remaking society (review)
tony sheather (2025) review of murray bookchin‘s remaking society via 7 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tony-sheather-remaking-society]
notes/quotes:
3
This oratorical vigour sweeps the reader into the more explicitly liberatory pages of the book. The chapter titles proclaim the visions and the dreams: Ideals of Freedom; Defining the Revolutionary Project; From Here to There. Here we are invited to share the numerous insights of an erudite man on the cusp of seventy, activist and revolutionary, from his early teenage years as Leninist through Trotskyism to social anarchist and social ecologist.
One of the enduring memories I have from first reading this book thirty years ago is the vivid distinction he drew between justice and freedom. Bookchin discerns the essential nobility of the cries for justice from ancient times through the law codes of the Romans and other cultures to the voluminous codification of today. He sees the moral, even religious dimension through the millennia where the call for justice in the face of unspeakable oppression was inspired by the ideal of “equal and exact” as the golden measure.
4
In his exhilarating evocation of these thinkers and the acolytes they inspired, Bookchin exhibits the voracious curiosity of the independent thinker, with books strewn around his home as recollected by a friend of yesteryear who attended a gathering in the US some decades ago.
His reflections on Anarchy and Libertarian Utopias sees figures such as Fourier with his multifaceted phalansteries where body and mind, work and play, desire and learning within self-sufficient communities *sparked rebellion yet did not challenge existing society. Robert Owen’s industrial villages saw more realistic versions of workshops and farms. **Rabelais’s “Abbey of Thelme” exalted the theme “Do as Thou Wilt” and delighted in the pleasures of mind and body. Godwin is lauded for his opposition to church, custom and state while even Rousseau is praised for his assertion of the human will if not the excess of romanticism. William Morris’s communal vision exalting art and artisanal skill is seen as a manifestation of co-operation, the human scale, ecological in aspiration and design.
*to me.. nothing to date has been legit alt/diff.. nothing yet has gotten to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. [again].. for (blank)’s sake..
**rabelais and his world et al
7
Sadly, Bookchin’s later writing shows a man *disillusioned with the promise of anarchism. His third introduction to Post-Scarcity Anarchism is a paeon to social ecology. His late life support for syndicalism but not anarchism demonstrates a profound departure from earlier conviction. Here was a man disappointed in his hopes, shattered by the denunciation from contemporary anarchists and deep ecologists. Provocative he may at times have been but there was always a nobility in his intent. In August, 1999, he announced his formal departure from anarchism as his philosophical home.
*because nothing to date sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
Nonetheless, this 222 pages’ summary of his earlier dreams is an exhilarating expression of the many movements, events and original thinkers who inspired the ideals of freedom throughout history. It is a crucial reminder of the theories and practices desperately needed today in a world in turmoil, one bereft of even a semblance of compassion, sense or intellectual aspiration.
TONY SHEATHER
_______
_______
______
______
______
______
______
be you. 