Social Ecology after Bookcliin Edited by Andrew Light Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/socialecologyaftOOOOunse SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN DEMOCRACY AND ECOLOGY A Guilford Series Published in conjunction with the Center for Political Ecology JAMES O'CONNOR Series Editor SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER BOOKCHIN Andrew Light, Editor THE STRUGGLE FOR ECOLOGICAL DEMOCRACY ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES Daniel Faber, Editor NATURAL CAUSES ESSAYS IN ECOLOGICAL MARXISM James O’Connor WORK, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT OLD PROBLEMS, NEW SOLUTIONS Charles Levenstein and John Wooding, Editors THE GREENING OF MARXISM Ted Benton, Editor MINDING NATURE THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY David Macauley, Editor GREEN PRODUCTION TOWARD AN ENVIRONMENTAL RATIONALITY Enrique Leff IS CAPITALISM SUSTAINABLE? POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE POLITICS OF ECOLOGY Martin O’Connor, Editor Social Ecology after Bookchin EDITED BY Andrew Light ?■" "fftomai I Bata libra: TRENT UNIVERSITr PFTMQROUGH, ONTARIO THE GUILFORD PRESS New York London © 1998 The Guilford Press A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc. 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 http://www.guilford.com All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America This book is printed on acid-free paper. Last digit is print number: 987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Social ecology after Bookchin / edited by Andrew Light, p. cm.—(Democracy and ecology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57230-379-4 1. Bookchin, Murray, 1921- 2. Social ecology. I. Light, Andrew, 1966- . II. Series. HM206.S55 1998 304.2—dc21 98-35447 For my friends and colleagues at The University of Montana. Introduction to the Democracy and Ecology Series This book series titled “Democracy and Ecology” is a contribution to the debates on the future of the global environment and “free market economy” and the prospects of radical green and democratic move¬ ments in the world today. While some call the post-Cold War period the “end of history,” others sense that we may be living at its begin¬ ning. These scholars and activists believe that the seemingly all- powerful and reified world of global capital is creating more economic, social, political, and ecological problems than the world’s ruling and political classes are able to resolve. There is a feeling that we are living through a general crisis, a turning point or divide that will create great dangers, and also opportunities for a nonexploitative, socially just, democratic ecological society. Many think that our species is learning how to regulate the relationship that we have with ourselves and the rest of nature in ways that defend ecological values and sensibilities, as well as right the exploitation and injustice that disfigure the present world order. All are asking hard questions about what went wrong with the worlds that global capitalism and state socialism made, and about the kind of life that might be rebuilt from the wreckage of ecol¬ ogically and socially bankrupt ways of working and living. The “De¬ mocracy and Ecology” series rehearses these and related questions, poses new ones, and tries to respond to them, if only tentatively and provisionally, because the stakes are so high, and since “time-honored slogans and time-worn formulae” have become part of the problem. James O’Connor Series Editor VII Acknowledgments This volume was a long time in coming, certainly too long. It originally began as an idea for a jointly authored book on Murray Bookchin’s so¬ cial ecology five years ago, to be penned by myself, Jay Moore, Jim O’Connor, and Alan Rudy. Many problems in orchestrating that vol¬ ume convinced us to abandon the project, and so it evolved into the present anthology. Over the years since then, through many false starts and long delays, several prospective authors have come into and later left the volume; all of them have made some sort of mark by helping me to think through what sort of book this should be. Accordingly, I wish to thank Jay Moore, Stanley Aronowitz, Ynestra King, Steve Best, Elizabeth Carlassare, and especially, Enrique Leff, for their assistance along the way. To the rest of the authors remaining in this volume, I thank them for their perseverance, dedication, and most of all, pa¬ tience. Other friends in environmental philosophy were always there to encourage the continuation of the process, especially Deane Curtin, An¬ drew Feenberg, Greta Gaard, and my dear friend and sometime col¬ laborator, Eric Katz. I also owe special thanks to Jim O’Connor, editor of the “Democ¬ racy and Ecology” series, Barbara Laurence, Managing Editor of Capi¬ talism, Nature, Socialism, and Peter Wissoker, my editor and friend at The Guilford Press. Jim and Barbara expressed remarkable confidence in my being able to put this volume together, and Peter