Anarchism and Social Ecology

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A community about anarchy. anarchism, social ecology, and communalism for SLRPNK! Solarpunk anarchists unite!

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Anarchism

Anarchism is a social and political theory and practice that works for a free society without domination and hierarchy.

Social Ecology

Social Ecology, developed from green anarchism, is the idea that our ecological problems have their ultimate roots in our social problems. This is because the domination of nature and our ecology by humanity has its ultimate roots in the domination humanity by humans. Therefore, the solutions to our ecological problems are found by addressing our social and ecological problems simultaneously.

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Quotes

Poetry and imagination must be integrated with science and technology, for we have evolved beyond an innocence that can be nourished exclusively by myths and dreams.

~ Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom

People want to treat ‘we’ll figure it out by working to get there’ as some sort of rhetorical evasion instead of being a fundamental expression of trust in the power of conscious collective effort.

~Anonymous, but quoted by Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.

~Murray Bookchin, "A Politics for the Twenty-First Century"

There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration.

~Murray Bookchin, Post Scarcity Anarchism

In modern times humans have become a wolf not only to humans, but to all nature.

~Abdullah Öcalan

The ecological question is fundamentally solved as the system is repressed and a socialist social system develops. That does not mean you cannot do something for the environment right away. On the contrary, it is necessary to combine the fight for the environment with the struggle for a general social revolution...

~Abdullah Öcalan

Social ecology advances a message that calls not only for a society free of hierarchy and hierarchical sensibilities, but for an ethics that places humanity in the natural world as an agent for rendering evolution social and natural fully self-conscious.

~ Murray Bookchin

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/37239269

I fear that if we (anarchists and fellow travelers) cannot explicitly articulate the need for action, within the context of upending daily life as it is currently lived, the horrors that are the existent world will continue along with it. Even when protests become riots, if we find ourselves continuing to inhabit the position of waiting for specialized locations of resistance to make themselves known we will fail to meet the moment at hand, perpetually stuck in a reactive cycle of prairie-dogging into moments of rupture only to fall back in line when the tides subside. If we truly desire the end of this world of death machines, we cannot afford to wait and take action only once ruptures become clear. We must embody the constant state of rupture. But to do that, we need to recognize why we so often wait.

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I've long considered myself an anarchist and while I'm not very well read, I'm also not a baby anarchist. I haven't read too many books on theory, instead I mostly learn from podcasts and discussions with peers. For whatever reason, I struggle to find the mental energy to get through books. I'm vaguely familiar with communalism but I'm still struggling with conflicting information.

  1. Is communalism compatible with anarchism? I've come across people who identify as both as well as communalists who view their philosophy and goals as distinct from anarchism.

  2. Is communalism statist or anti-statist? I've heard it described as anti-statist, yet depictions of it (when distinguished from anarchism) sound to me like they aim to establish a highly decentralized and directly democratic confederation of states.

  3. How do anarchists and communalists in this community feel about the others' praxis? I'm intrigued by both, including especifismo and libertarian municipalism.

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Zoe Baker and Anark release a video in the same week? Let's fucking gooooo! ❤️🖤

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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net
 
 

The previous parts 1 to 3 can be found here.

Written version of the entire series here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-a-modern-anarchism

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submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Crazycookie@slrpnk.net to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net
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Jeff found a genie in a bottle / Who said, "I can give you anything you ask. / You can have your wishes three, / And a million more for free. / It's unlimited, just set me to the task."

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True libertarianism, a left wing, socialist libertarianism, is a path towards a post-moral, totally human and liberated future. This is because libertarianism rejects the idea that morality should be imposed upon individuals by external forces. Instead, individuals are free to create their own meaning and purpose in life, without being constrained by societal norms or religious dogma. This freedom allows individuals to fully realize their own potential and to live their lives on their own terms. Libertarianism is often misunderstood as a conservative, capitalist philosophy. With this book, I aim to recapture the term from the hands of greedy destroyers of the world, and contribute a little to the ever-growing intellectual tradition on the left.

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In USA, both US citizens and immigrants are being caught and sent to detention centers or immigration camps. There the people will be kept and will be deported to another country on a later date. And that person will be deported to another country irrespective of whether he or she originated from there or not. It is even worse than what the USA did during the world war 2 to the japanese americans. During the war the japanese americans were forcefully relocated to internment camps. It is very shameful period of US american history. Probably in 60 or more years later people will read about these events in their history books. They will understand how a deranged president did all these. And the fact that the USA president had support of majority of people. USA needs a revolution today. Just like the american revolutionary war a similar war needs to be fought by the sane people of USA. Otherwise whatever good that has been achieved since July, 4th 1776 will all be lost.

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To destroy “woman” does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruction, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with the categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude, a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation (“forced residence,” domestic corvée, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. We are escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. For us this is an absolute necessity; our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accomplished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression.

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ABSTRACT Anarchism is a philosophy opposed to hierarchy and authority, and is used as a critical lens to analyze the whole of human society. As with members of all social groupings, anarchists differ from each other in many ways, one of which is their political ideology. At least two visibly distinct ideological variants of anarchism are distinguishable in the US—a red anarchism that emphasizes economic concerns and a green anarchism that focuses upon the environment. American anarchists have long assumed, based upon anecdotal evidence, that there are differences in ideological variant identification between those on the two US coasts. Using survey data, two distinct measures of ideology were formed and respondents were classified into four separate US regions. Although the majority of anarchists do not specify a particular orientation, Northeasterners were associated with red anarchism, while Westerners were associated with green anarchism. These differences may be created and/or reinforced by structural or organizational factors.

