Murray Bookchin
Sep 19 2005 22:28
I've started reading this character lately and was wondering if there are any fans/critics of him around here? I find his contemporary approach to anarchism easier to engage with than some of the older, beardier types namedropped on this site, however i think he may be a little too keen on industrial production for an ecologist.
Sep 20 2005 07:32
#2
<3
Sep 20 2005 10:23
#3
he's very good, post scarecity anarchism, and anarchism, marxism, and the left are the two i'd recomend at first
i don't agree with all the aspects of his class analysis, but other than that...
Sep 20 2005 10:56
#4
He's very readable, and his history of the Spansih anarchists is good.
Sep 20 2005 11:30
#5
Lazlo_Woodbine wrote:
He's very readable, and his history of the Spansih anarchists is good.
I always thought Bob Black saw him off myself........
Sep 20 2005 12:55
#6
Spanish anarchists is great, apart from his piss-poor class terminology, and critique of Marxism. But was of its time and place I suppose.
Anarchism, Marxism and the Left is also great, though some cunt nicked my bag before I finished it. He seems like a grumpy bastard and a bit too keen on stressing his own importance ("I invented ecology!" etc. 
) but seems like a nice old man really 8)
Sep 20 2005 13:41
#7
PaulMarsh wrote:
I always thought Bob Black saw him off myself........
his feuds are great 8)
Sep 20 2005 14:04
#8
Haven't you heard? Everyone hates Bob Black!!...lest any American anarchist I talk to. Though like me, he hates stupid workerists (btw, I really find it funny how most of you dont even know what that means).
On the whole I really like Murray Bookchin, specifically his emphasis on the ecological and environmental side to societal change. I really want to get my hands on his history of the Spanish Anarchists, but I might get it when I'm at the bookfair (ordinarily I'd buy it and any book I wanted off the internet but, alas, I am skint now). Ofcourse there's criticisms, namely his totally oldfashioned, anthrocentric rejection of animals as having any sentient consideration and then don't get started on bloody municipalism.
Sep 20 2005 14:11
#9
Volin wrote:
Haven't you heard? Everyone hates Bob Black!!...lest any American anarchist I talk to. Though like me, he hates stupid workerists (btw, I really find it funny how most of you dont even know what that means).
I think you'll find we do. Some people choose to interpret or use it in the Italian operaist sense though, cos you and others use it as a baseless strawman insult 
Sep 20 2005 14:15
#10
word on that shit John, everythings sexier in italy, even Ed's hairy arse.
Sep 20 2005 14:21
#11
actually there's more than one meaning to workerism, and time and again you morons use the one that we aren't referring to.
talk about mr strawman, d'you want examples? 
Sep 20 2005 14:24
#12
no we know what you mean but we choose to embrace the label cos your arguements are shite. We also embrace the term as a reaction towards the lifestylist filth that has attached itself to "revolutionary" politics.
When you get called workerist by the SWP you know your doing something right.
Sep 20 2005 14:36
#13
Volin wrote:
actually there's more than one meaning to workerism, and time and again you morons use the one that we aren't referring to.
Of course, hilariously, you even use it wrongly in the derogatory sense.
A "workerist" (negative) isn't just someone who believes in class struggle, it's someone who glorifies the class-in-itself. However, cunts like Bob Black are just stupid and assumed that because of how it sounded it meant "someone who likes workers".
Sep 20 2005 14:48
#14
Jack wrote:
cunts like Bob Black are just stupid and assumed that because of how it sounded it meant "someone who likes workers".
...... when, as we all know, the correct term for that is "workophilia." Isn't it, Jack, you big workononce?
(Or should that be ergophilia? Where are those classically-educated CSG members when you need 'em?)
Sep 20 2005 17:12
#15
Jack wrote:
Of course, hilariously, you even use it wrongly in the derogatory sense.A "workerist" (negative) isn't just someone who believes in class struggle, it's someone who glorifies the class-in-itself.
Nah that's being prolier-than-thou.
A "workerist" is someone with a conception only of a worker as employed labourer rather than as a whole class in a social factory.
AFAIK anyway.
Sep 20 2005 17:25
#16
Well, you know wrongly.
The way I used it is how Brinton does, and he's better than wherever you got it from.
Sep 20 2005 22:58
#17
Hi
Bookchin’s Municipalism works OK for me. I could be talked into accepting the premises behind Social Ecology, but I’m suspicious that it might be looking at the problem from the wrong end. Regardless, I dig Bookchin.
I can’t make up my mind about Bob Black, I don’t think he really expects to be taken seriously. He says things about post-leftism and play which all sound very fun and subversive, but there’s no substance, no concrete proposal, to back any of it up. It’s like getting drawn into what sounds like a really witty joke, and then finding there’s no punch line. And as for that “human shield” incident, well. Just goes to show, no matter how eloquent or lucid a person is in print, it doesn’t pay to become sentimentally attached to them as if they were your friends.
