The Modern Crisis

by Murray Bookchin, Andy Price (Introduction)

Murray Bookchin’s frank assessment of the disaster we are heading toward at increasing speed is as much a work of ethics as it is of environmentalism. The four essays that comprise it share the view that, as he puts it, “our ideas and our practice must be imbued with a deep sense of ethical commitment.” Whether he is critiquing the market economy, the state, or the idea—common to both capitalists and certain left materialists—that human beings are motivated solely by greed and self-interest, Bookchin ever reminds us of the ineffable values of freedom, self-consciousness, and social harmony.

Though first published in 1986, Bookchin’s framework still applies. The moral relativism of the 1980s—the politics of lesser-evils and risk vs benefit calculations—has morphed into what we now refer to as “both-sidesism” and the risk vs benefit calculations of yesterday are the 100,000 acre burn scars seen throughout the American west today. Beyond moral relativism or moral absolutism is an ecologically based ethics—one that sees our selfhood, reason, and freedom as stemming from nature’s variety and resilience. Bookchin’s social ecology refuses to separate society from nature. As such one can consider it a philosophy of participation—we cannot develop ecocommunities that aren’t participatory. We can’t save ourselves and the planet without an ethics of freedom. This edition, with a new introduction by Bookchin scholar Andy Price, is a breath of fresh air for a left that seems to have forgotten basic truths.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Climate Change, Environment, Ecology

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology. In the late 1990s he became disenchanted with the strategy of political Anarchism and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called Communalism.

Bookchin was an anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society along ecological and democratic lines. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, assembly democracy, had an influence on the Green movement and anti-capitalist direct action groups such as Reclaim the Streets.

Reviews

[Corvus · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is always a strange feeling when reading something written decades ago that could have been written today. It shows the wisdom of the author while also providing a reminder that the problems of today are also the problems of the past and future, ever changing shape. The reprint of Murray Bookchin's, The Modern Crisis invokes those feelings. His discussions of topics such as social ecology, bio/ecocide, climate catastrophe, authoritarianism, libertarianism (the original anarchist kind, not the appropriated right wing kind,) and more nestle themselves well in the current time. To be honest, I did not fully appreciate this book until I went back and read through my page flags. I sometimes find myself overwhelmed by political philosophy texts, but when I looked at my highlights, I saw more of the brilliance there.

It has been a while since I have read anything by a famous anarchist guy, but I have caught snippets of Bookchin's work here and there and figured he'd be someone I'd have things in common with. My portal into anarchism overall came through the green end of it and I remain very attached to green anarchism. Today, I think that all anarchisms, when practiced efficiently, are covering each other's bases anyway, so I don't tend to call myself one thing. But, there are times where it is important to draw divisions and Bookchin touches on some of those in this text. The titular line comes from this quote:

"The color of radicalism today is no longer red, it is green, and should be raised aloft boldly if the modern crisis is to be resolved."

While Bookchin does make references to other identity politics based issues, the essays in this book center humanity and everyone/thing else on the planet as a larger whole. Social ecology is the name of the game which differs from things like social "darwinism" and other anthropocentric and supremacist views of nature. While capitalism and authoritarianism create a myth of competition as the primary goal and who misrepresent Darwins teachings as some sort of war cry for toxic masculinity, social ecology involves seeing ourselves as part of the rest of the planet, dismantling and preventing oppressive hierarchy, and not assuming that something existing (patriarchy) means that it should or must exist.

One may wonder- especially outside of anarchist circles with running red vs. green snowball fight jokes- what the point is in creating such a distinction between red and green. Bookchin touches on this in multiple places, but especially in the essay "Workers and the Peace Movement." Bookchin dismantles the idea of "The Proletariat" as an inherently revolutionary class of individuals or as a monolithic people who will ultimately be liberated by seizing the machine that oppresses them. He dispells myths that activists who disrupt oppressive or ecologically destructive businesses are privileged people standing in the way of and at odds with the proletariat survival. Instead, he sees these people as all humans of differing backgrounds who must be part of the struggle together. He calls attention to the fact that many histories labeled only as workers revolutions were often far more complex in demographics and structure.

"Let us agree that no radical social change is possible without the support and initiative of working people - or, for that matter, of technicians, professionals, soldiers, women, ethnic groups, youth, the elderly, and the solidarity of the oppressed on a worldwide scale. But no radical change is possible unless "The Proletariat" transcends its suffocating class being and becomes a revolutionary *human* being."

Other essays touch on this and often reference the structure of ancient Athens as a model (while acknowledging oppression such as patriarchy that still existed then.) I don't know enough about that history to say much about it either way, but the gist of his argument seems to be that communities should be run by their members, with room to also respect and include "outsiders." Large nation sates make this sort of thing impossible, turning politics into a performative thing where individuals lose the ability to contribute in effective ways.

I do think that at times, Bookchin's own prejudices and anthopocentrism get in the way of his arguments. I knew before reading this that he did not always apply his critiques of anthropocentrism towards his personal behavior towards other animals in terms of consumption of their bodies and labor. I cannot ask him why this is, but there is always something that creates that itch in the back of my mind when someone is pointing a finger without necessarily pointing it at themself as well. This results in some comparisons between humans and other animals that don't mesh well with other comparisons and arguments that we are indeed part of the natural world like they are. Today's version of this is the cop out, "no ethical consumption under capitalism," which people often do not realize is a phrase that can be used to excuse countless atrocities involving money. (I am sure they would not say this phrase in regards to human trafficking for instance.) None of this means that his points are without merit of course. There is also a batshit out of place quote, "We buy and sell the outward trappings of personality: the sheen-like leather jackets that make humble bookkeepers look like dashing pimps and the high- heeled boots that make bored secretaries look like dangerously seductive temptresses." "Temptresses" replaced "whores" in the original version. There are so many hopefully obvious things wrong with this that I will not make this even longer in detailing. But, all this is to say he's not perfect. Overall though, he really hits the nail on the head in ways that I desperately wish more movements would connect with. I think perhaps when we include the other-than-human natural world in our movements and analyses, it forces us to look at ourselves more. That can be a lot harder than looking at cops and kings.

