Editing Murray Bookchin (section)

== Biography ==
Bookchin was born in New York City to Nathan Bookchin (born Nacham Wisotsky) and his first wife, Rose (Kalusky) Bookchin, [[History of the Jews in Russia|Jewish immigrants]] from the Russian Empire.  His father was from [[Mazyr]] (now Belarus) and his mother from [[Vilnius]] (Lithuania).<ref name="nynat">''New York, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1882–1944''</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028142620228|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014123810/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028142620228|title=''The Murray Bookchin Reader: Introduction''|archive-date=October 14, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/reader/intro.html |title=The Murray Bookchin Reader: Intro |publisher=Dwardmac.pitzer.edu |access-date=May 11, 2012 |archive-date=September 6, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110906162756/http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/reader/intro.html |url-status=live }}</ref> He was embarrassed by his given name Mortimore and went by his childhood nickname, Murray.{{sfn|Biehl|2015|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=aibYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA25 25fn8]}} His father adopted the name of a relative, Bukczin, and anglicized it to Bookchin. His parents divorced in 1934. He grew up in the [[Bronx]] with his mother, uncle Daniel, and maternal grandmother, Zeitel, a [[Socialist Revolutionary Party|Socialist Revolutionary]] who imbued him with [[Narodniks|Russian populist]] ideas.

After his grandmother's death in 1930, he joined the [[Young Pioneers of America]], the Communist youth organization (for children 9 to 14)<ref name="youtube2007">{{cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd0hxVUIQvk |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211114/Vd0hxVUIQvk |archive-date=November 14, 2021 |url-status=live |title=''Anarchism in America'' documentary |publisher=YouTube |date=January 9, 2007 |access-date=May 11, 2012}}{{cbignore}}</ref> and the [[Young Communist League USA|Young Communist League]] (for youths) in 1935. He attended the [[New York Workers School|Workers School]] near Union Square, where he studied [[Marxism]]. In the late 1930s he broke with [[Stalinism]] and gravitated toward [[Trotskyism]], joining the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|Socialist Workers Party]] (SWP). In the early 1940s, he worked in a foundry in [[Bayonne, New Jersey|Bayonne]], New Jersey, where he was a trade union organizer and shop steward for the [[United Electrical Workers]] as well as a recruiter for the SWP. Within the SWP, he adhered to the Goldman-[[Felix Morrow|Morrow]] faction, which broke away after the war ended. He was an auto worker and UAW member at the time of the great [[United Auto Workers (UAW) strike of 1945–1946|General Motors strike of 1945–46]]. In 1949, while speaking to a [[Zionist]] youth organization at [[City College of New York|City College]], Bookchin met a mathematics student, Beatrice Appelstein, whom he married in 1951.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/murray-bookchin-412486.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220618/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/murray-bookchin-412486.html |last=Price|first=Andy|archive-date=June 18, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Murray Bookchin, Political philosopher and activist who became a founder of the ecological movement |access-date=November 11, 2012 |location=London |work=[[The Independent]] |date=August 19, 2006}}</ref> They were married for 12 years and lived together for 35, remaining close friends and political allies for the rest of his life. They had two children, Debbie and Joseph.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07bookchin.html?_r=0 |title=Murray Bookchin, 85, writer, Activist and Ecology Theorist Dies August 7, 2006 |access-date=November 11, 2012 |work=[[The New York Times]] |first=Douglas |last=Martin |date=August 7, 2006 |archive-date=May 31, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150531064200/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07bookchin.html?_r=0 |url-status=live }}</ref> On religious views, Bookchin was an atheist, but was considered to be tolerant of religious views.{{Sfn|Light|1998|p=27}}

