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Harbinger Vol. 3 No. 1 — The Communalist Project

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 […]

Harbinger Vol. 3 No. 1 — Buttercups and Sunflowers: On the Evolution of First and Second Nature

by Sonja Schmitz One remarkable feature of social ecology is that Murray Bookchin’s vision of an ecological society goes beyond the development of eco-technologies and organic agriculture, but expands into the philosophical realm through dialectical naturalism. Murray recognizes the importance of healing the seemingly disparate relationship between nature and culture (first and second nature) by reminding […]

Harbinger Vol. 3. No. 1 — Economics in a Social-Ecological Society

n the midst of our struggles for a better world, social ecologists have frequently engaged in critical dialogue with other strands of radical thought about just what kind of world we’re struggling for. Such dialogues often address the question of how people in a liberated future will organize their material relationships with one another and […]

Harbinger Vol. 3 No. 1 — Radical Alternatives: An Interview with Ingrid Young

By Michael Caplan In the past few years, Norway and surrounding Scandinavian countries have proven to be a hotbed of activism inspired by the works of social ecology. Study groups, publishing projects, protests, conferences and seminars, anti-racist and ecological activism, and political organizational building are all common activities of the 4-year-old group Democratic Alternative (DA). […]

Harbinger Vol. 3 No. 1– Reflections: An Overview of the Roots of Social Ecology

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 […]

Harbinger Vol. 2 No. 1 — Editorial

By Daniel Chodorkoff

Welcome to the first edition of our second volume of Harbinger, A Journal of Social Ecology. Harbinger is the latest in a long line of publications offered by the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE). With the second edition of Harbinger, we are resurrecting a journal that we published in the 80s. We intend to explore the theory and practice needed to help to create an ecological society, and to cultivate a generous intellectual outlook that can inform the principle of hope. . .

Harbinger Vol. 2 No. 1 — Murray Bookchin interview

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.