Murray Bookchin

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Lore & Background

Bookchin was born on January 14, 1921 in New York City to Nathan Bookchin and Rose Bookchin, Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father was from Mazyr (now Belarus) and his mother from Vilnius (Lithuania). He grew up in the Bronx with his mother, uncle Daniel, and maternal grandmother Zeitel, a Socialist Revolutionary who imbued him with Russian populist ideas. After his grandmother's death in 1930, he joined the Young Pioneers of America and the Young Communist League in 1935. He attended the Workers School near Union Square, where he studied Marxism. In the late 1930s, he broke with Stalinism and joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In the early 1940s, he worked in a foundry in Bayonne, New Jersey, as a trade union organizer and shop steward for the United Electrical Workers and a recruiter for the SWP. He was an auto worker and UAW member during the great General Motors strike of 1945–46. In 1949, he met Beatrice Appelstein, a mathematics student, whom he married in 1951. They were married for 12 years and lived together for 35, remaining close friends and political allies. They had two children, Debbie and Joseph. On religious views, Bookchin was an atheist.

Reader's Guide

Bookchin's significance lies in his synthesis of ecology and radical politics. From 1947, he collaborated with Josef Weber in the Movement for a Democracy of Content, which edited the periodical *Contemporary Issues*. The magazine published his first articles, including "The Problem of Chemicals in Food" (1952). In 1958, he defined himself as an anarchist, seeing parallels between anarchism and environmentalism. His first book, *Our Synthetic Environment*, was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber in 1962. In 1964, he joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and protested racism at the 1964 World's Fair. During 1964–1967, he cofounded the New York Federation of Anarchists. His essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced ecology as a concept in radical politics. In 1968, he founded another group that published *Anarchos* magazine. His 1969 essay "Listen, Marxist!" warned Students for a Democratic Society against a takeover by a Marxist group. In 1971, he moved to Burlington, Vermont, to put his ideas of decentralization into practice. In 1974, he co-created the Social Ecology Studies program at Goddard College and the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE). In 1977, he published *The Spanish Anarchists*. In 1980, he co-established the New England Anarchist Conference (NEAC). During the 1980s, he criticized Bernie Sanders' mayorship in Burlington, claiming Sanders lacked a drive to establish direct democracy. In 1988, he and Howie Hawkins founded the Left Green Network. He formally broke with anarchism in 1999, describing himself in 2002 as a "communalist" in his essay "The Communalist Project." He continued to teach at the ISE until 2004. Bookchin died of congestive heart failure on July 30, 2006, at his home in Burlington, at the age of 85.

Did You Know?

• Bookchin was an autodidact who never attended college, yet is considered one of the most important left theorists of the twentieth century.
• His first book, *Our Synthetic Environment* (1962), was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber a few months before Rachel Carson's *Silent Spring*.
• He was an auto worker and UAW member during the great General Motors strike of 1945–46.
• In 1969, his essay 'Listen, Marxist!' warned Students for a Democratic Society against a takeover by a Marxist group, writing 'Once again the dead are walking in our midst.'
• Bookchin's ideas influenced the democratic confederalism of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava).