Murray Bookchin ( / ˈ b ʊ k t ʃ ɪ n / ; January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006 ) was an American thinker about society, writer, speaker, historian, and political philosopher. He was influenced by the works of G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Peter Kropotkin. He was an early leader in the environmental movement. Bookchin created and expanded the theory of social ecology and urban planning in the areas of anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He wrote more than 20 books about politics, philosophy, history, city planning, and social ecology. Some of the most important books were Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982), and Urbanization Without Cities (1987). In the late 1990s, he became disappointed with what he saw as the growing focus on personal lifestyle choices in the modern anarchist movement. He no longer called himself an anarchist and created his own libertarian socialist idea called "communalism," which combines and grows Marxist, syndicalist, and anarchist ideas.

Bookchin was a well-known opponent of capitalism and fascism and supported spreading out power in society along ecological and democratic lines. His ideas have influenced social movements since the 1960s, including the New Left, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and the democratic confederalism of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. He was a key person in the American green movement. A self-taught person who never went to college, he is considered one of the most important left thinkers of the twentieth century.

Biography

Murray Bookchin was born in 1921 in New York City to Nathan Bookchin (born Nacham Wisotsky) and Rose (Kalusky) Bookchin, Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father was from Mazyr (now Belarus), and his mother was from Vilnius (Lithuania). He disliked his full name, Mortimore, and used the nickname Murray. His father changed his family name from Bukczin to Bookchin. His parents divorced in 1934. He lived in the Bronx with his mother, uncle Daniel, and maternal grandmother, Zeitel, who was a Socialist Revolutionary and taught him about Russian populist ideas.

After his grandmother died in 1930, he joined the Young Pioneers of America, a Communist youth group for children aged 9 to 14, and the Young Communist League for older youths in 1935. He studied Marxism at the Workers School near Union Square. In the late 1930s, he stopped supporting Stalinism and joined the Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In the early 1940s, he worked in a foundry in Bayonne, New Jersey, as a trade union organizer and shop steward for the United Electrical Workers. He also recruited members for the SWP. Within the SWP, he supported the Goldman-Morrow faction, which separated after World War II ended. At the time of the 1945–46 General Motors strike, he was an auto worker and member of the United Auto Workers. In 1949, while speaking to a Zionist youth group at City College, he met Beatrice Appelstein, a mathematics student, whom he married in 1951. They were married for 12 years and lived together for 35 years, remaining close friends and political allies. They had two children, Debbie and Joseph. Bookchin was an atheist but respected religious views.

From 1947, Bookchin worked with Josef Weber, a German expatriate and fellow former Trotskyist, in New York City. Together, they founded the Movement for a Democracy of Content, a group of about 20 post-Trotskyists who edited the magazine Contemporary Issues – A Magazine for a Democracy of Content. The magazine promoted the idea that modern technology could eliminate the need for hard labor, leading to a "post-scarcity" society. Bookchin developed a theory of ecological decentralism to achieve this vision. His first articles, including "The Problem of Chemicals in Food" (1952), were published in the magazine. In 1958, Bookchin identified as an anarchist, seeing connections between anarchism and environmentalism. His first book, Our Synthetic Environment, was published in 1962 under the pseudonym Lewis Herber, shortly before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

In 1964, Bookchin joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and protested racism at the 1964 World’s Fair. From 1964 to 1967, while living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he helped start the New York Federation of Anarchists. His essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced environmentalism as a concept in radical politics. In 1968, he founded a group that published Anarchos magazine, which featured essays on post-scarcity, sustainable technologies like solar and wind energy, and decentralization. He lectured across the United States, helping spread the idea of ecology to the counterculture movement. His 1969 essay "Listen, Marxist!" warned Students for a Democratic Society against a potential takeover by a Marxist group.

From 1969 to 1970, Bookchin taught at the Alternate U, a radical school in Manhattan. In 1971, he moved to Burlington, Vermont, with friends to test his ideas about decentralization. In 1973, he was hired by Goddard College to teach about technology. His lectures led to a teaching position and the creation of the Social Ecology Studies program in 1974 and the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE), which he directed. In 1974, he also became a professor at Ramapo College in New Jersey. The ISE was a center for studying appropriate technology in the 1970s. In 1977–78, he was part of the Spruce Mountain Affinity Group of the Clamshell Alliance. He also published The Spanish Anarchists, a history of the Spanish anarchist movement up to 1936. During this time, he briefly connected with the libertarian movement but rejected forms of libertarianism that promoted unconstrained individualism.

In 1980, Bookchin co-founded the New England Anarchist Conference (NEAC) to organize the anarchist movement in the United States. At its first meeting in October 1980, 175 anarchists from the northeastern U.S. and Quebec attended. By its second meeting in January 1981 in Massachusetts, the NEAC became divided, leading Bookchin to lose confidence in a socialist revolution in the U.S.

In the 1980s, Bookchin occasionally criticized Bernie Sanders’ leadership as mayor of Burlington. He argued Sanders lacked a focus on direct democracy, prioritized economic growth over ecology, and was a "centralist" who ignored grassroots efforts. Bookchin and his colleagues in the Burlington Greens, which he co-founded with his ex-wife, Bea Bookchin, opposed a luxury condo development plan that was later rejected by voters. They supported a moratorium on growth, a moral economy, and social justice rooted in grassroots democracy.

