Murray Bookchin

Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006)Small, Mike. Murray Bookchin The Guardian August 8, 2006 was an American libertarian socialist, political and social philosopher, speaker and writer. For much of his life he called himself an anarchist, although as early as 1995 he privately renounced his identification with the anarchist movement. Biehl, Janet. "Bookchin Breaks with Anarchism". Communalism October 2007: 1. A pioneer in the ecology movement,John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico, Environmental Philosophy, Inc, University of Georgia, ‘‘'Environmental Ethics’’’ v.12 1990: 193. Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology.

Bookchin was a radical anti-capitalist and always favored the decentralisation of society. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, grassroots democracy, had an influence on the Green Movement and anti-capitalist direct action groups such as Reclaim the Streets. His criticisms of "new age" Greens such as Charlene Spretnak contributed to the divisions in the American Green movement in the 1990s.

Although an anti-capitalist, Murray Bookchin often met with libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard and occasionally attended Libertarian Party (United States) conventions, endorsing their presidential candidate Roger MacBride in 1976.

Bookchin has influenced the thinking of captured Kurdish militant Abdullah Öcalan, who has renounced violence and now wants a peaceful solution to the question of Kurdish autonomy.

Libertarian municipalism
Bookchin was the first to use the term "Libertarian municipalism", to describe a system in which libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies would oppose and replace the State with a confederation of free municipalities.Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview Libertarian municipalism intends to create a situation in which the two powers—the municipal confederations and the nation-state—cannot coexist.

Bibliography
Books
 Our Synthetic Environment 1962

 The Limits of the City (1973) .




 The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (1987 and 1992)
 The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism (1990 and 1996) Montreal: Black Rose Books.







Articles
 " Beyond Neo-Marxism ". TELOS 36 (Summer 1978). New York: Telos Press

References

 Biehl, Janet (1997), The Murray Bookchin Reader (An Anthology). Cassell .



Other websites
 Murray Bookchin Archive at Anarchy Archives
 Institute for Social Ecology (ISE)
 Communalism: International Journal for a Rational Society
 Social Ecology London . English study/action group exploring Bookchin's ideas.
 Democratic Alternative. Scandinavian communalist organization based on Bookchin's ideas. In Svenska, Norsk, Espanol, English.
 My Graphics About Murray Bookchin: blog and archive of comic strip stories about Bookchin's life maintained by Janet Biehl.

Category:1921 births
Category:2006 deaths
Category:American anarchists
Category:Jewish American writers
Category:American historians
Category:Green anarchism
Category:People from Burlington, Vermont
Category:Writers from New York City
Category:Green thinkers