From Urbanization to Cities: The Politics of Democratic Municipalism

by Murray Bookchin, Sixtine van Outryve d'Ydewalle (Introduction)

Overview

From Urbanization to Cities is a sweeping history of the city, not as a destination for capitalist exchange and individual gratification but as a locus for directly democratic politics. Just as ecosystems rely on participation and mutualism, so must cities—and their citizens—rediscover these qualities, establishing harmonious and ethical social relations. Democratic municipalism is an emancipatory philosophy of self-determination, where politics becomes an everyday act in which ordinary people and local communities take the power of decision making into their own hands. From the Paris Commune to the Kurdish-led revolution in northeast Syria, democratic municipalism is a tool for wresting power from the nation-state, allowing capitalist urbanization to give way to humanly scaled, ecological, and egalitarian societies. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849354387
Publisher:	AK PR INC
Publication date:	01/04/2022
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Murray Bookchin (1929–2006) was an active voice in ecology, anarchist, and communalist movements for more than fifty years. His groundbreaking essay, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” (1964), was one of the first to assert that capitalism’s grow-or-die ethos was on a dangerous collision course with the natural world that would include the devastation of the planet by global warming. Bookchin is the author of The Ecology of Freedom, among two dozen other books.

Sixtine van Outryve d’Ydewalle is a PhD researcher in political and legal theory at UCLouvain in Belgium. Her research focuses on the theory and practice of direct democracy in a communalist perspective, more specifically on social movements struggling for local self-government in France and North America.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. Urbanization Against Cities
2. From Tribe to City
3. The Creation of Politics
4. The Ideal of Citizenship
5. Patterns of Civic Freedom
6. From Politics to Statecraft
7. The Social Ecology of Urbanization
8. The New Municipal Agenda

APPENDIX The Meaning of Confederalism

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Bookchin gives us a useful history and a call for action.” —New York Times.

“Bookchin is the leading ecological thinker of our times. His work ranks alongside Lewis Mumford’s monumental works on the culture and history of cities and goes beyond.” —Kent Gerecke, University of Manitoba