Year of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

History

Department or School/College

Department of History

Committee Chair

Michael S. Mayer

Keywords

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

Publisher

University of Montana

Abstract

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.

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© Copyright 2011 Aaron David Hyams