Quote

There are no hierarchies in nature other than those imposed by hierarchical modes of human thought, but rather differences merely in function between and within living things.

Murray Bookchin

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Murray Bookchin
Age: 85 †
Born: 1921
Born: January 14
Died: 2006
Died: July 30
Author
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Historian
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Politician
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Nature
Imposed
Thought
Hierarchy
Human
Merely
Humans
Function
Things
Differences
Within
Hierarchies
Rather
Hierarchical
Living
Modes

More quotes by Murray Bookchin

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I'm convinced more than ever that capitalism, with its technological development, has not been an advance toward freedom but has been an enormous setback of freedom.
Murray Bookchin
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We should try to become better people, ethically speaking, reflect upon ourselves and our very limited existences and develop a sense of tolerance for each other, as well as for other anarchist groups with which we may disagree. But we're not committed to toeing a line called anarchism there are many different anarchisms.
Murray Bookchin
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I think that people who believe in limited government would benefit greatly by studying the logic in government itself and the role of power as a corruptive mechanism in leading finally to unlimited government.
Murray Bookchin
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We don't have to go around as the Protestant reformation did, or as the socialist revolution did, and execute each other as soon as we are successful - assuming we'll ever be successful.
Murray Bookchin
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To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society.
Murray Bookchin
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In the 60s there were a lot of things which were anarchistic. May-June '68 was riddled by anarchistic sentiments, dreams and ideals, but insofar as this was not strengthened organizationally and intellectually by a very effective, powerful infrastructure, then what happens is the movement becomes dissipated.
Murray Bookchin
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Until we become the architects of a society that is truly free and ecological, it will always seem that when the human brain is not adaptive, it is more often destructive than creative.
Murray Bookchin
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There are people, of course, who profess to be libertarian Marxists. I believe they mean very well, and I even write in their periodicals but I write very militantly that I regard Marxism as a very subtle form of what I would call the totalitarian ideology - all the more subtle because it professes to advance the notions of freedom.
Murray Bookchin
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The only conclusion I could arrive at with the death of the workers' movement as a revolutionary force - you know the imagery of the proletarian vanguard, or proletarian hegemony - has been the community.
Murray Bookchin
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I believe that if we do have a commonality of beliefs we should clarify them, we should strengthen their coherence and we should also develop common projects that produce a lived community of relationships.
Murray Bookchin
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I would agree that much with people who accept private property - that conscription is an unpardonable transgression, whether it be corrupt or not. The Spanish anarchists opposed conscription during the civil war in Spain as a gross expropriation of property, the most precious property that we have, our own physical beings themselves.
Murray Bookchin
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The State certainly played a decisive role. I also believe that it may have stemmed from the rivalry itself. Grow or die, devour or die. That's the one problem that I have to wrestle with. I have to wrestle with whether or not rivalry in the free market does not ultimately lead to concentration, corporatism, and finally totalitarianism.
Murray Bookchin
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The real problem is that limited government invariably leads to unlimited government. If history is to be any guide and current experience is to be any guide, we in the United States 200 years ago started out with the notion of limited government - virtually no government interference - and we now have a massive quasi-totalitarian government.
Murray Bookchin
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I have an admiration, even though I'm not likely to do that sort of thing myself, for [Ayn] Roark's behavior when he decided that his design was not being followed - which was a gross violation, by the way, of private property rights, because the building was his.
Murray Bookchin
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The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
Murray Bookchin
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I believe that anarchists should agree to disagree but not to fight with each other.
Murray Bookchin
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I would say that today the real support for State power and totalitarianism comes from the Communist parties and the Socialist parties and, where they are sizable, the Trotskyist groups. They are the ones that really frighten me.
Murray Bookchin
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My anarchism is frankly anarcho-communalism, and it's eco-anarchism as well. And it's not oriented toward the proletariat.
Murray Bookchin
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People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights - this is the true left in the United States.
Murray Bookchin
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Our Being is Becoming, not stasis. Our Science is Utopia, our Reality is Eros, our Desire is Revolution.
Murray Bookchin