Bookchin prefigured many ideas in solarpunk and degrowth before these things were even coined. But what are your critiques of him?
Bookchin prefigured many ideas in solarpunk and degrowth before these things were even coined. But what are your critiques of him?
One of the things I love about anarchist thinkers is that you don’t have to pretend they were infallible idols. There’s a little bit of mythologizing that goes on among anarchists, but most of us acknowledge that as a rule they were insufferable people naturally replicating the trauma they experienced from the political systems they lived under onto others. If someone is like “Bakunin was an antisemite” you can be like, “yeah, and fuck him for that. Fuck all antisemitism. But he hated the state most of all, so lets talk about why.”
I don’t think that’s a good thing – it has definitely been an obstacle in anarchist organizing, and we wouldn’t say “Be careful with each other…” if we didn’t need to be reminded. Maybe if there was an anarchist Mr. Rogers, we’d have automated transgender space luxury communism already.
No Gods, no masters also means no anarchist gods or masters.
Cool comment
Reminds me of something I heard someone say a few years ago (I can’t remember who said it): Build statues of ideas, not people.