Re-Enchanting Humanity:
A Defence of the Human Spirit
Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism & Primitivism
by Murray Bookchin
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This review was written several years ago, against a growing body of anger with Bookchin's increasingly strident and antagonistic tone and manner. As a definitive figure in the eco-anarchist movement, Bookchin had little to prove, and yet he seemed to be acting as if he must leave some kind of Hegelian-Marxist academic treatise behind before leaving this mortal coil.
There can be no doubt that this move towards self-mythologizing was not characteristic of his written work before the eighties [I cannot speak for his personal character at that time]. But from Ecology of Freedom on, he seemed more concerned with his legacy and ego, than with the communication of pragmatic ideas.
Yet his concerns over deep ecology and post-modernism were, although expressed in the manner most likely to stop people hearing him, quite legitimate. It was in this spirit that I wrote the following review of Re-Enchanting Humanity for DeCenter magazine. A shorter version also appeared in ToxCat magazine.
- Tim Barton
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Murray Bookchin's latest work is a defence of the Human Spirit. To achieve this he has found it necessary to launch a virulent attack upon a wide-ranging group of people and ideas. Those familiar with his work will be right behind him, though at the same time saddened that such a negative approach should be necessary. One of the reasons (apart from the need to respond to misleading and wrong-headed criticism of his own work) behind this approach - targeting, amongst others, many the careless may perceive as his allies - Bookchin sums up in these words;
"The very means that exist to achieve rational society... can be dangerously deployed by the present irrational society against the attainment of a better world" (p33)
This irrationalism Bookchin see's amongst diverse groups - some scientists; neo-Malthusian sociologists; ecomystics; primitivists; technophobes; and postmodernist nihilists, for example. The inclination of shallow media commentators to see the problems faced by humanity as polarised between right and left is tacitly demolished by this list of irrationalists - each of these groups contains representatives of both left and right. The real action is taking place elsewhere, and with almost all factions' eyes off the ball it is hardly any wonder that the world appears to be inexorably falling apart.
So Bookchin may feel that he has to take on all comers before he can move on to explicate some of his alternative, positive, vision. For Bookchin there is another way (in his words, "To become human is to become rational and imaginative, thoughtful and visionary, in rectifying the ills of the present society" (p32)), but let's look at the problems before we look at the solutions.
Our attempts to achieve a balance between individual and community are the history of our species (most obviously in the - still unfinished - Enlightenment). And Bookchin's "Defence of the Human Spirit" is a timely warning to us that this great project is in no way concluded - indeed, that it may fail. The book details many of the modes of thought that endanger it (and, therefore, all of us), categorising them under the general headings of Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism. Such broad categories are refined into a complex analysis of modes of thought that are a barrier to our understanding of, and our ability to deal with, the world about us. Many of the adherents of some of the belief systems castigated by Bookchin seem unaware of the teleological problems inherent in their beliefs, and therefore unable to see the direction that a logical unfolding of those ideas might take. It is partly for this reason that Bookchin feels the need not only to explicitly draw out their internal logic, but also to - quite rightly - note that (for example, in the case of ecomystics) no-one "can fault them for attempting to deepen public concern for the loss of wildlife, forests, and unsettled land. This laudable impulse is eminently desirable in a time of growing ecological devastation" (p87). Such largesse, however, will do little to soften the impact of his criticism on those who adhere to the ideologies he refutes. Those with the strength of character to bear with him stand to learn a great deal, and even when they remain in disagreement over some points, may find their bullshit detectors to be sharper as a result of hearing him out - allowing them to, perhaps, look more critically at their own ideological position.
Naturally, there are others who are not so well meaning, who will find the fact that someone is holding up their prejudices to the clear light of day irksome. The fact that Bookchin is no stranger to the anger of misanthropes is, no doubt, one of the reasons for the existence of this book in the first place. When he says that he is "deeply disturbed by" the "pseudo-radical" literature he sees around him in the States, "...the so-called 'new paradigm' or generically 'New Age' literature that 'disenchants' us with our humanity, indeed, that summons us to regard ourselves as an ugly, destructive excrescence of natural evolution.." (p3), he is referring to an old enemy.
