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New Website for the Institute for Anarchist Studies!

Posted on May 6th, 2009 in AK Allies, Happenings

The Institute for Anarchist Studies has launched their brand new, and very spiffy, website. It’s still somewhat under construction, but you should visit it soon and often. They’ve launched it with four essays about the late Murray Bookchin (who AK had the great privilege of working with over the last decade, both publishing and distributing his books). Here’s what IAS director Mark Lance has to say about the essays you’ll find on their site:

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The following four articles are written by people who were in one way or another connected to Murray’s life and work. Brian Tokar surveys Murray’s vast contribution to radical environmental thought. He reminds us of how far ahead of the rest of the world Murray’s ideas were, and also of how much they still have to offer a movement that frequently loses its radical edge in favor of accommodation with the very social forces that ground our antagonistic relationship with the Earth in the first place.

Next, John Clarke takes up Murray’s well-known attack on contemporary anarchist practice, specifically his charge that anarchism as it exists in contemporary society has moved towards a shallow sort of individualism. Clarke’s discussion is highly critical, but offers just the sort of intellectual and argumentative ferment that Murray reveled in.

Chaia Heller offers a personal reflection on her many years as a close colleague of Murray’s. She reflects on him both as a thinker and as a friend, offering us images of how we might move forward in the work to which he devoted his life, drawing political lessons as much from the nature of the friendship as from the ideas in his books.

Finally, Chuck Morse, a student and comrade of Murray, offers a detailed and at times highly critical look at his organizing strategy. Though informed by Chuck’s deep understanding of Murray’s theoretical vision, the focus is on the ways Murray sought to institutionalize that vision, with the ultimate conclusion that it was deeply flawed.

In my view, Murray was the most important anarchist theorist of the 20th century. I’m sorry I never met the man in person, but am honored and pleased to have found a home in a community to which he was so central. I am pleased as well to have had a small role in bringing you these essays that continue engagement with his life and work into a new century.