The other guy said it better than me, but Bookchin's book is one of the few that really get's down deep into the process by which anti-authoritarian ideas and movements get generated and how they achieve, or can achieve, social change. Wonderful both for theory and history.

From the few dozen workers who first listened to Giuseppi Fanelli as he presented "The Idea" in 1868, a nucleus of Anarchists slowly grew in Spain. "Anarchistic ideals are difficult to fix into a hard and fast credo. Anarchism is a great libidinal movement of humanity to shake off the repressive apparatus created by hierarchical society. It originates in the age-old drive of the oppressed to assert the spirit of freedom, equality, and spontaneity over values and institutions based on authority." (p. 16) Nineteenth Century Spain was rife with oppressive and authoritarian institutions-a culture medium, as it were, for Anarchism.

Bookchin traces the growth of the movement, explaining the various forms through which the anarchistic "Idea" developed. He briefly explores the influences of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Bakunin, and contrasts them with the bleak realities of the Spanish political situation. The Spanish anarchists were not an unruly mob of bomb hurling terrorists, they were "freedom fighters" in the best sense of the term. Many exemplified self-discipline:

"The more dedicated men, once having decided to embrace the "Idea," abjured smoking and drinking, avoided brothels, and purged their talk of "foul" language. They believed these traits to be "vices"--demeaning to free people and fostered deliberately by ruling classes to corrupt and enslave the workers spiritually." (p. 48)

"Anarchist-influenced unions gave higher priority to leisure and free time for self-development than to high wages and economic gains." (p. 50)

"A very compelling case, in fact, can be made for the argument that Spanish Anarchism refracted the spirit of Enlightenment Europe through an Iberian prism, breaking up its components and then reorganizing them to suit Spain's distinctive needs." (p. 51)

Bookchin threads his way through the maze of Spanish politics, explaining the labyrinthine changes of government and policy. At each step, whether liberal or more totalitarian, the poor kept on getting poorer and the rich kept on getting richer. At one point, a system known as Turnismo existed. "Liberal"and repressive regimes would regularly share the power back and forth. When capitalists and land-owners needed to reduce the power of unions, a "liberal" regime took power, and while promising land reform and better working conditions, repressed the unions. At other times the more totalitarian regimes ran things, at times easing a few restrictions to keep the populace content. (One can perhaps imagine a bit of "turnismo" in the Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations!)

Anarchism flourished in both the countryside and in the cities. Many pueblos had traditionally run themselves by ideals approaching anarchism. These folks accepted the "Idea" readily. syndicalist unions also found themselves attracted to anarchism.

Anarchists formed their own schools. Francisco Ferrer founded the Escuela Moderna, with "a curriculum based on the natural sciences and moral rationalism, freed of all religious dogma and political bias ... [there was to be] no atmosphere of competition, coercion, or humiliation. The classes were, in Ferrer's words, to be guided by the "principle of solidarity and equality ... Instruction was to rely exclusively on the spontaneous desire of students to acquire knowledge and permit them to learn at their own pace. The purpose of the school was ... to create solid minds, capable of forming their own rational convictions on every subject." (p. 117) This system was so successful that within a decade over 50 such schools existed in Spain. Eventually, however, Ferrer paid for his "radical" educational ideas with his life; the government executed him on October 13, 1909.

Bookchin traces the encounters between socialists and anarchists. He takes the time to establish the difference between the two groups (To oversimplify: socialists depended on central organization, while anarchists looked to the local "grupos de affinidad" (affinity groups) for decision making). These differences became crucial during the Spanish Civil War, when communists fought anarchists in the streets, rather than working with them to defeat Franco and his Fascist minions.

The book does a great job of explaining the world into which the Spanish Civil War burst in 1936. Bookchin, however, does not enter that conflict. He leaves that to other writers, and perhaps with good reason. The Civil War led to the total repression of Spanish Anarchism. Having the book stop while the Anarchism was still in the ascendancy and not yet being systematically destroyed, first by its "revolutionary" allies, and then by Fascism.