In 1987, Bookchin began working with Janet Biehl, who became his companion, editor, and advocate. After his death in 2006, Biehl wrote his biography and managed his archives. In 1988, Bookchin and Howie Hawkins founded the Left Green Network as a radical alternative to U.S. Green liberals, based on social ecology and libertarian municipalism.

In 1995, Bookchin expressed concern about the decline of American anarchism into movements like primitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationism, and individual self-expression, which he believed weakened the formation of a social movement. In 1999, he left anarchism, describing himself as a "communalist" in a 2002 essay titled "The Communalist Project."

Bookchin taught at the ISE until 2004. He died on July 30, 2006, in Burlington, Vermont, from congestive heart failure at the age of 85.

Thought

Murray Bookchin wrote about many subjects, including philosophy. He called his ideas "dialectical naturalism," which connects the way things change and grow with nature. He was influenced by the writings of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who believed that change and growth are part of a natural process. However, Bookchin was not a follower of Hegel’s ideas. Instead, his work focused on humanism, rational thinking, and the values of the Enlightenment, such as freedom and equality.

Bookchin criticized some ideas from Marxism and other political systems that he felt were too simple. He believed that societies are more complex than these systems suggested. In his book The Ecology of Freedom, he argued that throughout history, societies have developed systems of hierarchy—like rules that control people—which affect how people think and act.

Bookchin thought that both Marxism and syndicalism, which focus on workers’ rights, were too narrow in their views. He believed these systems did not address the bigger problems of society.

Bookchin wrote a book called Our Synthetic Environment in 1962, just before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published. He disagreed with other thinkers who blamed environmental problems on technology, overpopulation, or human nature. Instead, he believed that the root cause of environmental harm is the system of capitalism, which prioritizes making money over protecting the environment. He said capitalism’s need to grow constantly could lead to serious harm to life on Earth.

Bookchin did not think the solution was to return to ancient ways of living, like hunter-gatherer societies, which he saw as violent. He also rejected political actions that only protest without offering real plans for change. Instead, he proposed a system called "communalism," which includes direct democracy, shared power among people, and replacing capitalism with ways of living that focus on people, not profit.

Social ecology is a theory linked to Bookchin. It connects environmental and social problems, arguing that issues like pollution and inequality come from systems of control, such as unfair treatment based on age, gender, or race. It suggests that the solution is a society without hierarchy, where people make decisions locally and work together. This idea became more popular in the 1970s during the environmental and civil rights movements.

Bookchin studied how cities and society affect people’s lives. He later connected these ideas to environmental issues, leading to his most famous book, The Ecology of Freedom. He argued that humans harm nature because of how people control each other. He believed that life develops through cooperation and teamwork, not competition. He said that early human societies lived in harmony but were later taken over by systems like cities and capitalism, which are unique to humans.

Over time, Bookchin’s ideas evolved. He began to focus more on "communalism," which supports local, democratic governance. This made him different from some anarchist ideas. His work was inspired by thinkers like Kropotkin, Marx, and Engels, but he avoided ideas that ignored social issues or relied too much on technology.

In 2016, a meeting in Lyon, France, brought together people interested in social ecology and new ways of organizing society. These ideas also influenced Abdullah Öcalan, a leader of the Kurdish movement, who created the concept of "democratic confederalism." This system aims to unite people in the Middle East through shared, democratic communities. It was adopted by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and later by the Party of Democratic Union (PYD) in Syria. In 2014, parts of Syria called Rojava formed self-governing communities based on democratic, non-hierarchical principles.

Bookchin believed that an ecological society should be built through active participation by people in their communities. He called this approach "communalism," where local groups make decisions through direct democracy and work together to solve problems.

Legacy and influence

Though Bookchin did not gain many followers during his lifetime, his ideas have influenced various movements and thinkers worldwide.

Among those influenced are the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey. These groups have fought the Turkish government since the 1980s to gain more political and cultural rights for Kurds. The PKK is labeled as a terrorist group by the Turkish and U.S. governments, while the YPG has been seen as an ally of the U.S. against ISIS. The PKK originally followed a strict Marxist-Leninist ideology, but after its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was captured and imprisoned in 1999, the group began to change its ideas. During his imprisonment, Öcalan studied post-Marxist political theories and became interested in Bookchin’s work.

In early 2004, Öcalan tried to arrange a meeting with Bookchin through his lawyers, calling himself Bookchin’s "student" and wanting to apply Bookchin’s ideas to Middle Eastern society. Bookchin was too sick to accept the request. In May 2004, Bookchin said, "My hope is that the Kurdish people will one day create a free, rational society where their talents can flourish. They are lucky to have a leader like Mr. Öcalan to guide them." Bookchin died in 2006, and the PKK honored him as "one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century," promising to use his ideas in practice.

Öcalan developed a system called "democratic confederalism," based on Bookchin’s communalism. This system does not aim to create an independent Kurdish state separate from Turkey. Instead, the PKK says it is meant for all people in the region, regardless of their ethnicity, nationality, or religion. It focuses on creating local assemblies and organizations to build a society without a central government. It also emphasizes protecting and promoting women’s rights. The PKK has made progress in implementing this plan through groups like the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), which works within Turkey, and the Koma Civakên Kurdistan (KCK), which operates in Kurdish communities worldwide.

Selected works

• Anarchism After Scarcity (1971)
• The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years (1977)
• The Ecology of Freedom: The Beginning and End of Hierarchy (1982)