So I just "googled Bookchin" and was reading Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement
All he does is complain that Deep Ecology was push by evil muh privileged white men, and has no regard for the women's movement etc.
Is Bookchin always this IDpol?
It's hippy shhit
Red Ted and Linkola and disregard Bookchin
care to elaborate? From what I'm reading it seems that Bookchin's Social Ecology is the hippie shit. For example he complains that the Deep Ecologists say not to help the starving third world and let nature run its course. However we see that when we give free food to Africans it pushes local farmers out of business and into a life of crime.
That suggests that giving free food is a shitty way to help the starving third world, not that we shouldn't help the third world at all
I wouldn't discard Bookchin. But if you're focus is more on ecology and humanism, then yeah, by all means: Ted & Linkola.
Bookchin is actually very against ID pol. Here are a couple places where they expressed their thoughts about ID pol:
" The 1960s also saw the emergence of yet another form of nationalism on the Left: increasingly ethnically chauvinistic groups began to appear that ultimately inverted Euro-American claims of the alleged superiority of the white race into an equally reactionary claim to the superiority of nonwhites. Embracing the particularism into which racial politics had degenerated instead of the potential universalism of a humanitas, the New Left placed blacks, colonial peoples, and even totalitarian colonial nations on the top of its theoretical pyramid, endowing them with a commanding or “hegemonic” position in relation to whites, Euro-Americans, and bourgeois-democratic nations. In the 1970s, this particularistic strategy was adopted by certain feminists, who began to extol the “superiority” of women over men, indeed to affirm an allegedly female mystical “power” and an allegedly female irrationalism over the secular rationality and scientific inquiry that were presumably the domain of all males. The term “white male” became a patently derogatory expression that was applied ecumenically to all Euro-American men, irrespective of whether they themselves were exploited and dominated by ruling classes and hierarchies.
A highly parochial “identity politics” began to emerge, even to dominate many New Leftists as new “micronationalisms,” if I may coin a word. Not only do certain tendencies in such “identity” movements closely resemble those of very traditional forms of oppression like patriarchy, but “identity politics” also constitutes a regression from the libertarian and even general Marxian message of the “Internationale” and a transcendence of all “micronationalist” differentia in a truly humanistic communist society. What passes for “radical consciousness” today is shifting increasingly toward a biologically oriented emphasis on human differentiation like gender and ethnicity ―not an emphasis on the need to foster of human universality that was so pronounced among the anarchist writers of the last century and even in The Communist Manifesto." - democracynature.org
They also talk about it here:
youtube.com
then why does he accuse deep ecology of being racist and sexist
Because they are. Painting the results of imperialism as "natural" is racist in effect.
But complaining about "patriarchy" is engaging in IDpol
He's comparing idpol to patriarchy. Arguing that in essence their motives are similar, undesirable and run contrary to both the humanist (class) consciousness and internationalism expressed in the communist manifesto and earlier anarchist & marxist works.
He is literally supporting feminism, complaining about racism, and muh muh privilege arguments everywhere in this article
ID pol is not anything to do with sexism, racism, etc… my dude. "Identity politics" refers to a specific tendency than developed out of the New Left in the 1970s, and is typified in the Combahee River Collective Statement:
This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression… - circuitous.org
The change here from the universalism of the Old Left and even the Civil Rights Movement here, to the particularism of individual identity is made explicit. It is this rejection of universalism and embrace of particularism that typifies what we today call "identity politics".
Here is the sort of universalism that Bookchin did advocate for:
"I should emphasize that as the civil rights movement developed, it had a very humanistic form. In 1968 it demanded integration, not segregation or racial separation. When we sang "We Shall Overcome," the second verse was "black and white together," not "black and white apart." Although I disagreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. on many things, especially his pacifist tactics, he nonetheless declared that, "We will see the day when black and white, and Jew and Gentile" — he could have added Muslim — "and men and women will be all together" in sisterhood and brotherhood. He is well remembered for such a formulation in his famous speech before the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington. I applauded the civil rights movement for its universalistic approach. When King said he wanted *all* of humanity to enjoy the benefits of freedom, his universalism appealed to the internationalism I had inherited from Marxism." - Bookchin "Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left"
What is this from? I want some context.
Under: What is Social Ecology? From the article linked above
no I am agreeing with you
Did you forget to provide the link? None of the links ITT look like your screencap.
Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement
look under What is social ecology.
He's saying a feminism is emerging and describing the status of blacks and whites in virtually every country where both live. Not really idpol to just describe realistic things happening.
I skimmed the section and I can't find anything particularly liberal about it. At the top he quite plainly implies that identity politics themselves are a problem.
Pointing out that idpol exists isn't endorsing it.
the picture I posted is him saying Social Ecology includes feminism
see>>1485115
All feminism isn't ID pol. To claim that all feminism is identity politics is to ignore that identity politics is a relatively recent post-modern phenomenon that is different from how the Left and feminism had been historically.
all feminism is idpol
ok, you're a moron
So mad lol
...
I was defending Bookchin before but he's not wrong about this point. How is feminism not identity politics by definition? It is politics pertaining to identity (women).
All societal oppression is rooted in capitalism, to imply that society has otherwise not changed since before capitalism is idealistic liberal nonsense.
Whether or not something is an identity is besides the point. Is said group subjected to the woes of exploitation, hierarchy and domination? Then we should seek to abolish these things, and the program to abolish it for all peoples is ultimately a communalist program. Simply labeling the recognition of a certain groups of peoples struggle with these things as "idpol" is completely useless and meaningless. By this logic class is idpol.
All societal oppression is not rooted in capitalism, but in hierarchy and domination. Hierarchy and domination existed before class did, but that's not to say that class is not a form of hierarchy and domination, or that capitalism is not the worst manifestation of these things.
Whether it is identity politics is relevant here, because its very concept of what constitutes "exploitation, hierarchy and domination" is fundamentally opposed to that of most left wing ideologies. How an anarchist or communalist society would deal with sexism is a far cry from the petty bullshit that liberal feminists are preoccupied with.
Hierarchy and domination cannot exist without power, and in capitalist society, power belongs to the ruling class. Before that it was feudalism, and before that it was slave society. Even if you are not strictly a Marxist, If you think power does not come from ownership and control of the means of production, you are not a communist.
I still don't see the problem in relation to bookchin then, if you're only quarrel is with how liberals seek to fix issues of patriarchy and rascism.
I'm not a communist, I'm a communalist. Bookchin improves on much of what Marx wrote, Marx not having access to the information that Bookchin did. Read Pics related.
Just because idpol is divisive does not mean that racism and sexism do not exist in our society.
The trick is to abolish the hierarchy of races, sexes, religions, and economic classes. You can't have one without the others.
Communalism is about turning everyone into citizens, as multifaceted realized individuals they have many identities in addition to being a worker.
Like fuck, Bookchin basically invented being anti-idpol but that doesn't mean he denied the very real oppression groups of people faced.
Like holy fuck this is retarded.
Bookchin rejects the anarkiddie idea of everyone being a worker. The fact is Marx was very specific in who the word proletariat applied to, it was a worker who lived in an industrialized society and created surplus value to exploit. Not every member of the underclass can possibly fit into this role. (Ie peasant farmers in the third world they predate and exist alongside the modern proletariat.)
Instead communalist a seek to bind people under as the ideal citizen. Something every member of society can identify with regardless of their station in life
No such a thing exists