Ecology or catastrophe. The life of Murray Bookchin. New York: Oxford University Press.
“The real problem is a society that tolerates the social and economic conditions that create homelessness in the first place” (p. 273).
BOOKCHIN Murray
1977
The Spanish Anarchists. The heroic years 1868–1936. New York: Free Life Editions.
“... the organizational principle and practice so basic to Anarchism, that order reaches its most harmonious from through the spontaneous, unhampered development of individuality and variety” (p. 15).
“Few visions of a free society have been more grossly misrepresented than Anarchism. Strictly speaking, anarchy means without authority, rulerless — hence a stateless society based on self-administration. In the popular mind, the word is invariably equated with chaos, disorder, and terrorist bombings. This could not be more incorrect. Violence and terror are not intrinsic features of Anarchism. [...] Anarchism is a great libidinal movement of humanity to shake off the repressive apparatus created by hierarchical society. It originates in the age-old drive of the oppressed to assert the spirit of freedom, equality, and spontaneity over values and institutions based on authority” (p. 17).
1980
Towards an ecological society. Montréal-Buffalo: Black Rose Books. (Second printing 1986. Reprinted 2017.)
“Rousseau is only too accurate in recognizing that a body politic, divested of embodiment as a citizen assembly, is the negation of a people. The term ‘people’ has no meaning if it lacks the institutional structure for exhibiting its physical presence and imparting to that presence a decisive social meaning — if it cannot assemble to debate, formulate, and decide the policies that shape social life. To the degree that the formulation of these policies is removed by mediated and delegated institutions from the face-to-face decision-making process of the people in assembly, to that degree is the people subverted as the only authentic constitutive force of social life and society, vested in the sovereignty of the few, reduced to an abstraction, an unpeopled ‘public sphere’ or a mere ‘public space.’ Underlying every enterprise for the dissolution of the body politic into the faceless sovereignty of delegated authority is the hidden belief in an ‘elect’ that is alone endowed with the capacity to rule and command. Ultimately, this view amounts to a denial of the human potentiality for self-management, to the spark within every individual to achieve the powers of social wisdom that a privileged few claim for themselves. That circumstances — be they resolved into the denial of education, free time, access to culture, and even an enlightened familial background, not to speak of material and occupational circumstances — have concealed this spark to the ‘masses’ themselves is no argument for the fact that social life, particularly as it concerns the individual, could be otherwise. / Delegated authority, in effect, not only negates a people, but the claims of selfhood that are underlying to the notion of popular self-management” (p. 236).
1982
The ecology of freedom. The emergence and dissolution of hierarchy. Palo Alto: Cheshire Books.
“A hierarchical mentality fosters the renunciation of the pleasures of life. It justifies toil, guilt, and sacrifice by the ‘inferiors,’ and pleasure and the indulgent gratification of virtually every caprice by their ‘superiors.’ The objective history of the social structure becomes internalized as a subjective history of the psychic structure. Heinous as my view may be to modern Freudians, it is not the discipline of work but the discipline of rule that demands the repression of internal nature. This repression then extends outward to external nature as a mere object of rule and later exploitation. This mentality permeates our individual psyches in a cumulative form up to the present day — not merely as capitalism but as the vast history of hierarchical society from its inception. Unless we explore this history, which lives actively within us like earlier phases of our individual lives, we will never be free of its hold. We may eliminate social injustice, but we will not achieve social freedom. We may eliminate classes and exploitation, but we will not be spared from the trammels of hierarchy and domination. We may exorcize the spirit of gain and accumulation from our psyches, but we will still be burdened by gnawing guilt, renunciation, and subtle belief in the ‘vices’ of sensuousness” (p. 8).
1996
The third revolution. Volume I. Popular movements in the revolutionary era. London: Cassell.
“At this time of writing an eerie counter-Enlightenment is percolating through Western culture, one that celebrates egocentricity at the expense of social commitment, mysticism at the expense of naturalism, intuitionism at the expense of rationalism, atavism at the expense of civilization, a passive-receptive mentality at the expense of a militant, activist one, and an enervating religiosity at the expense of a critical secularity. As capitalism expands to global proportions, a media-orchestrated barbarism is pushing the modern human spirit back into an absurd caricature of medievalism — almost centuries removed in spirit and outlook from the revolutionary era that gave birth to modern ideals of freedom” (p. 19).
FANON Frantz
1952
Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. (Septembre 1995.)
“Le malheur de l’homme de couleur est d’avoir été esclavagisé. / Le malheur et l’inhumanité du Blanc sont d’avoir tué l’homme quelque part. / Sont, encore aujourd’hui, d’organiser rationnellement cette déshumanisation. Mais moi, l’homme de couleur, dans la mesure où il me devient possible d’exister absolument, je n’ai pas le droit de me cantonner dans un monde de réparations rétroactives. Moi, l’homme de couleur, je ne veux qu’une chose: / Que jamais l’instrument domine l’homme. Que cesse à jamais l’asservissement de l’homme par l’homme. C’est-à-dire de moi par un autre. Qu’il me soit permis de découvrir et de vouloir l’homme, où il se trouve. / Le nègre n’est pas. Pas plus que le Blanc. / Tous deux ont à s’écarter des voix inhumaines qui furent celles de leurs ancêtres respectifs afin que naisse une authentique communication” (p. 187).
FREUCHEN Peter
1961
Peter Freuchen’s Book of the Eskimos. Edited and with a preface by Dagmar Freuchen. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company.
“You must not thank for your meat; it is your right to get parts. In this country, nobody wishes to be dependent upon others. Therefore, there is nobody who gives or gets gifts, for thereby you become dependent. With gifts you make slaves just as with whips you make dogs!”
(Supposedly said by Sorqaq, p. 154).
LEFEBVRE Henri
1975
Le temps des méprises. Paris: Stock.
“[...] dans l’espace, aujourd’hui, se déploie le conflit entre la valeur d’échange et la valeur d’usage. Le rapport entre la valeur d’échange et la valeur d’usage n’était qu’un conflit logique, très proche d’une opposition logique, dans Marx, au début du Capital. Dans l’espace social, on les voit à l’état conflictuel; on voit l’échange s’emparer de l’usage et l’usage réagir contre l’échange. L’espace social n’existe que quand on l’use, en marchant, en se déplaçant, en le consommant par le tourisme. Or, tout cela est de plus en plus vendu, mais, en même temps, l’usage réplique et manifeste sa force. [...] Nous retrouvons ici une des grandes aspirations de l’utopie: créer un espace dans lequel le temps, le temps de vivre, le temps de la jouissance ou du bonheur, serait déterminant, serait le bien suprême” (p. 240).
“L’espace urbain sera l’œuvre des intéressés eux-mêmes, des usagers, ou ne sera rien d’acceptable” (p. 245).
