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.