So, who are these "enemies", and how do their beliefs undermine our common future?
One of the groups whom we must beware consist of a few members of that great bastion of 'objectivity', the scientific community. Particular areas that concern Bookchin are sociobiology and Gaian earth science. The former, which appears to reduce human complexities to individual genetic make-up, is particularly fashionable these days, with media personalities like Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene) seeming to subscribe to the idea. Yet its inherent determinism is hard to weld to any kind of positive philosophy, since its tacit, almost quietistic, regard for the status quo does much to disempower those who are convinced by its findings. Basically, it suffocates hope. Obviously, while this is unpalatable, if sociobiology was correct rather than crudely reductionist we would, perhaps, have to accept its determinism. But, as Bookchin shows in his succinct critique of E.O.Wilson, it is, when taken to this extreme, little more than pseudo-science. Yet its popularity means it cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.
BOX
to become human is to become rational and imaginative, thoughtful and visionary, in rectifying the ills of the present society
BOX
Gaian earth science is even more of a pseudo-science these days. Many people were attracted to the ideas put forward by James Lovelock in his Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, in which he first popularised his idea that the Earth functions as if it were a single organism. This more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts concept had and still has great appeal. But, in naming this metaphorical conceit Gaia, after the Greek earth mother, he has opened a whole can of worms; a can of worms that has made a celebrity out of Lovelock. His next book, The Ages of Gaia, went that inevitable step further, the reader being encouraged to move beyond a strictly metaphorical understanding of "gaia", and towards the idea that perhaps the earth-as-a-whole might indeed be some kind of actual being, rather than 'merely' an incredibly complex self-regulatory system. If Gaia could regulate itself in order to ride out events that threatened to upset its equilibrium, and if the entity called Gaia is alive (which is the corollary of believing it to be some kind of being, or, hell why not, goddess) and made up of all life on earth, then, some began to argue, perhaps, if humankind acted in a manner that was not conducive to the system - sorry, goddess - then it would be no great loss if we happened to pay the ultimate price for toying with the primeval forces of nature and became extinct.
Such so-called logic may seem ludicrous, but this kind of mentality is rife in New Age thought. And it is no surprise that Bookchin should regard the adherents of this belief - and its unknowing offspring - as, at the very least, misanthropic, if not downright anti human. The 'scientific' flavour, then, of some of the source documents one might find in a "New Age Reader" backs up the beliefs of ecomystics, and, frighteningly, puts a whole new antihumanist spin on them.
The doctrines of neo-Malthusianism are more overtly pseudo-scientific. The belief that overpopulation will bring ruin to us all has been common ever since the early nineteenth century, when Thomas Malthus produced his essay On Population. Todays Malthusians are no more sophisticated, and, if anything, have considerably less objective justification for their views, despite the beliefs of people like Paul Ehrlich, famous in the seventies for his apocalyptic The Population Bomb, - or Garrett Hardin, author of Biology: Its Human Implications, who believes that (because, in certain animal eco-cycles, we can see that dense population frequently results in the "overload and collapse of natural recycling processes") human "freedom to breed will bring ruin to all". Hardin then uses this belief to justify the curtailment of our freedom to breed.
This is exactly the kind of coercive behaviour that Bookchin views as ecofascist. To have a human society that is in balance with the world it lives in, but not at the same time in a stable and sustainable balance within itself, can never yield a viable human community. Forcing us to be 'free' by proscribing certain activities actually guarantees rebellion. If we really believe that lower populations are necessary - and many would refute this - then to achieve lower populations within a cohesive society requires education and voluntaristic birth control. Hardin's final insult is the coining of the term the "lifeboat ethic", wherein; "The biosphere... is akin to a lifeboat of survivors from a sinking ship - perhaps one whose more privileged passengers have secure places in the lifeboat. Those who are flailing in the water must be kept out if the lifeboat is not to sink. This 'ethic' rests on undisguised self-interest. Far from constituting a description of the human condition as we know it today, it is a prescription of what the human condition should be..", which view follows logically from the Malthusian belief that "a species that has exceeded the 'carrying capacity' of its ecosystem should in fact be permitted to starve... to weed the fit from the unfit in the struggle for survival" (p 79).