From 1947, Bookchin collaborated with a fellow lapsed Trotskyist, the German expatriate Josef Weber, in New York in the [[Movement for a Democracy of Content]], a group of 20 or so post-Trotskyists who collectively edited the periodical ''Contemporary Issues – A Magazine for a Democracy of Content''. ''Contemporary Issues'' embraced [[utopianism]]. The periodical provided a forum for the belief that previous attempts to create utopia had foundered on the necessity of toil and drudgery; but now modern technology had obviated the need for human toil, a liberatory development. To achieve this "[[post-scarcity]]" society, Bookchin developed a theory of ecological decentralism. The magazine published Bookchin's first articles, including the pathbreaking "The Problem of Chemicals in Food" (1952). In 1958, Bookchin defined himself as an anarchist,<ref name="youtube2007"/> seeing parallels between anarchism and environmentalism. His first book, ''[[Our Synthetic Environment]],'' was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber, in 1962, a few months before [[Rachel Carson]]'s famous ''[[Silent Spring]]''.<ref>Paull, John (2013) [http://orgprints.org/22934/7/22934.pdf "The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131103230258/http://orgprints.org/22934/7/22934.pdf |date=November 3, 2013 }}, Sage Open, 3(July):1–12.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/bio1.html |title=''A Short Biography of Murray Bookchin'' by Janet Biehl |publisher=Dwardmac.pitzer.edu |access-date=May 11, 2012 |archive-date=August 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200807055952/http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/bio1.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1964, Bookchin joined the [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE), and protested racism at the [[1964 World's Fair]]. During 1964–1967, while living on Manhattan's [[Lower East Side]], he cofounded and was the principal figure in the New York Federation of Anarchists. His groundbreaking essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced environmentalism and, more specifically, ecology as a concept in radical politics.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/ecologyandrev.html |title=Ecology and Revolution |publisher=Dwardmac.pitzer.edu |date=June 16, 2004 |access-date=May 11, 2012 |archive-date=August 29, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200829114202/http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/ecologyandrev.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1968, he founded another group that published the influential ''Anarchos'' magazine, which published that and other innovative essays on post-scarcity and sustainable technologies such as solar and wind energy, and on decentralization and miniaturization. Lecturing throughout the United States, he helped popularize the concept of ecology to the [[counterculture]]. His widely republished 1969 essay "Listen, Marxist!"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nasalam.org/bkchn06.htm |title=Listen, Marxist! |publisher=Nasalam.org |access-date=May 11, 2012 |archive-date=August 29, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200829114536/http://www.nasalam.org/bkchn06.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> warned [[Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)|Students for a Democratic Society]] (in vain) against an impending takeover by a Marxist group. "Once again the dead are walking in our midst," he wrote, "ironically, draped in the name of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], the man who tried to bury the dead of the nineteenth century. So the revolution of our own day can do nothing better than parody, in turn, the [[October Revolution]] of 1917 and the [[Russian Civil War|civil war]] of 1918–1920, with its 'class line,' its [[Bolshevik]] Party, its '[[Dictatorship of the proletariat|proletarian dictatorship]],' its [[puritanical]] morality, and even its slogan, 'Soviet power'".<ref name=Walker>[[Jesse Walker|Walker, Jesse]] (July 31, 2006) [http://reason.com/blog/2006/07/31/murray-bookchin-rip Murray Bookchin, RIP] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121012201439/http://reason.com/blog/2006/07/31/murray-bookchin-rip |date=October 12, 2012 }}, ''[[Reason (magazine)|Reason]]''</ref>

