Social Ecology and Social Labor: A Consideration and Critique of Murray Bookchin

In: Capitalism, nature, socialism: CNS ; a journal of socialist ecology, Band 6, S. 75-106

Abstract

Critiques social ecology & Murray Bookchin's (eg, 1962) form of political anarchism from an emerging socialist logical perspective. Primarily, Bookchin's work is criticized for his failure to realize the importance of social labor -- as a mediating force between social relations of humans & between humans & the nonhuman natural domain -- as a defining characteristic of capitalism. Bookchin's central ideas include: the development of domination in the early evolution of human society; the importance of the transition to capitalism; & the proposal for a modern society rooted in his Kropotkinian evolutionary anarchism. Here, a more materialist approach is recommended that includes a theoretical analysis of labor & social labor, along with the qualitative alteration of production distribution & consumption, & of historical structures, tendencies, & crisis that generate such changes -- all missing from Bookchin's theory, making his utopia society disfunctional & unrealistic. 24 References. L. Nguyen