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Social Ecology after Bookchin

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The title "Social Ecology After Bookchin" suggests that the essays in this book build on the left-libertarian political philosophy that Bookchin formulated under the name social ecology starting in the 1960s, and which has since gained an international reputation. But these essays do no such thing. Most of them are written by critics of social ecology and by those who wish to remake social ecology according to their own political beliefs. Not surprisingly, in this era when the entire political spectrum has shifted to the right, those beliefs are generally more conservative than Bookchin's. For example, where Bookchin's social ecology is explicitly libertarian-communist, antistatist, secular, and social-revolutionary, some of these authors look with favor on economic enterprise, the state, mysticism/spirituality, and reformism. The creation of the book appears to have been motivated by hostility to Bookchin, yet ironically a great part of its sales will probably result from the fact that the title contains the name "Murray Bookchin."

The anthology is part of a Guilford series whose overall editor, James O'Connor, is a Marxist and hence politically antipathetic to Bookchin's left-libertarian ideas. Nor are many of the others invovled in the book social ecologists at all. To be sure, John Clark and David Watson call themselves social ecologists at present, but they are determined to "reformulate" social ecology in the mystical terms they prefer. But others do not even claim to be social ecologists. The editor, Andrew Light, is an avowed democratic socialist, while among the contributors, the "ecocentric" Robyn Eckersley is far closer to deep ecology, and Joel Kovel and (to all appearances) Alan Rudy are Marxists. Tellingly, no one who teaches, alongside Bookchin, at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont contributed an essay to this book.

Nor do the essays, taken together, constitute a coherent critique of Bookchin's social ecology. Some, for example, criticize him for being a Marxist, while others criticism for his libertarianism. Many of the essays are greatly ad hominem, concerned at least as much with Bookchin's personal manners and habits, and with his supposed (but nonexistent) claim to "possess" social ecology, as they are with the content of his ideas. One essay, by a psychiatrist, even psychoanalyzes Bookchin, concluding that he has a "Messiah complex." This level of discussion could not be much lower.

I live with Bookchin, so I know the following story is true. In 1995-96 when Bookchin learned that this project was under way, he contacted Guilford, asking to be given the opportunity to write an essay in response to the criticisms, for inclusion at the end of the book. (This is a courtesy commonly extended to individuals who are subjects of critical anthologies while they are still alive.) Editor Andrew Light held a referendum among the contributors: Should Bookchin be permitted to respond to them? Their majority reply was no, he should not. What were they afraid of?

The book is a strange collection of essays, mostly written by people extremely hostile to their subject. There's not even a common thread in the book. The claim of the editor that this collection could be considered a 'tribute' to Bookchin is absurd.

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. ...

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 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.