Social Ecology and Communalism
Eirik Eiglad (Editor) and Murray Bookchin
AK Press has recently released this book:
“These four essays, written between 1989 and 2002 and
collected here for the first time in this volume, provide
an excellent overview of Murray Bookchin's political philosophy.”
"This is a highly accessible introduction to Social Ecology and Communalism, as it has been developed by one of the most exciting and pioneering thinkers of the twentieth century. Murray Bookchin's political philosophy suggests that the solution to the enormous social and ecological problems we face today fundamentally lies in the formation of a new citizenry, its empowerment through new political institutions, and a new political culture."
—Eirik Eiglad, from the Introduction
Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) was a life-long radical—a trade unionist in the 1930s and 1940s, and later a pioneer of the ecology movement. His writings on ecology go back to 1952, his opposition to nuclear reactors dates back to four years later, and his explorations of alternative technology go back to 1963, before the appearance of the well-known Small is beautiful of E.F. Schumacher. Bookchin was a co-founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, an institution of higher education dedicated to the study of social ecology, an interdisciplinary field drawing on dialectical philosophy, political and social theory, anthropology, history, economics, the natural sciences, and feminism. Murray Bookchin's nature philosophy was an organic outlook of generation, development, and evolution, that grounded human beings in natural evolution, yet, contrary to today's fashionable antihumanism, placed them firmly at its summit. Bookchin's anthropological writings traced the rise of hierarchy and domination out of egalitarian societies, while his historical writings covered important chapters in the European revolutionary tradition.
Editor Eirik Eiglad has been involved with the ideas and politics of social ecology for more than fifteen years. He edits the journal Communalism.