Another group whom Bookchin calls out because of the misanthropy that results from following their ideas through are the ecomystics. Bookchin contrasts this group to those discussed above on the grounds that, at least in theory, sociobiologists, gaians, and neo-Malthusians base their beliefs on rationally analysable facts, while ecomystics (and on occasion primitivists) actively celebrate anti-rationalism. Once one partakes of cosmic and holistic mysticism, rejecting 'objective' 'scientific' thought as less important than one's own subjective intuitions, the needs of the individual elements that make up the world/gaia become subsumed to the 'needs' of the whole (that secular materialist religion, Marxism, also suffers from this inherently anti-human dialectical unfolding - as does capitalism).
The green ecomystics that seem most popular are the deep ecologists, many of whom held Bookchin in high regard, seeing him, even, as some kind of founder. It does not take much analysis of Bookchin's work by a rational observer to see that this was a complete misreading. And it will surprise no-one that Bookchin himself was appalled by the failure of many greens to face up to the realities of the world, and angered that they should misrepresent his own views so totally. The reduction of man to a being whose stature can be equated with that of microbes philosophically divests us of control over our own destiny. The kind of quietistic individuality-in-subsumation-to-Nature that so many ecomystics regard as 'deep' can only lead to the self-abnegation of individuality - that is to say, of humanness.
Our 'equality' with other organisms (equality meaning, apparently, 'should be treated the same as', and that humans are 'on a par with', say, termites), is contested by Bookchin in the strongest terms. In the following statement Bookchin risks being called anthropocentric - apparently an insult - for refusing to deny empirical facts - "That only human beings in the entire biosphere can confer 'rights' upon non-human beings precisely because as humans they are so radically different from other life-forms seems to elude most deep ecologists" (p104).
For those who are not clear about the dangers of deep ecology, Dave Foreman, former 'head' of Earth First! (in the US, where the group is heavily influenced by deep ecology) gives the following response to a question on human (read: mere human) population issues:
"When I tell people how the worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is to give aid - the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let the people there just starve there, they think that is monstrous" (p107, quoted from Simply Living magazine 1986).
Well, yes, but that's because it is monstrous. This is not a man suggesting that giving grain now in the absence of long term structural aid, the overthrow of the elitist fascists' in government in Ethiopia, the disarming of the Sudanese, and the removal of interest payment commitments to western banks, the IMF and the World Bank simply defers the problem to a future in which we may no longer be in a position to 'help' (with which we can disagree, but which is at least an argument) - no, this is a man saying, 'Fuck them - let them starve, for the sake of the wilderness'. This is unambiguously misanthropic and disgusting. It is also a direct and predictable result of ecomystic patterns of thought. (Another deep ecologist, George Sessions, had the audacity to complain - in Wild Earth magazine, 1992 - that, because Foreman's comments were "casual remarks", Bookchin was being terribly opportunistic, implying that he should have let this rampant ecofascism pass unnoted!).
Little needs to be added to the above in order to illustrate Bookchin's views on primitivism. This is a group whose response to the evils of the world as it is today has been filtered through the same glasses as Foreman's. Their rallying cry could be characterised as "Back to the Pleistocene" (which is in fact an Earth First! slogan). Because the trappings of civilisation are to blame for the ills of the world today we should hark back to an earlier epoch, and go back to the land where we can regain our ancestors spiritual connectedness with the Earth. This once again seems to be pretty much a "stick your heads in the sand and the bogey man will go away" philosophy [a view Bookchin does understand, saying. "Mystical and particularly anti-rational and anti-humanistic cults are becoming prevalent because more and more people know too much ... about the nature of reality - and they are frightened by what they know" (p112)]. Well, no thanks, I can think of better things to do with my life than dig the soil with a branch, lose my harvest to bad weather, and catch every damn infection penicillin can cure. In chucking the baby out with the bathwater these supposed 'allies' in the battle with the establishment guarantee that they will almost certainly have nothing positive to offer in a time of real change, and that, if they are ever allowed any power, they will merely exacerbate the problems facing us. As Bookchin reminds us, "In the band and tribal societies of prehistory, humanity was almost completely at the mercy of uncontrollable natural forces and patently false and mystified visions of reality" (p122) and, "It took thousands of years for humanity to begin to shake off the accumulated 'intuitions' of shamans, priests, chiefs, monarchs, warriors, patriarchs, ruling classes, dictators, and the like - all of whom claimed immense privileges for themselves and inflicted terrible horrors on their inferiors on the basis of their 'intuited wisdom'" (p98).
