Social Ecology Journals

Inside Russia Today:
An Interview with Vadim Damier

by Wolfgang Haug

This issue of Green Perspectives focuses on recent developments in Russia from the perspective of anarchist Vadim Damier. Since 1987, Damier, who lives in Moscow, has been active in a number of different political tendencies. He presently belongs to the Group [...]

What is Communalism?

The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism
by Murray Bookchin

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 [...]

History, Civilization, and Progress
Outline for a Criticism of Modern Relativism

by Murray Bookchin

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 [...]

Social Ecology: International Reports

Editors’ note:

After a year and a half hiatus, we are pleased to submit to our readers the reemergence of Green Perspectives. Over the past year, we have been deeply involved with writing projects for journals and books that did not fit the Green Perspectives format, as well as [...]

Ecofascism:
Neither Left nor “Up Front” but Far Right

If the Green slogan “we are neither left nor right but up front” was ever meaningful, the increasingly notable emergence of an “ecological right” defines its bankruptcy conclusively. A political ecology that is dubiously conceived as a ideology that privileges the natural world over [...]

European Reports

This issue of Green Perspectives is devoted to a series of reports: from a Russian eco-anarchist, a U.K Green, Italian social ecologists, and a German radical ecologist. They provide glimpses into how people in different cultural contexts are working with ideas familiar to North American social ecologists.

First, Sergey Fomichov, one [...]

From Left to Right:
New Right Ideology as a Problem Facing Leftism Today

Introductory note:

The National Front in France, the Republicans Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium–all these ultra-right, even fascist parties have gained startling electoral successes in recent European elections. In increasingly multicultural Western [...]

A Critique of the Draft Program of the Left Green Network

by Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl

Editors’ note: The Left Green Network is in the process of writing, developing, and debating its program. The draft proposal for the program was published in the April/May 1991 issue of Left Green Notes, number 7. [...]

The Left That Was:
A Personal Reflection

by Murray Bookchin

I would like to recall a Left That Was–an idealistic, often theoretically coherent Left that militantly emphasized its internationalism, its rationality in its treatment of reality, its democratic spirit, and its vigorous revolutionary aspirations. From a retrospective viewpoint of a hundred years [...]

Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview
by Murray Bookchin

Perhaps the greatest single failing of movements for social reconstruction–I refer particularly to the Left, to radical ecology groups, and to organizations that profess to speak for the oppressed–is their lack of a politics that will carry people beyond the limits established by the status quo.

[...]