I participated in a four month reading group with the local solidarity economy study group of Murray Bookchin's magnum opus, The Ecology of Freedom. I cleverly called this the Murray Bookclub (you can use that, no attribution needed, that's usufruct). I'm really glad that I got to discuss the text with other folks, pick their brains and share the feels. The book club started with about 25 people and whittled down to about 8 tops by the by-weekly gatherings, covering about 50 pages a session with one volunteer per chapter leading the discussion and sometimes another facilitator moving the chat along. The book itself was challenging for me (and i think for others). First up he was an autodidact who grew up communist, turned anarchist, and had been writing and organizing for 5 decades by the time he wrote this book, so his rhetorical style was a bit different than what I was used to reading. His steeping in Greek philosophy and Roman history bespoke a classical education I was passingly familiar with. And it was hard at times to see past his sweeping generalizations about "organic" societies and progressivist arguments about human development. That said, once i gave him a chance, Murray nuanced his arguments and showed an aptitude to be challenged that I appreciated. There are probably some good essays out there coming from good faith critique at this nearly 40 year old book and it's shortcomings (only nods to settler-colonialism, eurocentrism, lack of engagement with anti-Black and other forms of racism in the society he at times idolized). My main criticism is that he tried to do too much at once and tried to pretty it up too much with a complicated vocabulary. It wasn't clear to me even by the end who his audience was. That said, I did get some good vocab fro the book (I have three new words for apocalypticism that I didn't have before), some new questions about rifts in the early Christian church (Paul versus James, go!). His wide argument that authoritarian tendencies and hierarchies that developed in society undid the social, spiritual and economic ties we had to the world, those around us and ultimately ourselves is well taken. And I appreciate his argument that there is no unlearning bad patterns but that our historic and current experience of unfreedom can help guide our creating of actual freedom rings of a Marxist "well, we're here now, what do you want to do" position around "primitive communism". I'm in agreement, we're carrying baggages already and most of it'll we'll have to schlep into whatever utopia we try build. A few things I was surprised to read from Bookchin (based on the anti-Bookchin perspectives i gleaned from the early 2000's anti-civ / Green Anarchist world) included: his positioning of technology within the realm of the social and reflecting social values in design and usage; his leaning at times (with caveat) on the importance of the mystical in the stories we tell ourselves about the world we live in and the place we inhabit in it; his vocal support of the aesthetic and of joy, beauty and luxury (within a system of values) that he felt had fallen by the wayside in our modern, atrophied sense of the desire. Bookchin's thoughtfulness and care is apparent as he sees what we've been and the germs of what we can be inside of us, isn't prescriptive about how to get there but just invites us to change direction. I think the book could be described as a love letter to the libertarian (in the anarchist sense) socialist (in the libertarian sense) impulse and movement. And in this way, it's quite lovely. I'm glad I read it (with comrades) and, tbh, I'm glad to put it down (once I've re-read the 75 pages of introduction to later printings (sigh).