The penultimate group Bookchin defends the spirit of man against are the technophobes. Apart from the scientific community (usually!), all the above groups have elements, often a majority, who can be characterised as technophobic. Gaian technophobia might revolve around the idea that the only possible human threat to Gaia is our technological 'prowess'; Malthusians might fear advances that extend human lifespans or allow for lower infant mortality, especially in the third world (ie, "over there"); ecomystics and primitivists may tend to spurn technology because they perceive it as damaging the environment. People who belong to none of the groups discussed also may tend to find technology to be one of the things that is wrong with the world.
But the basic assumption all of these groups make when embracing a technophobic attitude is that it is the scientific knowledge and our ability to apply it that is the problem. The realisation that technology can often be an inherently value-free tool, whose misuse is down to human connivance, shortsightedness, or what have you, is extremely rare. It is the application of technology that causes problems. It is often applied via centralised and hierarchical bureaucracies, for example. To look at one particular area: advances in electronics have yielded many devices. Some of these are centralising (because expensive, large-scale, and expert-orientated), like nuclear power; others are decentralising and can empower communities rather than states (because they are cheaper, small-scale and can be comprehended and maintained with less skill on a day-to-day basis), like wind power, or solar power. All of these devices may be seen to have some inherent bent, but the technological knowledge that produced them is itself value-neutral.
It should be obvious why someone like Bookchin, who wishes to see wide ranging changes in human relations with other humans and with the environment, deplores technophobia. What may be less obvious is why he would accuse so many people with different beliefs of suffering from it. In his book he makes it clear, however, that, often without knowing it themselves, all sorts of people in fact follow ideas that tend towards an anti-technology mentality; ie, that many world views are inherently technophobic even when those holding them use a good deal of technological products and do not have a conscious position on them.
Green groups are particularly susceptible to such a position, since the anger resulting from misuse of technology is a fundamental that greens of many shades can agree on - slowly it becomes easier to lump technology and its effects together in order to make their point more forcibly, unaware that this can only work as a pragmatic technique if they are conscious enough of the pitfalls to separate the two when necessary (it also encourages extremists, and discourages sensible sympathisers, thus reinforcing the technophobe tendency). That there occurs an identification of technology and science with its social application as a force for capitalism is even less surprising when capitalism itself encourages this view, with the intention of mysticising the relationship between capital and the economic and social realities of our daily lives - and deaths.
"It becomes difficult for the ordinary person to see that it is not science and technology that threaten to turn the entire world into a huge market and factory; rather, it is the market and factory that threaten to 'technologise', to objectify or commodify the human spirit and reduce the natural world to mere raw materials for capital expansion" (p154). Bookchin is very aware of the way in which society, particularly capitalist society, manipulates scientific discourse. "That science and technics conduct lines of research and open visions toward new developments is certainly true, but these developments are rigorously guided by the prevailing market society rather than the other way around" (p154). This awareness makes it particularly painful for Bookchin to see groups who claim to wish for radical changes in the way we live, but who thoughtlessly throw out the baby (our rationality, and scientific ability) with the bathwater (hierarchical and dominance-oriented society), because they fail to understand even the basics of how their own society works.
As Bookchin says, "...technophobia sets up a misleading enemy for committed environmentalists and culture critics, redirecting their attention away from patently social concerns. ...technophobes leave unanswered the strategic question of how a truly democratic society could be possible, if its members lacked the means of life and the free time to exercise their freedoms. ...the basic decision they face is how to use their vast fund of technological knowledge and devices, not whether to use them" and, "...without a technics that will free humanity from onerous toil - and without values that stress democratic forms of social organisation in which everyone can participate - all hopes for a free society in the future are chimeras. ...to glibly abstract technology from its social context, to let destructive current uses of technologies outweigh their potentially more rational application in a better society, would deny us the opportunity to choose what technologies should be used and the forms they will take" (p156/7).
