If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)โฆ Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be.
Murray BookchinTo speak of โlimits to growthโ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be โpersuadedโ to limit growth than a human being can be โpersuadedโ to stop breathing. Attempts to โgreenโ capitalism, to make it โecologicalโ, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.
Murray BookchinI am concerned that people who admire [Ayn] Rand are not often critical enough of the extent to which she has abridged the implications of [her] novels.
Murray BookchinI've been criticized by many anarchists as believing that anarchism is impossible without affluence. On the contrary, I think affluence is very destructive to anarchism. If you are absorbed by that commodity world then you're not going to move toward any radical positions, you're going to move toward a stance of protectiveness.
Murray BookchinI don't feel the individualist anarchists, particularly in the American tradition, including the Transcendental tradition of New England, in any way deserve the derogatory comments that are often made about them by the left. When one gets down to it ultimately, my anarcho-communism stems from a commitment to true individuality. My attempt to recover the power and the right of the individual to control his or her life and destiny is the basis to my anarcho-communism.
Murray BookchinMy feeling is that whatever people elect to do, insofar as they don't deny the rights of others, every effort should be made to defend their right to do it.
Murray BookchinIf anarcho-communism served to regiment the population in the name of libertarian unity, if it served in any way through collectivist measures to deny the rights of the individual instead of reconciling the rights of the individual with the collective, I would definitely stand completely on the side of the individualist who is trying to rescue above all that most precious thing that makes us human - consciousness and personality.
Murray Bookchin