Traducción: Pablo Abufom S.

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Cuando Murray Bookchin murió el 30 de Julio del año pasado, desapareció una de las figuras más ambiciosas e inspiradoras de la izquierda anti-autoritaria.

Fue un autor, educador y activista, aunque sobre todo fue un revolucionario que entregó su vida a una única y colosal tarea: idear un proyecto revolucionario que pudiera sanar las heridas de la humanidad y la separación entre ella y el mundo natural. Intentó esbozar los principios teóricos de esta tentativa; construir organizaciones capaces de transformar el mundo basándose en esos principios; y forjar un cuadro con la sabiduría necesaria para combatir por ellos y resistir los inevitables altibajos de la vida política. Tenía mucho en común con otros constructores de sectas de la izquierda socialista – como Max Shachtman, Josef Weber y Raya Dunayevskaya, por ejemplo – quienes, en sus respectivas épocas y latitudes, también intentaron rescatar la empresa revolucionaria del desastre que fue el Comunismo ruso y de las muchas calamidades del siglo XX. (1)

¿Tuvo éxito en esto?

No, no lo tuvo. No creó una nueva doctrina revolucionaria adecuada a sus fines o una, por ejemplo, que tuviera la fuerza transformadora del Marxismo. Su obra simplemente carece de la coherencia y la sutileza necesarias para alcanzar ese punto. Sus ideas tampoco han capturado la imaginación de un gran número de personas, no son parte del debate de la izquierda; nunca han tenido una influencia en la academia seria; y quienes aún abrazan de corazón sus visiones son, en efecto, un número reducido. Su legado teórico permanece en los márgenes de la vida intelectual.

Su intento de construir el marco organizacional para un movimiento revolucionario renovado encontró un destino similar: no sobrevive ninguno de los periódicos u organizaciones que inició o co-inició. El Institute for Social Ecology [Instituto de Ecología Social], que co-creó en 1974 para difundir sus perspectivas, se derrumbó en 2005 tras años de crisis fiscal y una decreciente matrícula. La Left Green Network [Red Verde de Izquierda], que co-fundó en 1989 para promover sus convicciones anti-estatistas, anti-capitalistas entre los Verdes, se disipó en 1991. El grupo Anarchos, que guió en la década de los sesenta, se disolvió hace más de una generación. Del mismo modo, ninguna de las revistas o boletines que fundó, co-fundó o inspiró existen hoy (Anarchos, Comment [Comentario], Perspectivas Verdes [Green Perspectives], Left Green Perspectives [Perspectivas Verdes de Izquierda], Left Green Notes [Notas Verdes de Izquierda] y Harbinger [Heraldo], entre otras).

Su iniciativa de crear un cuadro capaz de instituir sus perspectivas tuvo los mismos resultados. Desde la década de los sesenta, si no antes, Bookchin se rodeó de pequeños grupos de discípulos y protegidos, cuyas habilidades intelectuales y políticas quiso cultivar. Cada uno de estos grupos se desintegró en uno u otro momento y salvo un puñado, todos sus miembros se distanciaron de él políticamente. En el momento de su muerte, tenía escasos seguidores.

¿Capta esta dura evaluación – en la que juzgo a Bookchin según los estándares que él estipuló para sí mismo – la amplitud de sus logros como agente para el cambio social? No. Aunque nunca se convirtió en el Prometeo revolucionario que aspiraba a ser, dejó un patrimonio significativo – aunque más modesto y complicado. Esto es indudablemente cierto para quienes participaron en su intento de construir una secta revolucionaria. (2) Por ejemplo, yo pasé varios años colaborando con Bookchin y es una experiencia que todavía me inspira y me desafía. Fue emocionante, decepcionante y – sobre todo – expandió dramáticamente mi idea de lo que significa ser radical.

Conocí a Murray en el programa de “Ecología y Sociedad” del Instituto de Ecología Social el verano de 1989, cuando asistí a sus clases. Esto me impulsó a mudarme a su hogar adoptivo de Burlington, en Vermont, seis meses después para trabajar con él más de cerca. En ese momento, Murray trabajaba enérgicamente en la construcción de su núcleo revolucionario y alentaba a jóvenes de todo el país a que se le unieran. Apenas dos docenas de personas estaban involucrados en el proyecto cuando yo llegué. La mayoría tenía poco más de veinte años y, en general, eran altamente idealistas, devotos y serios. Gran parte había dado un giro hacia Bookchin después de haber tenido experiencias frustrantes con otras tendencias de la izquierda.

Me volví su aprendiz deliberadamente y pronto me convertí en uno de sus principales discípulos. Fui su ayudante en el Instituto de Ecología Social en el verano de 1990, miembro del colectivo editorial de su Left Green Perspectives por un año, y trabajé como “Coordinador” de la Left Green Network con la compañera de Bookchin, Janet Biehl, entre 1990 y 1991. También formé parte de los Burlington Greens, el grupo activista que lideraba cuando llegué a la ciudad, y participé en las clases sobre historia y filosofía que daba en su casa en esa época. Además, pasé incontables horas en discusiones privadas o semi-privadas con él. Me guió, me educó y me alentó, y yo intenté apoyarlo y compadecerme de él lo mejor que pude. Nuestra relación menguó cuando dejé Vermont en 1992, aunque mantuvimos un contacto amistoso hasta su muerte.

En este ensayo exploraré mi experiencia en el círculo cercano de Bookchin. Mi objetivo es ilustrar algunas de las fortalezas y debilidades de su singular aproximación a la cuestión orgánica revolucionaria, así como mostrar cómo pudo inspirar un proyecto que – aunque puede haber parecido sectario y exagerado a quienes no formaban parte de él – fue tremendamente inspirador para un pequeño grupo de jóvenes bien intencionados, comprometidos e inteligentes que buscaban una alternativa.

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El proyecto de Bookchin se basaba en una narrativa general de la evolución natural y del rol de la humanidad en ella. Desde su punto de vista, la vida tiene la tendencia de darse a sí misma formas cada vez más diferenciadas y auto-dirigidas, algo que se evidencia, por ejemplo, en el surgimiento de vida orgánica desde la materia simple. La emergencia de la humanidad es una transformación cualitativa en la historia de la vida, dado que sólo nosotros tenemos la capacidad para razonar y, por tanto, la habilidad de fomentar auto-conscientemente las tendencias evolutivas que hicieron posible nuestra existencia. En sus palabras, somos potencialmente “la naturaleza vuelta auto-conciente”. (3)

Para honrar nuestra herencia evolutiva, debemos crear una sociedad cuyo metabolismo con el mundo natural sea ecológicamente coherente y cuyas relaciones internas sean democráticas y descentralizadas. Sólo estas formas sociales poseen la plenitud y la libertad que la vida requiere.

Según Bookchin, nos aproximamos a esto al comienzo de nuestra historia cuando vivíamos en lo que él llamó “sociedades orgánicas”. En ese entonces, los humanos tenían prácticas culturales relativamente igualitarias y una relación favorable, aunque desinformada, con la naturaleza. “Reconozcamos con franqueza”, escribió Bookchin, “que las sociedades orgánicas cultivaron espontáneamente ciertos valores que nosotros difícilmente podremos mejorar”. (4)

Sin embargo, en lugar de construir sobre la base de este logro temprano, tomamos un trágico desvío de nuestro itinerario evolutivo. “[E]n la zona intermedia entre la primera naturaleza [no-humana] y la segunda [humana]… la evolución social comenzó a asumir una forma sumamente aberrante. El esfuerzo de sociedades orgánicas como las bandas y las tribus por elaborar formas sociales no-jerárquicas e igualitarias fue interrumpido… la evolución social fue despojada de la realización y el cumplimiento de una sociedad cooperativa en una dirección que produjo instituciones jerárquicas, estatistas y de clase”. (5) En lugar de convertirse en “la naturaleza vuelta auto-conciente” y elevar “la evolución a un nivel de auto-reflexividad que siempre había estado latente en la emergencia misma del mundo natural”, (6) los humanos crearon una sociedad irracional que socava sus propios logros culturales, impone miserias innecesarias a vastas franjas de la población, y amenaza la supervivencia misma del ecosistema. Las relaciones – dentro de la sociedad y entre sociedad y naturaleza – que deberían haber sido complementarias, se volvieron y siguen siendo antagónicas. Como resultado, el mundo está en crisis, (7) que es, “sobre todo, una crisis en la emergencia de la sociedad desde la biología, [y] las contradicciones (que surgen de la jerarquía, la dominación, el patriarcado, las clases y el Estado) que se desplegaron con este desarrollo”. (8)

En efecto, seguiremos siendo básicamente inhumanos hasta que superemos este obstáculo. “En un sentido muy real, entonces, todavía estamos inacabados en cuanto seres humanos”, afirma Bookchin, “porque no hemos realizado todavía nuestro potencial para la cooperación, el entendimiento y el comportamiento racional”. (9) “Los seres humanos son demasiado inteligentes como para no vivir en una sociedad racional, como para no vivir con instituciones conformadas por la razón… Mientras no lo hagan, seguirán siendo criaturas peligrosamente inmaduras y a la deriva”. (10)

Para quienes son fieles a la misión evolutiva de la vida, la tarea es, entonces, fomentar una gran transformación en los asuntos humanos. “Después de unos diez milenios de una evolución social bastante ambigua, debemos reingresar a la evolución natural” para llevar a cabo “tanto una humanización de la naturaleza como una naturalización de la humanidad” (11) en la que “una humanidad emancipada se volverá la voz, en efecto la expresión, de una evolución natural vuelta auto-consciente, preocupada y empática con el dolor, el sufrimiento y los aspectos incoherentes de una evolución dejada a su propio despliegue a menudo sin dirección. La naturaleza, debido a la intervención racional humana, adquirirá por consiguiente la intencionalidad, el poder de desarrollar formas de vida más complejas, y la capacidad para diferenciarse a sí misma”. (12) La humanidad será útil y completará su propia herencia creando una sociedad ambientalmente coherente, construyendo instituciones directamente democráticas que nos permitan participar plenamente en la determinación de la dirección de la vida social, y reemplazando el capitalismo por una economía cooperativa estructurada en torno a imperativos morales – y no mercantiles.

Imperativos
Esta perspectiva macro-histórica fue la que absorbimos de los libros de Bookchin, y la que aceptamos como fundamento para nuestras actividades cuando nos trasladamos a Burlington para colaborar con él. Su punto de vista era estimulante, porque ponía nuestro activismo en un plano epocal, pero también implicaba responsabilidades significativas, si es que íbamos a convertirnos en actores políticos capaces de lograr la transformación histórica mundial que él visualizaba. Haré un bosquejo de tres de los principios cardinales para formar parte del círculo de Bookchin: educación, primacía de la moralidad y audacia.

En primer lugar, teníamos que educarnos a nosotros mismos. (13) Murray nos instaba a que desarrolláramos una familiaridad básica con la historia de los movimientos revolucionarios y la tradición crítica de las ideas. Se esperaba que estudiáramos sus voluminosos escritos, a grandes pensadores como Marx y Hegel, y a autores menos conocidos que él consideraba importantes (Hans Jonas, Lewis Mumford, y otros). Comprender su trabajo y el de los teóricos asociados requería un esfuerzo intelectual mayor del que había conocido hasta ese momento – su mismo vocabulario era un desafío – pero mis pares y yo asumimos la tarea y nos esforzábamos mucho porque creíamos que algo muy importante estaba en juego. Él hacía todo lo posible para alentarnos y comúnmente daba largas respuestas a las preguntas acerca de nuestras lecturas que le presentábamos en los intermedios en encuentros o en intercambios privados. De hecho, le era difícil no entregarse a extensas disquisiciones sobre los textos en cuestión, tanto así que se convirtió en una especie de juego entre nosotros ver quién hacía la pregunta que suscitaría el monólogo más largo.

Murray nos aconsejó no sólo para que explorásemos los pensadores y eventos claves en la historia revolucionaria, sino también para que nos familiarizáramos con los principales momentos de la tradición occidental, desde la antigua Grecia hasta el presente. Creía que podíamos y debíamos asimilar los mejores aspectos de este legado en nuestro movimiento. La extraordinaria amplitud de referencias históricas y teóricas, tanto en su obra como en sus clases, parecían mostrar que esto era posible. En efecto, poco tiempo después de mi llegada, había comenzado a dar dos clases bi-semanales en el salón de su casa: una, la “Política de la Cosmología”, examinaba la historia de la filosofía desde los pre-socráticos hasta los eruditos contemporáneos; la otra, “La Tercera Revolución”, revisaba el destino de los movimientos revolucionarios desde la Edad Media hasta la Guerra Civil Española (y constituía la base para el cuarto volumen de su libro con el mismo título). Ninguna idea era demasiado abstracta, ningún evento era demasiado remoto como para quedar fuera de nuestro proyecto transformativo.

Bookchin también nos instaba a que hiciéramos del estudio una prioridad política. A menudo nos recordaba el compromiso con la formación que tenían los trabajadores revolucionarios antes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Recuerdo una anécdota que una vez compartió conmigo sobre una clase acerca del Capital de Marx a la que asistió cuando era miembro de un grupo juvenil comunista: los estudiantes y el profesor jugaron un juego en el que los jóvenes citaban un pasaje al azar del clásico libro de Marx y el desafío del instructor era recordar su ubicación exacta en el texto. No había oportunidad en la que no tuviera éxito, para el regocijo y el asombro de la juventud. Este relato y otros similares nos ayudaban a imaginar cómo podría ser una rigurosa cultura del estudio, más allá de la academia, y a creer que nosotros también éramos capaces de crearla. Efectivamente, bajo su influencia, yo y otros estudiamos por nuestra cuenta, asistimos a sus clases, y formamos una extensa red de grupos de estudio. Por un tiempo, fue posible participar en grupos de estudio semanales sobre Hegel, Marx, la Revolución Francesa, las ciudades, así como otros temas y teóricos de peso; había tantos grupos de estudio, y eran de tan alta calidad, que la gente solía decir que habíamos iniciado una universidad subterránea.

Por supuesto, las reflexiones críticas que desarrollábamos mediante el estudio se extinguirían si permanecían encerradas en los confines de una biblioteca o en un círculo de discusión. Como decía Marx, el objetivo era cambiar el mundo, no sólo interpretarlo.