In his concluding remarks, Bookchin makes a bold claim: "Although Spanish Anarchism was virtually unknown to radicals abroad during the "heroic years" of its development, it could be argued in all earnestness that it marked the most magnificent flowering and , in the curious dialectic of such processes, the definitive end of the century-long history of proletarian Socialism." (p. 278)

"The genius of Spanish Anarchism stems from its ability to fuse the concerns of traditional proletarian socialism with broader, more contemporary aspirations." (p. 286) Bookchin concludes by showing how "The larger problems of abolishing hierarchy and domination, of achieving a spiritually nourishing daily life, of replacing mindless toil by meaningful work, of attaining the free time for the self-management of a truly solidarizing human community ... [all this can be sensed in] sectors of society that were never accorded serious consideration as forces for revolution within the economic framework of proletarian socialism."

This book is required reading for anybody who wishes to understand the causes of the Spanish Civil War. It also presents some of the greatest Anarchist accomplishments in recent history. Bookchin related the history well and held my attention. I strongly recommend this book to anybody interested in Anarchism, in the Spanish Civil War, or who has ever read Garcia y Vega's REVOLT OF THE MASSES. It also makes understanding Orwell's HOMAGE TO CATALONIA much easier.

Five stars for scholarship, five stars for making history accessible, five stars for explaining difficult situations and concepts.

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Bookchin does an excillent job of presenting the often chaotic history of pre-Civil War Spain in a clear and organized manner. Possessing a clear writing style and an excillent grasp of the movement in general, Bookchin's book is an asset to anyone interested in Spanish history or Anarchism in general.

This book is brilliantly written. It has many stories of famous Anarchists, including poems and recipes for homemade weapons and survival items. Overall a great book and worth ten billion times the money. I give it two thumbs and two toes up!

In "The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism" Janet Biehl does an excellent job elaborating upon and solidifying the ideas, steps and political procedures stemming from Murray Bookchin's red-green philosophy. Concise, to the point, and thought provoking for any reader curious towards politics and the human order.

The aim of the book -as expressed during the introduction by its author Janet Biehl- is to divulge the ideas of Murray Bookchin, already published in different books and articles, but sometimes hard to find or to read to the common people. With a short trip through human history, Bookchin shows us that the State has not always existed (and, of course, that it has not to exist for ever). What's more, he maintains that the State as a form of organisation has been an imposition of a part of the people, not a free choice of the majority --and that actual political class tries to keep away the common people from the political arena, converting them just in "voters" and "taxpayers". There has been alternatives to the State, all of them with a main thing in common: its origin in the municipality. From here, Bookchin extracts the main theses of the book: the municipality is the right place --and maybe the unique-- where people can start to radicalise the democracy in order to get direct democracy. The book goes on describing the process libertarian people must follow to get at libertarian municipalities: the way they have to organise, the way they have to take decisions, the way they have to participate in the actual "political" live, the dangers they will have to confront (with an interesting Green's movement analysis), etc.. If some times the book seems too simple, we must arrive to the interview with M. Bookchin. This is the place where many questions appeared through the text find its answer. An essential complement, the interview gives to the book the necessary end. A light in the night!

The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism by Janet Biehl. Biehl's previous work looked at the convergence of ecological and feminist thinking 'Rethinking Ecofeminism'. Here she addresses the politics of social ecology, a radical critique of existing society pioneered and developed by political philosopher Murray Bookchin. This is then, a primer on Bookchin's thinking, an essential opening to Social Ecology. The stress here is on the political, rather than the social, anthropological or philosophical aspects of Social Ecology. This is no accident. At the heart of Biehl's analysis is the idea that the ecology movement has largely moved away from the political, increasingly moving towards a purely personal and/or spiritual worldview. This, argues Biehl persuasively, results in an insipid reactionary environmentalism. In opposition to this trend she advocates the radicalisation of the ecology movement, making common cause with other areas of exploitation. We must, she argues, understand the forces which undermine our environment, degrade our experiences and commodify our existence. These forces are the free market capitalist economy perpetuated by the nation state. In opposition to these now universal forces which cause such poverty, and human degradation we must build movements of resistance around municipalities. She argues that, whilst the state has been an imposition of an arcane and insane political order, there is a alternative history of free municipalities. Social Ecology demands the overthrow of the capitalist state and the reconstruction of viable socio-ecological relations. It is markedly different from other ecological outlooks in it refuses to buy into a reactionary technophobic analysis, arguing for appropriate technologies and embracing Enlightenment ideals as being essential to human develeopment. Biehl's book addresses the possibilities of a new politics based on direct democracy of municipal assemblies. Such assemblies would be confederated to wider regional groups who would co-ordinate non-local matters. It's an inspiring vision of a different, ecological future, where a general interest is realised and allows human endeavous to flourish. Social Ecology is a powerful tool for the re-contruction of a left-green movement wallowing in confusion, indulging in psychobabble and spiritual hokum and deluded by political compromise. Janet Biehl's book is a brilliant analysis of alternatives to this dead end.

