Books like Remaking Society by Murray Bookchin

A collection of essays by the anarchist collective CrimethInc., exploring radical politics, anti-capitalism, and personal freedom.

"Many similarities exist between the new movements against austerity that have emerged since 2011, ranging from Taksim Square in Turkey to the Chilean student protests, and from Greece to NYC. One of them is their return to the principles of direct democracy and their organization around popular assemblies. These ideas are hardly new - Murray Bookchin, who is one of the leading anarchist thinkers of the twentieth century, has been elaborating ideas about popular assemblies for several decades that have influenced thinkers such as David Harvey. The Next Revolution brings together Bookchin's writings on popular assemblies for the first time, just as his ideas are rekindling the radical imagination worldwide"--

This book asks—and tries to answer—several basic questions that affect all Leftists today. Will anarchism remain a revolutionary social movement or become a chic boutique lifestyle subculture? Will its primary goals be the complete transformation of a hierarchical, class, and irrational society into a libertarian communist one? Or will it become an ideology focused on personal well-being, spiritual redemption, and self-realization within the existing society? In an era of privatism, kicks, introversion, and post-modernist nihilism, Murray Bookchin forcefully examines the growing nihilistic trends that threaten to undermine the revolutionary tradition of anarchism and co-opt its fragments into a harmless personalistic, yuppie ideology of social accommodation that presents no threat to the existing powers that be. Includes the essay, "The Left That Was." (Source: [AK Press](https://www.akpress.org/socialanarchismorlifestyleanarchism.html))

**Tools for Conviviality** is a 1973 book by Ivan Illich about the proper use of technology. It was published only two years after his previous book *Deschooling Society*. In this new work Illich generalized the themes that he had previously applied to the field of education: the institutionalization of specialized knowledge, the dominant role of technocratic elites in industrial society, and the need to develop new instruments for the reconquest of practical knowledge by the average citizen. He wrote that "[e]lite professional groups … have come to exert a 'radical monopoly' on such basic human activities as health, agriculture, home-building, and learning, leading to a 'war on subsistence' that robs peasant societies of their vital skills and know-how. The result of much economic development is very often not human flourishing but 'modernized poverty', dependency, and an out-of-control system in which the humans become worn-down mechanical parts." Illich proposed that we should "invert the present deep structure of tools" in order to "give people tools that guarantee their right to work with independent efficiency." The idea of the 'radical monopoly' is also applied to the effects of cars on the urban form, as "speedy vehicles of all kinds render space scarce." Ivan Illich contributes to a radical critique of modern urbanism: "this monopoly over land turns space into car fodder. It destroys the environment for feet and bicycles. Even if planes and buses could run as nonpolluting, nondepleting public services, their inhuman velocities would degrade man’s innate mobility and force him to spend more time for the sake of travel." Tools for Conviviality attracted worldwide attention. A résumé of it was published by French social philosopher André Gorz in *Les Temps Modernes*, under the title "Freeing the Future". The book’s vision of tools that would be developed and maintained by a community of users had a significant influence on the first developers of the personal computer, notably Lee Felsenstein. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_and_Human_Interests))

Thomas Friedman argues that the 21st century is shaped by the accelerating forces of technology, globalization, and climate change, urging readers to pause and consider their profound impact on work, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community.

Murray Bookchin’s collection of essays argues that the technological progress of the 20th century has created the means for a post‑scarcity, self‑administered society where ecological sustainability and worker control replace the state and hierarchical parties.

Murray Bookchin introduces provocative ideas about the nature of community and what it means to be a fully empowered citizen. He believes that the tensions that exists between rural and urban society can be a vital source of human creativity, thereby defining a new, richly imaginative politics which can help us recover the power of the individual, restore the positive values and quality of urban life, and reclaim the ideal of the city as a major creative force in our civilization. What is envisaged is an environmentally oriented politics, a new ecological ethics and a citizenry that will restore the balance between city and country and, ultimately, between humanity and nature. Murray Bookchin is a pioneer thinker and writer and has been active in the ecology movement for more than thirty years. He is widely regarded as one whose ideas are decades ahead of his time. Professor Emeritus at the School of Environment Studies, Ramapo College and Director Emeritus of the Institute of Social Ecology, he has authored more than a dozen books on urbanism, ecology, technology and philosophy. (Source: [University of Chicago Press](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/U/bo50125967.html))

Three years in the making, Recipes for Disaster is the long-awaited follow-up to the CrimethInc. collective’s notorious first book, Days of War, Nights of Love. This 400-page manual complements the romance and idealism of that earlier work with practical information and instruction. Over thirty collectives collaborated in testing, composing, and editing the book’s 62 sections, which range from Affinity Groups, Coalition Building, and Mental Health to Sabotage, Squatting, and Wheatpasting. These are illustrated with extensive technical diagrams and first-hand accounts, and prefaced with a thorough discussion of the diverse roles direct action can play in social transformation. If you’re looking for a tactical handbook for revolutionary action, look no further.