Search

Over the course of the last decade and a half the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has transformed its ideological orientation in accord with the changing outlook of its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. It has discarded its erstwhile Marxist-Leninist ideology for the anarchist-inspired thought of the American political theorist Murray Bookchin. Yet, the PKK’s new theorist of choice may not be an entirely suitable one. Bookchin was a rabid anti-nationalist, and this paper argues that, even after having appropriated Bookchin, the PKK has been unable to chart a non-nationalist course. Scholars of the Kurdish question have so far let Bookchin’s seeming unsuitability go unnoticed. This is likely because Bookchin’s thought is not well known. This paper offers an overview of Bookchin’s thought, and in doing so, hopefully contributes to making Bookchin better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essential tension underlying much thinking about social movements is the relationship between so-called "new" social movements, such as radical ecology, and "older" movements such as those involving industrial workers. Indeed, analyses of class have posed a difficult challenge for much radical green thought. This paper discusses new social movement and radical ecology theories to identify perspectives that may pose obstacles to an articulation between radical ecology and industrial workers. Addressed also are approaches which seek to overcome these obstacles by theorizing radical ecology in terms of class analysis. Especially helpful are Marxist approaches as well as what I term green syndicalism, a view that combines radical unionism and ecology. The work of Judi Bari and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Local 1 is offered as one fruitful attempt to bring a class perspective to ecological theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research or concepts in the biological field have often been used as a basis to root political projects of different orientations. In the libertarian literature, there have also been attempts to explore the link between the natural world and the possibility of freedom by combining discoveries in biological fields and research in philosophical/political fields. In the first part of our work, we analyse Peter Kropotkin’s thought, especially his theory of mutual aid, focusing on his proto-ecological concepts. This section also focuses on the Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin in the context of the evolution of life in the natural world. The concepts of cooperation, empathy and mutual aid are explored, and also revolution, federalism and egalitarian ethics. In the second part, we review these ideas and concepts, drawing on insights from recent discoveries in the study of ecology and evolutionary biology. We conclude our review by discussing how these natural principles can inform social projects and social organisation, identifying how mismatches between social and biological organisation have contributed to inequality and domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the publication "Anarchist Studies." A common theme since its founding in 1993 has been an attempt to make relevant to anarchism topics, ideas, and methodologies not commonly associated with it, as well as the re-evaluation of classical anarchist thought. By 1996 "Anarchist Studies" was respected within the anarchist community as a source of vigorous discussion and debate. The periodical's history has been marked by a due regard for the importance of postmodernistic thought to anarchist theory.

In the wake of ecological crises, there has been a resurgence of interest in the relation between dialectical thought and nature. The work of Herbert Marcuse and Murray Bookchin offers unique approaches to this question that remain highly relevant. In the first half of the article, we engage with Marcuse's application of the dialectical method in which he gestured to the 'vital need' to push beyond the appearance of 'the real' and yet lamented the loss of the ability for negative thinking to pierce the dominance of the 'technical apparatus' that tied humanity to this 'radical falsity'. Here, we suggest the need for a more holistic dialectical understanding of the social totality-one that is directly located within, and takes as foundational, the environmental conditions of human society. In the second half, we examine Murray Bookchin's conception of 'dialectical naturalism' as a more thorough engagement with the human/nature relation that surpasses Marcuse's late engagements with ecologism. In particular, we offer critical reflections on the concept of 'nature' in the contemporary ecology movement and illustrate how dialectical naturalism is capable of not only transcending dualistic conceptions of 'man/nature' but in expanding our awareness of the potentialities of history along what Bookchin terms the 'libertory pathways' to a restorative relation between human 'second nature' and biological 'first nature'. We posit that systemic, interconnected and accelerating ecological crises (climatic, biospheric and oceanic) form the objective and absolute contradiction of contemporary global social life that compels an awareness of the potentialities of an ecological society. Only through this awareness can we break through the reified 'solutions' that have often plagued the ecology movement, bringing about the urgent social and ecological transformation that our species requires for its liberation and long-term survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many examples of aversion to the city and city life among classical anarchists, as well as of an exaggerated positive valuation of nature and rural life. This ‘urbanophobia’ is certainly simplistic; but it was or has been by no means the sole or even the most representative position in the course of the history of libertarian thought. In this text, I aim to show the complexity of libertarian approaches to the city in the 19th and 20th centuries, using as examples, respectively, the works of Élisée Reclus and Murray Bookchin. Additionally, and in a brief way, I also try to summarise what seems to be the utility of such a discussion for contemporary purposes, drawing inspiration and examples from the recent Latin American experience in terms of urban movements' spatial practices. All these contributions are examined considering three foci: (1) the opposition between city and countryside; (2) the (anti-)ecological dimension of urbanisation; (3) strategies for socio-spatial change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a famous polemical article, Murray Bookchin contrasts social and lifestyle anarchisms and argues that there is an 'unbridgeable chasm' between them. This article traces a parallel debate in British anarchism at the start of the 1960s and explains how Colin Ward sought to endorse elements of both views in developing his nonutopian, pragmatic anarchism. It shows how social and lifestyle anarchist themes find expression in Ward's work more generally, and argues that Ward's work in this way implicitly and persuasively challenges the thesis that they are incompatible (without denying they can be in tension). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of ‘anarchy’ in International Relations theory appears very different from its incarnations in political philosophy. Whilst realist scholars have used anarchy to describe an absence of centralised political authority in which states wield differential power, political philosophers in the anarchist tradition have mounted a critique of the coercive and compulsory powers of states themselves. This article argues for reconceptualising ‘anarchy’ in International Relations theory using insights from complexity theory. We would describe the international system as a complex adaptive system which has a tendency to self-organisation. Furthermore, in distinct contrast to Waltz, we argue that the international system has to be seen as embedded within a range of physical systems, and other social systems including those which reproduce a range of (gendered, racial, class-based, colonial) relations of domination. Here insights from anarchist social ecologism can be utilised to further accounts of hierarchy and dominance within International Relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A leading theorist of the anarchist and revolutionary personalist dimensions of the counterculture of the 1960s, some twenty-five years later Murray Bookchin adopted a much more strident and combative stance towards countercultural, lifestyle-oriented anarchism in his 1995 polemic, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm. This essay examines the rationale for Bookchin's shift from reasoned dialogue with participants in the Euro-American counterculture to polemical confrontation. In contrast to those who have charged Bookchin with theoretical inconsistency driven by cynical political opportunism, it argues that while his political thought evolved over time in response to changing historical circumstances, the later position is theoretically consistent with the earlier. However, it also maintains that Bookchin's straw man account of lifestyle anarchism in the 1990s is misguided and politically unhelpful insofar as it obscures what the earlier work helped so well to clarify: namely, the integral connections between the personal and the political aspects of libertarian revolutionary social change. It thus obscures one of the most creative and hopeful aspects of the anarchist currents in the newest social movements that emerged from the rebellions of 1968. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the theoretical and practical implications of environmental syndicalism. Convergences of radical union movements with ecology in Europe and North America; Emergence of green syndicalism; Criticism of syndicalism raised by social ecology guru Murray Bookchin.

Focuses on the dispute between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman about the organization, Earth First! and the Deep Ecologists in the U.S. Criticism on the organization by Bookchin; Accusations raised against the organization by Bookchin; Arrest of Foreman by National Bureau of Investigation officials in the year 1989.