Indeed, Bookchin's bottom line on the subject is related to the deep kinship between rationality and scientific thought, and its mirror in ecomystic groups who reject objective thought, rationality, and technology. "Freed of values grounded in objectivity, we are lost in a quasi-religious antihumanism, a spirituality that can with the same equanimity hear the cry of a bird or ignore the anguish of 6,000,000 once-living people who were put to death by the National Socialist state" (p170).
Lastly, Bookchin tackles the postmodernists, whose sheer nihilism is, in his view, antipathetical to the human spirit. Postmodernism is seen here as, on one level, merely a reaction to the perceived failure of Enlightenment ideals, and the "failures of various socialisms". As a writer with a more holistic worldview than that afforded by socialism (especially as it has been warped by Marx, and since then by Lenin and Stalin and their dogmatic centralist position, which has been deplorably entrenched in the European socialist movement), Bookchin, who himself has been involved with the American Left, is quite right to regard traditional (twentieth century) socialisms as failures. I feel that there is a real case to be made here with regard to the roots of postmodernism. However, it is not a field about which I am particularly informed. Bookchin notes that he had much help from others in his 'Postmodern Nihilism' chapter, so we have that much in common. I feel that this shows.
Nevertheless, there is much of worth in this chapter, especially with regard to the possible psychological processes that could produce 'postmodernist' views:
"The more one feels disempowered about the human condition and bereft of social commitment, the more one becomes cynical and thereby captive to the prevailing social order. To the extent that hope and belief in progress are lost, a disarming relativism, ahistoricism, and ultimately nihilism replace any belief in the objectivity of truth, the reality of history, and the power of reason to change the world... By contending that reason is questionable as a path to ascertaining truth, indeed that it is just a social artifact and that truth is merely a social artifact, postmodernism advances this process, as does its denial that an objective history exists... indeed the very idea of progress as a basis for hope and social foresight begins to fade, if not disappear completely" (175/6).
Bookchin is also not shy of pointing out that two of the historically most important philosophers for postmodernists - Heidegger and Nietzsche - were also rather important (indeed, arguably, seminal) in the development of Nazism in Germany.
Apart from reservations with regard to his attempt to incorporate post-modernism into his book, there are relatively few criticisms I would level at Re-Enchanting Humanity's choice of targets. Those few are not minor, however, and chief among them is that in many ways, right or not, the book is a waste of his time - though perhaps someone needed to say it. Of the others, I will begin with what is in some ways the least (and it is assuredly not Bookchin who is at fault), and end on the most important criticism:
The blurb on the book, and indeed the title, sub-title, and cover do not sell the book. I feel that those who would pick up a book called 're-enchanting'-anything will be very hostile to the content, whilst those who might find the contents stimulating would balk at the word, so passing it over, unless they knew Bookchin's work. The sub-title, while being a true description of the book, is cumbersome. The cover is over-dark and, frankly, bland. I also believe that anyone who picks it up even in part because of the blurbs assertion that Bookchin deals with topics "often wittily" will almost certainly be disappointed, since, apart from the occasional deep sarcasm, one thing Bookchin does not do is write wittily - I don't believe that he intends to be taken as a witty writer.
None of this should take away from the fact that Cassell are making a brave effort in publishing their new Global Issues series, of which this is a part, or that they are, as far as I know, the first UK publisher (bar a couple of pamphlets from AK Press) of Bookchin, which must be applauded since it is overdue to say the least.
A second criticism of the work relates to Bookchin's attempt to pull the rug from under the Malthusians and scientific pessimists. When offering examples of why they are wrong he often overstates or oversimplifies the optimistic message (a fault that is not to be found in other work, so it is not, I believe, Bookchin's beliefs that I am taking issue with, but his means of defending them). I will use only one instance of this in illustration: In response to neo-malthusian statements about worldwide famine and human overpopulation Bookchin relates a catalogue of statistics which show the massive global rise in cereal crop production, beef & mutton production, and supply of fish, saying that "All of these increases by far outstripped population growth, and - potentially, in a more rational society - might have amply met the needs of the world population" (p65).