Para Bookchin, la política era fundamentalmente una actividad ética. Aunque se comprende popularmente como un ritual de competencia por el poder entre las elites y los socialistas clásicos la definen como una expresión epifenomenal de contradicciones de clase subyacentes, Bookchin concibió la política como el marco a través del cual los humanos median sus relaciones unos con otros y, como tal, es esencialmente ética y está vinculada con el estado sólo incidentalmente. Estas nociones reflejaban su perspectiva ecológica (que era inherentemente relacional), pero también la influencia de pensadores pre-modernos como Aristóteles, así como el moralismo de la Nueva Izquierda. (14)

Poner nuestra actividad en un marco altamente ético hizo que adquiriéramos un compromiso inusualmente fuerte con la sinceridad, la responsabilidad y con una forma abierta y honesta de discutir las ideas entre nosotros. También alentó un profundo anhelo por sacrificarnos por la causa, que es una de las razones por las que nuestro pequeño grupo fue tan productivo. La mayor parte de nuestro trabajo tuvo lugar a través de los Verdes, que Murray consideraba en ese momento como el movimiento más abierto a acoger su visión social y ecológica. Todos participábamos activamente en los Burlington Greens, a través de los cuales intentábamos llevar una perspectiva ambiental y radicalmente democrática a la política local. Como miembros de este grupo, publicábamos boletines, patrocinábamos foros públicos y presentábamos candidatos para las elecciones municipales. (15) También participábamos en la Left Green Network, que era una organización norteamericana dedicada a promover una perspectiva anti-estatista y anti-capitalista en el movimiento ambientalista, así como una perspectiva ecológica en la izquierda revolucionaria amplia. En nombre de esta organización, coordinábamos conferencias regionales y nacionales, presentábamos documentos de posición, y publicábamos una revista (Left Green Notes). Por último, estábamos involucrados en la construcción de una tendencia internacional verde de izquierda. Esto tenía lugar a través de la publicación de Murray (Left Green Perspectives) y también mediante el desarrollo de relaciones amistosas con militantes de la izquierda verde alrededor del mundo (éramos particularmente cercanos con Jutta Ditfurth, líder de la facción izquierdista – es decir, “fundi” – de los Verdes de Alemania).

Esta perspectiva ética infundió en nosotros una gran confianza e hizo que nuestra denuncia del capitalismo y el estado fuera especialmente resoluta. A diferencia de los marxistas, no creíamos que el capitalismo fuese un paso necesario en la larga marcha hacia la libertad humana, sino una farsa que debía ser condenada por insertar en el nexo mercantil todo lo que encuentra a su paso. Igualmente, nuestra posición sobre el estado era categórica: no era un instrumento que podía aprovecharse para fines liberadores, sino una institución que sólo existe en la medida en que no hay una democracia genuina.

Las perspectivas morales de Bookchin también nos proporcionaron una manera de responder a la histórica incapacidad de la izquierda para crear una sociedad justa, igualitaria. Aunque podríamos pensar la tradición revolucionaria como un legado de fracaso total, esto no era – creíamos nosotros – consecuencia de una deficiencia inherente al proyecto, sino una falta de probidad moral por parte de sus protagonistas principales. Los comunistas no tenían la suficiente fe en la creatividad humana como para prevenir que su movimiento se convirtiera en una brutal máquina burocrática; los anarquistas clásicos carecían del coraje para prescindir de su ingenua entrega a la espontaneidad popular; y los militantes de la Nueva Izquierda habían sido demasiado débiles como para resistir las muchas tentaciones que encontraron en su “larga marcha por las instituciones”. La causa revolucionaria perduraba – sentíamos – para esos pocos audaces que estaban dispuestos a aceptarla en su plenitud.

El tercer principio de la militancia que Murray intentó transmitirnos fue la necesidad de audacia. Nos convenció de que pequeños grupos de personas pueden cambiar el mundo si están dispuestos a correr riesgos y nadar contra la corriente de la historia. Su propia biografía estaba llena de ejemplos de cuán fructífero podía ser esto. Innovó teóricamente, alcanzó cierto renombre como autor, y se las arregló para financiarse mediante sus iniciativas intelectuales; todo porque había tenido la temeridad para resistir la convención. Recuerdo un pequeño afiche enmarcado que colgaba en la pared cercana a su cama. Había cuatro o cinco párrafos de texto bajo grandes letras negras que demandaban “¡Armas para Hungría!”. Había escrito estas palabras en 1956 en apoyo de los rebeldes que se habían levantado contra el régimen comunista en dicho país. (16) Consideré este afiche como un recordatorio – y como su intento de recordarse a sí mismo – de las virtudes de una vida en permanente desafío de las ortodoxias predominantes (de izquierda o no).

Murray nos incitaba a que nos convirtiéramos en intelectuales revolucionarios o, para usar su palabra preferida, la “intelligentsia”. Desdeñaba a los pensadores académicos asalariados así como a los burócratas de partido. Despreciaba la forma en que los partidos políticos cultivaban el servilismo y el dogmatismo en sus filas (por un tiempo, vio al Partido Comunista como uno de los peores culpables, y creía que éste había creado una “mentalidad policial” entre sus miembros). (17) Despreciaba igualmente el inocuo radicalismo de los disidentes académicos, que “tienen su arena pública en la sala de clases y que operan según un programa de estudios”. (18) Admiraba a figuras como Denis Diderot, y a los “hombres y mujeres que crearon el fermento intelectual que dio lugar a los panfletos y la literatura que al final fue tan importante para promover la gran Revolución Francesa de 1789 a 1795”; (19) a los pensadores opositores de la Rusia pre-revolucionaria que luego fueron víctimas de Stalin; o a John Dewey y Charles Beard en los Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, para Bookchin, el “icono” de este arquetipo social era León Trotsky, “una personalidad totalmente movilizada que se atrevió a desafiar a todo un imperio hasta que un hacha fue enterrada en su cráneo” por uno de los asesinos de Stalin. (20) De hecho, la propia vida de Murray parecía encarnar este compromiso dedicado y militante: todo su trabajo escrito y oratoria estaban hechos para los movimientos sociales, y no para la universidad. (21) “Hoy”, declaraba en una asamblea de la Juventud Verde, “nos enfrentamos con la tarea de desarrollar una intelligentsia, no un nuevo cuerpo de intelectuales”. (22)

Bookchin elogiaba la capacidad de una vanguardia revolucionaria para tomar la iniciativa y transformar las cuestiones sociales, particularmente hacia el final de su vida, cuando Lenin se convirtió en uno de sus ejemplos favoritos y una constante fuente de discusión. Recuerdo vivamente la ocasión en que me narró la toma bolchevique del poder en 1917, sentado en una silla plástica en el salón de su casa una tarde de invierno. Describió al Primer Ministro Ruso Alexander Kerensky como un hombre disoluto, indeciso, que se paseaba impotente por su oficina mientras el mundo a su alrededor quedaba patas arriba, retorciendo extrañamente su mano detrás de su espalda mientras caminaba en círculos por la habitación. Lenin, que estaba lleno de determinación (por supuesto) y sin el problema de los extraños tics físicos (por supuesto), “agarró las manecillas del tiempo”, dijo Murray, “e impulsó la historia hacia adelante” en el momento en que tomó el poder.

Bookchin nos obsequiaba a menudo historias como estas, que parecían transportarnos de Bulington, Vermont – un insípido pueblo universitario como ninguno – directamente a los campos de batalla revolucionarios de antaño. Ellas nos inspiraban y nos hacían creer que nosotros también podíamos volvernos eso que alguna vez llamó una “vanguardia educacional”, que “al menos mantendría bajo control las terribles patologías de nuestra época, y en el mejor de los casos las aboliría”. (23)

Este voluntarismo era coherente con su perspectiva más amplia de desarrollo histórico. Para Bookchin, son nuestras ideas y valores – no la base económica de la sociedad – lo que determina el curso de los eventos (en “última instancia”). Integraba este principio en todos sus escritos históricos, ya sea que estuviera examinando los movimientos revolucionarios o bien asuntos más generales de la historia de la civilización. Por ejemplo, considérese el siguiente planteamiento acerca del surgimiento del capitalismo en The Third Revolution [La Tercera Revolución]: “Si los factores culturales fueran meros reflejos de factores económicos, el capitalismo hubiese emergido casi en cualquier momento del pasado, incluso en la antigüedad. Cantidades notables de capitalistas vivieron en la Grecia y la Roma antiguas, lo mismo que en partes de la Europa medieval, y no eran menos codiciosos o emprendedores en su búsqueda de riqueza que nuestra propia burguesía. Lo que les impidió tomar una posición predominante en la vida social – asumiendo que intentaran hacerlo – fue precisamente una serie de factores culturales que favorecían la propiedad colectiva de la tierra por sobre el capital, denigraban la acumulación material y enfatizaban fuertemente el estatus social en la forma de títulos nobiliarios más que en la propiedad de bienes fungibles”. (24) Para invertir una de las frases más incisivas de Marx, no es el ser el que determina a la conciencia, sino que la conciencia determina al ser.

La concepción de activismo revolucionario que tenía Bookchin era embriagadora. Creíamos que, si lo seguíamos, íbamos a convertirnos en los legítimos herederos de una tradición revolucionaria en particular y de la tradición occidental en general, y que seríamos capaces de rectificar el error cometido cuando la humanidad tomó esta senda “aberrante” hace tantos milenios. La historia, pensábamos, estaba en una encrucijada y nosotros, intrépidos y sabios militantes, pronto determinaríamos su dirección. Se aproximaban a toda velocidad los días en los que resolveríamos “la suerte de la historia” luego de librar un “combate mimético sobre las llanuras del destino”, para citar la apropiada descripción que hace Daniel Bell del sectarismo en el socialismo marxista en los Estados Unidos. (25)

Dilemas
Por supuesto, había problemas significativos en el intento de Bookchin de construir un cuadro. Estos problemas dejaron una fuerte impresión en mí e ilustraron algunas de las limitaciones de su ideal revolucionario. Haré un esbozo de las dificultades más notables. Ellas eran el encierro, la actitud defensiva y una desatención de las condiciones materiales para el cambio social.

Pero, para contextualizar, la posición elevada de Bookchin en nuestro medio no era resultado de su vanidad o narcicismo, sino de dos suposiciones básicas que él y todos sus seguidores compartían. Primero, creíamos que él había descubierto principios del desarrollo social que, si se aplicaban al mundo, eliminarían la jerarquía y reconciliarían a la humanidad con la naturaleza. Segundo, sosteníamos que el capitalismo destruiría el ecosistema si no aplicábamos sus principios. En otras palabras, sentíamos que no sólo debíamos aceptar sus enseñanzas para construir una buena sociedad, sino que además era necesario hacerlo si queríamos prevenir un apocalipsis ecológico. En consecuencia, las ideas de Bookchin tuvieron un papel cuasi-religioso para nosotros y él se convirtió en una especie de profeta.

Como se podría esperar, su centralidad tendía a aislarnos, cerrándonos a las reflexiones que otras tradiciones y pensadores podían ofrecer: ya que Bookchin presentaba la verdad, otros teóricos presentaban, por definición, falsedades. Había una tensión entre este encierro y la insistencia de Bookchin en que nos educáramos. En efecto, esta tensión se volvió cada vez más aguda a medida que nos enfrentábamos a los importantes textos que nos recomendaba y ansiaba confrontarse a los autores contemporáneos. Recuerdo que a menudo nos disuadía de explorar escritores que – era su temor – podrían amenazar su control sobre nosotros. Hacía esto con regularidad ridiculizándolos o denigrándolos personalmente (recuerdo que esto era particularmente cierto en sus comentarios sobre Foucault y Adorno). En otras ocasiones, simplemente preguntaba exasperado, “¿qué podrían tener de interesante sus obras?”.

Este hermetismo también nos alentaba a desarrollar un vocabulario y estilo político tan único que era difícil comunicarse y aprender de otros activistas. Por ejemplo, aun en la cima de la influencia de Bookchin, pocos habrían comprendido lo que decíamos si nos pronunciábamos únicamente en sus frases típicas (considérese: “una ‘intelligentsia’ debería estudiar las ‘sociedades orgánicas’ si pretende ‘volver auto-consciente la naturaleza’”). (26)

Igualmente, la elevada categoría de Bookchin alimentaba entre nosotros una política altamente no-democrática que ponía en riesgo nuestra capacidad de provocar reflexiones al interior de nuestros propios círculos. El servilismo era bastante común. Por ejemplo, el grupo Verde local que estaba en actividad cuando yo llegué a Burlington giraba casi totalmente en torno a Murray, que asumió una postura casi de oráculo durante las clases que daba sobre historia y filosofía. En dichas clases, simplemente leía de manuscritos en los que estaba trabajando, interrumpiéndose sólo para digresiones ocasionales (por lo general, para polemizar contra otro pensador). Nos sentábamos a su alrededor en la habitación, tomando notas frenéticamente. No entregábamos trabajos ni teníamos que dar exámenes: nuestro trabajo consistía simplemente en absorber sus reflexiones.

Este servilismo tenía su contraparte en exabruptos igualmente corrosivos por parte de antiguos seguidores desilusionados o de activistas a los que les molestaba el estatus de Murray. Con respecto a estos últimos, todos los veranos había abucheadores tratando de interrumpir las clases de Murray en el Instituto de Ecología Social y eran una preocupación cada vez que hablaba públicamente. Con respecto a los anteriores, John Clark era el ejemplo más extremo. Por un tiempo, Clark veneró a Bookchin como el “principal teórico anarquista contemporáneo”, (27) celebró sus “magnífica contribución”, (28) e incluso editó un volumen entero en su honor. (29) Sin embargo, sólo algunos años después de la publicación de su libro en homenaje a Bookchin, Clark comenzó a publicar una serie constante de artículos atacándolo, al parecer porque Clark sentía que Bookchin lo había desairado. Publicó numerosas diatribas anti-Bookchin, a menudo patéticas (como la “Confesión al Camarada Murray Bookchin, Presidente y Secretario General del Partido Ecologista Social y Fundador del Naturalismo Dialéctico (DIANAT) por parte de ‘C’”). Para Clark, Bookchin es ahora una “fuerza divisiva, debilitante” y “un obstáculo”. (30)

Aunque nunca vi a Bookchin exigiendo adulación, la motivaba indirectamente. Por ejemplo, constantemente hablaba de su mala salud y daba a entender que su muerte era inminente. Hacía esto cuando lo conocí en 1989, casi dos décadas antes de morir, y he oído relatos de un comportamiento similar veinte años antes de eso. Estos comentarios creaban un aura trágica a su alrededor y la sensación de que debíamos atesorar cada momento con él.

El corolario de esta concepción ética de la política era una obsesión con la defensa de sus puntos de vista contra las amenazas. De hecho, es probable que Bookchin haya pasado más tiempo librando batallas contra pensadores y tendencias rivales de la izquierda y el movimiento ambientalista que efectivamente desarrollando sus propias ideas.

