Murray Bookchin — theorist with roots in the Russian Empire
Murray Bookchin was an American political philosopher and anarchist whose theory of libertarian municipalism and social ecology became unexpectedly influential — most dramatically when Abdullah Öcalan adopted his ideas as the ideological foundation of the Rojava revolution in northern Syria, which established a feminist, ecological, democratic society.
Tracing the roots — Jewish
Born in New York in 1921 to parents who had emigrated from Russia, Bookchin grew up in the Communist and anarchist milieu of Russian-Jewish immigrant New York. His intellectual project — combining ecology, anarchism, and municipal democracy — drew on the radical political tradition that the Russian Jewish immigrant generation had carried from the Pale of Settlement.
A career defined by ambition
"A non-hierarchical society is not a utopia. It is a necessity."