Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006[1]) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement,[4] Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ecology and urban planning within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban affairs, and social ecology. Among the most important were Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982) and Urbanization Without Cities (1987). In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary anarchist movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called "communalism", which seeks to reconcile and expand Marxist, syndicalist, and anarchist thought.[5][6]
Murray Bookchin | |
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.jpg) Bookchin in 1999 | |
| Born | January 14, 1921 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | July 30, 2006 (aged 85) Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Era | 20th-/21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental Philosophy, Anarchism, Libertarian Socialism, Hegelianism, Philosophy of ecology |
Main interests | Social hierarchy, dialectics, post-scarcity, libertarian socialism, ethics, environmental sustainability, ecology, history of popular revolutionary movements |
Notable ideas | Social ecology |
Influenced | |
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| Green anarchism |
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| Libertarian socialism |
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| Anarchism |
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| Socialism in the United States |
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Bookchin was a prominent anti-capitalist and advocate of social decentralization along ecological and democratic lines. His ideas have influenced social movements since the 1960s, including the New Left, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and more recently, the democratic confederalism of Rojava. He was a central figure in the American green movement and the Burlington Greens.