Date of birth: 1921
Date of death: 2006
Website:

Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American libertarian socialist, political and social philosopher, speaker and writer. For much of his life he called himself an anarchist, although as early as 1995 he privately renounced his identification with the anarchist movement. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology.

Bookchin was an anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, grassroots democracy, had an influence on the Green Movement and anti-capitalist direct action groups such as Reclaim the Streets. He was a staunch critic of biocentric philosophies such as deep ecology and the biologically deterministic beliefs of sociobiology, and his criticisms of "new age" Greens such as Charlene Spretnak contributed to the divisions that affected the American Green movement in the 1990s.

More Authors

Sharyn Abbott

Sharyn is 4th generation born in San Francisco and was raised in a family that spent the majority of their time and effort trying to survive financially. Its not an uncommon story, but what is uncommon is how she took the rejection and abuse of her dysfunctional parents and turned it into an amazing...

Campbell, Harry A.

Born Stroud, Gloucestershire; lives in Glasgow; previously employed as bilingual lexicographer by Larousse and HarperCollins...