Bookchin dies
Jul 31 2006 15:31
Exactly what the title says. 85's not a bad innings though.
Jul 31 2006 15:49
#1
Offline
Jul 31 2006 15:55
#2
Gonna lose me cred with my ultra-left homies, but I liked him. Also, if it had worked, what he tried to do with social/lifestyle anarchism and beyond could have proved the best step forward for the American anarchist movement in decades.
Jul 31 2006 15:56
#3
oh shit, that's awful :(
i'll have a drink for him tonight...
shit
Jul 31 2006 16:43
#4
Never met him. Heard he was a grumpy old man. My friend Diane stole a Q-tip from his bathroom once. Myself and Comrade Flint were on a train to montreal once and struck up a conversation with this random women, who turned out to be a neighbor of bookchin's during the 70's in the lower east side. She said he was a grumpy old man back then too. I'll be interested to see how the former-ISE crowd intellectually progress away from Bookchin, now that he's dead.
Anyway thats my two sense (tribute?) about bookchin.
Jul 31 2006 17:12
#5
That is very sad. Bookchin seems to me to be the most important anarchist thinker of recent times.
Thanks comrade.
Jul 31 2006 17:30
#6
grumpy old man...yes but an interesting one
Jul 31 2006 17:38
#7
I'll echo what pingtiao says; we've lost a giant. Grumpy old man, sure. Not always right, of course. Sometimes self contradictory, certainly. But always worth listening to, always worth reading. And frequenly worth staying on the right side of! 
Jul 31 2006 17:58
#8
Pilchardman wrote:
I'll echo what pingtiao says; we've lost a giant. Grumpy old man, sure. Not always right, of course. Sometimes self contradictory, certainly. But always worth listening to, always worth reading. And frequenly worth staying on the right side of!
The gripey old bastardness was the thing I liked most about him. The grumpy old grandpa of the anarchist movement. 
Jul 31 2006 18:04
#9
i had to read 'the ecology of freedom' with a dictionary on hand, and i still never finished it. that is all.
Jul 31 2006 18:30
#10
Yeah a sad sad day for us all, except for Catch who can cancel those royalty checks he just posted.
I'll have a cup of tea and reread Post Scarcity Anarchism in memory of him.
Jul 31 2006 18:38
#11
revol68 wrote:
...except for Catch who can cancel those royalty checks he just posted.
Now I'm really depressed.
Jul 31 2006 18:58
#12
This guy was a putz. But sad for the people that liked him.
____________________________
Alienation in the isolated eye of liberty
Jul 31 2006 20:36
#13
RevolutionReversal wrote:
This guy was a putz.
Is the the right place for lexicographical inquiries?
What is a putz?
Jul 31 2006 20:44
#14
Pilchardman wrote:
What is a putz?
oy vey, didn't you see the episode of sex and the city where they explained it, you shmuck.
Jul 31 2006 21:47
#15
Bookchin was the leading light of recent anarchism, and a damn good one - up in the ranks of any other. I find it sad they he maybe didn't get to see the close feeling, and similar passion to which many in the next generation (well maybe to him, the next, next one) held him, his writings and social anarchism. I think his ecological work only started the process by which we should link the defence of our environment with the offence against the social foundations which drive its destruction (and of all that's human in it). But he made a brilliant job, like no other, in bringing anarchism more up to date, in smashing many of the delusions of the 'green' movement as well as imprinting political ecology with a clear, strong libertarian emphasis.
Quote:
He argued that only a completely free and open society can resolve the problems that confronted the environment.
:rbstar:
And who do we have to take his place?
Jul 31 2006 21:50
#16
Oh and...
VIVA BOOKCHIN!
Jul 31 2006 23:01
#17
I haven't read Bookchin much since the 70s, but I had a soft spot for him then. Raising the question of ecology at that time was important and this will probably outlive the 'municipalist', reformist aspects which, correct me if I'm wrong, seemed to become more central in this thinking in later years.
Aug 1 2006 05:57
#18
jef costello wrote:
oy vey, didn't you see the episode of sex and the city where they explained it, you shmuck.
No. I didn't watch Sex In The City. Or Will and Grace.
Aug 1 2006 06:38
#19
I think he'll be remembered for integrating ecology into anarchist thought and for his vituperative attitude towards others. That said, I think time will show that a lot of the targets of his bile deserved it.
I heard him speak once and briefly met him afterwards and he was good (though memory may be embellishing it - it happened when I was below the median age of posters on this site )
I also think he's under-rated as a historian - his work on Spain (when it's history and not polemic) is good, and the Third Revolution is also interesting and incovered a lot of aspects of previous revolutions that I'd been unaware of.
He was probably wrong with a lot of his more recent thoughts - I recall Albert telling me that at the Venice anarchist festival around 1980, some Germans complained to him that Bookchin was suffering from a bad translator because of all the reformist gumph he was coming out with. Albert replied that sadly he wasn't being mistranslated, and if anything it was worse in English!
However, being wrong in old age (or youth for that matter), is an occupational hazard for anyone who is still engaged in ideas and action, and the relationship between them. The reformism is at least understandable after a lifetime of fighting and never seeming to get anywhere. For his tenacity alone he deserves respect,
Regards,
Martin
Aug 1 2006 08:40
#20
Pilchardman wrote:
No. I didn't watch Sex In The City. Or Will and Grace.
Good for you, they're both shite.
Aug 1 2006 11:05
#21
RIP comrade
Aug 1 2006 11:52
#22
Salut! :rbstar:
Aug 1 2006 12:40
#23
This is a real shame, at least he left us this,
"Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm"
Aug 1 2006 17:33
#24
RIP
He may have been a git to quite a few people - but I think that says more about the quality of most anarchists than owt else.