Por ejemplo, fue autor de lo que parece ser una lista interminable de polémicas. (31) Su primera polémica importante fue “Listen, Marxist!” [“¡Escucha, Marxista!”], que publicó en la misma época en que salieron a la luz varios ensayos fundacionales (“Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” [“Ecología y Pensamiento Revolucionario”] and “Post-Scarcity Anarchism” [“Anarquismo Post-Escasez”], específicamente). También hubo polémicas al interior del movimiento ambientalista, contra los “ecologistas profundos” y algunas facciones de los Verdes (por ejemplo, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman [Defendiendo la Tierra: Un diálogo entre Murray Bookchin y Dave Foreman] and Which Way for the Ecology Movement? [¿Qué Camino para el Movimiento Ecológico?]; su principal polémica en el movimiento anarquista fue, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm [Anarquismo Social o Estilo de Vida Anarquista: Un Abismo Infranqueable]; y finalmente está su arrolladora y omniabarcante polémica, Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Anti-humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism. (32) Bookchin era un polemista extremadamente talentoso – en efecto, este fue el contexto de algunos de sus mejores escritos – pero era demasiado rudo a veces. El poeta beat Gary Snider una vez alegó en el periódico Los Angeles Times que Murray “escribe como un matón estalinista”. (33)

Otra estrategia era la de romper con seguidores que encontraba sospechosos por alguna u otra razón. Experimenté esto recién llegado a Burlington, cuando dejó el grupo Verde local que fundó, inspiró y guió. El asunto que causó la división fue extremadamente menor: durante una campaña por el municipio, uno de nuestros candidatos conspiró con el candidato del Partido Demócrata para no tratarse muy mal durante un debate y ponerle las cosas difíciles al candidato de los Progresistas (nuestro rival de izquierda). Esta era una maquinación política típica, pero en una escala insignificante: como mucho, sólo unas pocas docenas de personas prestaron atención a estos debates. Sin embargo, para Murray esto significaba una escandalosa transgresión de la rectitud moral de nuestro grupo. ¡La mala semilla del oportunismo había sido sembrada entre nosotros! Todavía recuerdo las feroces discusiones que ocurrieron en la casa de Bookchin cuando nuestro grupo se reunió para intentar resolver el asunto: se hicieron acusaciones, hubo gritos, e incluso se volcó una mesa. Parecía como si el mundo se estuviese acabando. Poco después, Murray, Janet y su aliado más cercano, Gary Sisco, se separaron, mientras el resto de nosotros formamos otro grupo. En ese momento, yo admiraba lo dispuesto que estaba Murray a convertir incluso los pequeños asuntos en cuestiones de principios, pero ahora me parece absurdo que hubiese desarmado un grupo que le había tomado años construir por un problema tan trivial, especialmente cuando podría haber sido enfrentado de tantas otras formas.

Otra táctica consistía en distinguirse de aliados que consideraba problemáticos inventando nuevos nombres para sus propios puntos de vista: en determinado momento, ya no era un Verde, sino un Verde de Izquierda; por un tiempo, propuso lo que llamó ecología social radical, no sólo ecología social; en cierto momento, abandonó el término “municipalismo libertario” por el de “comunalismo”; en otro, decidió que debía abandonar el anarquismo por el “anarquismo social” (y luego dejar el anarquismo completamente).

Dio pie a estas divisiones sin importar el costo político o el aislamiento que le supondría. (34) Por ejemplo, Murray, Janet y Gary renunciaron a la Left Green Network poco después de dejar el grupo Verde local. Como razones para su retiro mencionaron la ruptura de nuestro grupo local, tendencias hacia la formación de partido al interior de los Verdes a nivel nacional, y la salud cada vez más débil de Murray. (35) Todas estas razones eran plausibles, pero ellos se retiraron justamente cuando la Red estaba dejando de ser un pasivo comité hecho de papel y comenzando a ser una organización real dirigida por los seguidores de Bookchin e inspirada por sus perspectivas. Quizás la instancia más flagrante de esto ocurrió cuando Murray comenzó a denunciar al anarquismo en el punto más alto del movimiento anti-globalización. Ésta fue la primera vez, en décadas, que el anarquismo tenía una presencia en la vida pública y debiese haber sido un momento triunfal para él, dado que había hecho más que ningún otro pensador para recuperar el punto de vista anarquista en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Y, aún así, en vez de aprovechar la ocasión, se refugió en un amargo alegato doctrinario.

Finalmente, su convicción de que un pequeño grupo puede transformar la historia implicaba el clásico problema asociado al voluntarismo: una despreocupación por las condiciones para el cambio social.

Esto era evidente de muchas formas, pero la más chocante para mí era el silencio de Bookchin con respecto a la supremacía blanca y el racismo, temas que él nunca confrontó ni siquiera de un modo superficial. Su falta de atención al asunto significaba que se olvidaba de uno de los factores más importantes en la constitución del mundo que buscaba transformar y aseguraba que su obra nunca inspiraría a un amplio sector del público.

Recuerdo haberme impresionado ante lo extraño que era que Bookchin se hubiese establecido en Vermont, el estado más blanco de Estados Unidos, y que las organizaciones que construyó fueran siempre predominantemente blancas (entre el 90 y el 100 por ciento) y lo mismo su cuadro. Aunque nunca fui testigo directo de lo que reconocía como un obvio acto de prejuicio, me parecía claro que Bookchin vivía en una burbuja. Lo que no capté en ese momento era que el voluntarismo de Bookchin confirmaba su ceguera: si el cambio social era una cuestión solamente de voluntad, entonces apenas había razones para comprender las condiciones sociales que experimentaba la mayor parte de la población – mucho menos para combatir políticamente contra éstas. La preparación subjetiva de la elite revolucionaria es la única tarea que importa realmente.

Dispersión y Resonancia
Los grupos revolucionarios apuntan a transformar la sociedad y, al hacerlo, a socavar las condiciones que los vuelven necesarios: después de todo, no tendrían razón para existir una vez que “cruzan a la otra orilla”, para tomar una frase de los comentarios de Trotsky sobre el sectarismo. (36) Dicho esto, es más común que dichos grupos transformen a sus miembros – y no a la sociedad – de una forma que erosiona las condiciones de su propia existencia.

Esto es ciertamente lo que ocurrió con el cuadro de Bookchin. Todos los jóvenes que se trasladaron a Burlington para trabajar con él dejaron la ciudad entre 1991 y 1992. Un grupo de considerable tamaño se fue a Alemania para aprender la lengua y estudiar filosofía continental (Adorno, en particular). Otros, entre los que me incluyo, fuimos a la ciudad de Nueva York para inscribirnos en el programa de filosofía de la New School for Social Research. Algunos simplemente desaparecieron. Esta dispersión marcó el fin de la última vez que Bookchin intentó con entusiasmo construir un núcleo para instituir sus perspectivas.

Murray era un hombre apasionado, inteligente, difícil, necesitado, carismático, arrogante, divertido y generoso: en otras palabras, era contradictorio, como todos nosotros. He intentado capturar algunos de los elementos en conflicto de su vida y su obra en este ensayo. Aunque mi perspectiva es poco favorecedora a veces, creo que una visión crítica debe ser parte de cualquier apreciación seria de su legado. Los movimientos revolucionarios asumen demasiado a menudo una postura conservadora con respecto a su propia historia.

Tengo sentimientos encontrados cuando reflexiono sobre mis años con Bookchin. Aunque en ese momento estaba entrando en la segunda década de mi vida, me parece extraordinario pensar que me comprendí a mí mismo en los términos que nos proporcionó su grandiosa narrativa del desarrollo histórico. Ya no es así, y supongo que cada generación tiene derecho a sus propias ilusiones. (37)

Pero los eventos descritos más arriba no son sólo otro relato de exceso y desencanto juvenil. Por mi parte, los dos años y medio que pasé en el núcleo de Bookchin dejaron en mí una impronta duradera y fundamentalmente positiva, a pesar de los conflictos y las contradicciones. Lo que es más importante, me permitieron imaginar brevemente que mi vida se había confundido con las tendencias históricas, algo que era electrificante y que estimuló en mí apetitos revolucionarios que todavía no se apaciguan. Fomentó también un amor duradero por el aprendizaje y un sentido más matizado de mi capacidad como actor político. Sospecho que muchos de mis pares harían afirmaciones similares.

Nunca más habrá una secta como la de Bookchin y es improbable que vuelva a haber, alguna vez, una secta anarquista de algún tipo. Las premisas teóricas necesarias para una formación como ésta – la idea de una historia universal, de contradicciones primarias y secundarias, etc. – no han tenido mucho éxito en nuestra cultura en general. Del mismo modo, los actuales movimientos de oposición ya han tenido demasiada experiencia con la democracia como para tolerar un grupo como el que creó Bookchin (y no debemos olvidar que a él le cabe cierta responsabilidad por esta maduración política).

En mi opinión, los problemas que he descrito en este ensayo no constituyen una crítica al proyecto revolucionario que abrazó Bookchin, sino solamente a la particular manera en que lo formuló. Aunque no hubiese resuelto los antiguos problemas de la humanidad o elaborado una doctrina comparable al marxismo, esto no prueba que la iniciativa a la que entregó su vida sea menos valiosa o imposible. Simplemente da cuenta de que es algo muy, muy difícil.

Aunque Murray era un militante de un calibre enteramente distinto, algunos comentarios que Engels pronunció en el funeral de Marx le son aplicables. Él era, dijo Engels de Marx, “ante todo un revolucionario. Su verdadera misión en la vida fue la de contribuir, de un modo u otro, al derrocamiento de la sociedad capitalista y de las instituciones estatales que ésta procreó… La lucha era su elemento”.

Lo mismo podría decirse de Bookchin, aunque a la cita tendría que seguirle aquella que William Morris escribió en The Dream of John Ball [El Sueño de John Ball] y que Murray utilizó para The Ecology of Freedom [La Ecología de la Libertad]: “Medité sobre todas estas cosas, y sobre cómo los hombres luchan y pierden la batalla, y que eso por lo que luchan ocurre a pesar de su derrota, y que cuando ocurre resulta ser otra cosa que la que querían decir, y que otros hombres tienen que luchar por lo que ellos querían decir bajo otro nombre”.

Murray Bookchin, QEPD.

* * * * *

Estoy agradecido con Paul Glavin, Walter Hergt, Matt Hern, Yvonne Liu, Joe Lowndes, y Mark Lance por sus útiles comentarios sobre los borradores de este ensayo.

[Nota del traductor: Gracias a Luigi Celentano, Eva González y Mónica Morales Moreno por revisar la traducción y proponer valiosas correcciones que aclararon y enriquecieron el texto final.]

NOTAS

1. Bookchin fue miembro del Partido Socialista de Trabajadores de Shachtman y del Movimiento por una Democracia de Contenido de Josef Weber. Para un excelente estudio del grado en el que los puntos de vista de Weber prefiguraron muchas de las contribuciones posteriores de Bookchin, véase: Marcel van der Linden, “The Prehistory of Post-Scarcity Anarchism: Josef Weber and the Movement for a Democracy of Content (1947-1964)”, Anarchist Studies, 9 (2001), 127-145. Para una revisión de Max Shachtman, véase Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 35-76 y Peter Drucker, Max Shachtman and His Left: A Socialist’s Odyssey Through the “American Century” (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994).

2. Aunque Bookchin nunca usó la palabra “secta” para describir su proyecto y ciertamente la habría rechazado, es aplicable. El Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary describe una secta como “un grupo separado que adhiere a una doctrina o forma de pensar distintiva o a un líder en particular…. una escuela de filosofía o de opinión filosófica…. un grupo que sostiene perspectivas similares en política, economía u otros ámbitos”.

3. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 1a Edición, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1990), 45.

4. Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: the Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Chesire Books, 1982), 319. [Hay trad. cast. La Ecología de la Libertad: el surgimiento y la disolución de la jerarquía (Madrid: Nossa y Jara, 1999)].

5. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 178. El mismo pasaje se encuentra también en Murray Bookchin, “Ecologizing the dialectic”, en John Clark, Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology, A Celebration of the Work of Murray Bookchin (Londres: Green Print, 1990), 211.

6. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 1a Edición, 182-183.

7. Bookchin usó la palabra “crisis” a lo largo de su obra, incluyéndola en el título de muchos de sus ensayos y también en un libro (The Modern Crisis [La Crisis Moderna]). Al comentar las raíces médicas del uso del término en la teoría social, Seyla Benhabib señala que “‘crisis’ designa una etapa del desarrollo de una enfermedad que es un punto decisivo y durante el cual se alcanza el diagnóstico definitivo sobre la cura o empeoramiento del paciente”. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: a study of the foundations of critical theory (Nueva York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 20.

8. Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 1a Edición, 163-164.

9. Bookchin, Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Anti-humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism (Londres: Cassell, 1995), 235.

10. Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 2a ed., (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1996), 160.

11. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 315.

12. Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 202-203.

13. Por supuesto, Bookchin no pretendía que adquiriéramos una educación en el sentido convencional del término. De hecho, me inscribí en el programa “fuera del campus” del Goddard College con el fin de trabajar con él, lo que significaba, esencialmente, dar la espalda a una educación superior. El programa de Goddard no exigía que sus estudiantes asistieran a clases o siguieran un currículo específico; aparentemente, no exigía que hicieran nada en especial. Yo agradecí esto, porque me permitía vivir en Burlington y dedicarme exclusivamente a las actividades del movimiento. No me arrepiento de haber optado por esto. Sospecho que aprendí más de Bookchin que lo que podría haber aprendido en una universidad. Puesto que, ¿cómo podría competir la vida académica tradicional con una participación activa en un contexto dedicado a transformar el mundo?

14. Por ejemplo, tómese en cuenta la afirmación de Aristóteles: “Los estudios éticos podrían llamarse con justicia estudios políticos” (Retórica, Libro I, c. II, parágrafo 7).

15. Bookchin hacía una clara distinción entre la ciudad y el estado, y ésta era la premisa de su argumento de que las campañas electorales a nivel municipal pueden ser una forma legítima de activismo comunitario (y no de activismo estatista).

16. Seguramente este panfleto formaba parte de la campaña del Movimiento por una Democracia de Contenido a favor de los rebeldes húngaros. Bookchin participó activamente en ella. Véase, Marcel van der Linden, ibid.

17. Murray Bookchin, Carta al Editor, New York Review of Books, 15 de Agosto, 1985. Accedido el 14 de Junio, 2007. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5378)

18. Murray Bookchin, “Intelligentsia and the New Intellectuals,” Alternative Forum, Vol.1, No.1, Otoño, 1991. Accedido el 14 de Junio, 2007. (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/intellectuals.html)

19. Ibíd.

20. Murray Bookchin, “On The Last Intellectuals”, Telos, 73 (Fall 1987): 184.

21. Nunca asistió a la universidad, excepto por algunas clases que tomó sobre tecnología radial después de la Segunda Guerra, y nunca tuvo un puesto académico a largo plazo (su “puesto” en el Instituto de Ecología Social era puramente nominal).

22. Murray Bookchin, “Intelligentsia and the New Intellectuals”.

23. Murray Bookchin, “Reflections: An Overview of the Roots of Social Ecology”, Harbinger: A Journal of Social Ecology, Vol. 3, No. 1, (Otoño 2002). Accedido el 14 de Junio, 2007. (http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=2003111811572182)

24. Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, Vol. 1 (Londres: Cassell, 1998), ix.

25. Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Ithaca, Nueva York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 10, n. 13.

26. La tendencia hacia el hermetismo tenía una lógica política. En particular, asumíamos que no era posible construir un movimiento de masas en la coyuntura actual, dada la decadencia histórica generalizada que suponíamos ver a nuestro alrededor, y por ello nos sentíamos llamados a dirigirnos a los sectores más “avanzados” de la población. Esto avalaba el uso de un discurso muy esotérico y, en cierto grado, lo hizo necesario como elemento vinculante en nuestra comunidad política.

