this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Anarchism and Social Ecology

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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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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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If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?

If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist!

Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organization where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of general consent?

If you answered “yes”, then you belong to an organization which works on anarchist principles!

Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest? Do you think we live in an economic system which is stupid and unfair?

If you answered “yes”, then you subscribe to the anarchist critique of today’s society — at least, in its broadest outlines.

Do you really believe those things you tell your children (or that your parents told you)?

“It doesn’t matter who started it.” “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” “Clean up your own mess.” “Do unto others...” “Don’t be mean to people just because they’re different.” Perhaps we should decide whether we’re lying to our children when we tell them about right and wrong, or whether we’re willing to take our own injunctions seriously. Because if you take these moral principles to their logical conclusions, you arrive at anarchism.

Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?

If you answered “yes”, then, well, it looks like you aren’t an anarchist after all. But if you answered “no”, then chances are you already subscribe to 90% of anarchist principles, and, likely as not, are living your life largely in accord with them.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (4 children)

How do anarchists propose handling public works, healthcare, etc?

I think anarchism is a neat idea on paper, but how does it avoid becoming libertarianism in practice?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

How do anarchists propose handling public works, healthcare, etc?

Well, how we do it now?

During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists socialized many industries. What they found out was that you could just remove people from most management positions and continue work as before. Very rarely a manager was actually needed, and when it was they would simply elect one of themselves to fulfill the role for a while.

Talking about healthcare specifically, in many countries that have public healthcare, the system is already decentralized. Because it needs to be, otherwise they can't properly answer the demands from their communities. Again, you just need to remove pointless middle-men and other workplace hierarchies (like physicians being more important than nurses), and stuff tends to get better.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

To my (self-labelled anarchist) view, anarchism is not a complete political doctrine and does not propose an off-the-shelf solution for all problems. It is a general direction: reduction of coercion in society. Hopefully to the point where none is required. "But what about criminals, prison, armed police?" yes, we don't have non-coercive solution for everything. We just know that where no-coercive solutions exist, we should favor these. And that's already a pretty radical program.

public works

I am not sure what you specifically project in anarchism, and whether you are talking about the actual construction work or the decision-making but these typically tend to work better when all stakeholders are involved in the project and there are already public works cooperatives out there.

healthcare

You mean health insurance or actual medical care? In my country (France) actual medical care is already done by a staff of people who accept a level of stress and a low pay they could easily escape given the qualifications required to work in a public hospital, but cling to it due to their will to accomplish a useful work. Remove administrative hassle and the need to pay for a right to live and they will happily work for free there:

Same applies for most teachers, researchers, caretakers, farmers, that I know.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

There's an entire essay just for how would anarchists do public service like healthcare. tl;dr, healthcare wasn't even provided by states in the early modern period, it was provided by mutual aid societies. These societies had to be divested of power for states to monopolize the provision of services.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Community banking and funds mostly. Health-care similarly. It's actually not really such a big problem to organize these things, so I always wonder why people give this as examples for why Anarchism wouldn't work. If anything, large bureaucratic state systems make these more difficult and expensive.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I'm not trying to disprove anarchism, I'm trying to understand it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I definitely think a lot of the inefficiencies that make people think we 'need' capitalism are caused by capitalism itself. People see these huge infrastructures and assume they're necessary when they may well be so cumbersome that they detract from getting their stated task accomplished more than they contribute to it. Someone made a comment elsewhere about how much unnecessary management we have in our society, and I honestly think that's a major component.

Work goes so much better when there isn't someone breathing down your neck. Just a bunch of useless people lording over everyone for no reason and we waste sooo much time, effort, and resources on them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If anything, large bureaucratic state systems make these more difficult and expensive.

I agree that the current system is broken, but I don't know that this statement is inherently true. There are economies of scale, for example.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Why would that need a bureaucratic state apparatus? Anarchistic principles are extremely good at organizing things at scale.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

And I would like to add that theanarchistlibrary.org is a fantastical free resource for anyone interested in anarchism.

Also that particular author (Graebber, mostly known for Bullshit Jobs and 5000 years of debt, also available for free on the anarchist library) is the one that made me understand the gap between anarchism and marxism and realize that far-left does not need to circle around marxism-leninism to go forward.

[–] EdibleFriend 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I just want to move on to the part where we start burning things. We tried other things.

Does that count?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Made me think of the song "Give the Anarchist a Cigarette" by Cumbawamba:

https://inv.citw.lgbt/watch?v=4Gzyd3u1Jh0

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Anarchist, and generally the whole far-left part of the spectrum can be divided between revolutionary (often vanguardists) and reformists (like yours truly). So no, anarchist does not always imply burning stuff (but can) and the old image of the anarchist bomb maker comes from the Propaganda of the Deed theory that is generally considered discarded.

