Fifty Years on the Fringe: Murray Bookchin and the American Revolutionary Tradition, 1921-1971

Hyams, Aaron, M.A., Spring 2011 History Fifty Years on the Fringe: Murray Bookchin and the American Revolutionary Tradition 1921-1971 Chairperson: Dr. Michael Mayer Murray Bookchin was an American revolutionary and political theorist born in New York City in 1921. His career as both an activist and a theorist through the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, made him an active participant and influential voice for both the American Old Left, and the New Left. Writing for Contemporary Issues, a left wing journal edited by Josef Weber, Bookchin became an important part of the schismatic Left, a loose conglomeration of Marxist and Materialists who were both anti-Liberal and anti-Soviet. Bookchin worked with Weber until the latter’s death in 1959. The two men formed a powerful intellectual and personal relationship that influenced Bookchin’s career well into the 1960s. After Weber’s death, Bookchin became a controversial and eclectic anarchist theorist. He developed Social Ecology, a comprehensive critique of advanced industrial capitalism that fused classical Anarchism with Neo-Marxist theory and British ecological theory. By the 1970s, Social Ecology had evolved into a standalone school of thought that became a guiding influence for the American Environmental Movement and bioregionalism.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2011

Author dc:creator

• Hyams, Aaron David

• Bookchin
• Josef Weber
• post-scarcity anarchism
• social ecology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/446

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-1465