27. John Clark, “Murray Bookchin”, Encyclopedia of the American Left, ed. Paul Buhle et al. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 102.

28. John Clark, Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology, A Celebration of the Work of Murray Bookchin (Londres: Green Print, 1990), 3.

29. Me refiero al libro citado en la nota anterior.

30. John Clark, “Municipal Dreams” en Andrew Light, Social Ecology After Bookchin (Nueva York: The Guilford Press, 1998), p. 183.

31. Estas polémicas pueden entenderse al menos parcialmente como un sustituto de las batallas políticas que Murray demandaba pero era incapaz de dar debido a su marginalidad.

32. Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman (Boston: South End Press, 1991), Which Way for the Ecology Movement? (Edinburgh y San Francisco: AK Press, 1993), Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (San Francisco: A.K. Press, 1995), Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Anti-humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism (Londres: Cassell, 1995).

33. Bob Sipchen, “Ecology’s Family Feud: Murray Bookchin Turns up the Volume on a Noisy Debate”, Los Angeles Times, 27 de Marzo, 1989, p. 1.

34. A veces, Bookchin parecía apreciar su propio aislamiento, como si fuese un signo de gracia.

35. Murray Bookchin, Janet Biehl, Gary Sisco, “Burlington Greens Depart from the Network, Left Green Notes, Febrero/Marzo, 1991, p. 7.

36. Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (Nueva York: Pathfinder Press, 1974), 109.

37. Irving Howe describió experiencias similares en el Partido Socialista de Trabajadores (SWP) en los años 30: “Nunca antes, y ciertamente nunca después, viví con tal intensidad, ni estuve de tal modo absorbido en ideas que fueran más allá de la pequeñez del yo. Comenzó a parecer como si la forma misma de la realidad pudiese ser moldeada por nuestra voluntad, como si aquellos realmente sensibles a los ritmos internos de la Historia pudiesen someterla. Seguí adelante con la vida cotidiana: iba a la universidad, tenía algunos trabajos ocasionales, salía con chicas ocasionalmente, vivía o al menos dormía en casa. Pero lo que importaba – apasionadamente – era el movimiento, que requería mis energías, liberaba mis fantasías, me protegía día y noche del aburrimiento diario”. Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Biography (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and Jonanovich, 1982), 42. Existen impresionantes parecidos entre las primeras tres décadas de las vidas Bookchin y Howe: ambos eran judíos descendientes de europeos del este, nacieron con seis meses de diferencia, ambos fueron criados en el Bronx, ambos fueron miembros del SWP y ambos se unieron al Ejército.

I would have asked permission to repost the piece if it had been marked with a copyright—which, of course, is how authors indicate that they want to restrict the circulation of their writings. Since it was not, I assumed that Eiglad would not object to its publication here, although I now see that he does. I am removing it out of consideration for Eiglad (who will hopefully learn to designate his articles more carefully in the future if, in fact, he does not want them to be reposted).

But why would Eiglad care if I published his piece on this blog when it is identical to the article on his website? What difference does it make to him? Only he can really answer that question, although I suspect this is a control issue: on this blog he would be unable to curtail a critical discussion of his essay or Bookchin generally, whereas he can exclude critics at a whim on his (temporarily unavailable) Communalism forums.

Whatever his motives, Eiglad is mistaken if he thinks that he can promote Bookchin’s ideas and silence Bookchin’s critics at the same time. That is simply not possible. Whatever lessons Bookchin has to offer–and I think there are many–will emerge only in the context of a critical analysis of his life and work. Indeed, Bookchin’s contributions will either be criticized or they will be forgotten.

* * *

Measures of Failure and Success: Part 1 – Reflections on Chuck Morse’s “Being a Bookchinite”

By Eirik Eiglad

… this article has been removed at the author’s behest. You can read it here.

I was very disappointed by Andy Price’s “Communalism or Caricature”, which appeared in the recent Anarchist Studies (v16, #1). Murray Bookchin was one of the most controversial anarchist figures in recent memory. The furious and often nasty debates around his work in the 1990s (much of the tone of which was set by Bookchin himself); his bitter and divisive polemic Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm; and his subsequent disavowal of anarchism, all worked to alienate so many radicals that his death has been met mostly with silence. Unbiased and neutral discussion of his work has become almost impossible. Price’s piece does not improve this situation; especially problematic is the second half, which is attack on a critical look at Bookchin’s legacy by one of his former students, Chuck Morse. Additionally, Price’s essay includes misrepresentations and errors which need to be addressed.

I will limit my comments to two claims that Price makes in his review of Chuck Morse’s essay “Being A Bookchinite”. (I will not comment on Morse’s essay itself, however, which I have my own criticisms of – criticisms which do not dovetail with Price’s.) The first comment regards Price’s mischaracterization of the criticisms of Bookchin during the 1990s. The second regards Bookchin’s teaching style and its origins in the Communist pedagogical tradition.

Price claims that Chuck Morse’s piece “follows the same patterns of much of the critiques of Bookchin of the 1990s: it offers an analysis of Bookchin and his work without paying sufficient attention to his theoretical and practical programme. Instead, Morse relies on the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin that render his revolutionary project a failure.” Price ends by reiterating that Morse “falls back into the patterns of caricature that surrounded Bookchin in the 1990s.”

This is an unscholarly dismissal of the numerous serious arguments concerning Murray Bookchin’s philosophy, particularly his relationship to Marxism, ecological philosophy, and technology. These arguments were made by a large number of intellectuals and constitute the vast majority of the “critiques of Bookchin of the 1990s.”

It is well beyond the scope of anything short of a serious monograph to chart these intellectual confrontations; interested readers should start with Andrew Light’s anthology Social Ecology After Bookchin, published by the Guilford Press in 1998. I would like to know if Price believes that Joel Kovel, Robyn Eckersley, Glenn A. Albrecht, Regina Cochrane, John Clark, Adolf G. Gunderson, David Watson, Eric Stowe Higgs, Alan P. Rudy, David Macauley and Andrew Light all rely on “the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin” which “render his revolutionary project a failure.”

Watson—one of those whom Price undoubtedly is invoking when referring to those who focused on Bookchin’s “personal failings and insidious motives”—sums up his problems with Bookchin very succinctly in the book. His concerns are with Bookchin’s conceptions of “rationality, history, and other areas, but most pointedly in his writings on technology” (page 212). Furthermore, one must wonder if Price is familiar with Light’s anthology, as his essay title echoes one of Joel Kovel’s comments regarding Bookchin himself—Kovel says that “Bookchin’s rendition of Marx is a caricature not a critique”. (page 41)

In fact, perhaps a majority of serious commentators on both left-wing ecology and anarchism expressed their disagreements with Bookchin in the 1990s. While some of the furious polemics during this time certainly did involve personal attacks, even those occurred in the context of discussions of the validity of Bookchin’s theoretical positions. Price’s misrepresentation of the arguments—in fact his refusal to even recognize them as having taken place—shows a real closure around the discussion of Bookchin’s philosophy.

***

Second, Price attacks Morse for his description of how Bookchin attempted to control the intellectual thought of his followers. Price says that:

this claim of educational ‘closure’ around Bookchin jars with Morse’s own description of the extent and scope of that education. Only a few pages earlier, Morse describes how there were regular lectures from Bookchin on his own work but how it was possible to ‘participate in weekly study groups on Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities, and other weighty topics and theorists.’ . . .

Quite how a thinker who encouraged such an education could then close his students off from other insights is left unclear. One can only assume here that Morse took his self-appointed role as a Bookchin ‘disciple’ all too literally, and that this ‘closing-off’ was a self-imposed one. The fact that Bookchin dissuaded his students from other writers or schools of thought does not automatically translate as an attempt to maintain a hold over his students. Rather, it represents the messy business of a democratic politics, and the freedom of opinion therein.

Here, Price shows an ignorance of Communist pedagogical culture, which Bookchin inherited the legacy of and reproduced himself.

In his reply to Price (“Reply to Andy Price’s ‘Communalism or Caricature’”), Morse identifies Bookchin as a “sect builder”. Bookchin was raised in the Marxist milieu of the 1930s, which featured soapboxing and bitter, public ideological debates between competing sect members (see Bookchin’s Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left for descriptions of this milieu). Bookchin kept this polemical and rhetorical style to his death, as he openly admitted.

In addition to the rhetorical style held over from the Marxist-Leninist tradition, Bookchin also retained its powerful pedagogical structure. The Communist movement held intellectuals in a special regard. It prized their abilities to formulate policy and social critique, and spent considerable assets on educational programs, not just for the leadership (the special schools in Moscow, for example), but also for the rank and file. Bookchin himself attended the Party-sponsored Workers School in New York City. Students at these schools did not just learn the ‘classics of Marxist-Leninism’, but could also study history, philosophy, theatre and other subjects.

So how did the Party encourage such broad erudition while simultaneously controlling the patterns of thought of the students it was educating? Alan Gouldner describes this apparent inconsistency in his works The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class and Against Fragmentation. He describes the Party as a having a two-fold function: to be a vehicle for intellectuals to achieve social dominance, but at the same time to act as a vessel to restrain the intellectuals from wandering off on their own paths. (The practice of “democratic centralism” is the best-known aspect of this; open debate is allowed internally among the committed, but once a decision is made, a uniform public front must be presented, and internal debate ends.)

Pedagogically, the Communists faced the same dilemma. In order to cultivate intellectuals—real intellectuals, not just epigones and propagandists—it had to train them in Marxist epistemology and ontology. A deep understanding of what Marx was doing and why he was doing it was essential to creating “Marxists”—intellectuals who could wield a Marxist critique to understand complex social situations and create policy in response to them.

By training students in Marxism—particularly its philosophical basis—the Party handed them powerful tools. But this did not guarantee the Party had control over what the intellectuals did with these tools. In fact, having received this instruction, some students even took their training and used it to dismember Marxism itself. Gouldner himself does this by using Marxist class analysis to critically analyze Marxist political claims.

The Marxist pedagogical style included starting schools, organizing Marxist study groups (which became the nuclei for recruiting cadres), and producing newspapers. These structures could also be applied to different political ideologies; Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford, Jr.), in We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations 1960-1975 refers to his mentor Queen Mother Audley Moore, a veteran of the Communist Party. She organized revolutionary nationalist study groups which became political cadres, basing this structure on the Communist model. Lenin was particularly interested in the role of the newspaper and revolutionary movements, and his views later influenced the anarchist newspaper Love and Rage.

Murray Bookchin also utilized the Communist pedagogical style. The Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) and the study groups around it were continuations of this structure. And Bookchin himself, as Morse points out, plays the classic role of the Marxist sect builder. (One has to wonder to what extent he followed in the footsteps of Joseph Weber, his former mentor.) Like many Marxist intellectuals, Bookchin created a sect built around his ideas, and to some extent himself. The personality cults of the political leaders of Orthodox Marxism are well-known (Lenin, Stalin, Mao; and in the US, Bob Avakian), but numerous intellectuals also founded their own political sects. Raya Dunayevskaya, who like Bookchin was interested in a Hegelianized Marxism with libertarian socialist tendencies, also set up a political sect focused around herself (News and Letters). The recent split of this group is also telling: the majority faction clung to the personality cult and repetition of Dunayevskaya’s critique, while the minority wished to keep their thought fluid, open and changing. The latter lost out.

So did Bookchin control his students learning? Given the history of this pedagogical structure and direct claims from students such as Morse, this seems to be most likely. Even Morse’s list, which Price does not dispute, backs this up. The weekly study groups were on “Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities….” Hegel and Marx are the theorists that Bookchin was most indebted to, and the French Revolution and cities are two topics that were central to Bookchin’s thought. This is hardly an expansive and wide-ranging intellectual exploration.

Bookchin was left with the same quandary faced by all intellectual innovators who found a school of thought. How can they be intellectual innovators, train other intellectuals to follow in their footsteps, but then keep them in line? In this sense, Bookchin was confronted with the same dilemma as Martin Luther: having thrown off the authority of the church (or, in Bookchin’s case, the Marxist-Leninist party), and founded a new way of thinking about his intellectual tradition, how to close the floodgates to limitless innovation and reconsideration? Martin Luther of course founded his own church, and like the Roman Catholics, persecuted heretics. Bookchin trained people in his ideology, while simultaneously discouraging innovation or fundamental criticism.

Bookchin seemed to have successfully closed the door to the floodgates of innovation. The ISE has not produced a single intellectual of real distinction. The best known of the former staff, John Clark, was an anarchist intellectual long before his association with Bookchin. Chaia Heller is frequently referred to as the most prominent theoretician, but her book The Ecology of Everyday Life is little read and has had almost no impact. Cindy Milstein, a former member of Bookchin’s inner circle, is a popular anarchist writer but has not published a book and has made only minor intellectual revisions of Bookchin’s formulations. Janet Biehl has published several works closely following Bookchin’s framework and has acted as his propagandist and apologist, but has made no significant theoretical claims of her own.

That Bookchin fostered an exciting intellectual atmosphere at the ISE is beyond question. As to whether Bookchin fostered true intellectual query—or just fostered followers—is something that Chuck Morse has explored, much to the consternation of certain guardians of Bookchin’s posthumous flame.

Bookchin himself superseded his previous teachers and struck out on his own intellectual journey; by doing so he added to the rich tapestry of radical thought. In the same manner, those who Bookchin trained need to set out on their own and find their own voices. Morse is raising the question as to why this hasn’t happened; Price is trying to close this discussion down.

See also:

* Reply to Andy Price’s “Communalism or caricature” by Chuck Morse

* C.N. Tell: Praying the Hail Murray, Again by C.N. Tell

* Communalism or caricature: patterns of Bookchin critique by Andy Price

* Being a Bookchinite by Chuck Morse

Murray Bookchin dedicated his life to building a revolutionary challenge to the existing social order. He elaborated complex doctrines that pointed to a different future, he formed organizations to advocate for his ideas, and he tried to educate militants who would, he hoped, fight for his views.

Bookchin was ultimately unable to mount a new revolutionary challenge, although nearly everyone who participated in his attempt to do so was inspired, frustrated, and transformed by the experience. I tried to describe some of this in my Being a Bookchinite, an essay that struck a chord among many who had been touched by Bookchin in one way or another. Readers seemed particularly grateful for its balance of praise and critique, a rarity in the literature on Bookchin.

However, Andy Price, a British academic who recently reviewed my piece in Anarchist Studies, had a very different response. Though he accepts all of my favorable remarks about Bookchin without comment, he challenges every observation in my essay that might put Bookchin in an unfavorable light. He argues that my criticisms–though not my praise–are methodologically unsound and presuppose a misreading of Bookchin’s work.

His primary objection is that I rely on “the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin that render his revolutionary project a failure.” An essay, he says, on the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin’s revolutionary project should not contain “personal recollection and gossipy insinuation.” What is required is a “detailed examination of [Bookchin’s] principles and the practice they necessitate.”

There are actually several issues here. I believe that I can resolve one–the accusation that I insinuated something–by simply reminding Price that I articulated my views quite frankly and did not seed my essay with hints or suggestions. There were no hidden messages.

