Anarchy Works - sh.itjust.works

How would an anarchist society compare to statist and capitalist societies? It is apparent that hierarchical societies work well according to certain criteria. They tend to be extremely effective at conquering their neighbors and securing vast fortunes for their rulers. On the other hand, as climate change, food and water shortages, market instability, and other global crises intensify, hierarchical models are not proving to be particularly sustainable. The histories in this book show that an anarchist society can do much better at enabling all its members to meet their needs and desires.

The many stories, past and present, that demonstrate how anarchy works have been suppressed and distorted because of the revolutionary conclusions we might draw from them. We can live in a society with no bosses, masters, politicians, or bureaucrats; a society with no judges, no police, and no criminals, no rich or poor; a society free of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia; a society in which the wounds from centuries of enslavement, colonialism, and genocide are finally allowed to heal. The only things stopping us are the prisons, programming, and paychecks of the powerful, as well as our own lack of faith in ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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