I was very impressed at the broad sweep covering the history of urban life. The author is very insightful as he brings home the history of urban "space" and the variety of governance structures. I am still wondering about his conclusions. They seem too "liberal/socialist" for me. Society owes us each enough to cover our needs?? I don't know a good way to make it work. I am very into his "politics is local" message. He really appeals to my liberterian side. I rate this a very good book that will challenge you to think.

Not a work replete with big phrases or designed for only the most erudite of readers, this book is a good starting point for just about anyone who wants to "change the world". Using rational humanism as his basis, Bookchin attacks what he views as the mystical and anti-human approach to social ecology and to politics. While the author definitely points out many flaws in several prevailing belief systems, his excessive dependence on rationality can be a turn-off at times.

Murray Bookchin wrote "Remaking Society" as a synopsis of his life of radical thought. Bookchin details his theories of history, ecology, and political organization, with other subjects along the way, within his "Remaking Society." The language and the point are quite straightforward and the book serves as a handy reference to his prolific writing career.

This book is a mildly interesting instance of radical history being rewritten using the interview format. If you believed everything you read in this book you'd have to think that Murray Bookchin was (or at least should have been) the pivotal character in the last 50 years of radical history, except that nobody knows it besides him because of the raw deals he's always gotten by those who have upstaged him, ignored him, or (like Rachel Carson)not even realized he existed! In other words, because he's rarely been successful at anything, even though he thinks he did all the right things at the right times, it's the world's fault that he's not the biggest radical sensation since the Spanish Revolution.
Read this book if you dare. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Echoing Rosa Luxembourg in 1916, the founder of social ecology foresees an ineluctable choice in the new century between libertarian socialism and barbarism. The nature of this nascent barbarism will be manifested in the exponential industrialization of the planet, new state authoritarianism to cope with approaching ecological crises, the degradation of individuality as the corporate economy colonises all aspects of personal life, and the loss of the ability to conceptualise alternatives.

Resistance, to Bookchin, means first turning to history, to recover the 'legacy of freedom'of popular revolutionary movements since the English Revolution which sought radical forms of political and economic democracy and the free time for ordinary people to become active citizens (see the historical trilogy, The Third Revolution). A long-term revolutionary, Bookchin advocates the formation of Left study groups to "rebuild radical consciousness" and eventually act as agitators for direct, face-to-face democracy within their own communities.

The book also contains fascinating (and sometimes quite funny) reflections on the Left in the 1930s and '60s from someone who lived through both eras and a sympathetic reassessment of the contribution of Karl Marx to revolutionary thought.

The book's tone is rather too negative, overall. Now that the epithet 'anti-capitalist' is being claimed by more and more people, there is surely more hope for radical movements than Bookchin seems prepared to admit. Are things really so grim?

I don't think I've ever seen a book quite like this before - one of the most preeminent Leftist author/philosophers in the world giving incredibly detailed, fascinating responses to questions about where the "Left" (for lack of a better word) originated from, where it has been, and where it could possibly go. Bookchin is incredibly to-the-point and would probably make the world's best dinner guest if he wasn't so damn cranky.

If you've been interested in possible means of alternative social organization, and get the feeling that there's something outside of the narrow definitions of the mainstream (where someone like James Carville could be labeled as a "radical leftist" with a straight face) this is an excellent place to start. If anything, this should be required reading for all young "radicals" who might get bored with Anarchism after age 20 or so. This also serves as an excellent introduction to the current debate between 'mystical' Anarchism and a more empirical, scientific approach to social organization theory - something that Bookchin tirelessly promotes and that (in my opinion) will be absolutely necessary to garner support for Anarchism as a popular movement.