[–] EdibleFriend 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well I mean I want the fire to help push change. Not just random burning. But... Yeah I just really kind of want to start burning down billionaire's houses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is fine to be a revolutionary, but one needs to have a clear goal with it. Violence just as a reaction to injustice usually just leads to an even more violent reaction. One need to have a goal apart from escalation, which usually leads to authoritarian military-like structures.

[–] EdibleFriend 1 points 10 months ago

The goals are above my pay grade. I'm just down here on the ground doing the dirty work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Look up insurrectionary anarchism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts.

I would add a third assumption: that capital tends to accumulate (while power and capital are exchangeable). Together with the "power corrupts" presumption, it gives a conclusion that power will too accumulate, and corruption will accumulate, unless the process is actively resisted - thus, a society without processes that balance the accumulation will eventually go bad.

[–] samus12345 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Anarchy is great as long as nobody's an asshole. That's pretty much what government is needed for, to keep assholes in check. Of course, when the government is given too much power it becomes the biggest asshole...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Anarchy is the only way to stop an asshole.

If you're an asshole in anarchism, you'll fuck your neighbor's life.

If you have a State or other giant hierarchy filling assholes with power, they will fuck everybody's life. Case in point: every single billionaire alive.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Anarchy is. Period.

The rulers of 'God', laws, police, military, and so on, all know this. There is nothing 'out there' that somehow magically 'govern us'. It's all in your head, taught to you while you were young enough to make all that life-long beliefs. And it is rare for adults to then question those beliefs because that's the way childhood and adulthood works, across species.

There's nothing to the foundation of of our current society but ideas. And so it's fragile AF - and what remains real underneath those stories is anarchy: people want to help each other and they know how to take care of themselves. Give them space, and they'll be happy.

That's why the folks who lord it over you come and beat the shit out of you, put you in a cage, or shoot you in the head if you get out of line.

Or even if you simply wish to opt out! Sure, you can go into the forest. But try to bring too many people with you and we'll punch you and YOUR funny ideas into the pavement.

Anarchism is the act of always trying to throw the Ring into Mount Doom. Our 'systems' of rule, political machines, laws, police, borders, bla bla bla, are just different versions Sauron's ring. They all want to use the Ring to help in some way, and all inevitably become his servants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That was a nerdy AF analogy, but I dig it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I'd argue that it's a bigger problem when assholes are able to take over the positions of power they're typically attracted to and make the lives of others miserable. I'd much rather assholes just be, like, kinda uncooperative but no more influential than anyone else.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I don't know where you live but all the governments I've seen are full of assholes. As the sociologist and not anarchist Charles Tilly noted, government is organized crime. Some assholes thousands of years ago set up a protection racket and we've been living with the consequences ever since. Every benevolent act by government merely legitimizes the violence they inflict.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Can you be more specific what you mean by asshole?

Because if someone has a shitty personality I just stop associating with them, like not inviting them to parties. An anarchist society ideally would greatly increase my autonomy when it comes to the decision on who I interact with.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For example: Third Mate Gregory Cousins. I mean, I certainly wouldn't invite him to a party, but I can't choose to not interact with what he caused.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Anarchy means those kinds of people that have the power to concentrate huge amounts of hydrocarbons, spill it, and get away with the consequences wouldn’t have that kind of power to begin with. It’s our current system that allows assholes to create massive harm on the level that regular people are unable to avoid

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Energy provision in an Anarchistic society would have to be much more decentralized, both due to environmental necessity and to prevent people being able to blackmail others though centralized control of the energy supply.

That this would also largely prevent these kind of disasters as there wouldn't be such a concentration of a massive amount of hydrocarbons (or nuclear fuel for that matter) in one place, is more of a necessary side effect of that.

Of course, there would be a transitional period, but the Exxon Valdez story is also a story about worker exploitation and the company refusing to repair vital safety features (due to profit maximisation), neither of which would be acceptable in an Anarchistic society. It is likely that the disaster would have not happened if the workers would have not been not massively overworked and the collision radar would have been repaired in time (it was broken since months already, and deemed too expensive to fix).

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"neither of which would be acceptable..."

And how does one reject that? Do you think profit maximization goes away under anarchy? You're missing very basic parts of your utopia to deal with things when people don't act perfectly, intentionally or not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If there is no money (as a store of value, as opposed to an freely inflatable means of exchange) and no private property (as opposed to personal property), both of which is a given in an Anarchistic society*, why would anyone try to maximize profit? The entire concept of profit maximisation would be absurd in such a scenario.

