The core of the radical environmental movement that developed in the 1960s-90s largely embraced anarchist thought and practice. Radical environmentalists criticised Marxists for their support of rampant industrialisation and their propensity to delay environmental action until ‘after the revolution.’ Eco-anarchists like prominent Earth First!er Judi Bari argued that the environmentally destructive practices of socialist countries reflected both a failure of Marxism and the fact that all states privilege economic growth and stability above the health of the environment.
The theorisation of eco-anarchism was a central component of the broader attempt to revise anarchist politics for the new era. Anarchism’s ecological focus also expanded its appeal to a new generation of environmental activists who saw the pressing need for radical change. As Marxists downplayed the importance of environmental struggle and even championed the industrial policy of socialist states, anarchists began to fight back against the catastrophic damage being done to the earth.
A variety of anarchist positions competed for leadership of the radical environmental movement. Beginning in the 1960s, Murray Bookchin theorised ‘social ecology’ as a synthesis of social anarchism with ecological thought and advocated for decentralised political action to build an ecological society. Opposed to Bookchin’s social ecology was an ecologically-motivated ‘anarcho-primitivism,’ centered around the Fifth Estate newspaper, which went beyond the New Left’s anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism to critique industrial civilisation itself. Both tendencies were influential in the aforementioned anti-nuclear movement, as was anarcha-feminism.
Later organisations like Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front would take up aspects of the critique of industrial civilisation in their growing commitment to Deep Ecology. Many anarchists also embraced veganism and animal liberation in this era, in part for environmental reasons, and went on to develop an intersectional vision of ‘total liberation.’
The eco-anarchist tendency took center stage in the 1990s in the actions of the Earth Liberation Front as well as the much-celebrated alliance of ‘Teamsters and Turtles’ (labour unions and environmentalists) in the 1999 Seattle demonstration against the World Trade Organization. Anarchism’s ecological focus helps explain its increasing appeal in an era of growing environmental consciousness.
This is an excerpt from my article in the journal Anarchist Studies, “From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s).” Contact me for a PDF!