Murray Bookchin helped me articulate, in my younger days, my libertarian, anti-marxist, social sensibilities. As a tutor in college [I tutored Eric Fromm, Milton Friedman and the anarchist tradition], Bookchin helped me think deeply about how humans actively create and destroy their environments. He was, as Brian Tokar notes, "the Last Utopian."
Although I have personally moved towards a Keynesian understanding of economics, and fluctuate between Burke and Marx [Burke understood the person; Marx understood conflict] in their understanding of culture, Bookchin tried to articulate a coherent form of egalitarian libertarian communalism that challenged the totalitarian and deterministic edge of Marxism. In the end, I found his discussions of wisdom a bit dissatisfying, finding Christ along the way. I also ended up taking a softer view of hierarchies, reclaiming my inheritance as an Episcopalian (although I think the Episcopal church potentially has the best balance between hierarchy and freedom).
Much of his prose is a bit turgid, but he resisted the mystification and idealization of ecology, while still affirming local networks, and free associations. He was relentless in his critique of bourgeois environmentalism. He had the humility to rethink and reconsider his positions, instinctively resisting both the dogmatic impulses and the frivilous fads the often engulf left thinking. Even seven years ago he gave up "anarchism."
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