The Philosophy of Social Ecology

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) was a leading voice in the ecology, anarchist, and communalist movements for more than fifty years. His groundbreaking essay “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” (1964) was one of the first to assert that capitalism’s grow-or-die ethos was on a dangerous collision course with the natural world that would include the devastation of the planet by global warming. Bookchin is the author of The Ecology of Freedom, among two dozen other books. He was born in New York, NY.

Dan Chodorkoff is a writer and educator who cofounded The Institute for Social Ecology with Murray Bookchin. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from the New School for Social Research, and he is the author of numerous books, including The Anthropology of Utopia: Essays on Social Ecology and Community Development and the 2022 novel Sugaring Down. He received a Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant for anthropological research, and in 2015 was awarded the Goddard College Presidential Award for Activism.

Todd McGowan teaches at the University of Vermont and is the author of Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution, among other books.