The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy

First published in 1982, and since significantly expanded with a lengthy preface, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy is widely considered to be the magnum opus of Murray Bookchin's social ecology theory. Its content and scope is that of human civilisation itself; from pre-literate "organic society" to our present social formations under capitalist domination, in order to reveal and elaborate how the fundamental antagonism to human freedom—more fundamental than that of class or exchange—is that of institutional hierarchy. This profoundly inter-disciplinary examination of institutional hierarchy—inherently anthropological, ecological, philosophical and political in equal measure—is undertaken via a central dialectic of two enduring categories, the "legacy of domination" and "legacy of freedom". Beyond this central analysis, however, are equally rich—and criminally overlooked—discussions of an ecologically oriented technical imagination, inspired by the Aristotelian conception of technê, and a proposal to rescue reason from modern abuses via a libertarian mode of rationality. It is an essential and underrated classic of American critical theory, which readers familiar with Marx and the Frankfurt School theorists especially would do well to explore.

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