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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My personal pet idea about how to neutralize the state (and by neutralize, I mean "make neutral", not "disappear immediately") is to try returning from elections to sortition. Perhaps locally at first, then regionally, then a bicameral parliament with an elected and sortitioned half, until after many iterations, only sortition remains (singular leaders like presidents and prime ministers would obviously need to go). Upon success, there would still be a state, but not a state steered by borderline psychos, but a random sample of the (hopefully educated) population.
A long time ago, in a certain city-state where the term "democracy" originates from, it was considered oligarchic to elect representatives. Instead they were chosen by lottery, and only military leaders were elected. Modern politicians of course, would shudder at the thought of their kind being drawn by lot, and modern military leaders might not like being elected either. We have somehow stumbled to the point where we choose civil administrators using a method ancient democrats considered suitable for choosing warlords. And indeed, we get wannabe warlords using this method, and sometimes real ones.
Switching democracy over to sortition is, of course, a pathway short of revolution - it requires campaigning and constitutional change in almost any state, and one can expect long-term resistance - but the end result doesn't slip away immediately after one electoral cycle, after power has corrupted those who sought to correct it. Sortition tends to eliminate political parties (read: at most times, most parties will oppose sortition). It tends to hinder corruption and make lobbying cumbersome.
In sortition, you can't advertise your way to power with generous donations, the composition of a representative body can't be altered by owning the media, a lottery is fairly hard to manipulate with bribes, and a lottery can be cheaply repeated with nobody losing anything they worked for, since they didnt climb to power (doing that requires certain psycholoogical traits which aren't healthy), but power came to them by chance.
Another pathway is of course building up autonomy in low-level societal structures, so that those could take over functions gradually.
So I admit: I'm a reformist anarchist who doesn't shy away from asking people to vote (because it's easy, just don't expect much to happen) and thinks it might be possibe to wind down some states using their own mechanism, while others must wait till failure. I don't expect it to happen fast.
Full agree on sortition. However, you don't want to end up with a republic, but it's sortition. I think another key aspect is having some direct democracy, such as yes/no votes on the adoption of laws produced by the selected bodies.
However sortition does not remove the effect of media.