His statement that personal recollections should be excluded raises a more complicated question, although I wish he would have explained—rather than simply asserted—his claim. In the absence of an explanation, I can only reply by stating that I find that analyses that relate ideas to practice are richer than those that treat ideas alone, particularly in the case of someone like Bookchin, who not only wrote but also lived as a revolutionist. I suspect that this is why personal recollections were so important to Bookchin (think, for example, of the extensive autobiographical interviews in Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left) and why Janet Biehl is writing his biography.

However, Price’s contention that I failed to examine Bookchin’s ideas and the “practice they necessitate” is erroneous. I described Bookchin’s views on nature and history and social change and related them directly to the political experience that I shared with him. I also linked his broader ideals to his political practice in very specific, concrete terms when I identified Bookchin as a sect builder.

Price not only questions the general framework of my essay, but also my reading of Bookchin’s work.

For instance, he objects to my statement that Bookchin was silent on white supremacy and racism and never addressed either topic in any but the most cursory fashion. This, for him, is my most “specious accusation yet.” He writes:

In terms of the claim that Bookchin was ‘silent’ on race, then the whole of Bookchin’s writings on hierarchy and domination set themselves to a critique of these concepts in their entirety, including the hierarchy and domination that exists between ethnic groups. To argue for the dissolution of hierarchy as such in society is to argue for the end of white supremacy.

It is true that Bookchin argued against hierarchy as such, but opposition to hierarchy in general is not a substitute for an analysis of its particular forms, such as racism and white supremacy, which have their own origins and trajectory. Although Murray wrote extensively about patriarchy, gerontocracy, the emergence of the state, and other hierarchies, he never advanced an analysis of racism or white supremacy. In fact, he never devoted a single article or book, or even a significant portion of an article or book, to either topic.

Price also takes exception to my claim that Bookchin disregarded the material conditions of social change. To refute me, he cites a passage in which Bookchin calls for changes in material conditions.

Of course, Bookchin called for the transformation of material conditions but, theoretically, he prioritized cultural over material factors. He was also a voluntarist, who believed that social change was primarily about wanting it. These commitments run throughout his work, from his writings on natural evolution, to his historical studies, to his political essays. In fact, the “The Communalist Project,” which contains only passing commentary on social structures but a detailed discussion of ideological issues, is a good example.

How would Price have us respond to Bookchin’s work? If his (completely uncritical) review of Social Ecology and Communalism is an indication, he would have us venerate Bookchin as an immaculate martyr to the revolutionary cause. In fact, I suspect that what really troubles Price is that I had the temerity to advance any criticism at all: that, instead of heralding him as a thinker and activist of world-historical import, I treated him as an important but imperfect revolutionist. In my view, this approach is much more satisfying because it humanizes Bookchin and thus, if nothing else, renders his achievements all the more impressive. Indeed, as a deity, we would have to dismiss him as a miserable failure; as a man, who was flawed and embedded in his times like the rest of us, he was extraordinary.

I believe that those committed to building a revolutionary alternative should work to identify Bookchin’s shortcomings and surpass them in an analysis that balances both praise and critique. Although this might seem like an act of disloyalty to the memory of a man who gave so much to so many, I am of the opinion that applying this method is actually the best way to embrace and celebrate the substance of Bookchin’s legacy. It was in that spirit that I wrote Being a Bookchinite.

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Praying the Hail Murray, Again

By C.N. Tell

Was Murray Bookchin perfect personally and politically, or was he, like all of us, a vibrant and flawed example of imperfect historical processes? Who more accurately applies the lessons of Bookchin’s intellectual and political legacy, those who are willing to courageously initiate a constructive dialogue about a major radical thinker’s strengths and weaknesses, or those who narrowly defend a body of work—including the personality and relationships of the author– against any criticism? I value Andy Price’s response to Chuck Morse’s “Being a Bookchinite” because it unwittingly affirms that the new Bookchinism is not much different than the old variety. While abstractly committed to dialectical reflection and democratic processes, Bookchinism is still practically mired in flattened anti-dialectical logic and an all too predictable dogmatic sectarianism. This is not that surprising, because, as Morse implies in “Being a Bookchinite,” dogmatism may be (gasp!) endemic to Bookchinism in general.

I will briefly focus on two major points in Andy Price’s essay. First, Price asserts that Morse’s use of personal examples is “gossipy” and therefore illegitimate. An argument for a strict personal/ political or personal/theoretical dichotomy is tricky in critical exchanges (and as I note later, Price himself does not refrain from such tactics in his own response). After all, one of the most attractive aspects of the anarchist tradition is the inclusion and centralization of the personal in politics. This includes examination of egoism, opportunism, and ulterior motives in political groups and movements. What struck me about Morse’s essay the first time I read it is that he was being gracious when using personal examples. I know that there were even more egregious examples he could have used to illustrate Bookchin’s trademark self-aggrandizement and political territorialism. These trademark personality traits were frustrating and destructive, but they could also be comical and endearing at times. It just depended on the context. This is one reason why people have complex responses to Bookchin personally and politically.

Morse was intimately involved in Bookchin’s inner circle, and I knew him to be one of Bookchin’s most intimate confidantes and loyal supporters for several years. Given this fact, Morse obviously wanted to avoid making this into a pissing match about someone’s good or bad behavior because, if that were the case, he would have provided plenty more examples. I applaud Morse for his self-restraint in choosing the so-called “personal recollections” that he shares. But far from mere recollections or insinuations, these were real lived experiences from which important political lessons can be gleaned.

Many of us who studied Bookchin’s ideas thought it would be a challenge—maybe even an impossibility–to apply a political practice cultivated in the New England town meeting tradition to complex multi-racial urban environments. That was a fairly standard issue in Burlington when I moved there in 1991, and it was one of the factors involved in people’s decisions to study other thinkers and movements and pursue political projects beyond New England’s social ecology community. Price responds that Morse’s “most specious accusation” against Bookchin is that Bookchin inadequately addresses white supremacy and race issues in his works. However, I think this is one of the most obvious points to make, and shouldn’t be considered such a dramatic accusation. Also, lacking substance in the face of Morse’s supposedly specious accusation, Price contradicts his earlier dismissal of the critical legitimacy of personal examples when he cites Bookchin’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement. If that biographical fact is fair game, then so are other biographical facts.

Clearly Morse appreciates Bookchin’s talent for understanding, as Price puts it, the “dialectical development of oppositional thought in light of the ever-shifting terrain of capitalism.” Contrary to Price’s abstract references to dialectics in the review portion of his essay, Morse’s balanced assessment of Bookchin’s contributions and failings is true dialectical criticism. He recognizes that Bookchin both acted against and was acted upon by history, including the history of white supremacy as it plays out in the movements and theories of Bookchin’s expansive time. It is this more complex framing that continues the best aspects of Bookchin’s legacy. Another “Hail Murray” tract, like Price’s, simply foregrounds Bookchin’s closed dogmatic side over the generous and open one. While it may be a harder pill to swallow, acknowledging Bookchin’s shortcomings as manifested in the personal interactions he had in groups and movements, the organizations he founded and participated in, and his writings, is an important step in the very process of historical consciousness and uncompromising critique that Bookchin so consistently championed.

- – -

Bookchin’s Social Ecology and Communalism (2007), a posthumous collection of four essays, culminates in the last theoretical piece he was to write, wherein he concludes that, ‘its often refreshing aphorisms and insights notwithstanding’, anarchism ‘is simply not a social theory’ (p.90, emphasis added). As forthright as ever, one can almost feel the hackles rising at Bookchin’s final proclamation. However, it would be all too easy here to make the same mistakes that much of the reaction to Bookchin in the 1990s made, and to read his ultimate break with anarchism as further evidence of, variously: Bookchin’s nefarious desire to be leader of the green-anarcho left; his desire to extinguish any other political creed but his own; or his fundamental personal failings that render his liberatory project dogmatic and irrelevant.

In truth, however, this caricature of Bookchin is unfair, and Bookchin’s rejection of anarchism more properly reflects the two driving forces of his half-century of radical thought: the commitment to the social expression of humanity’s creative potentiality; and the commitment to the continuing dialectical development of radical oppositional thought in light of the continuing development of capitalism. In Social Ecology and Communalism–thanks in no small measure to the excellent selection and ordering by Eirik Eiglad, who collates and introduces the collection–these two driving forces are traceable throughout and find their synthesis in the political project Bookchin outlines in his final theoretical outing.

In the opening essay, ‘What is Social Ecology?’ first published in 1993, we find a clear enunciation of Bookchin’s view of nature, both human and nonhuman, from which emerges his formulation of humanity’s creative potential. ‘[T]he natural world and the social’, Bookchin writes, ‘are interlinked by evolution into one nature that consists of two differentiations: first, or biotic nature, and second or social nature’ (p.29). What links these two natures is that they both ‘share an evolutionary potential for greater subjectivity and flexibility’ (p.29).

That is to say that humanity is both the expression of, and is endowed with, a creative, evolutionary potentiality for increased subjectivity, flexibility, and ultimately, self-consciousness. These evolutionary materials not only rendered humanity the most self-conscious element in nature in the present but also provide it with the creative potentiality to achieve a rational ecological society in the future. Needless to say, this creative potentiality has been arrested by the destructiveness that has thus far characterised human society and its relationship with the natural world. It is to the creation of social forms that both express this creative potentiality and ameliorate the destructive that Bookchin sets his political programme.

In the two essays that follow–’Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism’ (1989), and ‘Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction’ (1996)–we can trace Bookchin’s commitment to the dialectical development of oppositional thought in light of the ever-shifting terrain of capitalism. Here, he describes the changing nature of capitalism post-1945 (p.56; p.69). During the 1950s and 1960s, capitalism began to mutate an economic system into a social system, bringing new challenges to the Left. It is from within these changes that Bookchin’s critique of the stasis of Marxism would emerge.

By the 1990s, however, the rules of engagement had changed again: capitalism was no longer solely a set of social relations but had transformed into the ‘end of history’ itself, had become enshrined as the ultimate version of human nature, a nature predicated on its ethos ‘to compete, win, and grow’ (p.73). In the light of such a shift, ideas and movements that opposed capitalism had also been deeply affected, and must therefore be subject to a constant ‘uncompromising critique’ (p.75). This uncompromising critique of the movements to which he belonged, so characteristic of Bookchin’s career, was based on this clear understanding of the extent of the changing nature of capitalism and the changes this necessitated in anti-capitalism.

Which bring us to the fourth essay, ‘The Communalist Project’ (2002), Bookchin’s final outlining of his political project. Here, the two driving motors of his work in fact become one, intertwined whole: the project to build a society that is the expression of the creative potentiality of humanity must be drawn in light of the ultimate shift in capitalism and the crisis it fosters–i.e., the threat of ecological collapse. This response, in light of the fact that capitalist crisis is now generalised (p.84)–i.e., it is not solely an economic crisis, does not solely affect one particular class–must be predicated on a direct empowerment of the citizen through the community. It is in this sense that Bookchin argues that, ‘Above all, Communalism is engaged with the problem of power’ (p.109). This engagement with power is in fact twofold. First, the empowerment of the citizen and the community would require the creation of a decentralised ‘ensemble of institutions designed to deal with the problems of consociational life in an orderly and hopefully fair manner’ (p.95). This process would not only require substantial organisation but also leadership. For Bookchin, ‘leadership always exists … [and] … a serious libertarian approach to leadership would indeed acknowledge the reality and crucial importance of leaders’ (p.111, emphasis in original), to both challenge the abusive power of present leaders and to engender the material and institutional changes necessary for the move toward communalism.

Second, in order to engender this new social reality, the members of a community would need to be materially and politically empowered, today. Therefore, Bookchin argues that ‘adherents of Communalism mobilize themselves to electorally engage in a potentially important centre of power–the municipal council–and try to compel it to create legislatively potent neighbourhood assemblies’ (p.109, emphasis added). This would constitute the ‘minimum programme’ of communalism that would aim, in the here and now, ‘to satisfy the most elemental needs of the masses, to improve their access to the resources that make daily life tolerable’ (p.114). In light of the extent of the spread of the ethos of capitalism, now enshrined as human nature itself (and to the extent that it permits no other conception of human nature) this tentative, material and political empowerment is indispensable to opening up even the idea of radical change.

These initial steps, then, are not the start of a process through which a communalist society can be legislated into existence for Bookchin, but rather the process through which the ‘maximum program’ is hopefully brought into view: they are the first tentative steps to establish ‘new rules of engagement between the people and capital’, as revolutionaries–anarchist or otherwise–start to envision and create ‘lasting organizations and institutions that can play a socially transformative role in the real world’ (p.115).

In Social Ecology and Communalism, then, we get a glimpse, uncluttered of the polemics of the 1990s, of the explicitly social nature of the whole Bookchin programme: philosophically, in his commitment to the social expression of humanity’s creative evolutionary potential; and politically in his commitment to confronting the realities of the power required to start this process, today. This social focus and the commitment to the dialectical development of radical thought are the fundamentals of Bookchin’s revolutionary programme, and it is from these fundamentals (rather than dubious motivations or personal failings) that stem his critiques of the less-socially focused aspects of anarchism. Anyone with any lingering doubts about Bookchin’s motivations should read this concise yet comprehensive collection.

Unfortunately, the second piece under review here, Chuck Morse’s essay, ‘Being a Bookchinite’, almost completely neglects these fundamentals. In doing so, it follows the same patterns of much of the critiques of Bookchin of the 1990s: it offers an analysis of Bookchin and his work without paying sufficient attention to his theoretical and practical programme. Instead, Morse relies on the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin that render his revolutionary project a failure (p.3). Based on the three years he spent studying and working in close association with Bookchin (1989-92)–which began after he ‘self-consciously apprenticed’ himself to Bookchin and became ‘one of his core disciples’ (p.5)–Morse offers to ‘illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of his [Bookchin's] particular approach to revolutionary organising’ (p.6).

He begins by outlining ‘three of the cardinal tenets of membership of Bookchin’s core circle’ (p.10). These were: an emphasis on education, as a result of which, Morse tells us, he received an unparalleled education under Bookchin (p.10, fn.13); the unique framing of politics as a moral activity, which ‘fostered an unusually strong commitment to honesty, accountability, and the principled discussion of ideas’ (p.12); and a commitment to a ‘boldness’ of political engagement, fostering the notion of a small group of people being able to change the world if willing to take risks (p.14). For Morse, however, these cardinal tenets also presented ‘significant problems’ (p.18).

In terms of the emphasis on education, Morse argues that the centrality of Bookchin as the educator, and the principle focus on his thought, ‘tended to close us off from insights that other traditions and thinkers had to offer’ (p.18). His followers believed that Bookchin had found the principles of social development that could replace capitalism and avert ecological disaster, and therefore ‘Bookchin’s ideas played a quasi-religious role for us and he became something of a prophet’ (p.18). From this, since they believed that ‘Bookchin advanced the truth, other theorists advanced deceptions by default’ (p.18, emphasis in original). Moreover, Bookchin ‘often dissuaded us from exploring other writers who–he seemed to fear–might threaten his hold on us’ (p.19).

