Article Archive

Social ecology developed out of important social and theoretical problems that faced the Left in the post-World War II period. The historical realities of the 1940s and the 1950s completely invalidated the perspectives of a proletarian revolution, of a “chronic economic crisis” that would bring capitalism to its knees, and of commitment to a centralistic [...]

This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, June 1995, and reprinted in Third World Resurgence, Number 63, November 1995.

For many years, public debates around biotechnology and genetic engineering were mostly the domain of scientists, ex-scientists and anti-scientists. Now, those days are clearly past, as products of biotechnology have begun to transform the nature [...]

This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, February 1995.

On an unusually balmy November morning, eco-activists in the northeast awoke to some long-awaited but entirely unexpected news. In the immediate aftermath of the 1994 elections, any good news would be unexpected, but this one would be an occasion for celebration in any season. The [...]

For some two centuries, anarchism — a very ecumenical body of anti-authoritarian ideas — developed in the tension between two basically contradictory tendencies: a personalistic commitment to individual autonomy and a collectivist commitment to social freedom. These tendencies have by no means been reconciled in the history of libertarian thought. Indeed, for much of the [...]

Seldom have socially important words become more confused and divested of their historic meaning than they are at present. Two centuries ago, it is often forgotten, “democracy” was deprecated by monarchists and republicans alike as “mob rule.” Today, democracy is hailed as “representative democracy,” an oxymoron that refers to little more than a republican oligarchy [...]

This article orignially appeared in Z Magazine, April 1994.

After nearly a year of back room deals, political arm-twisting and viciously polarized debate, the Clinton administration has released the final details of its long-awaited plan for the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest. In early April, a federal judge is expected to decide whether [...]

Rarely have the concepts that literally define the best of Western culture–its notions of a meaningful History, a universal Civilization, and the possibility of Progress–been called so radically into question as they are today. In recent decades, both in the United States and abroad, the academy and a subculture of self-styled postmodernist intellectuals have nourished [...]

This document can also be found at Spunk.org

Preface

These essays are less an analysis of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War of 1936-39 than an evocation of the greatest proletarian and peasant revolution to occur over the past two centuries. Although they contain a general overview and evaluation of the Anarchist and Anarchosyndicalist [...]

Nationalism and the “National Question” Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 01:19 AM PST

Contributed by: murray

By: Murray Bookchin

One of the most vexing questions that the Left faces (however one may define the Left) is the role played by nationalism in social development and by popular demands for cultural identity and [...]

This book review was published in Tikkun Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 2003.

This past August, civil society representatives, public officials and heads of state from around the world converged on Johannesburg for the tenth anniversary of the landmark 1992 United Nations “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. While the U.S. media focused largely on symbolic issues such [...]