In 1969–1970, he taught at the Alternate U, a counter-cultural radical school based on 14th Street in Manhattan. In 1971, he moved to Burlington, Vermont, with a group of friends, to put into practice his ideas of decentralization. In the fall of 1973, he was hired by [[Goddard College]] to lecture on technology; his lectures led to a teaching position and to the creation of the Social Ecology Studies program in 1974 and the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) soon thereafter, of which he became the director. In 1974, he was hired by [[Ramapo College]] in [[Mahwah, New Jersey|Mahwah]], New Jersey, where he quickly became a full professor. The ISE was a hub for experimentation and study of [[appropriate technology]] in the 1970s. In 1977–78 he was a member of the Spruce Mountain Affinity Group of the [[Clamshell Alliance]]. Also in 1977, he published ''[[The Spanish Anarchists]]'', a history of [[anarchism in Spain|the Spanish anarchist movement]] up to the [[Spanish Revolution of 1936|revolution of 1936]]. During this period, Bookchin briefly forged some ties with the nascent [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] movement, speaking at a [[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] convention and contributing to a newsletter edited by [[Karl Hess]]. Nevertheless, Bookchin rejected the types of libertarianism that advocated unconstrained individualism.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/CMMNL2.MCW.html|title=Reflections: Murray Bookchin|website=dwardmac.pitzer.edu|access-date=October 16, 2019|archive-date=October 15, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181015005827/http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/cmmnl2.mcw.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1980, Bookchin co-established the New England Anarchist Conference (NEAC) to organize the [[anarchist movement]] in the United States. At its first meeting in October 1980, 175 anarchists from the [[Northeastern United States|northeastern US]] and [[Quebec]] attended. By the second conference in January 1981 in [[Somerville, Massachusetts|Somerville]], Massachusetts, the NEAC devolved into [[sectarianism]], which moved Bookchin to lose faith in a [[Socialist Revolution|socialist revolution]] happening in the US.{{sfn|Biehl|2015}}

During the 1980s, Bookchin engaged in occasional critiques of [[Bernie Sanders]]' mayorship in Burlington.  Bookchin criticized Sanders' politics, claiming he lacked a drive to establish [[direct democracy]], followed a Marxian deprioritization of ecology, and was a “'centralist' who narrowly focused on economic growth."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rossi |first=Marco Rosaire |date=2022-04-03 |title=The Sanders-Bookchin Debate |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2022.2051058 |journal=Capitalism Nature Socialism |language=en |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=120–138 |doi=10.1080/10455752.2022.2051058 |s2cid=247404346 |issn=1045-5752 |access-date=June 27, 2023 |archive-date=June 27, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230627001222/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2022.2051058 |url-status=live }}</ref>  Bookchin and his social ecologist colleagues in the Burlington Greens, which he co-founded with his former wife Bea Bookchin, criticized the Sanders administration for pushing for a luxury condo waterfront redevelopment, which was eventually rejected by Burlington voters. They advocated for a moratorium on growth, a moral economy, and social justice rooted in grassroots democracy.<ref>Vote Green leaflet https://www.scribd.com/doc/229304919/Vote-Bea Retrieved February 24, 2024</ref>

In 1988, Bookchin and [[Howie Hawkins]] founded the [[Left Green Network]] "as a radical alternative to U.S. Green liberals", based around the principles of [[Social ecology (Bookchin)|social ecology]] and [[libertarian municipality]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Biehl |first1=Janet |author1-link=Janet Biehl |title=The Left Green Network (1988–91) |url=http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/left-green-network/ |website=Ecology or Catastrophe |access-date=November 16, 2019 |date=March 22, 2015 |archive-date=March 25, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150325131724/http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/left-green-network/ |url-status=usurped |ref={{harvid|Biehl|2015b}} }}</ref>

In 1995, Bookchin lamented the decline of [[American anarchism]] into [[Anarcho-primitivism|primitivism]], anti-technologism, neo-[[Situationism]], individual self-expression, and "ad hoc adventurism," at the expense of forming a social movement. He formally broke with anarchism in 1999, describing himself in 2002 as a "communalist" in a major essay elaborating his late-life views, called "The Communalist Project".{{sfn|Bookchin|2015}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

He continued to teach at the ISE until 2004. Bookchin died of [[congestive heart failure]] on July 30, 2006, at his home in Burlington, at the age of 85.<ref>{{cite news |title=Murray Bookchin, visionary social theorist, dies at 85 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07bookchin.html |work=The New York Times |date=August 7, 2006 |last1=Martin |first1=Douglas |access-date=February 22, 2017 |archive-date=October 1, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181001031323/https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07bookchin.html?_r=0 |url-status=live }}</ref>