However, these rises in production must be seen in the light of the methods by which they were achieved. Bookchin's point about a post-scarcity environment already having the potential to exist due to twentieth century advances, and his recognition that the societal institutions we currently have cannot achieve such an environment, does not follow from the examples of growth stated here (I believe he is right, and has explicated his reasoning far better elsewhere - the approach here does a grave disservice to his earlier work).
First off, the rise in grain production has been due largely to monocultures, tailored to produce a high yield fast, with a concomitant lowering of quality, and to pesticides which are highly carcinogenic, and fertilisers which are artificial (created using fossil fuel) and which leach the soil of all natural nutrients. That is to say, the rise is short term only, due to the (capitalist-developed and oriented) technologies that have created them, and therefore gives no backing to Bookchin's argument in this case. Secondly, the rise in beef and mutton production, ignoring possible dangers like BSE, is predicated on artificially maintaining the health of the cattle through injections of antibiotics, which pass into the human consumer, encouraging the viruses and microbes to develop immunities which render this rise in productivity also short term and more of a danger than an aid. The amount of dioxin poisoning in animal, fish - and human - populations also casts a different light on Bookchin's figures. A further comment on the third element, fish production, relates to fish stocks. The current rise of fish catch is in no way sustainable since it is not based upon an increase in fish in the sea, but, instead, upon massive overfishing. The tendency to overfish with ever larger nets with ever smaller holes in them leads to younger fish in the catch, a situation which increasingly imperils breeding per se - surely it is self-evidently ludicrous to base any anti-malthusian hopes upon this statistic?
These are, unfortunately, not the only examples of this kind of laziness in the book, though I would say that they are probably the grossest. From reading much of Bookchin's other work over the years, I am certain that he knows better, on all these issues.
In some ways the worst problem in the book involves the idea of dialectical logic. Here, Bookchin puts forward a form of thought-process that goes beyond the empty reductionism of linear (Newtonian?) scientific logic. His idea of dialectical logic owes much to Hegel, and one might suggest that it presents a more holistic version of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, thus acknowledging the interconnectedness of all process on Earth. However, Bookchin is extremely unclear in his description of dialectical logic, to the point, in fact, that it is very difficult to tell it apart from some of the thought-processes he criticises in others (quite correctly, one might add). Again, elsewhere in his work he covers his ideas on the subject in more detail, but as yet I have not found his explanations convincing as arguments. I think I know what he means, and I would agree wholeheartedly - would, in fact, agree that dialectical logic as I believe he means it is necessary. But since it is of such importance in his work I find it very worrying that he seems unable to communicate his intent convincingly, sometimes making his views appear less as dialectics than as teleology.
Overall, I believe that this is a very important book, and that, as usual, Bookchin is generally clear about where he is coming from and refuses to pull his punches when lesser writers would have backed off for fear of offending. Bookchin never has because he believes in what he says, and believes he is right not only about what the problems are, but also about what the solutions are.
The Logic of Neo-Malthusianism:
"if we didn't have people
we wouldn't have pollution
get rid of people
that's the only solution"
- sixth grade poem, (p66)
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So what are his beliefs? His views have on occasion been vulgarly characterised as left-libertarian. Indeed, emphasising the element of socialist perspective in his thought, Bookchin says, "Beneath the so-called 'population bomb', the deforestation of the planet, the diminution of biotic diversity, and the pollution of Gaia are the same underlying causes: an increasingly competitive marketplace, which leads to the unending growth of production so that one corporate entity can gain a competitive edge over its rivals. This competitive drive forces capitalism to pursue sources of cheap 'raw materials' in the farther-most recesses of the world's land masses and even its oceanic depths, irrespective of its impact on the well-being of humanity and the future of the biosphere" (p254).
The collectivism of socialism and the individualism of anarchism are, in Bookchin's social ecology, balanced (as, indeed, a functional and stable society must be), as he shows in this definition of freedom - "our potentiality for achieving a rational society consists in the attainment of freedom. Freedom consists of a multitude of interrelated attainments: the opportunity to choose between various courses of action, to shape our personal and social lives creatively, to deal with each other and the natural world humanely, to be guided by an ethics of complementarity, to create communal forms of social organisation, and to use reason in all our affairs. Hence rationally guided choice, certain basic virtues, and radically democratic institutions, constitute the partly realised potentialities for attaining humanness and achieving a free humanitas" (p236).
