Memorial for Author Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin, Visionary Social Theorist, Dies At 85
by Brian Tokar
July 31, 2006
Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died during
the early morning of Sunday, July 30th in his home in Burlington,
Vermont. During a prolific career of writing, teaching and political
activism that spanned half a century, Bookchin forged a new
anti-authoritarian outlook rooted in ecology, dialectical philosophy and
left libertarianism.
During the 1950s and '60s, Bookchin built upon the legacies of utopian
social philosophy and critical theory, challenging the primacy of
Marxism on the left and linking contemporary ecological and urban crises
to problems of capital and social hierarchy in general. Beginning in the
mid-sixties, he pioneered a new political and philosophical
synthesis-termed social ecology-that sought to reclaim local political
power, by means of direct popular democracy, against the consolidation
and increasing centralization of the nation state.
From the 1960s to the present, the utopian dimension of Bookchin's
social ecology inspired several generations of social and ecological
activists, from the pioneering urban ecology movements of the sixties,
to the 1970s' back-to-the-land, antinuclear, and sustainable technology
movements, the beginnings of Green politics and organic agriculture in
the early 1980s, and the anti-authoritarian global justice movement that
came of age in 1999 in the streets of Seattle. His influence was often
cited by prominent political and social activists throughout the United States,
Europe, South America, Turkey, Japan, and beyond.
Even as numerous social movements drew on his ideas, however, Bookchin
remained a relentless critic of the currents in those movements that he
found deeply disturbing, including the New Left's drift toward
Marxism-Leninism in the late 1960s, tendencies toward mysticism and
misanthropy in the radical environmental movement, and the growing focus
on individualism and personal lifestyles among 1990s anarchists. In the
late 1990s, Bookchin broke with anarchism, the political tradition he
had been most identified with for over 30 years and articulated a new
political vision that he called communalism.
Bookchin was raised in a leftist family in the Bronx during the 1920s and '30s. He enjoyed retelling the story of his expulsion from the Young
Communist League at age 18 for openly criticizing Stalin, his brief
flirtation with Trotskyism as a labor organizer in the foundries of New
Jersey, and his introduction to anarchism by veterans of the immigrant
labor movement during the 1950s. In 1974, he co-founded the Institute
for Social Ecology, along with Dan Chodorkoff, then a graduate student
at Vermont's Goddard College. For 30 years, the Institute for Social
Ecology has brought thousands of students to Vermont for intensive
educational programs focusing on the theory and praxis of social
ecology.
A self-educated scholar and public intellectual, Bookchin
served as a full professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey despite his
own lack of conventional academic credentials. He published more than 20
books and many hundreds of articles during his lifetime, many of which
were translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish and
other languages.
During the 1960s-'80s, Bookchin emphasized his fundamental theoretical
break with Marxism, arguing that Marx's central focus on economics and
class obscured the more profound role of social hierarchy in the shaping
of human history. His anthropological studies affirmed the role of
domination by age, gender and other manifestations of social power as
the antecedents of modern-day economic exploitation. In The Ecology of
Freedom(1982), he examined the parallel legacies of domination and
freedom in human societies, from prehistoric times to the present, and
he later published a four-volume work, The Third Revolution, exploring
anti-authoritarian currents throughout the Western revolutionary tradition.
At the same time, he criticized the lack of philosophical rigor that has
often plagued the anarchist tradition, and drew theoretical sustenance
from dialectical philosophy-particularly the works of Aristotle and
Hegel; the Frankfurt School-of which he became increasingly critical in
later years; and even the works of Marx and Lenin. During the past year,
even while terminally ill in Burlington, Bookchin was working toward a
re-evaluation of what he perceived as the historic failure of the 20th
century left. He argued that Marxist crisis theory failed to recognize
the inherent flexibility and malleability of capitalism, and that Marx
never saw capitalism in its true contemporary sense. Until his death,
Bookchin asserted that only the ecological problems created by modern
capitalism were of sufficient magnitude to portend the system's demise.
Murray Bookchin was diagnosed several months ago with a fatal heart
condition. He will be remembered by his devoted family members-including
his long-time companion Janet Biehl, his former wife Bea Bookchin, his
son, daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter-as well as his friends,
colleagues and frequent correspondents throughout the world. There will
be a public memorial service in Burlington, Vermont on Sunday, August
13th. For more information, contact info(at)social-ecology.org.