Reviews for The Murray Bookchin reader

The average rating for The Murray Bookchin reader based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-04 00:00:00 Michelle Disrud This book is a good primer for anyone who wants to know more about Bookchin and his philosophy, or for someone who has read Bookchin in the past and wants to refresh their memory. The excerpts cover the full span of Bookchin's writing career, reaching as far back as the 1960s. I found some of the older works to be a little dated. But overwhelmingly, most of the texts are relevant to our current political and ecological situation, which goes to show how foresighted Bookchin was for his time. Janet Biehl's introductions to each section are a highlight. She obviously knows Bookchin's works inside and out, and she does a fantastic job of contextualizing and summarizing the excerpts. I came to this book knowing almost nothing about Bookchin. Now, I feel like I have a comfortable knowledge of his ideas on social ecology, anarchism and his later philosophy of Communalism. I also now know which of his books of his I would like to read in the future. In all, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of political and social theory.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-27 00:00:00 Christopher Grosklos This collection is very good at dispelling unproductive or even reactionary aspects of anarchism (deep ecology, disjointed theory, and what he calls "lifestyle anarchism") and it contains a number of terms that are useful when trying to think about how society might become more ecological. Where it falls apart is when Bookchin turns to Marxism. His fundamental misunderstanding of what the terms "proletariate" and "bourgeoisie" mean makes for an incredibly frustrating thread of Bookchin's thought. He also disparages poststructural thinkers with an obvious lack of knowledge about their work. Both of these misunderstandings make sense considering the often unproductive or reactionary work of academics that have used the banners of Marxism and Poststructuralism in the past, however in rejecting Marx's fundamental tension or the insights of how meaning is made offered by poststructuralists his theory loses a lot. I need to read some Hegel to understand a lot of what he's saying in the more philosophical sections, something I think it'll take me a while to feel up to. His insights into society as an ecological and historical formation are incredibly valuable, but his theoretical and practical shortcomings leave me incredibly frustrated about how to go about bringing such an ecological society into being.