However, this claim of educational ‘closure’ around Bookchin jars with Morse’s own description of the extent and scope of that education. Only a few pages earlier, Morse describes how there were regular lectures from Bookchin on his own work but how it was also possible to ‘participate in weekly study groups on Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities, and other weighty topics and theorists’ (pp.11-12). Indeed, ‘there were so many study groups, of such high quality, that people used to say that we had started an underground university’ (p.12). Many of these groups were student led, but Bookchin had encouraged them directly: he counselled his students ‘not only to explore key revolutionary thinkers and events, but also to acquaint ourselves with major moments in the Western tradition’, in order to ‘assimilate the best aspects of this legacy into our movement’ (pp.10-11). Moreover, he tells us that ‘the extraordinary breadth of historical and theoretical references in his [Bookchin's] work seemed to show this was possible’, and proved to Morse that ‘no idea was too abstract or event too remote to be incorporated into our transformative project’ (p.11).

Quite how a thinker who encouraged such an education could then close his students off from other insights is left unclear. One can only assume here that Morse took his self-appointed role as a Bookchin ‘disciple’ all too literally, and that this ‘closing-off ‘ was a self-imposed one. The fact that Bookchin dissuaded his students from other writers or schools of thought does not automatically translate as an attempt to maintain a hold over his students. Rather, it represents the messy business of a democratic politics, and the freedom of opinion therein.

Later, Morse himself openly concedes there is no evidence for this kind of intellectual domineering in Bookchin, but does so only to launch an even more problematic criticism: ‘Although I never saw Bookchin demand obsequiousness’, Morse states, ‘he encouraged it indirectly’, as ‘he constantly spoke of his ill-health and implied that his death was imminent’ (p.21). For Morse, Bookchin’s discussions of his own mortality are all the more problematic as Bookchin did this ‘when I first met him in 1989, almost two decades before his actual death’ (p.21). The insinuation here of some kind of mortal deception by Bookchin is compounded by Morse when he tells us, rather unscientifically, that ‘he has heard accounts of similar behaviour twenty years before that’, and that this created a ‘tragic aura’ around Bookchin that fostered a feeling in those around him ‘that we should treasure every moment with him’ (p.21).

In terms of what an essay on the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin’s revolutionary project should contain, we surely know that it should not be this kind of personal recollection and gossipy insinuation. Moreover, and although it is regrettable that one has to enter into this personal discussion, it should be noted in the name of fairness that Bookchin turned 70 in the period that Morse knew him (in 1991) and was in ill-health: he was three years away from his first heart attack and was increasingly crippled by osteoarthritis. Is it so surprising that a man of 70 would talk of his declining health, and even his death? And why should this present a problem? Again, this tells us less about Bookchin and his programme and more about Morse: to be lulled into obsequiousness by a septuagenarian discussing his health and death speaks more of weaknesses of the listener than those of the speaker.

Next, Morse argues that the second cardinal tenet, Bookchin’s framing of politics as a moral activity, led to ‘an obsession with defending his views against threats’ (a causal link he does not explain) which led to Bookchin’s ‘endless stream of polemics’ (again, unexplained) (p.21; p.22). This ‘tendency for defensiveness’ also manifested itself in Bookchin constantly ‘inventing new names for his views’–his move from social ecology to radical social ecology, anarchism to social anarchism, and libertarian municipalism to communalism (p.22). That Bookchin changed the names of different aspects of his thought, that he was a strident polemicist is clear; that these things stem from defensiveness is not. As noted already in this review, this more accurately reflects the commitment to the dialectical development of radical thought throughout Bookchin’s career. However, Morse does not see the dialectic in Bookchin, and views Bookchin’s ultimate rejection of anarchism and his move toward communalism as ‘bitter, doctrinal carping’ (p.24).

For Morse, instead of ‘carping’, what Bookchin should have actually been doing was enjoying the ‘triumphant moment’ that the re-emergence of anarchism within the anti-capitalist movement represented, ‘given that he had done more than any other thinker to redeem the anarchist vision in the second half of the twentieth century’ (pp.23-4). It does not occur to Morse to ask: why would Bookchin forego such a triumphant moment? Why would he forego the enjoyment of seeing his work justified, of sitting back and resting on his laurels? Why not take the path of least resistance in what was clearly the autumn of his life? Again, the answers to these questions are to be found in Bookchin’s work itself, and not in the caricature that Morse falls back onto here.

Finally, the third cardinal tenet–Bookchin’s commitment to the notion ‘that a small group of people can change the world’–led for Morse to Bookchin’s ‘disregard of the material conditions of social change’ (p.18). Despite the fact that Bookchin’s commitment to the creation of an educated intelligentsia to lead social change stems from a detailed regard for the extent to which present material conditions preclude social change (as discussed above), Morse uses this claim to launch his most specious accusation yet: that Bookchin’s dismissal of the material conditions for revolutionary change was most strikingly represented by his ‘silence on white supremacy and racism, which he never addressed in all but the most cursory fashion’ (p.24).

Further, Morse then goes on to tell us that he remembers ‘marvelling at how strange it was that Bookchin had settled in Vermont, the whitest state in America’ and how the organisations he built ‘were always overwhelmingly white’ (p.24). Here, the same pattern that Morse uses in his earlier insinuation repeats itself, as he tells us that ‘though I never personally witnessed what I recognised as an obvious act of prejudice, it was clear to me that Bookchin lived in a bubble’ (p.24)–i.e., just as in the case of Bookchin’s demanding of obsequiousness, prejudice is insinuated by noting its very absence.

In terms of the claim that Bookchin was ‘silent’ on race, then the whole of Bookchin’s writings on hierarchy and domination set themselves to a critique of these concepts in their entirety, including the hierarchy and domination that exists between ethnic groups. To argue for the dissolution of hierarchy as such in society is to argue for the end of white supremacy. It is ridiculous to suggest that Bookchin was silent on this issue. The instances where Bookchin discusses these hierarchies specifically are there in his work, and too numerous to list here, but we should remind ourselves in passing of his vociferous (and voluminous) late-1980s writings against those in the ecology movement who argued that population growth was the cause of the ecological crisis, writings which endlessly pointed out the implicit racism of such a position. This is to leave aside Bookchin’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

In terms of the criticism of Bookchin’s residency in Vermont, then, to attempt to draw any conclusions from the question of where a person in their fifties (as Bookchin was when he moved to Vermont, gradually, throughout 1970s)–who had lived in the US Northeast his entire life, who had a network of friends, family, political and work commitments in the region–’chose’ to live shows a complete disregard for the material conditions of social reality, not just social change; but again, on Morse’s part, not Bookchin’s. Moreover, it also overlooks one of the key political motivations for moving to Vermont in the first place: the New England town meeting tradition, which Bookchin would consistently write of (see Bookchin 1995, for example), and to which he hoped he could tap into in the construction of his new politics.

Again here, and as with the rest of Morse’s essay, an explanation of the problems he raises can be found in Bookchin’s work, in an examination of his theoretical foundations and their conclusions for radical action: there is a coherence of thought and practice in Bookchin, wherein his political programme, whether one agrees with him or not, is based upon his principles. It is here where we can, and should, put Bookchin to the test, through a detailed examination of these principles and the practice they necessitate. Unfortunately, Morse does not offer this here but rather falls back into the patterns of caricature that surrounded Bookchin in the 1990s.

The author would like to thank Janet Biehl for providing additional information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bookchin, M (1995), From Urbanisation to Cities: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship, 2nd edn., New York and London, Cassell.

ANDY PRICE
Department of Politics & Philosophy Manchester Metropolitan University

Social Ecology and Communalism
Murray Bookchin
AK Press, Edinburgh 2007
ISBN: 978-1904869499, 118 pages

Being a Bookchinite
Chuck Morse
Chuck Morse, New York 2007
27pp. (Also due to appear in the Spring 2008 issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory.)

This article will appear in the spring, 2008 issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, which is likely to be published in March. For more information, visit the Institute for Anarchist Study’s website.

This article in a printable format / This article in PDF format

* * * * *

When Murray Bookchin died on July 30 last year, one of the most ambitious and compelling figures of the anti-authoritarian left passed.

He was an author, educator, and activist, although above all he was a revolutionary who gave his life to a single, colossal task: devising a revolutionary project that could heal the wounds within humanity and the split between it and the natural world. He tried to outline the theoretical principles of this endeavor; to build organizations capable of transforming the world around those principles; and to forge a cadre with the wisdom necessary to fight for them while enduring the inevitable ups and downs of political life. He had much in common with other sect builders of the socialist left—such as Max Shachtman, Josef Weber, and Raya Dunayevskaya, for example—who, in their respective times and latitudes, also attempted to salvage the revolutionary enterprise from the disaster that was Russian Communism and the many calamities of the twentieth century.(1)

Was Bookchin successful?

No, he was not. He did not create a new revolutionary doctrine that was adequate to his aims or one, for instance, that possessed the transformative force of Marxism. His work simply lacks the coherence and subtlety necessary to register on that scale. His ideas have also not captured the imagination of sizable numbers of people; they are not part of the debate on the left; they have never had an influence among serious academics; and those who wholeheartedly embrace his views today are few indeed. His theoretical legacy sits on the margins of intellectual life.

His attempt to construct the organizational framework for a renewed revolutionary movement met a similar fate: not one of the organizations or periodicals that he initiated or co-initiated survives. The Institute for Social Ecology, which he co-created in 1974 to propagate his views, fell apart in 2005 after years of fiscal crisis and declining enrollment. The Left Green Network, which he co-founded in 1989 to advance his anti-statist, anti-capitalist convictions within the Greens, dissipated in 1991. The Anarchos group, which he led in the 1960s, disbanded more than a generation ago. Likewise, none of the magazines or newsletters that he founded, co-founded, or inspired continue to publish (Anarchos, Comment, Green Perspectives, Left Green Perspectives, Left Green Notes, and Harbinger among others).

His effort to build a cadre capable of instituting his views achieved the same results. Since the 1960s, if not earlier, Bookchin surrounded himself with small groups of disciples and protégés, whose intellectual and political abilities he tried to cultivate. Each of these groups disintegrated at one moment or another and all but a handful of their individual members distanced themselves from him politically. He had scant supporters at the time of his death.

Does my harsh assessment—in which I judge Bookchin according to the standards that he set for himself—capture the breadth of his achievement as an agent for social change? No, it does not. Though he never became the revolutionary Prometheus that he aspired to become, he did leave a significant—albeit more modest and complicated—patrimony. This is undoubtedly true for those who participated in his attempt to build a revolutionary sect.(2) For example, I spent years in close association with Bookchin and continue to be challenged and inspired by the experience. It was thrilling, disappointing, and—above all—dramatically expanded my idea of what it means to be a radical.

I first met Murray at the Institute for Social Ecology’s “Ecology and Society” program in the summer of 1989, where I attended two of his lecture classes. This prompted me to move to his adopted home of Burlington, Vermont six months later to work with him more closely. At the time, he was energetically building his revolutionary nucleus and encouraged young people from around the country to join him. There were roughly two dozen individuals engaged in the undertaking when I arrived. Most were in their early twenties and, as a whole, highly idealistic, dedicated, and thoughtful. The majority had turned to Bookchin after having had frustrating experiences with other tendencies on the left.

I self-consciously apprenticed myself to him and quickly became one of his core disciples. I was his teaching assistant at the Institute for Social Ecology in the summer of 1990, a member of the editorial collective of his Left Green Perspectives for a year, and served as the Left Green Network’s “Clearinghouse Coordinator” with Bookchin’s companion Janet Biehl between 1990 and 1991. I also belonged to the Burlington Greens, the activist group that he was leading when I first came to the city, and participated in the classes on history and philosophy that he was giving in his home at the time. In addition, I spent countless hours in private or semi-private discussions with him. He guided me, educated me, and encouraged me, and I tried to support and commiserate with him as well as I could. Our association waned after I left Vermont in 1992, although we maintained friendly contact until his death.

I will explore my experience in Bookchin’s inner circle in this essay. My goal is to illustrate some of the strengths and weaknesses of his particular approach to revolutionary organizing and also to show how he could inspire a project that—while it might have seemed cultish and exaggerated to those on the outside—was tremendously compelling for a small group of well-meaning, committed, and intelligent young people who were searching for an alternative.

* * *

Bookchin’s project rested upon a sweeping narrative of natural evolution and humanity’s role within it. Life, in his view, has the tendency to shape itself into increasingly differentiated and self-directed forms, as evidenced, for example, by the growth of organic life from simple matter. The emergence of humanity is a qualitative transformation in the history of life, given that we alone have the capacity to reason and thus the ability to self-consciously foster the evolutionary tendencies that made our existence possible. In his words, we are potentially “nature rendered self-conscious.”(3)

To honor our evolutionary heritage, we must create a society whose metabolism with the natural world is ecologically sound and whose internal relationships are democratic and decentralized. It is solely these social forms that possess the wholeness and freedom that life requires.

According to Bookchin, we approximated this in our early history while living in what he called “organic societies.” Then, humans had relatively egalitarian cultural practices and a sympathetic, if uninformed, relationship to nature. “Let us frankly acknowledge,” Bookchin wrote, “that organic societies spontaneously evolved values that we rarely can improve.”(4)

However, instead of building upon this early achievement, we made a tragic departure from our evolutionary itinerary. “[I]n the intermediate zone between first [non-human] nature and second [human]. . . social evolution began to assume a highly aberrant form. The effort of organic societies like bands and tribes to elaborate nonhierarchical, egalitarian social forms was arrested. . . . social evolution was divested from the realization and fulfillment of a cooperative society into a direction that yielded hierarchical, class-oriented, and Statist institutions.”(5) In lieu of becoming “nature rendered self-conscious” and raising “evolution to a level of self reflexivity that has always been latent in the very emergence of the natural world,”(6) humans created an irrational society that undermines its own cultural accomplishments, imposes needless miseries on vast swaths of the population, and threatens the very survival of the ecosystem. Relationships—within society and between society and nature—that should have been complementary became and remain antagonistic. The world is in crisis(7) as a result, which is “very much a crisis in the emergence of society out of biology, [and] the contradictions (the rise of hierarchy, domination, patriarchy, classes, and the State) that unfolded, with this development.”(8)

Indeed, we will remain basically inhuman until we overcome this impasse. “In a very real sense, then, we are still unfinished as human beings,” Bookchin asserted, “because we have not as yet fulfilled our potentiality for cooperation, understanding, and rational behavior.”(9) “Human beings are too intelligent not to live in a rational society, not to live with institutions formed by reason . . . . In so far as they do not, human beings remain dangerously wayward and unformed creatures.”(10)

The task, then, for those faithful to life’s evolutionary mission is to facilitate a massive change in human affairs. “After some ten millennia of a very ambiguous social evolution, we must reenter natural evolution,” to accomplish “no less a humanization of nature than a naturalization of humanity”(11) in which “an emancipated humanity will become the voice, indeed the expression, of a natural evolution rendered self-conscious, caring, and sympathetic to the pain, suffering, and incoherent aspects of an evolution left to its own, often wayward, unfolding. Nature, due to human rational intervention, will thence acquire the intentionality, power of developing more complex life-forms, and capacity to differentiate itself.”(12) Humanity will serve and also complete its own heritage by creating an environmentally sound society, by building directly democratic institutions that enable all to participate in determining the direction of social life, and by replacing capitalism with a cooperative economy structured around moral—not market—imperatives.

