An Overview of the Roots of Social Ecology”
By David Vanek
Murray Bookchin, born in 1921, has been involved in leftist politics for seven decades and has written almost two dozen books on a great variety of subjects, encompassing ecology, nature philosophy, history, urban studies, and the Left, particularly Marxism and anarchism. In the 1950s, with his long 1952 essay “The Problem of Chemicals in Food,” he warned against the chemicalization of agriculture and the environment, and with this and other writings, he helped lay foundations of the modern radical ecology movement. He is the cofounder of the Institute for Social Ecology, where he lectures each summer, and professor emeritus at Ramapo College of New Jersey. He is currently finishing the third volume of a trilogy, /The Third Revolution,/ which is a history of the great European and American revolutions.
Murray Bookchin, born in 1921, has been involved in leftist politics for seven decades and has written almost two dozen books on a great variety of subjects, encompassing ecology, nature philosophy, history, urban studies, and the Left, particularly Marxism and anarchism. In the 1950s, with his long 1952 essay “The Problem of Chemicals in Food,” …
Continue reading “Interview with Murray Bookchin (by Dave Vanek)”
This article was presented as the keynote speech to the conference “The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism” held in Plainfield, Vermont, U.S.A., on August 26-29, 1999. The speech has been revised for publication. This article originally appeared in Left Green Perspectives (Number 41, January 2000). Age, chronic illnesses, and the summer heat oblige me …
This article originally appeared in New Politics, vol. 6, no. 4 (new series), whole no. 24, Winter 1998 It is politically restorative to look with a fresh eye at The Manifesto of the Communist Party (to use its original title), written before Marxism was overlaid by reformist, postmodernist, spiritual, and psychological commentaries. From an examination …
Continue reading “The Communist Manifesto: Insights and Problems”
This speech was originally presented to the International Conference on the Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism in Lisbon, August 26, 1998 Thank you for the privilege of addressing your conference on libertarian municipalism, if only by means of a videotape. Unfortunately, I am incapable of attending the conference because of my physical infirmities and …
Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice. Socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality. — Mikhail Bakunin What form will anarchism take as it enters the twenty-first century? What basic ideas will it advance? What kind of movement, if any, will it try to create? How will it try to change the human sensibilities and …
Continue reading “Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics”
Economic factors alone, to be sure, cannot account for the differences in the socialist movements that emerged in Britain and France: political traditions, the flexibility of existing institutions, and the cultural élan of the laboring classes had significant effects as well. But the role of economic factors should not be underrated. Reaching unprecedented peaks early …
Continue reading “The Third Revolution Vol 2: Britain’s Socialist Trajectory”
Recently I have begun to encounter, especially among young people, individuals who call themselves “leftists” but who have little or no awareness of the most basic features of the Left’s longstanding analysis of capitalism, or of the history of the revolutionary movements that have stood in fundamental opposition to bourgeois society. It distresses me that …