New Future

Murray Bookchin’s ideas on dialectical naturalism have sparked significant debate among ecophilosophers, even within social ecology—particularly his view that it is possible to extract an objective ethics from natural history.

When my teacher Pamela Boyce Simms gave a presentation at the 2017 ISE Summer Gathering in Marshfield, she opened with the intentionally inflammatory statement that “It’s all the fault of the Enlightenment.

This essay is the first of a planned three-part series delving into the science of ‘first and second nature. ’ “Man did not create society; society existed before Man. ” Peter Kropotkin, “The State: Its Historic Role” “Unless we understand the language of the fauna and flora, we will neither understand ourselves nor become ecological socialists.

Armed with its twisted philosophy of history and mystical sensibility, the very idea of eugenics can be seen as radically conservative or downright reactionary. Its most mundane form appears in statements that “Western civilization” or “Western values” are in decline or under threat.

Calls for radical community-based action in response to the climate crisis seem to grow louder all the time.

The 1960s saw the development of the struggles of various social groups as well as alternative politics in the Western world to the dogmatic Marxism that had previously dominated the Left. Social movements against racism and patriarchy emerged, and alternative culture blossomed in everyday life.

Murray Bookchin was keenly aware of the unique constraints, as well as possibilities, imposed by specific historical eras on those lodged within them.

The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest—ranging from southern Canada to northern California—have long had a reverential relationship with salmon. It made frequent appearances in their myths and was often duplicated in the totemic structures of the Salish peoples.

This issue of Harbinger is dedicated to exploring what might be called social ecology “heresies” – new perspectives that critique, challenge, or rethink its prevailing “orthodoxies” and take aim at some of our political community’s sacred cows.