The essays from Bookchin, a key figure in Green philosophy and propounder of Social Ecology as a rival to Deep Ecology, are a mixed lot to say the least. The essay dealing with the replacement of capitalism's culture of egoism with the participatory practices of communitarianism is worthwhile if not exactly original. The essay on Social Ecology however is disappointing since, on close examination, it never really gets beyond a hollow rhetorical stage in laying out what should be the book's centerpiece.

The essay on market economy vs. moral economy is the compilation's strongest. Generally, Bookchin's skillful rhetoric manages to vividly contrast the misanthropy of market economy with the humanism of moral economy, laying bare the ultimate cost of placing greed before need. However - and this is an important reservation - the author's framework of commercial transaction within moral economy fails to penetrate beyond the medieval emphasis on honest dealing. Replacing market gouging with honest dealing is thin gruel indeed after some four centuries of failure. The problem with Bookchin's analysis is not his enemies. It's the recourses he offers. The dehumanizing cash nexus of market economy is a problem indeed, but the author's retreat into moral admonition represents little more than wishful thinking. Reliance on honest, profitable dealings constitutes a step backward, not forward, and likely represents the absence of genuine alternatives to planned economy and the real possibilities of modern technology which Bookchin too often appears to equate with its corrosive capitalist offspring, viz. mass marketing.

Bookchin represents much that is both creative and restrictive among the contemporary social left.

....as it was written in the 70's and 80's, but it's an able collection of Bookchin's writings on topics as varied as ecology, environmentalism, anarchy, Marxism, and the contributions to be made by a utopian perspective. The author also writes about the need for a social ecology that keeps in mind the parallel between oppression of people with oppression of the natural world. Worth reading if you can get past the polemical tone, critical and even bullying at times, and the steady note of indignation; for this reader it felt like a knuckle rapping steadily on the forehead.

I read this after reading Bookchins Anarchism, Marxism, and theFuture of the Left.

If you must read this book, please do yourself afavor and read some of Bookchins work also. ...

This is the third book in print about Murray Bookchin -- the others are BEYOND BOOKCHIN and ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM -- with the words "After" or "Beyond" in their titles. They reflect an emergent consensus that Bookchin, long overrated as a social theorist, now stands for opinions mostly untenable and increasingly ridiculous. The contributors to this book should know -- most are his former followers and, in several cases, his closest collaborators. They show him rather more respect than Bookchin has ever shown to them, or to any of his other critics. But if their criticisms are understated they are nonetheless stated, and they are devastating. Implicit in these essays, as in the title of the book, is the judgment that it is no longer worthwhile even to read and engage with Bookchin's eccentric ideas about natural and human evolution, urbanism, ecology and anarchism.

In recent years, Bookchin has increasingly reverted to his original Marxism, including its mystical metaphysics, dialectics. Part I of this book deals with the arbitrariness and obscurantism of the way he divines, by some occult faculty, the "directionality" of nature, and its inherent ethical content. It is pointed out that these intuitions are without emperical grounding and seem to be denied to everybody else (except, I should say, the Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin -- but Teilhard, like Hegel, could assign the purposefulness of the Universe to God, wheeras Bookchin is an atheist).

Part II addresses the most glaring contradictions in Bookchin's social philosophy. The founder of social ecology is at the same time a strident advocate of "municipal socialism" and high technology. Even aside from the absurdity of sovereign city-states in the 21st century, obviously the city has always had a more or less adverse impact on the environment, and this is still more obvious with respect to technology. It's amazing that someone who, as does Bookchin, exhibits hatred for nature not under human control -- for wilderness (which, inconsistently, he sometimes says does not exist) -- can refer to himself as any kind of an ecologist.

In Part III, several contributors explore the ways in which Bookchin has used and abused anthropology and history. Bookchin insists that in essence, the city tends toward widely-based direct democracy. In fact, every self-governing city in history -- including Bookchin's beloved Athens -- was an oligarchy, and change is invariably in the direction of smaller, tighter oligarchy. As for ethnography, Bookchin uses these materials both carelessly and tendentiously to bolster curious theses (such as gerontocracy as the origin of social stratification)the contributors reasonably consider to be not only unproven but irrelevant to social ecology.

