Nachruf: Murray Bookchin

Friday, August 11. 2006

Nachruf: Murray Bookchin

Vor gut einer Woche, am 30. Juli 2006, verstarb Murray Bookchin, eine prägende Person der US-Ökologiebewegung. Ich will jetzt keinen allzu pathetischen Nachruf auf einen Anarchisten verfassen, aber dennoch ein paar Worte dazu schreiben.

Das erste Mal hab ich über Bookchin in Jutta Ditfurths Buch »Entspannt in die Barbarei« gelesen, in der sie ihn als Gegenpol zum stark durch Esoterik geprägten Flügel der Ökologiebewegung aus Biozentrismus, Tiefenökologie und ähnlichen Spinnereien darstellte. Desweiteren war Bookchin nie Müde, die Verknüpfung der ökologischen mit der sozialen Frage einzufordern.
Anliegen, die zu unterstützen notweniger denn je ist.

To speak of »limits to growth« under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be »persuaded« to limit growth than a human being can be »persuaded« to stop breathing. Attempts to »green« capitalism, to make it »ecological«, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post-modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism.

This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of »revolutionizing themselves and things«, much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People's Labor Party »revolutionaries« is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of »proletarian morality« replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little »Red Book« and other sacred litanies.

(Quelle: Wikipedia)
Posted by Hanno Böck in Ecology, Politics at 19:56 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)
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Hi,

Re Murray Bookchin passing away.

I run the websites:
http://www.bluegreenearth.com
http://www.europeansocialecologyinstitute.org

The latest issue of blue (BlueGreenEarth Vol.5 #11 - August 20th 2006) has run two Bookchin pieces

Whither Bookchin? - Obituary, by Tim Barton
Obituary, by Rob Allen (for Freedom Anarchist Fortnightly)

We also republished our review of Re-Enchanting Humanity

In the previous issue we had run a reprint of our Local-Global Organising feature from November 2005's Lancaster University KnowledgeLab (UK), at which I gave a Social Ecology related seminar.

Our Institute is still in its early stages, despite plans over 15 years ago to get it running, However, in the last few months things have begun to forge ahead and in 2007 we hope to have several courses available. These may be in Hastings, Ipswich, or Cork, and we hope offer them further afield over the next few years.

I hope this is of interest to you. We too were very sad to hear of Murray's death, though aware it was kind of due.

Regards
Tim

PS I also run the blog:
http://socialecologyinstitute.blogspot.com
#1 Tim (Homepage) on 2006-08-28 19:18 (Reply)

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You can find my web page with links to my work as a journalist at https://hboeck.de/.

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Hanno Böck
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