Murray Bookchin Quotes - Page 5

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• I got deeply involved with the Trotskyists. I assumed simply that my enemy's enemies were my friends.

  Murray Bookchin

  Enemy, My Friends, Involved

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• I would like to see a critical mass of very gifted anarchists come together in an appropriate place in order to do highly productive work. That's it. I don't know why that can't be done except for the fact that I think that people mistrust their own ideals today. I don't think that they don't believe in them; I think they mistrust the viability of them. They're afraid to commit themselves to their ideals.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Thinking, Productive Work

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• 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.

  Murray Bookchin

  Real, Believe, America

  Source: reason.com

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• I'm sorry that some self-styled anarchists have picked up on the word spirit and have turned me into a theological ecologist, a notion which I think is crude beyond all belief.

  Murray Bookchin

  Sorry, Thinking, Self

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• I am concerned that people who admire [Ayn] Rand are not often critical enough of the extent to which she has abridged the implications of [her] novels.

  Murray Bookchin

  People, Enough, Admire

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• I believe that there has to be an ideal and I favour an ethical anarchism which can be cohered into an ideal.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Favour, Ethical

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• 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.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Childhood, Age

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I'm not sitting in judgment on whether or not libertarians can participate in a political process whose very nature they oppose.

  Murray Bookchin

  Political, Sitting, Libertarian

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• 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.

  Murray Bookchin

  Party, Order, Political

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• I have been criticized for pointing out that anarchism is likely to flourish more easily, at least in the western world, and to a certain extent in eastern Europe, in those areas where there is either grim need or considerable technological development.

  Murray Bookchin

  Technological Development, Europe, Needs

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• Deny my individuality and I become an animal, mute, a mere creature of all the forces that act upon me.

  Murray Bookchin

  Animal, Individuality, Deny

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I don't think that the Soviet Union and China are accidents, aberrations; I think they follow from Marxism-Leninism. I think that Leninism comes out of Marx's basic convictions.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Aberration, Unions

  Source: reason.com

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• I'm a Bookchinite, and nobody has a right to claim that but me.

  Murray Bookchin

  Claims

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• Realistically speaking, Ayn Rand should not have opposed the antidraft movement and supported the Vietnam War effort - in effect, she supported military conscription.

  Murray Bookchin

  Military, War, Effort

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I don't feel the individualist anarchists, particularly in the American tradition, including the Transcendental tradition of New England, in any way deserve the derogatory comments that are often made about them by the left. When one gets down to it ultimately, my anarcho-communism stems from a commitment to true individuality. My attempt to recover the power and the right of the individual to control his or her life and destiny is the basis to my anarcho-communism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Destiny, Individuality

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I believe in a libertarian communist society.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Libertarian, Communist

  Source: reason.com

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• We don't have to go around as the Protestant reformation did, or as the socialist revolution did, and execute each other as soon as we are successful - assuming we'll ever be successful.

  Murray Bookchin

  Successful, Revolution, Assuming

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

  4 Copy quote

• I will not call myself a pacifist for the very simple reason that if something like a [Francisco] Franco should arise in Spain again, or, for that matter, in America, and tried to take away whatever dwindling civil liberties and human rights we retain, I would resist them with a club if I had to. But my admiration for pacifism as an outlook and a sensibility is enormous. I just find that it gets me into contradictions, as it often gets many pacifists into contradictory positions and strategies.

  Murray Bookchin

  Simple, America, Rights

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I've had training in electronics engineering, of all things, and in languages. But I've never taken any degree, something I share with Lewis Mumford, I think.

  Murray Bookchin

  Taken, Thinking, Engineering

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I've worked in the factories of this land, and I've thought freely and creatively. And I think that that has greatly enriched my capacity to abstract intellectually. The experience of being with workers, my encounters with management and my recognition of its foibles, my personal encounters with American industrial efficiency, my military experience - all of these things packaged together have greatly enriched my reading and my understanding, and I've written with what I hope is a reasonable fluency of style that is much more expressive than the academic stuff.

  Murray Bookchin

  Military, Reading, Thinking

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• My thinking is very flexible, and I hope that it will remain flexible and creative as long as biology permits me to think and that I will remain a rebel all my life.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Long, Creative

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I don't want to think any longer simply in terms of the Spanish Revolution or the Russian Revolution. It doesn't make any sense to talk [Peter] Makhno to an American.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Want, Revolution

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• In The Ecology of Freedom, my critique of what is called civilization and industrial society is massive, and my attack upon [Karl] Marx's commitment to it as a necessary stage in human progress and the domination of nature is very sharp.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Civilization, Progress

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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