Dictates
It was this macro-historical perspective that we absorbed from Bookchin’s works and accepted as the framework for our activities when we relocated to Burlington to collaborate with him. His outlook was exhilarating, because it placed our activism on an epochal plane, but it also implied significant responsibilities, too, if we were to become political actors capable of accomplishing the world historical transformation that he envisioned. I will outline three of the cardinal tenets of membership in Bookchin’s core circle: education, the primacy of morality, and boldness.

First of all, we had to educate ourselves.(13) Murray urged us to develop a basic familiarity with the history of revolutionary movements and the critical tradition in ideas. We were expected to study his voluminous writings, major thinkers such as Marx and Hegel, and lesser-known authors that he deemed important (Hans Jonas, Lewis Mumford, and others). Comprehending his work and the associated theorists required greater intellectual exertion than had ever been demanded of me before—his vocabulary alone was a challenge—but my peers and I soldiered through because we believed that something very important was at stake. He did his best to encourage us and typically gave lengthy responses to the queries about our readings that we brought him during breaks in meetings or in private exchanges. In fact, it was difficult for him to resist launching into extended disquisitions on the texts at hand, so much so that it became sort of a game among us to see who could ask the question that would spark the longest monologue.

Murray counseled us not only to explore key revolutionary thinkers and events, but also to acquaint ourselves with major moments in the western tradition, from the ancient Greeks to the present. He believed that we could and should assimilate the best aspects of this legacy into our movement. The extraordinary breadth of historical and theoretical references in his work seemed to show that this was possible, as did his equally wide-ranging teaching. Indeed, shortly before I arrived, he had begun giving two, bi-weekly lecture classes in his living room: one, the “Politics of Cosmology,” examined the history of philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to contemporary scholars; the other, “The Third Revolution,” considered the fate of revolutionary movements from the Middle Ages to the Spanish Civil War (and was the basis for his four volume book by the same name). No idea was too abstract or event too remote to be incorporated into our transformative project.

Bookchin urged us to make study a political priority as well. He often reminisced about the dedication to education among revolutionary workers before WWII. I remember an anecdote that he once shared with me about a class on Marx’s Capital that he attended while a member of a Communist youth group: the students and teacher played a game in which the youngsters cited a random passage from Marx’s classic tome and the instructor’s challenge was to recall its precise location in the text. He succeeded invariably, to the glee and amazement of the youth. This vignette and others like it helped us imagine what a serious culture of study beyond the academy might look like and to believe that we too could create one. Indeed, under his influence, I and others studied on our own, attended his lecture classes, and formed an extensive network of study groups. For a time, it was possible to participate in weekly study groups on Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities, as well as other weighty topics and theorists; there were so many study groups, and they were of such high quality, that people used to say that we had started an underground university.

Of course, the critical insights that we developed through study would wither if locked in the confines of a library or a discussion circle. As Marx said, the point was to change the world, not just interpret it.

For Bookchin, politics was fundamentally an ethical activity. Although it is popularly understood as a ritualistic contest for power among elites and classical socialists define it as an epiphenomenal expression of underlying class contradictions, Bookchin conceived of politics as the framework through which humans mediate their relationships with one another and, as such, it is essentially ethical and linked to the state only incidentally. These views reflected his ecological perspective (which is inherently relational), but also the influence of pre-modern thinkers such as Aristotle as well as the New Left’s moralism.(14)

Framing our activity in highly ethical terms fostered an unusually strong commitment to honesty, accountability, and the principled discussion of ideas among us. It also encouraged a deep eagerness to sacrifice for the cause, which is one of the reasons why our small group was so productive. Most our work took place through the Greens, which Murray then regarded as the movement most likely to embrace his social and ecological vision. We were all active in the Burlington Greens, through which we attempted to bring a radically democratic and environmental perspective to local politics. As members of this group, we published newsletters, sponsored public forums, and fielded candidates for local, municipal office.(15) We were also active in the Left Green Network, which was a North American organization dedicated to promoting an anti-statist, anti-capitalist perspective in the environmental movement and an ecological perspective in the broader revolutionary left. On behalf of this organization, we held regional and national conferences, released position papers, and published a magazine (Left Green Notes). Finally, we were involved in building an international left Green tendency. This took place through Murray’s publication (Left Green Perspectives) and also by cultivating comradely relationships with individual left Green militants around the world (we were particularly close to Jutta Ditfurth, a leader of the leftwing—i.e., “fundi”—faction of the German Greens).

This ethical perspective instilled great confidence in us and made our denunciation of capitalism and the state particularly resolute. Unlike Marxists, we did not to regard capitalism as a necessary step in the long march toward human freedom but rather as a travesty to be condemned for reducing everything in its path to the commodity nexus. Likewise, our position on the state was categorical: it was not an instrument that could be harnessed to liberatory ends but rather an institution that exists only to the extent that genuine democracy does not.

Bookchin’s moral views also gave us a way to respond to the left’s historic inability to create a just, egalitarian society. Though one can cast the revolutionary tradition as a legacy of unmitigated failure, this was not—we believed—a consequence of an inherent deficiency in the project but rather a lack of moral probity on the part of its leading protagonists. Communists did not have enough faith in human creativity to prevent their movement from becoming a brutal bureaucratic machine; the classical anarchists lacked the courage to dispense with their naïve dedication to popular spontaneity; and New Left militants had been too weak to resist the many enticements that they encountered on their “long march through the institutions.” The revolutionary cause lives on—we felt—for the audacious few willing to embrace it in its fullness.

The third principle of militancy that Murray attempted to impart to us was the need for boldness. He convinced us that small groups of people can change the world if they are willing to take risks and swim against the tide of history. His own biography was full of examples of how fruitful this can be. He innovated theoretically, achieved some renown as an author, and managed to support himself through his intellectual endeavors; all because he had had the temerity to buck convention. I recall a small, framed poster that hung on the wall near his bed. There were four or five paragraphs of text under large black letters demanding “Arms for Hungary!” He had penned these words in 1956 in support of the rebels who had risen up against Communist rule in their country.(16) I regarded this flyer as a reminder—and his attempt to remind himself—of the virtues of a life lived in defiance of prevailing orthodoxies (leftwing or otherwise).

Murray urged us to make ourselves into revolutionary intellectuals or, to use his preferred word, the “intelligentsia.” He disdained salaried, academic thinkers as well as party bureaucrats. He despised the way that political parties cultivate servility and dogmatism in their ranks (for a time, he saw the Communist Party as one of the worst offenders, which he believed had created a “police mentality” among its members(17). He also spurned the innocuous radicalism of academic dissidents, who “find their public arena in the classroom and who are operating according to a syllabus.”(18) He admired figures like Denis Diderot, and the “men and women who created the intellectual ferment that gave rise to the pamphlets and the literature that finally did so much to nourish the great French Revolution of 1789 to 1795;”(19) the oppositional thinkers in pre-revolutionary Russia who later became Stalin’s victims; or John Dewey and Charles Beard in the United States. However, the “avatar” of this social type for Bookchin was Leon Trotsky, “a totally mobilized personality who dared to challenge an entire empire until a pickax was buried in his skull” by one of Stalin’s assassins.(20) In fact, Murray’s own life seemed to embody such dedicated, militant engagement: all of his written work and oratory were directed to social movements, not the university.(21) “Today,” he declared at an assembly of the Youth Greens, “we are faced with the task of developing an intelligentsia, not a new body of intellectuals.”(22)

Bookchin lauded the ability of a revolutionary vanguard to take the initiative and transform social affairs, particularly toward the end of his life, when Lenin became a favorite example of his and a constant source of discussion. I have a vivid memory of the time that he recounted the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power for me while sitting on a plastic chair in his living room one winter afternoon. He described Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky as a dissolute, indecisive man who impotently paced his office while the world around him turned upside down, strangely twisting his hand behind his back as he circled the room. Lenin, who was full of determination (of course) and unburdened by strange physical ticks (of course), “grabbled the hands of time,” said Murray, “and pushed history forward” when he took power.

Bookchin often regaled us with stories like these, which seemed to transport us from Burlington, Vermont—an insipid college town if there ever was one—directly into the revolutionary battlefields of yore. They also inspired us to believe that we too could become what he sometimes called an “educational vanguard,” which would “keep the terrible pathologies of our day under control, at the very least, and abolish them at the very most.”(23)

This voluntarism was consistent with his broader view of historical development. For Bookchin, it is our ideas and values—not society’s economic base—that determine the course of events (in the “final instance”). He wove this principle into all of his historical writings, whether he was examining revolutionary movements or broader topics in the history of civilization. For example, consider the following discussion of the rise of capitalism in The Third Revolution: “If cultural factors were merely reflexes of economic ones, capitalism would have emerged at almost any time in the past, as far back as antiquity. Capitalists in sizable numbers lived in ancient Greece and Rome as well as many parts of medieval Europe, and they were no less acquisitive or enterprising in their pursuit of wealth than our own bourgeoisie. But what prevented them from taking a commanding position in social life—assuming that they tried to do so—was precisely a host of cultural factors that favored the ownership of land over capital, denigrated material accumulation, and strongly emphasized social status in the form of noble titles rather than the ownership of fungible property.”(24) To invert one of Marx’s more incisive phrases, it is not being that determines consciousness, but consciousness that determines being.

Bookchin’s conception of revolutionary activism was intoxicating. If we followed his lead, we believed that we would become the rightful heirs of the revolutionary tradition in particular and the western tradition in general and able to rectify the wrong committed when humanity took off down its “aberrant” path so many millennia ago. History, we thought, was at a crossroads and we, intrepid, high-minded militants, would soon determine its direction. The days were fast approaching in which we would settle “the fate of history” after fighting “mimetic combat on the plains of destiny,” to cite Daniel Bell’s apposite discussion of sectarianism in Marxian Socialism in the United States.(25)

Dilemmas
Of course, there were significant problems in Bookchin’s attempt to build a cadre. These left a strong impression upon me and illustrated some of the limitations of his ideal of revolutionism. I will outline the most salient difficulties below: they were closure, defensiveness, and a disregard for the material conditions of social change.

But, to contextualize, Bookchin’s exalted position within our milieu was not a result of his vanity or narcissism but rather two basic assumptions that he and all his followers shared. First, we believed that he had discovered principles of social development that, if applied to the world, would eliminate hierarchy and reconcile humanity with nature. Second, we held that capitalism would destroy the ecosystem if we did not apply his principles. In other words, we felt that we not only should embrace his teachings in order to build a good society but also had to do so if we wanted to prevent an ecological apocalypse. Accordingly, Bookchin’s ideas played a quasi-religious role for us and he became something of a prophet.

As one might expect, his centrality tended to close us off from insights that other traditions and thinkers had to offer: since Bookchin advanced the truth, other theorists advanced deceptions by definition. There was a tension between this closure and Bookchin’s insistence that we educate ourselves. Indeed, this strain grew increasingly acute as we worked our way through the many important texts that he recommended to us and became eager to confront contemporary authors. I remember that he often dissuaded us from exploring writers who—he seemed to fear—might threaten his hold upon us. He regularly did so by ridiculing or otherwise denigrating them personally (I recall that this was especially true in his comments about Foucault and Adorno). Other times, he would simply ask in exasperation, “What could you possibly find in their work?”

This hermeticism also encouraged us to develop a political vocabulary and style so unique that it was difficult to communicate with and learn from other activists. For example, even at the height of Bookchin’s influence, few would have understood what we were saying if we articulated ourselves in his catch phrases alone (consider: “an ‘intelligentsia’ should study ‘organic societies’ if it wants to ‘render nature self-conscious’).(26)

Likewise, Bookchin’s elevated stature nurtured a highly undemocratic political among us that compromised our ability to elicit insights from within our own circles. Slavishness was quite common. For example, the local Green group active at the time of my arrival in Burlington revolved almost entirely around Murray and he assumed a near oracle-like posture during the classes that he gave on history and philosophy. In those classes, he simply read from manuscripts that he was preparing, interrupting himself only for occasional digressions (typically to polemicize against another thinker). We sat around him in the room, furiously taking notes. We submitted no papers and took no exams: our job was solely to absorb his insights.

This slavishness had its counterpart in equally corrosive outbursts thrown by disillusioned onetime followers or activists who resented Murray’s status. As for the latter, hecklers tried to disrupt Murray’s classes every summer at the Institute for Social Ecology and were a concern whenever he spoke publically. With respect to the former, John Clark was the most extreme example. For a time, Clark revered Bookchin as the “foremost contemporary anarchist theorist,”(27) celebrated his “magnificent contribution,”(28) and even edited an entire volume in his honor.(29) However, only some years after the publication of his Bookchin festschrift, Clark began publishing a steady stream of articles attacking him, apparently because Clark felt that Murray had snubbed him. He published numerous, often pathetic anti-Bookchin diatribes (such as “Confession to Comrade Murray Bookchin, Chairman and General Secretary of the Social Ecologist Party and Founder of Dialectical Naturalism (DIANAT) by “C””). Clark now casts Bookchin as a “divisive, debilitating force” and “an obstacle.”(30)

Although I never saw Bookchin demand obsequiousness, he encouraged it indirectly. For instance, he constantly spoke about his ill health and implied that his death was imminent. He did this when I first met him in 1989, nearly two decades before he actually died, and I have heard accounts of similar behavior twenty years before that. These remarks created a tragic aura around him and the feeling that we should treasure every moment with him.

The corollary of his ethical conception of politics was an obsession with defending his views against threats. Indeed, Bookchin probably spent more time battling competing thinkers and tendencies on the left and in the environmental movement than actually elaborating his own ideas.

For example, he authored what seemed to be an endless number of polemics.(31) His earliest significant polemic was “Listen, Marxist!”, which he published around the time that he released several foundational essays (“Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” and “Post-Scarcity Anarchism,” specifically). There were also his intra-environmental movement polemics against “deep ecologists” and factions within the Greens (e.g., Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman and Which Way for the Ecology Movement?); his major anarchist movement polemic, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm; and his sweeping, catch all polemic, Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Anti-humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism.(32) Bookchin was an extremely talented polemicist—in fact, he did some of his best writing in this context—but he was too harsh at times. Beat poet Gary Snyder once complained to the Los Angeles Times that Murray “writes like a Stalinist thug.”(33)

Another strategy was by breaking with supporters whom he found dubious for one reason or another. I experienced this within months of my arrival in Burlington, when he left the local Green group that he had founded, inspired, and led. The issue that caused the divide was extremely minor: during a campaign for local city office, one of our candidates conspired with the candidate from the Democratic Party to go easy on one another during a debate but to make things hard for the candidate from the Progressives (our leftwing rival). This was a typical political machination, but on a negligible scale: no more than a few dozen people paid attention to those debates at the most. However, for Murray, this was an outrageous transgression of our group’s moral rectitude. The evil seed of opportunism had been sown among us! I still remember the fierce arguments that erupted in the Bookchin home when our group met to try to resolve the matter: accusations were made, people shouted, and a table was even flipped over. It seemed as though the world was coming to an end. Shortly afterwards, Murray, Janet, and their closest ally, Gary Sisco, separated, while the rest of us went on to form a new group. At the time, I admired Murray’s willingness to make even small matters a question of principle, but it now strikes me as absurd that he would rupture a group that he had spent years building over such a trifling problem, especially when it could have been addressed in so many other ways.

