AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left: Interviews and Essays, 1993-1998 by Murray Bookchin ISBN: 1-873176-35-X Publisher: AK Pr Distribution Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: Self-aggrandizing oral "history"
Comment: This book is a mildly interesting instance of radical history being rewritten using the interview format. If you believed everything you read in this book you'd have to think that Murray Bookchin was (or at least should have been) the pivotal character in the last 50 years of radical history, except that nobody knows it besides him because of the raw deals he's always gotten by those who have upstaged him, ignored him, or (like Rachel Carson)not even realized he existed! In other words, because he's rarely been successful at anything, even though he thinks he did all the right things at the right times, it's the world's fault that he's not the biggest radical sensation since the Spanish Revolution.
Read this book if you dare. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating...
Comment: I don't think I've ever seen a book quite like this before - one of the most preeminent Leftist author/philosophers in the world giving incredibly detailed, fascinating responses to questions about where the "Left" (for lack of a better word) originated from, where it has been, and where it could possibly go. Bookchin is incredibly to-the-point and would probably make the world's best dinner guest if he wasn't so damn cranky.

If you've been interested in possible means of alternative social organization, and get the feeling that there's something outside of the narrow definitions of the mainstream (where someone like James Carville could be labeled as a "radical leftist" with a straight face) this is an excellent place to start. If anything, this should be required reading for all young "radicals" who might get bored with Anarchism after age 20 or so. This also serves as an excellent introduction to the current debate between 'mystical' Anarchism and a more empirical, scientific approach to social organization theory - something that Bookchin tirelessly promotes and that (in my opinion) will be absolutely necessary to garner support for Anarchism as a popular movement.

Rating: 4
Summary: Ideas for a 21st century Left
Comment: Echoing Rosa Luxembourg in 1916, the founder of social ecology foresees an ineluctable choice in the new century between libertarian socialism and barbarism. The nature of this nascent barbarism will be manifested in the exponential industrialization of the planet, new state authoritarianism to cope with approaching ecological crises, the degradation of individuality as the corporate economy colonises all aspects of personal life, and the loss of the ability to conceptualise alternatives.

Resistance, to Bookchin, means first turning to history, to recover the 'legacy of freedom'of popular revolutionary movements since the English Revolution which sought radical forms of political and economic democracy and the free time for ordinary people to become active citizens (see the historical trilogy, The Third Revolution). A long-term revolutionary, Bookchin advocates the formation of Left study groups to "rebuild radical consciousness" and eventually act as agitators for direct, face-to-face democracy within their own communities.

The book also contains fascinating (and sometimes quite funny) reflections on the Left in the 1930s and '60s from someone who lived through both eras and a sympathetic reassessment of the contribution of Karl Marx to revolutionary thought.

The book's tone is rather too negative, overall. Now that the epithet 'anti-capitalist' is being claimed by more and more people, there is surely more hope for radical movements than Bookchin seems prepared to admit. Are things really so grim?