Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Toward
Development
Freedom
Setback
Ever
Technological
Advance
Enormous
Capitalism
Convinced

More quotes by Murray Bookchin

Image
I'm sorry that some self-styled anarchists have picked up on the word spirit and have turned me into a theological ecologist, a notion which I think is crude beyond all belief.
Murray Bookchin
Image
Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I'm by no means convinced that capitalism and the development of technology has made anarchism easier.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I was raised as a red diaper baby.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I believe that it's terribly important to have a movement that is spiritual, not in the supernatural sense, but in the sense of German Geist, spirit, which combines the idea of mind together with feeling, together with intuition.
Murray Bookchin
Image
Until society can be reclaimed by an undivided humanity that will use its collective wisdom, cultural achievements, technological innovations, scientific knowledge, and innate creativity for its own benefit and for that of the natural world, all ecological problems will have their roots in social problems.
Murray Bookchin
Image
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
Image
Deny my individuality and I become an animal, mute, a mere creature of all the forces that act upon me.
Murray Bookchin
Image
We have to give people the freedom to choose lifestyles and material satisfactions that suit their needs, and we have to redefine need itself. We can't redefine need among ghetto people by telling them we should all give up our TV sets or automobiles: we have to tell them there's enough to go around, now let's talk about using it sensibly.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I'm much more interested in developing human character in society. And I'm much more interested in the social conditions that foster commitment to ideals, a sense of solidarity, purposefulness, steadfastness, responsibility.
Murray Bookchin
Image
People are never free of trying to be content.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I don't want to think any longer simply in terms of the Spanish Revolution or the Russian Revolution. It doesn't make any sense to talk [Peter] Makhno to an American.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I feel that if people investigate the emergence of government, of State power - if they examine the logic of State power historically, and more specifically in the United States - they will find that the concept of limited government is not tenable once they adopt some type of libertarian principle.
Murray Bookchin
Image
The most important thing [anarchists] can do is educate themselves, develop a propaganda machinery in the form of books and periodicals, a literature, engage in discussion groups that are open to a community, to discuss and develop their ideas and to develop networks.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I would not want to be in the same movement with an anarcho-syndicalist, however much I may respect and like that person. Some of my best friends are anarcho-syndicalists. I mean, I realize that we do not have a commonality, even a language, that makes it possible for us to communicate.
Murray Bookchin
Image
I believe in a libertarian communist society.
Murray Bookchin
Image
My anarchism is frankly anarcho-communalism, and it's eco-anarchism as well. And it's not oriented toward the proletariat.
Murray Bookchin
Image
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
Image
If the State does not enjoy a monopoly of violence, which then gives it the power to order people's lives and to compel them to obey decisions over which they have no control, or just limited control, then I think you have a consistently libertarian society.
Murray Bookchin
Image
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