Pantel, J.H., Varengo, S. and Venturini, F., 2023. Peter Kropotkin and Social Ecology: Between Biology and Revolution. Anarchist Studies, 31(2), pp.73-95. (original) (raw)

The Fecundity of Social Ecology

This project is one of the only articles written in an accessible style on the obscure radicalism of the American anarchist Murray Bookchin. He was an american anarchist who formed the ideological foundation of The Kurdish Workersparty PKK. He died in 2006 and his works has seen an increase in interest ever since. This project explains how his concept of social ecology works and why it is fecund to involve in modern political thought.

Unchaining Solidarity, Mutual Aid and Anarchism

To be published in: Unchaining Solidarity: On Mutual Aid and Anarchism with Catherine Malabou (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), edited by Dan Swain, Petr Urban, Catherine Malabou and Petr Kouba, 2021

To think about solidarity, mutual aid and anarchism is to think about how we can and do live together, and how we might do so differently. Mutual aid is, in Peter Kropotkin's famous formulation, a factor of evolution, but also a conscious political strategy undertaken by activists in times of crisis. While this combination of biology and politics has been a source of controversy, and even embarrassment, recent developments demand a rethink. The contributions in this volume aim to renew interest in the idea of mutual aid, and to consider how biological claims might be incorporated into political projects without appearing as essentialist constraints. They thus point to the necessity of solidarity and mutual aid for understanding our social life, while releasing them from the biological and symbolic chains in which they often appear.

Eco-communalism. Bookchin and the Ecology of Revolution

The article develops two main arguments. The first develops the four points on which Murray Bookchin enriches the revolutionary socialist tradition: through the integration of ecology, the consideration of the problem of hierarchy, a rereading of the history of revolutions, and the communalist project as a way to jointly overcome Marxism and anarchism. The second explains that Bookchin's work consists of two inseparable investigations, on the one hand, into the causes of the ecological crisis and, on the other, into the politics of emancipation capable of overcoming this crisis. Bookchin's communalism is ultimately an eco-communalism that allows us to reinscribe the evolution of societies in the evolution of the nature to which they belong.

Evolution and Anarchism in International Relations: The Challenge of Kropotkin's Biological Ontology

This article will utilise Peter Kropotkin’s theory of Mutual Aid to reconsider ontology in International Relations (IR). Mutual Aid Theory holds that the evolution of organisms is shaped by cooperation within a group of species against a variable ecology; thus giving rise to a sociality instinct. This is contrasted with the Malthusian assumption that evolution takes place at the individual level according to their intraspecific fitness. Mutual Aid Theory, applied to the realm of politics, overturns collective-action-problem-grounded theories that hold that the egoistic and competitive drive of humans must be overcome to promote cooperation. Bradley Thayer applied the orthodox individual-fitness interpretation of evolution in an attempt to shore up realist arguments. I argue that such reductionist approaches to studying politics are archaic and not congruent with current scientific understanding. A Critical Realist (CR) approach, placing analytical priority on ontological investigations over epistemological/methodological commitments, is employed to assist in the criticism of orthodox reductionist ontologies. However, equally in line with Kropotkin’s Anarchist ideas, I argue that this critical realist approach also provokes ontologically-driven inquiries into post-sovereignty global politics and can inform the emancipatory intent of Critical IR theory, along side the basic Anarchist ontological claim: society precedes the State.

Nature Without the State: An Anarchist Critique of ' Animalistic Evil'

Studies in the History of Philosophy, 2022

I here present an anarchist critique of the idea of 'animalistic evil' and its common use as a justification for the State's existence and use of force. On this view, 'evil' is a privation of morality, justice, and civilised behaviour. It is then identified with the 'animalistic' since animals are often thought to be defined by the aforesaid privation. I first clarify the idea of animalistic evil within the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), and Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) prominently argue that all that prevents humanity from devolving into animalistic evil, a state of violent and individualistic struggle for bare survival, is the power of State government to forcibly control the animalistic drives within its citizens. I subsequently pose two questions. (1) Is it justified to associate animal life with evil when this is (a) understood as a privation of a morality, justice and society and (b) characterised as an individualistic struggle for survival? (2) If this is not justified, what is the political harm of doing so? Building on the work of the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), I argue that any conception of animalistic evil is unjustifiable, that it is a false justification for the State's existence and use of force, and that the State, upon making the empty threat of animalistic evil, both violently harms individuals and impedes the socially beneficial practice of mutual aid.

Taking Pyotr Kropotkin Seriously : Darwinism, Anarchy and Science

2011

More than a decade ago I began to take the first steps in what would eventually become an extensive research into Pyotr (or Piotr) Kropotkin. At that time, newly installed in England for a postdoctoral sojourn, one tended to think that few would be interested in a theoretical anarchist decades after the final collapse of anarchism's brief revival after 1968. It seemed that there would, at best, remain some smouldering embers, appropriately ground down in those days when the Thatcherite orthodoxysuitably modernized with convenient Blairite clothing-prevailed in Britain and beyond. Well, I soon realized that on the island where he lived for over thirty years of exile, from 1886 to 1917, he was never wholly forgotten.

Social ecology, deep ecology, and liberalism

Critical Review, 1992

Murray Bookchin’s influential writings on social ecology attempt to unite the traditional leftist critique of liberal democratic society with contemporary environmental concerns. His work is undermined, however, in part by the dubious comparisons he makes between market systems and ecosystems, and in particular by his failure to understand that these systems operate in a like fashion according to impersonal principles of self-organization. In the case of the market, while this impersonal process facilitates cooperation and exchange, it also rewards the instrumental nature of the relationship between human and ecological communities. Deep ecologists are therefore right to criticize the unwillingness of participants in market societies to appreciate the intrinsic value of nature. The challenges they pose to the human community – to become less anthropocentric and to approach property rights with a sense of stewardship – may be taken up by an “evolutionary liberalism,” which would strive to achieve harmony between humans and the natural world under the guidance of rules ordered by self-organizing principles.

"The Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin"

Despite more than a decade of widespread pubric discussion of "ecological crises" and,,enviro.r*arrtul problems,,, r"tfra"ti. ecological thinking has had only the *ort *u.ginal influence on contemporary society. The widespread tendenry to triviarize ecology is not limited ro its recycting Uy media, industry and politics for inclusion on their endless lists of ,.issues,,, ,,corcJrns,,, and "items on the agencra-" More disturbing irirr. ""..iii.ur treatment of ecological concep-ts by virtuallyitt tt. prevailing currents in social theory, including .,r., ih. allegldly most radical varieties.