Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) was an influential American ecological activist, author, and anarchist thinker known for developing the concept of social ecology. He argued that the post-World War II prosperity in the United States was achieved at significant environmental costs. Bookchin criticized both socialism and capitalism for their disregard of industrial impacts on the environment, suggesting that a sustainable society requires reevaluating social hierarchies alongside ecological concerns. He believed that human domination of nature and social hierarchies were interconnected issues that must be addressed together. His early works, published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber, included "Our Synthetic Environment" and "Crisis in Our Cities," where he advocated for an antiauthoritarian approach to resolving environmental crises. Throughout his career, he emphasized the need to dismantle hierarchical structures that contribute to ecological degradation. Additionally, Bookchin served as a professor and director of the Institute for Social Ecology. His legacy continues to influence contemporary environmental thought, even amid critiques of his views on returning to pre-industrial lifestyles.
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Murray Bookchin
IDENTIFICATION: American ecological activist, author, and anarchist thinker
Bookchin, the creator of the concept of social ecology, suggested in the 1960’s that the prosperity of the post–World War II United States had been bought at the price of serious harm to the environment.
Like German socialist philosopher Karl Marx, Murray Bookchin argued that the human race cannot survive in a civilization based on life in the modern city, bureaucratic decision-making structures, and industrialized labor. Bookchin, however, built on Marx’s insights to argue further that both socialism and capitalism are heedless of modern industry’s impacts on the environment, and so neither socialism nor capitalism can be the basis for a sustainable society. He posited a close interconnection between human domination over nature and human beings’ domination over one another, arguing that since the propensities to dominate nature and to dominate other humans sprang up together, they must be eliminated together.
Bookchin published his first two books, Our Synthetic Environment (1962) and Crisis in Our Cities (1965), under the pseudonym Lewis Herber. In these works he argued that it would not be an uprising of the proletariat but rather an uprising of an antiauthoritarian younger generation that would resolve the environmental crisis by dissolving all social hierarchies. This did not come to pass, of course, and some criticized Bookchin’s faith in the younger generation as naïve. His insight concerning the connection between social problems and the earth’s environment, however—that the existence of hierarchy, in addition to the misuse of technology, has brought humankind to the brink of disaster—is seen as a valuable contribution to environmental thought.
Throughout his career, Bookchin developed and refined his argument that a link exists between the “destructive logic behind a hierarchical social structure” and environmental crisis. He strongly criticized environmentalists who are satisfied to save or ban harmful chemicals yet support underlying social structures that produce new toxins and similar problems. He called for a return to life as it was before the Industrial Revolution, in particular citing what he saw as the and harmonious way of life of past societies such as the Plains Indians in North America. Some critics also deemed this notion naïve.
In addition to his writing, Bookchin served as professor of social at Ramapo College in New Jersey and as director of the Institute for Social Ecology at Goddard College in Rochester, Vermont. Among his books are Toward an Ecological Society (1980), The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982), Remaking Society (1989), The Philosophy of Social Ecology (1990), The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (1987), and Social Ecology and Communalism (2007).
Bookchin died on July 30, 2006, in Burlington Vermont. He was 85 years old. According to his New York Times obituary, he died from heart complications.
Bibliography
Barry, John. “Murray Bookchin, 1921-.” In Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment, edited by Joy A. Palmer. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Bookchin, Murray. “What Is Social Ecology?” In Earth Ethics: Introductory Readings on Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics, edited by James P. Sterba. 2d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Martin, Douglas. "Murray Bookchin, 85, Writer, Activist and Ecology Theorist, Dies." The New York Times, 7 Aug. 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07bookchin.html. Accessed 15 July 2024.
White, Damian. Bookchin: A Critical Appraisal. London: Pluto Press, 2008.