The contributors combine politeness reflecting their former adherence to Bookchin with an implicit impatience to go forward with what they consider to be still viable in his social ecology. Certainly, after reading this book no one would have any reason to waste his time reading Bookchin himself, at least not the Bookchin of the last 20 years.

Don't believe the vituperative bile of orthodox social ecologists on this book. The mere fact that they're so peeved means the book is good. Murray Bookchin has systematically attacked all his former students who have disagreed with him in even the slightest ways, typical of totalitarian minds or whining leftists everywhere. John Clark and other former students who contributed to the volume have been systematically cast off from the fold. This book dares to take social ecology seriously, with great respect to Bookchin. To take the approach seriously, you may start with Bookchin, but should go beyond Bookchin. It's such a shame that such a smart man has gotten so full of himself that he can't take even a whiff of criticism. May social ecology evolve, thrive, and move beyond its cranky founder at last! This book shows the way...

This may be the worst book about anarchists any of them has ever written. Contemporary anarchists, many of whom had been influenced by Bookchin, were shocked by this diatribe, which assailed basically everything different from (not even always opposed to) Bookchin's ideology in its current Marxized version. Murray had been away for so long trying to take over the Greens movement that most anarchists perforce elaborated their various tendencies without his guidance (he's an ex-Dean). Bookchin's deliberately divisive innovation is to distinguish Social Anarchists (good anarchists who agree with the four tenets he lays down) from Lifestyle Anarchists, who are an unsavory lot of mystics, lumpenproletarians, post-modernists, primitivists, spontaneists, New Agers, Stirnerites, irrationalists, bourgeois and petit bourgeous,liberals -- and fascists (!). No attempt is made to explain the apparent irrationalities in Bookchin himself, for example, how people can be bourgeois and lumpen, or liberal and fascist at the same time. Part of this rhetoric Bookchin seems to have brought back from his controversies with deep ecologists without noticing that none of his targeted enemies are deep ecologists. He had all this rhetoric, why waste it? No one, not Bookchin even (he has a second book out on this theme, even more Marxist and authoritarian) has ever identified even one attribute shared by all these tendencies. There is only one such attribute: Murray Bookchin dislikes them. It would be no trouble (but very time-consuming) to refute most of what Bookchin now says out of his earlier writings, and two books and a number of reviews have done so. The consensus is that he was right the first time. Additionally, although the book parades its footnotes, most of them distort or entirely fail to represent the propositions they are attached to. Critics argued that Bookchin had returned to his original Stalinism (in the 1930s) or at the very least, that he was not an anarchist (he favors sovereign municipalities or neighborhoods and voting in local elections). It is sad that it is this book, and its even more execrable sequel, for which Bookchin will be remembered. -- According to an item in the magazine "Anarchy," Bookchin no longer considers himself an anarchist.

Some people fight real battles, others tilt at windmills. Still others, unfortunately, prefer to invent enemies on which to hang blame for their own failures.
Bookchin is an ex-Stalinist, ex-Trotskyist, ex-Marxist ecological radical who has never learned how to drop the Stalinist-style denunciations of those with whom he disagrees. In this case he's invented a whole nonsense category of evil "lifestyle" anarchists who are conspiring to ruin the radical movement by talking about living individuals and their desires for community and the end of social alienation. According to Bookchin, such talk denigrates the really important task of dedicating one's efforts to the greater glory of Bookchin's own Social Ecology Thought, or at least to that of the social democratic Left. For Bookchin individuals are bad and only the Social is good. Forget that for over a hundred years anarchists have been trying to harmonize individuality and community. Bookchin says they can't co-exist. And true to his Stalinist heritage, he chooses to privilege the Social absolutely over the potentially free individual.
This is a sad text. A once-rational and coherent mind given over to petty battles with ghosts of his own invention, or, at best, to ridiculous rantings condemning a disparate group of people who have little in common except that Bookchin doesn't like what they say.
With this book Bookchin has dug the grave of his own potential influence over future generations. Nobody with any sense will take him seriously from now on.