I'll end with a chunk of my favorite quote from the text in the essay, "An Appeal for Social and Ecological Sanity," that captures the gist of it all for me. His audience is clearly non-immigrant North American, but you get the point. It's all connected.

"With each such loss (of aforementioned extinct species, biodiversity, etc,) humanity, too, loses a portion of its own character structure: its sensitivity toward life as such, including human life, and its rich wealth of sensibility. If we can learn to ignore the destiny of whales and condors - indeed, turn their fate into chic cliches - we can learn to ignore the destiny of Cambodians in Asia, Salvadorans in central America, Kurds in Syria and Turkey, and, finally, the human beings who people our own communities."

This was also posted to my blog.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only good critique of the left has only ever come from the left. In this spirit I would like to point out the following:

1) I found the first thing I really, really disagree on with Murray Bookchin. In the essay "An Appeal for Social and Ecological Sanity" he argues that the reason why the USA hasn't obliterated its enemies with nuclear weapons is because this tendency is opposed by the society's remnant libertarian, republican tradition that is still latent in its feeble state institutions that serve as checks and balances to each other. I find this line of argumentation absolutely ridiculous, the powerless democratic tendencies in US societies cannot compel their government to do anything; it is much more plausible that the proliferation of nuclear arms is the reason. A pragmatic "mutually assured destruction" argument is more viable than an idealistic one that romanticizes US society.

2) The essay "Workers and the Peace Movement" starts out with a jab at Vermont's socialist mayor at that time (Bernie Sanders), and evolves into one of the best critiques of working class movements, and Marxism that I have ever read. I find this essay to be complementary to his more well known Listen, Marxist!", but clearly of a greater quality.

Furthermore, this book helped me further understand social ecology, and its role in a yet unexplored revolutionary tradition.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably my favorite Bookchin writings. In the past I've found him to be a bit too focused on the past and not focused enough on laying out his thoughts about the present and future, but this group of essays does a better job in getting that across. They are much easier to follow than other essays and books by him that I've read. Workers and the Peace Movement was my favorite essay, while An Appeal for Social and Ecological Sanity was the scariest. These were all written in the '80s yet wring as true today as they did back then.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four Murray Bookchin essays compiled together provide a decent introduction to his philosophy of 'social ecology.' Basically, the idea that human society and non-human ecology are not a dualism but rather complementary parts of a living whole, and that in order to make positive social change we must "place humanity within a natural context" in Bookchin's words. Made me want to re-read The Ecology of Freedom. This guy was smart.

[Garret Wassermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of 6 essays talks about "the modern crisis" that, as Bookchin declares in the first essay, is actually a crisis within "the Left" or radicalism which prevents it from appropriately organizing to address ecological crisis like climate change and social crisis. The essays were written at different times but share a few common themes. One, "the Left" needs to move beyond traditional worker-centric organizing models from 1800s/early 1900s that have ultimately failed to produce social change, with once radical unions and community organizations largely become integrated into capitalism. Two, our organizing needs to focus on building an ethical movement for the "public good", not merely focusing on economic self-interest; Bookchin proposes an ethics based on natural history and the history of humanity which shows humans are inherently cooperative, thus the ethics that should guide our politics should emphasize participatory democracy, mutual aid, and solidarity. Bookchin describes a "libertarian municipalist" movement which can realize these ethics by creating cooperative networks and confederations of municipalities that can collectively address ecological and social change. Bookchin advises that "the Left" reclaim the word "libertarian" for its original Leftist roots from the reactionary usage in modern US, in part because the libertarian tradition within US culture is a good way to reach out to our neighbors with a shared language and build a movement. Overall this book was very good read that challenges us to think about what a 21 century Leftist movement should look like, recommended reading for all those that consider themselves "Left" and/or socialist.

[Nexusjio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first time I have ever read anything by Murray Bookchin. I will be honest I did not even know who he was until my friend let me borrow this book. Regardless I found this to be a very thought provoking and incredibly enlightening analysis on the ways humanity relationship with ecology is drastic need of radical change. As well how capitalism has deteriorated our social connections between people and trivialized interactions through a binary and inorganic "buyer and seller" mentality. There was a lot of stuff he discussed I don't quite understand fully yet but overall I learned a lot when reading this short collection of essays.

I thoroughly will look out for more books by this author to read in the future

[Stef P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found myself disagreeing and agreeing with a lot of points but regardless of that it was always interesting to hear him plead his case. Good read if you’re interested in social ecology criticisms of left movements of the time (generally 1980s).

[Nathanael Card · Rating 3 out of 5]

Valuable for the links made between society and ecology, but I found Bookchin's style of writing to be hard to follow and too heady to inspire me to finish it.

[Zayne Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informationally dense, invaluable insights, though at some points proved itself an arduous read.

[Franklin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a totally foolish political tract by Bookchin, completely anti-worker, anti-Third World. The model of democracy is the (need I say "slave"?) society of ancient Athens. Sometimes he appears to think that the vanguard of revolution today is the New England town meeting. Also, anytime he criticizes any serious thinker, such as Marx, he is incapable of accurately representing their thought.