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These two sometimes contradictory anti-authoritarian perspectives were hastily translated 50 years after the 17th of November of 1973, the date marking the peak of an insurrection which marked the passage from dictatorship to bourgeois democracy in greece. The first is an article published by an antifascist collective, which discusses, in the trademark style of local autonomists, contemporary — despite the 15 years that have passed since its publication — questions on the meaning and background of the uprising and the position that radicals should have towards its commemoration. The 2007 article ends with a brief chronology of the uprising, a useful segue into the second text, a discussion on the role of “the anarchists”, an informal grouping of anti-authoritarian participants in the workers’ assembly within the Polytechnic occupation. The text is a relatively brief reference within a 1977 article on the development of the greek proletariat in one of many early anti-authoritarian print publications which emerged in the post-dictatorship era, and the originally unnamed author (who has posthumously been identified as X. Konstatinides) identifies himself as one of the participants within this anarchist grouping. Besides a detailed recollection of some seemingly small, but crucial moments within the occupation, there is also value in the inclusion of the reactions of the ‘traditional’ left to the uprising. At the time of writing, there have been large demonstrations and some, fairly limited — for the standards of this particular insurgent holiday — commemorative clashes in Athens, Patras, Thessaloniki and Ioannina. There are still lively debates within the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space on how — and if — uprisings such as the ones marked by the 17th of November of 1973, and the 6th of December of 2008, should be commemorated (see the extended 2022 analysis by anarchist prisoner D. Xatzivasiliadis: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1621702/; if I have a lot more time on the 17th of November next year, I might tackle it…). Please excuse any translation mistakes!

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Material solidarity means to raise the social cost of Zionism on the home Imperialist front. By reinscribing radical Anti-imperialist history into our theory and practice we can generate a militant strategy in coordination with the movements of the Palestinian national liberation forces on the ground, as they continue to wage war on Zionist colonialism. ‘Bringing the war home’ in essence, calls on us to abolish counterinsurgency from our movements in favour of aligning ideologically and practically with the AlQassam armed fighter and the Fellaheen rock thrower.

Free Palestine!

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The question of our time, then, is not how we should respond to the climate crisis, or the coronavirus crisis, or the current economic crisis. The real question is twofold: firstly, how can we take hold of the revolutionary potential of this moment to attack the root cause of each of these crises – capitalism, and all its oppressive and destructive effects; and secondly, how can we build in its place a system that will truly value and secure the freedom of every individual, community, and society around the world.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net
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Really good analysis of the past few years here

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My love, these experiences together are as seamless as every wave in an ocean. To others this is just a tale of two mercury switch hearts ignited by the spark of a first kiss. I look forward to whatever we may encounter under this black rainbow called life. We'll ride the waves of every hurricane that makes landfall. Until their bullets turn our blood into confetti during a shoot-out, or we simply grow old and sing each other to sleep with a shared death rattle... More riots! Vandalism! Anarchy!

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Rebel Peripheries (bandilangitim.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by mambabasa@slrpnk.net to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net
 
 

When anarchism (or any other idea for that matter) is brought into new contexts, it necessarily enters into dialogue with the histories and traditions of that new context. When Mao Zedong Thought was all the rage during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., this new idea was re-contextualized in the context of the history of revolutionary nationalism of the Katipunan, Andres Bonifacio, and the resistance to the American colonial State. Anarchism in the Philippines necessarily indigenizes itself into the Philippine context, something I’ve written about in the past on various libertarian elements in the Philippines.[1] My purpose here isn’t to restate what I’ve already written on previously but to expand the re-contextualization of the potentiality of anarchism in rebel peripheries to a distinctly anti-anarchist project: that of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). As a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad says “Seek knowledge even in China,” China being the furthest and most remote place in the ancient Arab imagination, urging that we ought to seek knowledge even from the most remote—or in this case, the strangest—of places.

The CPP, its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), and its front the National Democratic Front (NDF) have been waging Maoist armed struggle in the Philippines since 1969. In doing so, it has created a number of rebel peripheries in the countryside that exist outside the control of the Philippine State—in the anarchy of the peripheries. However, the longstanding second communist rebellion in the Philippines has to be placed in the historical context of anarchic and rebel peripheries in the archipelago. Once we move past and sublate the experiences of the Maoists for the revolutionary project of anarchism, we can then move on understanding the insurrectionary project of mamundok-in-place.

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What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites.

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What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites.

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In the current evolution of the so-called radical left in the so-called United States, one concerning trend is the growing popularity of Marxist-Leninist organizations, particularly among newly-activated young people. One organization that has been a major beneficiary of such a surge has been the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which, though around for decades, has become more visible and active on the ground and online in recent years. FRSO’s article on their 2022 congress states that “[r]eflecting the rapid growth of FRSO over the last four years, this was the first congress for most attendees. While some of the participants were veterans of the communist movement with many decades of experience, the overwhelming majority were under 35 years old.” [1] This trend has continued.

FRSO’s program presents their goals and principles in an easily digestible format, divided into six sections. It is a quite basic Marxist-Leninist program and, as such, contains the flaws inherent to this organizational model, making for an uninspiring document outdated in its ideas and of little use. Fundamentally, it is stuck in a fetishized statist framework that conflates socialism with a planned state-capitalist economy, reinforces the colonial foundations on which the so-called United States is built, and spreads false information about its populations. We should criticize this anti-revolutionary program and challenge its growing influence.

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