From his beliefs follow genuine solutions - which leaves us asking, well, so what should we actually be doing?
Bookchin's first point would be that part of the solution is a wide recognition of the existence and nature of the problems that need to be overcome. Since at least part of the problem is improper self-awareness - awareness of our own role in the crisis:
"We must recover the social core that explains our present ecological crisis... this core constitutes the heart of an enlightened humanism that is both critical & constructive, thoughtful & practical, speculative & interventionist".
From this realisation of the thought systems that have shaped our pasts may come an ability to consciously change the precepts of our beliefs, enabling us to "...reinforce the powers of reason to radically project the vision of a new society that would completely replace the present one", ("tragically, we already presuppose the existence of commodity production, the marketplace, and capitalism as though they were God-given".), and to "totally reconceptualise our ideas of justice and freedom... Unlike justice, which works with the pretension that all are equal in theory, despite their many differences in fact, freedom makes no pretence that all are equal but tries to compensate for the inequalities [that exist]".
The practical actions that might follow from this may include the "advance [of] technology and science along lines that will diminish work time (the realm of necessity) and enlarge free time (the realm of freedom). ...people should be free to choose the life-style they want. Lacking the right to do so, they will remain with a sense of enforced privation that makes irrational choices seem desirable" (p259). This emphasis on choice cannot be overstated; "The achievement of freedom must be a free act on the highest level of intellectual and moral probity, for if we cannot act vigorously to free ourselves, we will not deserve to be free". (p260) "A new society... must be a libertarian 'commune of communes', a confederated network of balanced, directly democratic, & decentralised communities, united administratively by councils on a regional and inter-regional level, constituting a counterpower against the centralised nation-state that prevails today" (p259).
Despite very clear ideas over what should be done, many of which are explicated in other works (where he speaks of libertarian municipalism, of alternative technologies, of post-scarcity anarchism, and of various forms of more direct and decentralised democracy), and despite a modicum of optimism, Bookchin is forced - largely by the sort of groups that Re-Enchanting Humanity is aimed at - to nevertheless ask the question:
"...what direction will these [techno-logical, etc] changes [in the next few generations] take? Toward a rational future that creates a sensitive balance within society and between society and the natural world? Or toward a domineering and exploitative social order that makes earlier systems of domination seem benign?" (p123).
It is up to us to ensure that this rational future is acheived, indeed, it is up to us to ensure that we have any future at all. Bookchin must certainly be one of our guides.
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– Tim Barton
Murray Bookchin is widely recognised as the founder of social ecology. This school of thought is one of the most fruitful in analysing the present ecological, political, and social crises of western society.
Born in New York in 1921, Bookchin was involved in the American labour movement during the depression, as witnessed by his oratorial style. The next couple of decades saw his position move away from traditional socialist ideas, via syndicalism, and towards a libertarian socialism levened by a green awareness. He has been active in the worldwide green movement, as well as having been involved in several alternative communities in the States, in which he was amongst the first to push alternate technologies.
His first book length work to address the green issue was Our Synthetic Environment, published under a pseudonym [Herber] in 1962. Recommended amongst his later work are Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), and Toward an Ecological Society (1980). His magnum opus, however, is the philosophical work, The Ecology of Freedom (1982).
He now lives in Burlington, Vermont, with his partner, the social ecologist Janet Biehl, where he is director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology.
Do you feel that none of his criticisms apply to you? Maybe this anecdote will call complacent readers up, at the same time showing the kind of humanistic understanding Bookchin is capable of;
"...the New York Museum of Natural History organised an 'environmental exhibition' in which schoolchildren were trotted past one case after another that showed wanton environmental damage. The last exhibit... was headed: 'The Most Dangerous Animal of All'. It consisted of a full length mirror, in which visitors could see themselves in the full splendour of their terrifyingly human attributes. When I lingered near this distasteful exhibit, nothing impressed me more than the sight of a middle-class white teacher explaining to a black child the ‘meaning’ of the mirror and the title that surmounted it".
Re-Enchanting Humanity, p.66
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