This book contains "a short note to the reader" and two essays. At 86 pages, it looks to be a short, fast read. It isn't. (I started reading in Anchorage, continued reading during an hour layover in Seattle, and finished about 20 minutes before arriving in LA!) Bookchin stakes out his reasons for writing the first essay in a "note to the reader" that begins with:

"Anarchists have formed neither a coherent program nor a revolutionary organization to provide a direction for the mass discontent that contemporary society is creating. Instead, this discontent is being abosrbed by political reactionaries and channeled into hostility toward ethnic minorities, immigrants, and the poor and marinal, such as single mothers, the homeless, the elderly, and even environmentalists, who are being depicted as the principal sources of contemporary social problems ... Thousands of self-styled anarchists have slowly surrendered the social core of anarchist ideas to the all-pervasive Yuppie and New Age personalism that marks this decadent, bourgeosified era." (p. 1)

He goes on to point out that:

"The various oppressions that [capitalism] inflicts upon society have been grossly imputed to the impact of 'technology,' not the underlying social relationships between capital and labor, structured around an all-pervasive marketplace economy that has penetrated into every sphere of life, from culture to friendships and family." (p. 2)

Looking back to the roots of anarchism (Emma Goldman, the Wobblies), he decries:

"They demanded a revolution -- a _social_ revolution -- without which these aesthetic and psychological goals could not be achieved for humanity as a whole ... regrettably, this revolutionary endeavor, indeed the high-minded idealism and class consciousness on which it rests, is central to fewer and fewer of the self-styled anarchists I encounter today." (p 3)

Bookchin then launches into his first essay, dedicating 52 pages to attacking what he calls Lifestyle Anarchism and then five pages to Social Anarchism. This annoys me more than anything else. I would much rather have seen a balanced treatment, spending another 50 some pages to outline his vision of Social Anarchism. The heart of his polemics seems to be attacking the substitution of an egoistic, undisciplined, do-your-own-thing mentality for solidarity and revolutionary commitment. He takes issue with those who promote an "individualism" unconnected with community, noting that the individual arises out of, is nurtured by, and co-creates with community. He assails those who promote anarchism as mere chaos. Similarly, he goes after those who would take refuge in mysticism at the expense of social analysis and concrete revolutionary commitment. He refutes those who see "technology" as THE problem, demonstrating that neo-ludditism is no substitute for a rational anarchy. (Had he read Rianne Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, he might have picked up some even more powerful arguments here.)
He concludes that:

"A bourgeois reality whose economic harshness grows starker and crasser with every passing day is shrewdly mutated by lifestyle anarchism into constellations of self-indulgence, inchoateness, indiscipline, and incoherence." (p. 51)

"To malign civilization without due recognition of its enormous potentialities for _self-conscious_ freedom -- a freedom conferred by reason as well as emotion, by insight as well as desire, by prose as well as poetry -- is to retreat back into the shadowy world of brutishness, when thought was dim and intellecuation was only an evolutionary promise." (p. 56)

In the next five pages he briefly sketches out his ideas of a Democratic Communalism. He yearns for a sharing of power in face-to-face collective meetings, for an anarchism that stays connected to its Enlightenment roots. He wants an anarchism that: "is committed to rationality, while opposing the rationalization of experience; to technology, while opposing the 'megamachine;' to social institutionalization, while opposing class rule and hierarchy; to a genuine politics based on the confederal coordination of municipalities or communes" (p. 57) and warns that "if a left-libertarian vision is not to disappear ... it must offer a resolution to social problems, not flit arrogantly from slogan to slogan, shielding itself from rationality with bad poetry and vulgar graphics." (p. 57)

His second essay (about 20 pages), The Left that Was, offers a nice primer on the "traditional" Left from an anarchist perspective. This essay alone was worth the price of the book. He makes a final appeal: "What this society usually does should not deter leftists from probing the logic of events from a rational standpoint or from calling for what society _should_ do. Any attempt to adapt the rational 'should' to the irrational 'is' vacates that space on the political spectrum that should be occupied by a Left premised on reason, freedom, and ecological humanism." (p. 86)

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