Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

My guest today is Janet Beal.

She is an artist, biographer, journalist, activist, writer.

She is the author of the book's ecology or catastrophe, the life of Murray Bookchin, and most recently,

their blood got mixed, revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS, which is a graphic

novel that she both wrote and illustrated. Janet Biel, thank you so much for joining us on current affairs.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I would like to start with the life and

thought of Murray Bookchin. And I suppose where I'd like to begin with you is to ask you, when you meet people who have not

heard of or unfamiliar with the thought and work of Mari Bukjin, and if they ask you to tell

them why you think he is, his work is important or has enduring value.

Where do you begin?

Well, I, first of all, I have to situate him as a leftist and of socialist revolutionary.

He came out of the communist movement, but he innovated a post-Marxist, a post-Marxist set of ideas for the left that he began developing and arguing for in the 1950s and continued for the rest of his life.

And instead of structuring a radical movement around a supposedly revolutionary proletariat,

which turned out not to be revolutionary, he thought that it was necessary for a socialist

movement to organize around ideas of democracy and ecology. As he perceived early on, the limits of

capitalism were ecological.

He began to realize that in the 50s when there were investigations into the effects of chemicals and food on human health.

And he thought that, well, maybe the proletariat didn't rise up because it was immeasurated,

but people would surely not stand for insults to their health

from eating, consuming chemicals and food, so surely people would rise up. Well, it didn't quite

work out that way, but it was a valid insight, and it's only become more, more valid as the decades

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