A fantastic introduction to Bookchin's communalist ideology and how he distinguishes it from socialism and anarchy more broadly. There is room for growth, but Bookchin's work is a fantastic starting point on the subject. ( )

Readable if somewhat shallow introduction to a very interesting thinker. When I went to the library to return this one I left with two more books of his, so take that as a recommendation. ( )

This book is a compilation of four essays:
"What is Social Ecology?"
"Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism"
"The Role of Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction"
"The Communalism Project"

They were and revised by Murray Bookchin and introduced by Erik Eiglad. Published shortly after Bookchin's death in 2006, this books aims to offer a brief summary of his life's work.

Bookchin was born in the Bronx in 1921 to Jewish-Russian immigrants. He started out a Marxist, became an anarchist, and then later identified as a Communalist. He lived most of his life in Burlington, VT. Bookchin is considered on of the primary scholars in the field of social ecology.

To quote the first sentence of the first essay, "Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems."

Bookchin attempts to develop a number of distinctions or thresholds in these essays. The distinction between social and cultural. The distinction between politics and statecraft. The distinction between cities and urban areas. The distinction between socialism and municipalism.

By the end of the book, I'm not sure that I've yet grasped all of these distinctions. But it does seem that Bookchin espouses science and rationality and distances himself from spirituality and mysticism.

There were two thoughts that stood out to me in the first essay: 1) the conception of the natural world as a developmental process, and 2) that the nature we experience is the holographic history of nature.

Bookchin's writing is certainly intellectually stimulating. I may move on to his "The Ecology of Freedom" at some point to try to get a better grasp on his worldview and ideas. I can't say that this compilation was exactly what I was looking for, but I did get a taste of Bookchin. ( )