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An Appraisal of The Ecology of Freedom
Murray Bookchin s theory of social ecology is perhaps the most comprehensive and powerful ecological philosophy yet developed. It involves a complex, detailed, interdisciplinary framework that has been developed during the course of Bookchin ' career and demands keen learning from the reader. The payoff is well worth it, however, for Bookchin provides important tools for thinking about the relation between society and nature and how the human antagonism with the natural world might be resolved. Focusing on Bookchin's 1991 work, The Ecology of Freedom, the author lays out the philosophical and historical underpinnings of social ecology and its analysis of hierarchy.
A century ago, Marx could validly argue that the alternatives to socialism are barbarism. Harsh as the worst of these alternatives may be, society could at least expect to recover from them. Today the situation has become far more serious. The ecological crisis of our time has graduated society's alternative to a more decisive level of futuristic choices. Either we will create an ecotopia based on ecological principles, or we will simply go under as a species. In my view this is not apocalyptic ranting-it is a scientific judgment validated daily by the very law of the prevailing society. (pp. 70-71)
-Bookchin (1980)
Murray Bookchin is a living testament to the triumphs and failures of the American Left of this century. A vital link between the old and new Left and beyond, Bookchin's work has evolved in response to the turbulent eras in which he lived. Bookchin was a part of the traditional Left in the United States during the 1930s, but unlike Sidney Hook, Max Eastman, and numerous others, the twin evils of Stalinism and McCarthyism only reinforced his radicalism and pushed him farther to the left. Rather than joining the ranks of former socialists who drifted toward liberalism and neoconservatism, Bookchin began, in the 1950s, to develop a creative synthesis of anarchist and ecological theories while participating in numerous social and ecological movements. His linkage of ecology and revolutionary politics came at a time when the Left tended to reject ecology as a trivial or diversionary bourgeois concern.
The unifying thread that winds throughout the course of Bookchin's development over five decades...