Anarchism and Social Ecology
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A community about anarchy. anarchism, social ecology, and communalism for SLRPNK! Solarpunk anarchists unite!
Feel free to ask questions here. We aspire to make this space a safe space. SLRPNK.net's basic rules apply here, but generally don't be a dick and don't be an authoritarian.
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.
Libraries
Audiobooks
- General audiobooks
- LibriVox Public domain book collection where you can find audiobooks from old communist, socialist, and anarchist authors.
- Anarchist audiobooks
- Socialist Audiobooks
- Social Ecology Audiobooks
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.
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
Network
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European welfare is subsidized by interest payments made by poor countries to rich countries. European social democracy works because they steal money from the developing world. Social welfare in developing countries are notably less robust precisely because of the underdevelopment.
I've already addressed this critique. Democratic socialism works in the developing world, too. Everything there works less well because the countries are poorer, but democratic socialism still works best.
Yeah sure, whatever. Meanwhile I've watched social democrats in the Philippines turn to fascism while others become the left wing of the Liberal Party.
This is a strong refutation of the argument that social democracy always works and that all social democrats are good people.
Social democracy is a dead end. Where the left in power won serious gains like in Venezuela, Bolovia, or Brazil, they did so not under the banner of social democracy. And even in these countries, the left in power eventually developed a class consciousness diametrically opposed to the socialism of the streets and eventually betrayed their mass bases. In Bolivia and Brazil, where reaction was particularly harsh, the harshness of the reaction made people forget the failings of state socialism and tried again. I will continue to watch these dynamics play again and again and again for as long as I live. This is the folly of state socialism, whether social democratic or otherwise.
Also, please respect that this space is anarchist. There are other communities on this site that aren't.
The Brazilian social democratic reforms were sufficiently well-embedded that, even when the people made the mistake of electing an authoritarian right government, that government wasn't able to remove them. The organised working class in Brazil was than powerful enough to remove the authoritarians even in the face of voter suppression. The system in fact worked as intended (unsually for Brazil!) and the Brazilian people are benefiting once again.
By contrast, the record of anarchists is... what? A handful of temporary governments during civil wars, which anarchists can't even agree were actually anarchist?
I didn't think anarchists were oppose to having discussions. I don't think you're representative of anarchists in that regard.
Anarchists usually participate in a lot of grassroots movements, which put pressure on the state to benefit oppressed groups through reformism. So they too have an impact here, they just have a much more ambitious project that is extremely hard to create in a current world situation, but they are actively improving the lives of oppressed people.
I'm not opposed to having discussions, I'm opposed to you using this space to push authoritarian ideas.
The fact of the matter is that elections alienate people from agency and the ballot boxes represent mere images of agency. People voted in fascism in Brazil because it gave them that image of power that denied them true agency. They voted for PT again on the same grounds. These are the same dynamics I observed in the Philippines.
Anarchists don't oppose the ballot box on the basis of its effectivity in gaining reforms but rather on the basis of the alienation it represents. Anarchists who argue to vote argue so on the basis that this alienated agency is easier to mobilize in the short run, not because it is inherently anarchist to vote. It's only easier to mobilize votes precisely based on the same alienation that characterizes the alienation of electoral politics.
The record of anarchism is obviously not measured in taking state power because that's the exact opposite of anarchy. Meanwhile social democracy will always run risk of turning neoliberal or fascist as it has in Bolivia and Brazil, if even reluctantly neoliberal. Anarchism opposes this fight for an image of agency that voters must contest over and smash this edifice of bourgeois democracy altogether.
Just recently, your beloved state socialists in Chile under Boric are resuming the colonial war on the Mapuche. All while under the continuing guise of socialism. The same happened in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil. I will watch it happen again in Brazil.