“[The] term 'libertarian' itself, to be sure, raises a problem, notably, the specious identification of an anti-authoritarian ideology with a straggling movement for 'pure capitalism' and 'free trade.' This movement never created the word: it appropriated it from the anarchist movement of the [nineteenth] century. And it should be recovered by those anti-authoritarians ... who try to speak for dominated people as a whole, not for personal egotists who identify freedom with entrepreneurship and profit.” LibertarianLibertarianismLibertarian SocialismLeft Libertarian Author:Murray Bookchin
“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.” PeopleIfsFeelsStatesGovernmentUnitedPrinciplesUnited StatesTypeConceptsLogicLibertarianLimited GovernmentEmergence Author:Murray Bookchin
“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.” PeopleIfsThinkingGivingDoeStatesOrderEnjoyDecisionViolenceLibertarianConsistentlyMonopoly Author:Murray Bookchin
“I'm not sitting in judgment on whether or not libertarians can participate in a political process whose very nature they oppose.” PoliticalProcessJudgmentSittingLibertarian Author:Murray Bookchin
“Take a very striking case in point: the Russian Bolsheviks. [Vladimir] Lenin created an alleged workers' party, which in every way reflected the Czarist machine, in order to deal with Czarism. And the danger and the hazards of trying to accommodate libertarian principles to the political process as we know it today is that one begins to dissolve the libertarian principles. So I would say that there is an inconsistency there that should be explored.” KnowsWayShouldTryingTodayPoliticalOrderProcessDealsPartyPrinciplesCasesDangerMachinesWorkersLibertarianHazardsAccommodateInconsistencyBolsheviks Author:Murray Bookchin
“I find it perfectly consistent for libertarians to operate on the municipal or county level, where they are close to the people and where they may have a party or a federation that is made up of the social institutions, the residual social institutions that still remain, over and beyond what the State has managed to preempt and absorb.” PeopleMayMadeStillsStatesSocialLevelsPartyInstitutionsLibertarianConsistentCountyFederationSocial InstitutionsResidual Author:Murray Bookchin
“Whether they [left in America are] anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left, and I feel much closer, ideologically, to such individuals than I do to the totalitarian liberals and Marxist-Leninists of today.” FeelsBelieveRealTodayAmericaIndividualLeftRegardLibertarianLegacyEnterpriseCommunistMarxistFree Enterprise Author:Murray Bookchin
“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.” PeopleWritingBelieveWellsMeanFormCoursesI BelieveRegardNotionLibertarianIdeologySubtleMarxismMarxist Author:Murray Bookchin
“I believe in a libertarian communist society.” BelieveI BelieveI Believe InLibertarianCommunist Author:Murray Bookchin
“I believe that any attempt on the part of a libertarian communist society to abridge the rights of a community - for example, to operate on the basis of a market economy of the kind that you describe - would be unforgivable, and I would oppose the practices of such a society as militantly as I think any reader of your publication would.” ThinkingBelieveKindWould BeI BelieveCommunityPracticeEconomyRightsExampleReaderBasesLibertarianCommunistPublicationMarket EconomyUnforgivable Author:Murray Bookchin
“I have no quarrel with libertarians who advance the concept of capitalism . I believe that people will decide for themselves what they want to do. The all-important thing is that they be free to make that decision and that they do not stand in the way of communities that wish to make other decisions.” PeopleWayWantBelieveImportantI BelieveWishCommunityDecisionConceptsCapitalismImportant ThingsLibertarianQuarrels Author:Murray Bookchin
“If anarcho-communism served to regiment the population in the name of libertarian unity, if it served in any way through collectivist measures to deny the rights of the individual instead of reconciling the rights of the individual with the collective, I would definitely stand completely on the side of the individualist who is trying to rescue above all that most precious thing that makes us human - consciousness and personality.” IfsWayTryingHumansNamesIndividualSidesConsciousnessRightsPersonalityUnityPopulationDenyLibertarianCommunismCollectivesRescueHuman ConsciousnessPrecious Things Author:Murray Bookchin
“I do have an intense respect for pacifists, because I believe that ultimately, if we are to have a truly humanistic as well as libertarian society, violence will have to be banished on this planet.” IfsBelieveWellsI BelieveViolencePlanetsLibertarianIntensePacifistHumanistic Author:Murray Bookchin
“I will never compromise - I can now say with assurance at the age of 57 - with my libertarian and my revolutionary commitments; they'll have to kill me first. They can't buy me out. I'm just not interested in what they have to offer. I've managed to stick it out, and the thing that has been the most rescuing, the most redeeming, feature of my life that has kept me alive, that has kept me more or less single-minded about my commitment to libertarian ideals once I escaped the trap of Marxist-Leninism - a childhood trap, to be sure - has been consciousness.” FirstsHas BeensI CanAgeConsciousnessAliveChildhoodOffersCommitmentIdealsSticksLibertarianCompromiseFeaturesRevolutionaryNot InterestedTrapsAssuranceKill MeMarxistRedeemingNever Compromise Author:Murray Bookchin
“What I'd like to see developing is an American radicalism, libertarian in character, which relies, however weak, faint, and even mythic these traditions may be, on the American libertarian tradition. I don't mean right-wing libertarianism obviously.” MayMeanCharacterTraditionWeakWingsLibertarianDevelopingRelyLibertarianismRight WingRadicalism Author:Murray Bookchin
“The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” ThinkingExistenceLibertarianAssumptionAcidAnarchistVisionaries Book:Urbanization without cities: the rise and decline of citizenship Source: Urbanization without cities: the rise and decline of citizenship
“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.” TodayLeftViewsConcernAgreeWingsExtremesLibertarianCoreSocialismPostsIndividualismPeterSocialistAnarchismFashionableMysticLeft Wing Author:Murray Bookchin
“The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.” HumansEarthSpiritCapitalismLibertarianHuman SpiritMarketplaceAnarchistPlunder Author:Murray Bookchin
