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Description: In this series of essays, Murray Bookchin balances his ecological and anarchist vision with the promising opportunities of a "post-scarcity" era. Technological advances during the 20th century have expanded production in the pursuit of corporate profit at the expense of human need and ecological sustainability. New possibilities for human freedom must combine an ecological outlook with the dissolution of hierarchical social relations, capitalism and canonical political orientation. Bookchin's utopian vision, rooted in the realities of contemporary society, remains refreshingly pragmatic. "Book-chin makes a trenchant analysis of modern society and offers a pointed, provocative discussion of the ecological crisis."-Library Journal Murray Bookchin has been an active voice in the ecology and anarchist movements for more than 40 years.
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Review Summary: indispensable |
Date: 2006-12-05 |
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Details: This landmark of collection of essays is, along with Paul Goodman's "Drawing the Line", perhaps the finest American contribution to Anarchist thought in the latter part of the 20th Century. Bookchin draws on a tremendous wealth of experience as a revolutionary (he got his start as a Communist Party agitator at age 8), and careful study of radical history, ecology, and technology, to put forward the claim that society has for the first time entered onto the threshold of the `post-scarcity' era, an era in which there is sufficient material wealth to provide for the subsistence of all people everywhere. Under these circusmstances, Bookchin argues, the culture of domination and exploitation that grew under conditions of scarcity, want, and competition, can finally give way to an anarchist culture of freedom, localism, community, direct democracy, and human scale.
The introduction, and title essay, lay out the particulars of the above argument. The essay "The Forms of Freedom" presents a fascinating capsule history of the spontaneous formation of directly democratic structures of government--factory councils and neighborhood committees-- in revolutionary situations in Paris, Petrograd, Barcelona, and elsewhere, and examines their precursors in the ancient Greeke `polis'. The widely read polemic "Listen, Marxist!", launches a crushing attack on the ideology of the Leninist vanguard groups of the sixties, pointing out the flaws and problems with applying Marx's ideas mechanically to 20th century conditions, and laying bare the inexorable failures of Leninist revolutionaries to deliver on their hollow promises of liberation. Other essays examine ecology and anarchism, technology, and the Paris uprisings of 1968.
A tremendously insightful and important collection which is highly instructive for today's social movements. |
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