never failed in his ongoing support for the idea of the book. Jim’s intellectual rigor, dedication, generosity, and character are always an inspiration. I may be mistaken in assuming that he, Barbara, and Peter never gave up hope that this volume would finally get done. In any event, their en¬ couragement was always there, and I thank them for it. IX X Acknowledgments I have dedicated this collection to my friends and colleagues at The University of Montana. It was there, during my all too short stay as a member of the philosophy department, that I finally found the time to finish this volume. For the first time in my nomadic aca¬ demic career I felt at home, and surely this sense of being in place, if only for a brief time, made it possible for me to accomplish much. Of those in Missoula, I thank all of my colleagues in the philosophy department and elsewhere, especially Barbara Andrew, Irene Appel- baum, Lauren Bartlett, Albert Borgmann, Bill Chaloupka, Dan Flores, Carl Heine, Bruce Milem, Ron Perrin, Val Plumwood, and Deborah Slicer. A very singular thanks goes to my assistant at Montana, David Roberts, who never failed to make my working days more en¬ joyable and productive. Finally, my biggest debts of gratitude go to two very different people, both of whom have been by my side in various ways since the beginning of this process. First, to Dorit Naaman, my partner for the last four years, and constant interlocutor on all projects, both great and small. Dorit’s dedication to her own work continues to be an inspiration for me with mine. Second, to Murray Bookchin, who may indeed not welcome this collection but whom I hope realizes the honor we do him when we continue to press on and be inspired by his work and presence. Bookchin has already commented in an ap¬ parent reference to this volume prior to its publication that it is a “joint endeavor of Marxists, neo-Marxists, and deep ecologists” de¬ signed to denounce his work, and whose purpose “is to dimmish the anarchist tendency in the ecology movement.”1 I hope that the chari¬ table reader of this collection will see that it is not designed to “de¬ nounce” Bookchin or anarchism in general. (Nor should the papers in the volume be taken as a “joint endeavor” by the particular authors of the various chapters. Indeed, each author is responsible for the content of his or her own contribution and that only.) The purpose of this volume is to provide more and less supportive cri¬ tiques and extensions of and challenges to social ecology, toward the goal of enriching the overall development of the broad array of views represented as political ecology. Certainly this task requires analysis of Bookchin’s work, as that work is practically coextensive with the development of social ecology as we know it today. Even though we are all in some ways critical of his work, I hope that no I. Murray Bookchin, “Whither Marxism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics,” avail¬ able at http://www.pitzer.edu/dward/Anarchist_Archives/bookchm/whither.html, footnote 72, paragraph 4. 1 his article is forthcoming in Bookchin’s Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left (San Francisco and Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998). Acknowledgments XI reader will come away from this volume thinking that a social ecol¬ ogy after Bookchin means a social ecology without Bookchin. Book- chin, more than he may realize, has pressed us all to move forward and continue the conversation over his ideas into the next century whether we align ourselves in his camp or not. Surely, no author could ask for a greater tribute. Andrew Light Missoula, Montana May 1998 Contents INTRODUCTION Bookchin as/and Social Ecology Andrew Light PART I DIALECTICS AND ETHICS CHAPTER 1 Negating Bookchin Joel Kovel CHAPTER 2 Divining Evolution and Respecting Evolution Robyn Eckersley CHAPTER 3 Ethics and Directionality in Nature Glenn A. Albrecht CHAPTER 4 Social Ecology and Reproductive Freedom: A Feminist Perspective Regina Cochrane PART II POLITICS AND MATERIAL CULTURE CHAPTER 5 Municipal Dreams: A Social Ecological Critique of Bookchin’s Politics John Clark XIV Contents CHAPTER 6 Bookchin’s Ecocommunity as Ecotopia: 192 A Constructive Critique Adolf G. Gundersen CHAPTER 7 Social Ecology and the Problem of Technology 211 David Watson CHAPTER 8 “ ‘Small’ Is Neither Beautiful nor Ugly; It Is Merely 240 Small”: Technology and the Future of Social Ecology Eric Stowe Higgs PART III HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND COMPARISONS CHAPTER 9 Ecology and Anthropology in the Work of Murray 265 Bookchin: Problems of Theory and Evidence Alan P. Rudy CHAPTER 10 Evolution and Revolution: The Ecological Anarchism 298 of Kropotkin and Bookchin David Macauley CHAPTER 11 Reconsidering Bookchin and Marcuse as Environmental 343 Materialists: Toward an Evolving Social Ecology Andrew Light !ndex 385 Contributors 399 Introduction Bookchin as/and Social Ecology ANDREW LIGHT In 1993 I unwittingly stepped onto a battlefield.