Campbell Young
LINCHPIN

These days, concern for the state of the planet is all the rage in the mainstream media. But an ecological perspective on things is nothing new in anarchism. In fact, one of the first serious “green” thinkers of modern times was also a social anarchist. Murray Bookchin (1921-2006), the American philosopher/activist who was an early pioneer in the ecology movement, also played a major role in getting anarchism back on the political landscape.

Through numerous books and articles, Bookchin developed a radical, coherent analysis of such diverse topics as cities, revolutions, technology, gender, and labour. As a whole, he called his praxis (praxis = thought + action) social ecology.

The basic idea of social ecology is that a given society’s view of nature reflects the social relations of that society. Early human communities (and many existing aboriginal communities) saw themselves as equal participants in nature because there was a high degree of equality in their societies. But as hierarchy – sexism, age-ism, racism, class, etc – developed through history, so too did a domineering attitude toward the natural world. For Bookchin, “the very idea of dominating nature stems from the domination of human by human.” In other words, a society in which people see each other as instruments of domination is bound to see nature as an object to be exploited.

This has reached a crisis point in the present age. Competition dictates that the state-capitalist system must “grow-or-die” to stay alive, swallowing up every one and every thing in the process. No matter how “environmentally friendly” some corporations claim to be, the capitalist system as a whole will eventually outgrow the biosphere in its quest to control labour, markets, and resources. To do so it must break down every vestige of community, creating new, often irrational, “needs” in people.

Unlike other radical eco-philosophies such as primitivism and deep ecology, social ecology does not take a negative and simplistic view toward technology, civilization, and human progress. While hierarchy has expanded through history, the potential for freedom has also taken on a wider scope with resistance, revolution, and utopian visions.

Thus, for social ecology, efforts to heal the planet are ultimately futile without revolutionary action to bring about a cooperative, libertarian-socialist society. Appropriate technologies are important, but they must find their place in decentralized, confederated, and directly democratic communities.

As Bookchin once wrote: “The notion that what exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.”

More info:
www.social-ecology.org
www.communalism.org