And with no external force to maximize profit, why would a worker-owned cooperative that handles transport of hydrocarbons exploit their workers (i.e. themselves) or not do necessary repairs?

I think you don't understand the basic idea behind Anarchism... it is precisely the idea that people can be flawed but society doesn't incentive such behaviour and has many defences in place to prevent people from trying to amass power over others.

*as they can only exist when a state enforces these with violence

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nifty, didn't know much about the economic specifics of anarchy (ancaps give you guys a bad name and are much louder). I'll have to dig a little deeper there as I'll admit I'm ignorant.

I still don't see how anarchy provides sufficient mechanisms to deal with economic bads. Like even if the worker-owned cooperative handles hydrocarbon transport perfectly, there's still environmental impacts from the use of that product. The incentive to do damaging things to others (pollution, climate change) is still present even in the absence of non-personal economic incentives (e.g. portable fuel for personal vehicles). Do you have anything to point me at for learning a bit more about how anarchy deals with that?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, as I said... I think extraction of hydrocarbons in not really feasible under the proposed framework of an Anarchistic society, but there will probably have to be some sort of transitional period during which existing infrastructure is still used.

In general it is perfectly feasible to run industrial machines with biogas and bio-diesel (ideally produced from waste streams), which are easy to produce in a decentralized way when the overall demand is minimized to what is really needed. Personal transport can be easily electrified with trains and so on.

But as a general principle Anarchism doesn't claim to have all the answers. It's more of an method to ensure that a fair society can reached and that people have the means & will be smart enough to figure out the details along the way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'll look into it a bit more, but claiming decentralized hydrocarbon extraction wouldn't be feasible but biogas etc would be is a stretch to me, especially with the caveats of needing minimized demand or having new technology available.

And while I understand not claiming to have all the answers (and this not being the best medium for long explanations), dealing with economic bads is a fundamental issue. Not having a sufficient solution is a big part of why we've got climate change, micro plastics in everything, etc., in the current system. I'm not a pollyanna; I don't think figuring it out along the way is sufficient.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation. You introduced me to some new ideas. I think it's getting a little too hand-wavy to continue, though. You've got me curious enough to look up some things, so I think this counts as a success for both of us. Have a good one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The big difference there is that you can make biodiesel from an extremely common waste product (grease) in your back yard. Grease cars are very DIY, whereas oil mining operations really aren't.

As far as the amount of oil we use currently, a lot of that is going to be related to the unnecessary infrastructure of social hierarchy. Consider, for a moment, remote work. Employers who run offices tend to want their employees to come into the office every day, which leads to millions of people commuting on a daily basis. Not only do they have to burn the fuel required to move their cars from point A to point B, but they're stuck in traffic so they're constantly wasting momentum (and thus fuel) by braking and idling.

Pivoting to the office itself, now you've got a bunch of people hanging out in a big open space that needs to be climate controlled. Often this space has massive, bare windows, which isn't fantastic for heating efficiency. Offices aren't really built for efficient human habitation.

When people refuse to come back to the office, switching jobs or retiring early, they're helping to make things more efficienct by taking power away from the points where it's concentrated. Flattening out the hierarchy is better for all of us and better for the planet.

Centralized hierarchies really just take the work that's being done by much smaller groups of workers and claim credit for it while imposing an unnecessary organizational infrastructure over the top of them and taking the value of their labor. If you work at a corporate restaurant the food you're selling isn't prepared by some huge corporate infrastructure, it's prepared by the people who work in the restaurant. If they weren't getting their supplies from the company that owns the place, they'd be getting it elsewhere.

These sources of collected power want us to think we need them. They want us to think that because their name or their logo is on the side of a building they're the reason anything gets done. But the reality is that it's the people actually doing the work, and they often don't really need someone telling them how to do it from up on high.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

"they often don't really need someone telling them how to do it..."

I don't share that level of optimism. So many current laws are written in blood, so to speak, because people are lazy or just ignorant even ignoring the crappy incentives in capitalism and hierarchies. I absolutely want standards for bridge construction, for example. Or food handling. Gotta get all that grease from somewhere, right? Doesn't take a jack in the box to give people e. coli. Got any ideas for a pessimist on that kind of point?

[–] samus12345 1 points 10 months ago

Asshole in the "danger to society" sense, not just the "they're a jerk" sense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I been trying to push this for quite some time. Choosing to be civil proves progress independent of any governance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, that bunch of choices you made for others was painful to read, seems like you're not...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Who made any choices for others?

[–] TheDarkKnight -4 points 10 months ago

We tried anarchy once, and then got hungry and develeoped civilization.