Philosopher views

ECOCOMMUNITARIANISM IS BETTER THAN BOOKCHIN'S IDEAS

1. ECOCOMMUNITARIAN POLITICS IS BETTER THAN BOOKCHIN'S MUNICIPALISM

John Clark, professor of philosophy at Loyola University, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, 1998, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/municipaldreams.html, accessed May 10, 2001.

This analysis forms part of a much larger critique, in which I attempt to distinguish between social ecology as an evolving dialectical, holistic philosophy, and the increasingly rigid, nondialectical, dogmatic version of that philosophy promulgated by Bookchin. An authentic social ecology is inspired by a vision of human communities achieving their fulfillment as an integral part of the larger, self realizing earth community. Ecocommunitarian politics, which I would counterpose to Bookchin's libertarian municipalism, is the project of realizing such a vision in social practice. If social ecology is an attempt to understand the dialectical movement of society within the context of the larger dialectic of society and nature, ecocommunitarianism is the project of creating a way of life consonant with that understanding. Setting out from this philosophical and practical perspective, I argue that Bookchin's politics is not only riddled with theoretical inconsistencies, but also lacks the historical grounding that would make it a reliable guide for an ecological and communitarian practice.

John Clark, professor of philosophy at Loyola University, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, 1998, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/municipaldreams.html, accessed May 10, 2001.

One of my main contentions in this critique is that because of its ideological and dogmatic aspects, Bookchin's politics remains, to use Hegelian terms, in the sphere of morality rather than reaching the level of the ethical. That its moralism can be compelling I would be the last to deny, since I was strongly influenced by it for a number of years. Nevertheless, it is a form of abstract idealism, and tends to divert the energies of its adherents into an ideological sectarianism, and away from an active and intelligent engagement with the complex, irreducible dimensions of history, culture and psyche. The strongly voluntarist dimension of Bookchin's political thought should not be surprising. When a politics lacks historical and cultural grounding, and the real stubbornly resists the demands of ideological dogma, the will becomes the final resort.
3. BOOKCHIN'S VIEWS WON'T LEAD TO REAL SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

John Clark, professor of philosophy at Loyola University, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN, 1998, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/municipaldreams.html, accessed May 10, 2001.

Certain tendencies that have always impeded Bookchin's development of a truly communitarian outlook are already evident in his conclusions on the place of "consciousness" in this process. "What consciousness must furnish above all things is an extraordinary flexibility of tactics, a mobilization of methods and demands that make exacting use of the opportunities at hand." In this analysis, Bookchin expresses a Bakuninism (or anarcho-Leninism) that has been a continuing undercurrent in his thought, and which has recently come to the surface in his programmatic municipalism. His conception of consciousness at the service of ideology stands at the opposite pole from an authentically communitarian view of social transformation, which sees more elaborated, richly developed conceptions of social and ecological interrelatedness (not in the sense of mere abstract "Oneness," but rather as concrete unity-in-diversity) as the primary challenge for consciousness as reflection on social practice.

MURRAY BOOKCHIN’S IDEAS ARE MISGUIDED AND DANGEROUS

1. BOOKCHIN’S NOTION OF ‘SOCIAL VS. LIFESTYLE’ ANARCHISM IS AWFUL, STALINIST

Bob Black, anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 3.

SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM may well be the worst book about anarchists that any of them has ever written. According to the cover blurb, Murray Bookchin, born in 1921, has been ``a lifelong radical since the early 1930s.'' “Radical'' is here a euphemism for “Stalinist''; Bookchin was originally “a militant in the Young Pioneers and the Young Communist League”. Later he became a Trotskyist.

Bob Black, anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 5.

About 25 years ago, Murray Bookchin peered into the mirror and mistook it for a window of opportunity. In 1963 he wrote, under a pseudonym, Our Synthetic Society, which anticipated (although it seems not to have influenced) the environmentalist movement. In 1970, by which time he was pushing 50 and calling himself an anarchist, Bookchin wrote ``Listen, Marxist!'' – a moderately effective anti-authoritarian polemic against such Marxist myths as the revolutionary vanguard organization and the proletariat as revolutionary subject. In this and in other essays collected in Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Bookchin disdained to conceal his delight with the disarray of his Marxist comrades-turned-competitors. He thought he saw his chance. Under his tutelage, anarchism would finally displace Marxism, and Bookchin would place the stamp of his specialty, ``social ecology,'' on anarchism. Not only would he be betting on the winning horse, he would be the jockey. As one of his followers has written, “if your efforts at creating your own mass movement have been pathetic failures, find someone else's movement and try to lead it''.
3. BOOKCHIN IS AN EGOMANIACAL LEADER

Bob Black, anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 9.

Something went awry. Although Dean Bookchin was indeed widely read by North American anarchists – one of his acknowledged sycophants calls him “the foremost contemporary anarchist theorist'” – in fact, not many anarchists acknowledged him as their dean. They appreciated his ecological orientation, to be sure, but some drew their own, more far-reaching conclusions from it. The Dean came up against an unexpected obstacle. The master-plan called for anarchists to increase in numbers and to read his books, and those parts came off tolerably well. It was okay if they also read a few anarchist classics, Bakunin and Kropotkin for instance, vetted by the Dean, with the understanding that even the best of them afford “mere glimpses” of the forms of a free society subsequently built upon, but transcended by, the Dean's own epochal discovery, social ecology/social anarchism. Bookchin does not mind standing on the shoulders of giants – he rather enjoys the feel of them under his heel – so long as he stands tallest of all.
4. BOOKCHIN USES STALINIST TACTICS

Bob Black, anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 12.

Where Bookchin accuses rival anarchists of individualism and liberalism, Stalinists accuse all anarchists of the same. For example, there was that Monthly Review contributor who referred to Bookchinism as “a crude kind of individualistic anarchism”! In other words, capitalism promotes egotism, not individuality or “individualism.” ... The term “bourgeois individualism”' an epithet widely used today against libertarian elements, reflects the extent to which bourgeois ideology permeates the socialist project – these words being, of course, those of Bookchin the Younger. That the Dean reverts to these Stalinist slurs in his dotage reflects the extent to which bourgeois ideology permeates his project. Fanatically devoted to urbanism, the Dean was being complimentary, not critical, when he wrote that “the fulfillment of individuality and intellect was the historic privilege of the urban dweller or of individuals influenced by urban life” Individuality's not so bad after all, provided it's on his terms.