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20th century Analytic theory Books Direct democracy Futures theory Global Social Ecology Statism - Representationism Strategic theory

The Politics of Social Ecology : Libertarian Municipalism (1998)


Author(s)

Janet Biehl


Contents

“Libertarian municipalism is one of many political theories that concern themselves with the principles and practices of democracy.

In contrast to most such theories, however, it does not accept the conventional notion that the State and governmental systems typical of Western countries today are truly democracies. On the contrary, it considers them republican States with pretensions of being democratic. Republican States, to be sure, are more “democratic” than other kinds of States, like monarchies and dictatorships, in that they contain various kinds of representative institutions. But they are nonetheless States—overarching structures of domination in which a few people rule over the great majority.

A State, by its very nature, is structurally and professionally separated from the general population—in fact, it is set over and above ordinary men and women. It exercises power over them, making decisions that affect their lives. Its power in the last instance rests on violence, over whose legal use the State has a monopoly, in the form of its armies and police forces. In a structure where power is distributed so unevenly, democracy is impossible. Far from embodying rule by the people, even a republican State is incompatible with popular rule. Libertarian municipalism advances a kind of democracy, by contrast, that is no mere fig leaf for State rule.

The democracy it advances is direct democracy—in which citizens in communities manage their own affairs through face-to-face processes of deliberation and decision-making, rather than have the State do it for them.”

Janet Biehl

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21st century Analytic theory Anarchism Anti-racism Books Capitalism Direct democracy Feminism Futures theory Global Patriarchy Social Ecology Statism - Representationism Strategic theory Values theory White supremacy

The Next Revolution (2015)


Author(s)

Murray Bookchin

Debbie Bookchin (editor)

Blair Taylor (editor)

Ursula K. Le Guin (foreword)


Contents

“Murray Bookchin spent a lifetime opposing the rapacious ethos of grow-or-die capitalism. The nine essays in this book represent the culmination of that labor: the theoretical underpinning for an egalitarian and directly democratic ecological society, with a practical approach for how to build it.

He critiques the failures of past movements for social change, resurrects the promise of direct democracy and, in the last essay in this book, sketches his hope of how we might turn the environmental crisis into a moment of true choice—a chance to transcend the paralyzing hierarchies of gender, race, class, nation, a chance to find a radical cure for the radical evil of our social system.

Reading it, I was moved and grateful, as I have so often been in reading Murray Bookchin. He was a true son ofthe Enlightenment in his respect for clear thought and moral responsibility and in his honest, uncompromising search for a realistic hope.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (Foreword)

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20th century Analytic theory Books Direct democracy Global Longue durée Social Ecology Strategic theory

Urbanization without Cities (1992)


Author(s)

Murray Bookchin


Contents

“The city at its best is an ecocommunity. To ignore this compelling fact is to ignore the destruction it faces by one of the most serious phenomena of the modern era, the massive urbanization that is sweeping it away together with so many natural features of our planet.

Urbanization is not only a social and cultural fact of historic proportions; it is a tremendous ecological fact as well. At a time when the overwhelming majority of people in North America and Western Europe regard themselves as city dwellers, we are obliged, if only for ecological reasons, to explore modern urbanization. We must explore not only its impact on the natural environment, a subject that has already been discussed in considerable detail by many writers, but, more significantly these days, the changes urbanization has produced in our sensibility toward society and toward the natural world.

A social ecology of the city is needed today if ecological thinking is to be relevant to the modern human condition.”

Murray Bookchin

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