Social Ecology and Community Development
Reprinted from Renewing the Earth, John Clark, ed., (London: Green Print, 1990). Social ecology, as developed by Murray Bookchin, brilliantly presents a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing the crises of modernity. It is perhaps the first such comprehensive approach since Marx, and suggests a reconstructive practice which holds promise of fundamentally transforming people’s relation to […]
Will Ecology Become ‘the Dismal Science’?
Almost a century and a half ago Thomas Carlyle described economics as “the dismal science.” The term was to stick, especially as it applied to economics premised on a supposedly unavoidable conflict between “insatiable needs” and “scarce natural resources.” In this economics, the limited bounty provided by a supposedly “stingy nature” doomed humanity to economic […]
Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism
Defying all the theoretical predictions of the 1930s, capitalism has restabilized itself with a vengeance and acquired extraordinary flexibility in the decades since World War II. In fact, we have yet to clearly determine what constitutes capitalism in its most “mature” form, not to speak of its social trajectory in the years to come. But […]
Death of a Small Planet: It’s growth that’s killing us
We tend to think of environmental catastrophes -such as the recent Exxon Valdez oil-spill disaster in the Bay of Alaska-as “accidents”: isolated phenomena that erupt without notice or warning. But when does the word accident become inappropriate? When are such occurrences inevitable rather than accidental? And when does a consistent pattern of inevitable disasters point […]
Capitalism, Consensus, and Theistic Spirituality
By: Janet Biehl and Murray Bookchin The following programmatic theses have been written by members of the Burlington Greens as draft resolutions for the National Green Gathering to be held in Eugene, Oregon, on June 21-24, 1989. Based on such resolutions, or SPAKAs (Strategy and Policy Approaches in Key Areas), written by Greens around the […]
The Population Myth (Part 2)
Before the 1970s, Malthusianism in its various historical forms claimed to rest on a statistically verifiable formula: that population increases geometrically while food supply increases merely arithmetically. At the same time, anti-Malthusians could refute it using factual data. Arguments between Malthusians and their opponents were thus based on empirical studies and rational explorations of the […]
Yes!–Whither Earth First?
Editors’ Note: The following article was written nearly a year ago in response to a supplement in the November I, 1987, issue of Earth First! The greater part of the supplement attacked the author, Murray Bookchin, for some six columns. After an orgy of personal recriminations, unfounded accusations. and sheer falsehoods, Earth First! refused to […]
The Population Myth (Part 1)
The “population problem” has a Phoenix-like existence: it rises from the ashes at least every generation and sometimes every decade or so. The prophecies are usually the same namely, that human beings are populating the earth in “unprecedented numbers” and “devouring” its resources like a locust plague. In the days of the Industrial Revolution, Thomas […]
The Crisis in the Ecology Movement
No. 6, May 1988 American ecology movements — and particularly the American Greens — are faced with a serious crisis of conscience and direction.
The Modern Crisis
By Murray Bookchin This article originally appeared in Green Perspectives No. 2 February 1986. In my article, “Toward a Libertarian Municipalism2,” I advanced the view that any counterculture to the prevailing culture must be developed together with counterinstitutions to the prevailing institutions—a decentralized, confederal, popular power that will acquire the control over social and political […]
