Popular Education for a Free Society
A Critique of the Draft Program of the Left Green Network by Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl Editors’ note: The Left Green Network is in the process of writing, developing, and debating its program. The draft proposal for the program was published in the April/May 1991 issue of Left Green Notes, number 7. The following …
The Left That Was: A Personal Reflection by Murray Bookchin I would like to recall a Left That Was–an idealistic, often theoretically coherent Left that militantly emphasized its internationalism, its rationality in its treatment of reality, its democratic spirit, and its vigorous revolutionary aspirations. From a retrospective viewpoint of a hundred years or so, it …
Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview by Murray Bookchin Perhaps the greatest single failing of movements for social reconstruction–I refer particularly to the Left, to radical ecology groups, and to organizations that profess to speak for the oppressed–is their lack of a politics that will carry people beyond the limits established by the status quo. Politics today …
Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism by Murray Bookchin 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 …
The Population Myth II by Murray Bookchin 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 …
Policy Statements Capitalism, Consensus, and Theistic Spirituality 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 …
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 …
The Population Myth – I by Murray Bookchin 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. …
The Crisis in the Ecology Movement by Murray Bookchin American ecology movements — and particularly the American Greens — are faced with a serious crisis of conscience and direction. Will ecologically oriented groups and the Greens become a movement that sees the roots of our ecological dislocations in social dislocations — notably, in the domination …