Love
LR
Three Golden Taxis Group
Sep 20 2005 23:04
#18
dear all,
bob black is a cunt, bookchin is great, and so is workerism (in the way jack correctly uses it)
love
kb
the turn und taxis group
Sep 21 2005 23:26
#19
give me black over bookchin any day of the week.
funny vs. self-aggrandizing
anti-work vs. pro-technology
alcoholic vs. holier-than-thou (well, it's not that i *like* that he's alcoholic, but it's sure better than bookchin's dogma.)
Sep 21 2005 23:29
#20
Quote:
anti-work vs. pro-technology
How are those opposites? Or even just opposing?
Sep 21 2005 23:31
#21
and the problem with technology is?
And Bob Black isn't funny he's a dishonest cock who spreads bullshit myths about imaginary "industrial fetishists".
Bookchin is hardly innocent of doing the same with anarcho syndicalism, but atleast Bookchins arguments approach serious analysis, whilst Black is a self indulgent cock, who sums up everything that is wrong with anarchism in the states.
Sep 21 2005 23:51
#22
meanoldman wrote:
Quote:
anti-work vs. pro-technologyHow are those opposites? Or even just opposing?
especially if you read bookchin's essay on liberatory technology - and the potential for technology to help us abolish arduous tasks 8)
Sep 22 2005 11:46
#23
Quite. How exactly does Bob Black propose to do away with work if not through shitloads of technology? Or does he just not bother with minor details like that?
Sep 22 2005 17:15
#24
didn't mean to say that the concepts were opposed (just as one can be funny and self-aggrandizing), but that black is anti-work (where work has a specific definition, constructed by the current system) and i prefer that, while bookchin is pro-technology (using exactly that kind of "liberatory" terminology, which apparently makes everything ok) which i don't prefer, since to me it is just a furthering of the thinking that science is going to solve all our problems, as long as the right people become scientists (akin to "politics is fine, as long as the right people become politicians").
on the science question, anybody read/think interesting things about feuerabend?
Sep 22 2005 17:24
#25
Quote:
that black is anti-work (where work has a specific definition, constructed by the current system)
So is Bookchin. 
Sep 22 2005 17:33
#26
well then, i haven't read that about/by him.
so delete that bit of my post.
(and tell me where he writes about that? thanks.)
Sep 22 2005 17:43
#27
Mostly everywhere I've read. From the first article that looked promising in the Anarchy Archives:
"[revolution must] eliminate not only the exploitation of man by man but also the domination of man by man, the splits between man and nature, town and country, work and play, mind and physical activity, theory and practice, reason and sensuousness, survival and life."
It'd be absurb for him to place himself, and be seen in, the anarchist traditional if he didn't oppose work.
Sep 22 2005 18:31
#28
dot wrote:
didn't mean to say that the concepts were opposed (just as one can be funny and self-aggrandizing), but that black is anti-work (where work has a specific definition, constructed by the current system) and i prefer that, while bookchin is pro-technology (using exactly that kind of "liberatory" terminology, which apparently makes everything ok) which i don't prefer, since to me it is just a furthering of the thinking that science is going to solve all our problems, as long as the right people become scientists (akin to "politics is fine, as long as the right people become politicians").on the science question, anybody read/think interesting things about feuerabend?
So you're opposed to decentralised production of goods, energy and food, and you're opposed to the use of automation to take over the most repetitive or draining tasks? And you claim to be anti-work?
Bookchin wants technology put to the service of human need, democratically controlled, to reduce the necessity of labour for meeting needs and allow for much greater freedom of individuals and groups to spend their time how they like. As meanoldman points out, it permeates just about everything he's written.
Scarcity used to impose work on all societies, and revolution was always about taking over and reorganising work rather than eliminating it as a concept. It's technology that supplies the potentiality of a society without work. Certainly in the West, capitalism imposes work rather than the need to actually produce the necessities of life. Even recent famines have often been to do with lack of money to buy food than lack of food (cf. Niger).
Have you read any Bookchin, or just Black's denunciations of him? How exactly does Black want to end work?
Sep 22 2005 19:01
#29
Black is absolutely shit. Everything that's bad about anarchism.
Bookchin rocks, old-skool 
8)
Maybe we should have a poll...
Sep 22 2005 19:05
#30
Quote:
It'd be absurb for him to place himself, and be seen in, the anarchist traditional if he didn't oppose work.
people are absurd all the time: that is, people constantly make different associations than i (for example) would expect them to.
for example:
catch, your question doesn't seem to be asked in good faith. that is, there is absolutely NOwhere that i say i am opposed to decentralization. so clearly you are making some association that i don't share.
and since i associate technology with problematic philosophical views of the world then yes, i oppose automation.
and i don't "claim" to be anything - but thanks for the loaded language.
shit, i really did want to stay away from the tech question on this forum <she says, girding her loins...>
pingtiao rates him. I get the impression I would rate him if I actually read some of his stuff.