Murray Bookchin and the Postwar Environmental Moment The Early Bookchin and the Politicization of Ecology, 1948-1964

Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) is best known today for pioneering a novel synthesis between social anarchism and ecology in the 1960s. Both his writing and his activism had a substantial impact on the young New Left and the radical ecology movement, and were in polemic dialogue with radical environmentalists, anarcho-primitivists, and deep ecologists. This article explores the development of Bookchin's early political thought within the framework of a "postwar environmental moment"and uncovers how he uniquely politicized ecological science in the 1950s. I argue that Bookchin's early writings were a critical response to both the dire environmental issues of his time and the limitations he perceived in Old Left politics. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Bookchin's understanding of ecological science was not simply a product of a turn to anarchism, but was directly linked to debates among 1950s ecologists, typically overlooked in the recent scholarship on Bookchin.