My communism attempts basically to create a shared society, that's all; a shared society in which individuality will flourish, along with love, and along with mutual respect.

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

I detest violence. I have a tremendous respect not only for human life but also for the animal life that I have to live with, and I believe that our destiny as human beings is to become nature-conscious as well as self-conscious, living in loving relationship and in balance and in harmony, not only with one another, but with the entire natural world.

I learned that [Trotskyism] were no different from the Stalinists, and they expelled me, which is the typical Marxist-Leninist way of dealing with dissenters. From that point on, I migrated by the 1950s into anarchism, increasingly emphasizing decentralization. Also, I made the all-important step of bridging my social philosophy with ecology. I did that in 1952 and went on to write a whole series of books developing an anarcho-ecological approach.

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.

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.

I went through the communist children's movement at the age of nine, in 1930, and into the Young Communist League in 1936. The Spanish civil war brought me back. I'd already broken with the communists - or the Stalinists, more precisely - in 1935. But the civil war in Spain and the desire to aid the remarkable people struggling against Fascism brought me back to the Young Communist League, so that I could effectively participate, however far removed from Spain, in their struggle. By 1938 I was ready to be expelled. By 1939 I was expelled.