Abstract
As the emergence of the green movement in the late 1960s ran alongside the resurgence of the anarchist tradition, it is perhaps no surprise that the two traditions would converge into what we would call today green anarchism. However, this was not simply an accident of timing: even the most cursory of surveys of the philosophies anarchism and ecology show clearly that the guiding principles of both are remarkably similar—participation, diversity, complementarity, and interdependence are the foundational principles of both areas of thought. Taking in the work of the three main contributors to green anarchism—Murray Bookchin, Arne Naess, and John Zerzan—as our starting point, and drawing on contemporary examples of green anarchism in practice, this chapter examines the broad contours of what it means to be both an anarchist and a green, and argues that if we follow either school of thought to the logical conclusions of their foundational principles, then the two positions are inseparable: all genuine green thinking is by definition anarchistic; all anarchist thinking is by definition green.
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Notes
- 1.
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (London: Freedom Press, 1993), 73.
- 2.
See, for example, Michel Bakunin, ‘The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State’, in Writings on the Paris Commune (St. Petersburg: Red and Black Publishers, 2008), JP Proudhon, La Guerre et la Paix (Antony: Éditions Tops, 1998). An important early contribution also came from Élisée Reclus, a French geographer and anarchist, who’s L’Homme et La Terre (1905) was one of the first radical works to address society’s relationship to and conception of the natural world. For a detailed introduction to his contribution, see John Clarke, Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus, 2nd ed. (Oakland: PM Press, 2013).
- 3.
George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (New York and Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1962), 469.
- 4.
Ibid., 475.
- 5.
Murray Bookchin [under the pseudonym, Lewis Herber], ‘The Problem of Chemicals in Food’, Contemporary Issues, June–August, 3:12 (1952).
- 6.
Murray Bookchin, Our Synthetic Environment (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1962).
- 7.
See, for example, Murray Bookchin, ‘Listen, Marxist!’, Anarchos, May 1969; Murray Bookchin, ‘Spring Offensives & Summer Vacations’, Anarchos, 4 (1972).
- 8.
Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 2nd ed. (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1982); Murray Bookchin, From Urbanization to Cities: Towards a New Politics of Citizenship, 2nd ed. (New York: Cassell, 1995).
- 9.
Murray Bookchin, Social Ecology and Anarchism (Oakland: AK Press, 2009), 29, my emphases.
- 10.
Murray Bookchin, ‘Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach’, Our Generation, 18, Spring/Summer (1987): 35–36.
- 11.
Murray Bookchin, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Nature: The Bases for an Ecological Ethics’, in Tobias, M. (Ed), Deep Ecology (San Diego: Avant Books, 1984), 229.
- 12.
Murray Bookchin, ‘Freedom and Necessity in Nature: A Problem in Ecological Ethics’, Alternatives, 13:4, November (1986), 31.
- 13.
Bookchin, ‘Thinking Ecologically’, 33, emphasis added.
- 14.
Bookchin, Ecology of Freedom, passim.
- 15.
Andy Price, Recovering Bookchin: Social Ecology and the Crises of Our Time (Porsgrunn: New Compass Press, 2012), 158.
- 16.
Bookchin, Urbanization to Cities, 260.
- 17.
Bookchin, ibid., 240–241.
- 18.
For discussion of the municipal in social ecology, see: Janet Biehl, Libertarian Municipalism: The Politics of Social Ecology (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998).
- 19.
Bookchin, Urbanization to Cities, 264.
- 20.
Ibid., 264.
- 21.
Arne Naess, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary’, Inquiry, 16 (1973), 95.
- 22.
Ibid., 96.
- 23.
Ibid., 96.
- 24.
Arne Naess, ‘Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes’, in Tobias (Ed), Deep Ecology (San Diego: Avant, 1984), 268, emphases added.
- 25.
Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Utah: Gibson Smith, 1985).
- 26.
Ibid., 70.
- 27.
Ibid., 70, emphasis added.
- 28.
Ibid., 71, 72.
- 29.
Warwick Fox, ‘Deep Ecology: A New Philosophy of our Time?’, in Philosophical Dialogues, Arne Naess and the Progress of Philosophy (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984), 155.
- 30.
Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, 187.
- 31.
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (London: Penguin, 2004).
- 32.
For a good discussion of one example of this direct action, see Jeff Shantz, Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red/Green Vision (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012).
- 33.
See Price, Recovering Bookchin, for a detailed discussion of some of the more problematic elements of deep ecology.
- 34.
See John Zerzan, Elements of Refusal (New York: Left Bank Books, 1998); Questioning Technology (New York: Freedom Books, 1998); Future Primitive and Other Essays (New York: Autonomedia, 1994).
- 35.
See John Zerzan, ‘Author Index’, at http://www.primitivism.com/author-index.htm, Accessed 11 August 2017.
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Price, A. (2019). Green Anarchism. In: Levy, C., Adams, M.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75620-2_16
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