Since 2014 solidarity activists, independent leftists, and others have been crossing the Tigris to study the developments in Rojava, the independent multi-ethnic enclave in northern Syria. Here the Kurdish people, whose aspirations have been stomped on for generations throughout the Middle East, are building a society structured institutionally around an assembly / council democracy and […]
The Libertarian Party (US): a political party in the United States that promotes civil liberties, non-interventionism, laissez-faire capitalism, and limiting the size and scope of government. The party was conceived in August 1971 at meetings in the home of David F. Nolan in Westminster, Colorado, and was officially formed on December 11, 1971, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The organizers of the party drew inspiration from the works and […]
Murray Bookchin For some two centuries, anarchism — a very ecumenical body of anti-authoritarian ideas — developed in the tension between two basically contradictory tendencies: a personalistic commitment to individual autonomy and a collectivist commitment to social freedom. These tendencies have by no means been reconciled in the history of libertarian thought. Indeed, for much […]
Almost a century and a half ago Thomas Carlyle described economics as “the dismal science.” The term was to stick, especially as it applied to economics premised on a supposedly unavoidable conflict between “insatiable needs” and “scarce natural resources.” In this economics, the limited bounty provided by a supposedly “stingy nature” doomed humanity to economic […]
Here, I shall try to show how the new technology can be used ecologically to crystallize man’s sense of dependence upon the natural world into the human experience, so we can contribute to the achievement of human wholeness. Town and Country Classical utopians fully realized that the first step in this direction must be to […]
THE ECOLOGICAL USE OF TECHNOLOGY I have tried, thus far, to deal with a number of tangible, clearly objective issues: the possibility of eliminating toil, material insecurity, and centralized economic control. In the present section, I would like to deal with a problem that may seem somewhat subjective, but one which is nonetheless of compelling […]
Few arguments have been used more effectively to challenge the case for face-to-face participatory democracy than the claim that we live in a complex society. Modern population centers, we are told, are too large and too concentrated to allow for direct decision-making at a grassroots level…our economy is too global to unravel the intricacies of […]
adapted from Murray Bookchin, Municipal Libertarianism Any agenda that tries to restore and amplify the classical meaning of politics and citizenship must clearly indicate what they are not, if only because of the confusion that surrounds the two words. Politics is not statecraft…Citizens are not constituents or taxpayers. Statecraft consists of operations that engage the […]
Even more troubling are the writings of George Bradford (aka David Watson), one of the major theorists at Fifth Estate, on the horrors of technology — apparently technology as such. Technology, it would seem, determines social relations rather than the opposite, a notion that more closely approximates vulgar Marxism than, say, social ecology. ‘Technology is […]
Hakim Bey Since absolutely nothing can be predicated with any real certainty as to the “true nature of things”, all projects (as Nietzsche says) can only be “founded on nothing.” And yet there must be a project—if only because we ourselves resist being categorized as “nothing.” Out of nothing we will make something: the Uprising, […]
adapted from Murray Bookchin — Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm One of the most unsavory examples of lifestyle anarchism is Hakim Bey’s (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson) T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchism, Poetic Terrorism, a jewel in the New Autonomy Series (no accidental word choice here), published by the heavily postmodernist […]
Social anarchism is made of fundamentally different stuff, heir to the Enlightenment tradition, with due regard to that tradition’s limits and incompleteness. Depending upon how it defines reason, social anarchism celebrates the thinking mind without in any way denying passion, ecstasy, imagination, play, and art. Rather than reify them into hazy categories, it incorporates them into […]
Contrary to the cosmic order, there are some days in history that do not rise up. In order to appear, these new things disguise themselves and possibly their borrowed dress, yesterday’s will stifle them. This fragile moment is also that of human decision that will sort among possible destinies. To this instant, which lets […]
adapted from Murray Bookchin — Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm Ideological individualism did not fade away altogether during this 19th century period of sweeping social unrest. A sizable reservoir of individualist anarchists, especially in the Anglo-American world, were nourished by the ideas of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, as well as […]
adapted from Murray Bookchin — Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm For some two centuries, anarchism — a very ecumenical body of anti-authoritarian ideas — developed in the tension between two basically contradictory tendencies: a personalistic commitment to individual autonomy and a collectivist commitment to social freedom. These tendencies have by no means […]
If many pragmatic people are blind to the importance of decentralism, many in the ecology movement tend to ignore very real problems with “localism” — problems no less troubling than the problems raised by a globalism that fosters a total interlocking of economic and political life on a worldwide basis. Without wholistic cultural and political […]
Above all, I have tried to show in my previous writings how confederation on a municipal basis has existed in sharp tension with the centralized state generally, and the nation-state of recent times. Confederalism, I have tried to emphasize, is not simply a unique societal, particularly civic or municipal, form of administration. It is a […]
Decentralism and self-sustainability must involve a much broader principle of social organization than mere localism. Together with decentralization, approximations to self-sufficiency, humanly scaled communities, ecotechnologies, and the like, there is a compelling need for democratic and truly communitarian forms of interdependence — in short, for libertarian forms of confederalism. I have detailed at length in […]
The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking (as witness the recent tendency of radicals to espouse “market socialism” rather than deal with the failings of the market economy as well as state socialism). Doubtless we will have to import coffee for those people who need […]
Murray Bookchin Few arguments have been used more effectively to challenge the case for face-to-face participatory democracy than the claim that we live in a “complex society.” Modern population centers, we are told, are too large and too concentrated to allow for direct decision-making at a grassroots level. And our economy is too “global,” presumably, […]
Iroquois society was based in the matrilineal clan where women lived with their classificatory sisters – applying the principle that “my sister’s child is my child”. Because they lived and worked together, women in these communal households felt strong bonds of solidarity with one another, enabling them when necessary to take action against uncooperative males. […]
Social Liberty