Another tactic was to distinguish himself from allies that he found problematic by inventing new names for his views: at one point, he was no longer a Green but rather a Left Green; for a time; he advanced what he called radical social ecology, not just social ecology; at a certain moment, he abandoned the term “libertarian municipalism” for “communalism;” at another he decided that he had to forsake anarchism for “social anarchism” (and later give up on anarchism altogether).

He initiated these splits no matter what the political cost or how isolated they left him.(34) For example, Murray, Janet, and Gary quit the Left Green Network shortly after leaving our local Green group. They cited the breakup of our local, tendencies toward party formation within the Greens nationally, and Murray’s declining health as reasons for their withdrawal.(35) These were all plausible, but they stepped down precisely when the Network was growing from a passive, paper-based caucus into a real organization driven by Bookchin’s followers and inspired by his views. Perhaps the most flagrant instance of this occurred when Murray began denouncing anarchism at the height of the anti-globalization movement. This was the first time in decades that anarchism had been a presence in public life and it should have been a triumphal moment for him, given that he had done more than any other thinker to redeem the anarchist vision in the second half of the twentieth century. And, yet, instead of embracing the occasion, he retreated into bitter, doctrinal carping.

Finally, his conviction that a small group of individuals can transform history implied the classic problem associated with voluntarism: dismissal of the material conditions of social change.

This was manifest in many ways, but the most striking for me was Bookchin’s silence on white supremacy and racism, which he never addressed in any but the most cursory fashion. His inattention to the topic meant that he was oblivious to one of the most important factors in the constitution of the world that he sought to change and assured that his work would never inspire a large section of the public.

I recall marveling at how strange it was that Bookchin had settled in Vermont, the whitest state in America, and also that the organizations that he built were always overwhelmingly white (between 90 and 100 percent) and his cadre exclusively so. Though I never personally witnessed what I recognized as an obvious act of prejudice, it was clear to me that Bookchin lived in a bubble. What I did not grasp at the time was that Bookchin’s voluntarism sanctioned his blindness: if social change is a question of will alone, then there is scarce reason to understand—much less wrestle with politically—the social conditions experienced by the broader population. The subjective preparation of the revolutionary elite is the only task that truly matters.

Dispersal and Resonance
Revolutionary groups aim to transform society and, by doing so, undermine the conditions that make them necessary: after all, they would have no reason to exist once they “cross over to the other shore,” to take a phrase from Trotsky’s comments on sectarianism.(36) That said, it is more common for such groups to transform their members—not society—in such a way that erodes the conditions of their own existence.

This was certainly the case with Bookchin’s cadre. All the young people who relocated to Burlington to work with him left the city between 1991 and 1992. A sizable group went to Germany to learn the language and study continental philosophy (Adorno, in particular). Others, including myself, went to New York City to enroll in the New School for Social Research’s graduate program in philosophy. Some just disappeared. This dispersal marked the end of the last time that Bookchin earnestly attempted to build up a core group to institute his views.

Murray was a passionate, intelligent, difficult, needy, charismatic, arrogant, funny, and generous man: in other words, he was contradictory, like all of us. I have tried to capture some of the conflicted elements of his being and lifework in this essay. Though my perspective is unflattering at times, I believe that such a critical view has to be part of any serious appraisal of his legacy. Revolutionary movements too often assume a conservative posture toward their own history.

I have mixed feelings as I reflect upon my years with Bookchin. Although I was only in my early twenties at the time, I find it extraordinary to think that I understood myself in the terms provided by his grandiose narrative of historical development. I no longer do so, and I suppose that every generation has the right to its own delusions.(37)

But the events recounted above are not simply another story of youthful hubris and disenchantment. For my sake, the two and a half years that I spent in Bookchin’s nucleus left a lasting and fundamentally positive imprint upon me, despite the conflicts and contradictions. Most importantly, they allowed me to briefly imagine that my life had merged with larger historical tendencies, which was electrifying and stimulated revolutionary appetites in me that have yet to subside. It also fostered an enduring love of learning and a more nuanced sense of my capacity as a political actor. I suspect that many of my peers would make similar claims.

There will never be another Bookchin sect and it is unlikely that there will ever be another anarchist sect of any sort. The theoretical premises necessary for such a formation—the idea of a universal history, of primary and secondary contradictions, etc—have not fared well in the culture at large. Likewise, oppositional movements now have too much experience with democracy to tolerate a group like the one that Bookchin created (and we should not forget that he bears some responsibility for this maturation).

In my view, the problems that I have described in this essay are not an indictment of the revolutionary project that Bookchin embraced, but merely the particular way in which he formulated it. Though he had not solved humanity’s age old problems or elaborated a doctrine comparable to Marxism, that does not prove that the undertaking to which he gave his life is any less valuable or that it is impossible. It simply shows that it is very, very difficult.

Although Murray was a militant of an entirely different caliber, some comments that Engels made at Marx’s funereal are applicable to him. He was, Engels said of Marx, “before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being . . . Fighting was his element.”

The same could be said of Bookchin, although that quotation should be followed by one from William Morris’s The Dream of John Ball, which Murray used to open The Ecology of Freedom: “I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.”

Murray Bookchin, RIP.

* * * * *

I am grateful to Paul Glavin, Walter Hergt, Matt Hern, Yvonne Liu, Joe Lowndes, and Mark Lance for their helpful comments on various drafts of this essay.

ENDNOTES

1. Bookchin was a member of Shachtman’s Socialist Workers Party and Josef Weber’s Movement for a Democracy of Content. For an excellent to discussion of the degree which Weber’s views prefigured many of Bookchin’s later contributions, see: Marcel van der Linden, “The Prehistory of Post-Scarcity Anarchism: Josef Weber and the Movement for a Democracy of Content (1947-1964),” Anarchist Studies, 9 (2001), 127-145. For a consideration of Max Shachtman, see Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 35-76 and Peter Drucker, Max Shachtman and His Left: A Socialist’s Odyssey Through the “American Century” (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994).

2. Although Bookchin never used the word “sect” to describe his efforts and surely would have rejected it, it is applicable nonetheless. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary describes a sect as “a separate group adhering to a distinctive doctrine or way of thinking or to a particular leader . . . . a school of philosophy or of philosophic opinion . . . . a group holding similar political, economic, or other views.” Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, s.v. “Sect.”

3. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 1st Edition, (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1990), 45.

4. Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: the Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Chesire Books, 1982), 319.

5. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 178. The same passage also exists in Murray Bookchin, “Ecologizing the dialectic,” in John Clark, Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology, A Celebration of the Work of Murray Bookchin (London: Green Print, 1990), 211.

6. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 1st edition, 182-183.

7. Bookchin used the word “crisis” throughout his writings, including in the title of many of his essays and also a book (The Modern Crisis). Commenting on the medical roots of the term’s usage in social theory, Seyla Benhabib notes that “‘crisis’ designates a stage in the development of a disease that is a turning point and during which the decisive diagnosis concerning the healing or worsening of the patient is reached”. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: a study of the foundations of critical theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 20.

8. Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 1st edition, 163-164.

9. Bookchin, Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Anti-humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism (London: Cassell, 1995), 235.

10. Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, 2nd ed., (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1996), 160.

11. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 315.

12. Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 202-203.

13. Of course, Bookchin did not intend for us to get an education in the conventional sense of the term. In fact, I enrolled in Goddard College’s “off campus” program in order to work with him, which meant, in essence, forsaking a college education. Goddard’s program did not require its students to attend classes, to follow a specific curriculum, or, it seemed, to do anything at all. I welcomed this, because it enabled me to live in Burlington and devote myself to movement activities exclusively. I do not regret the choice. I suspect that I learned more from Bookchin than I ever would have in a college or university. And how could traditional academic life compete against active participation in a milieu dedicated to transforming the world?

14. For example, consider Aristotle’s statement: “The study of ethics may not improperly be termed a study of politics.” (Rhetoric, Book I, c. II, #7).

15. Bookchin made a sharp distinction between the city and the state, which was the premise of his argument that electoral campaigns at the municipal level can be a legitimate form of community activism (not statecraft).

16. This leaflet was surely part of the Movement for a Democracy of Content’s campaign on the half of the Hungarian rebels. Bookchin was an active participant in the effort. See, Marcel van der Linden, ibid.

17. Murray Bookchin, Letter to the Editor, New York Review of Books, August 15, 1985. Accessed on June 14, 2007. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5378)

18. Murray Bookchin, “Intelligentsia and the New Intellectuals,” Alternative Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall, 1991. Accessed on June 14, 2007. (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/intellectuals.html)

19. Ibid.

20. Murray Bookchin, On The Last Intellectuals, Telos, 73 (Fall 1987): 184.

21. He never attended college, except to take some classes in radio technology after WWII, and held no long term academic posts (his “position” at the Institute for Social Ecology was purely nominal).

22. Murray Bookchin, “Intelligentsia and the New Intellectuals.”

23. Murray Bookchin, “Reflections: An Overview of the Roots of Social Ecology,” Harbinger: A Journal of Social Ecology, Vol. 3, No. 1, (Fall 2002) Accessed on June 14, 2007. (http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=2003111811572182)

24. Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, Vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1998), ix.

25. Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 10, n. 13.

26. The tendency toward hermeticism had a political logic. Specifically, we assumed that it was not possible to build a mass movement at the present juncture, given the generalized historical decline that we presumed to see around us, and thus we felt compelled to address ourselves to more “advanced” sectors of the population. This sanctioned the use of very esoteric discourse and, to a degree, made it necessary as a bonding element in our political community.

27. John Clark, “Murray Bookchin,” Encyclopedia of the American Left, ed. Paul Buhle et al. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 102.

28. John Clark, Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology, A Celebration of the Work of Murray Bookchin (London: Green Print, 1990), 3.

29. I refer to the book cited in the previous note.

30. John Clark, “Municipal Dreams” in Andrew Light, Social Ecology After Bookchin (New York: The Guilford Press, 1998), p. 183.

31. These polemics must be at least partially understood as a substitute for political battles that Murray called for but was unable to fight due to his marginality.

32. Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman (Boston: South End Press, 1991), Which Way for the Ecology Movement? (Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 1993), Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (San Francisco: A.K. Press, 1995), Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Anti-humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism (London: Cassell, 1995).

33. Bob Sipchen, “Ecology’s Family Feud: Murray Bookchin Turns up the Volume on a Noisy Debate,” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1989, p. 1.

34. At times, Bookchin seemed relish in his own isolation, as if it were a sign of grace.

35. Murray Bookchin, Janet Biehl, Gary Sisco, “Burlington Greens Depart from the Network, Left Green Notes, February/March 1991, p. 7.

36. Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974), 109.

37. Irving Howe described similar experiences in the Socialist Workers Party in 1930s: “Never before, and surely never since, have I lived at so high, so intense a pitch, or been so absorbed in ideas beyond the smallness of self. It began to seem as if the very shape of reality could be molded by our will, as if those really attuned to the inner rhythms of History might bend it to submission. I kept going through the motions of ordinary days: I went to college, had a few odd jobs, dated girls occasionally, lived or at least slept at home. But what mattered—burningly—was the movement, claiming my energies, releasing my fantasies, shielding me day and night from commonplace boredom.” Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Biography (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and Jonanovich, 1982), 42. There are striking parallels between the first three decades of Bookchin and Howe’s respective lives: both were Jews of Eastern European descent, they were born within six months of one another, both were raised in the Bronx, both were members of the SWP, and both joined the Army.

For instance, Janet Biehl, Bookchin’s longtime companion and collaborator, has begun work on a loving graphic memoir of Murray’s life and, happily, has made parts of it available online. The image below is one of the many installments that you can find on her site.

Likewise, the fall issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, the Institute for Anarchist Studies’s journal, will focus on Bookchin (and include a lengthy article on him by yours truly). The eco-Marxist journal Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism also plans to devote a special issue to his legacy, which is scheduled to appear in 2008.

For anyone so inclined, there are two interviews with Bookchin that are freely available online. Both are worth watching, due to their innately interesting subject matter and because they indicate how sharply his views on anarchism changed over the years. One is from 1981 and it is here ; the other is from 2004 it is here.

[8/23/2008 UPDATE: This image was removed at Janet Biehl's request.]

In het begin van de zeventiger jaren, toen velen het culturele radicalisme achter zich lieten, werd Biehl geïnsprireerd door avant-garde performance groepen als het Living Theater en ze behaalde een graad in theaterwetenschappen aan de Wesleyan University.

De wens om actrice te worden bracht haar naar New York City, waar Biehl zich begon te interesseren voor radicale theorie en politiek. Alhoewel Nieuw Links nu tot het verleden behoorde, maakte de verkiezing van Ronald Reagan en haar groeiende ontgoocheling in de kunst dit tot een natuurlijke keuze.

Terwijl ze studeerde voor een Master of Arts aan het CUNY-center kwam ze in contact met Murray Bookchin’s werk en volgde ze een cursus aan het Institute of Social Ecology in 1986.

Bookchin’s werk stond Biehl toe haar radicaal engagement op een nieuwe wijze te formuleren. Korte tijd nadien verhuisde ze naar Burlington, Vermont, om hechter met Bookchin samen te werken, en ze werd zijn metgezel en meest hechte medewerkster. Momenteel leeft en werkt ze met hem, en komt aan de kost als freelance copy editor. In tegenstelling tot vele generatiegenoten – wier levens een lange terugtocht uit hun jeugdig radicalisme betekenen – is Biehl op een consequente manier in de andere richting geëvolueerd.

—— SELECTED WORKS ——

The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism. Montreal: Black Rose, 1997.

The Murray Bookchin Reader (editor). London: Cassell Academic, 1997. (editor). London: Cassell Academic, 1997.

Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience (with Peter Staudenmaier). San Francisco: AK Press, 1996. (with Peter Staudenmaier). San Francisco: AK Press, 1996.

Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1991. Boston: South End Press, 1991.

“Militia Fever: The Fallacy of ‘Neither Left nor Right’” Green Perspectives, No. 37, 1996.

“European Greens: From Movement to Party,” Society and Nature, No. 3, 1993

“Women and the Democratic Tradition,” Green Perspectives, No. 16 & 17, 1989.

“Goddess Mythology and Ecological Politics” New Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1989.

“Critique of the Draft Program of the Left Green Network” (with Murray Bookchin), Green Perspectives, No. 23, 1991.