this post was submitted on 08 Sep 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.

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~Murray Bookchin, "A Politics for the Twenty-First Century"

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In modern times humans have become a wolf not only to humans, but to all nature.

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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...

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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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In How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Malm advocates, but also shits on direct action. Clearly detached from ecological struggles, referring to anarchists attacks as not big enough, he draws on the work of Micheal Loadenthal who documented “27,100 actions between 1973 and 2010,” in an attempt to discredit decentralized action.

All those thousands of monkeywrenching actions achieved little if anything,” explains Malm, “and had no lasting gains to show for them. They were not performed in a dynamic relation to a mass movement, but largely in a void.”

Ignoring the actions of the remaining Leftist governments (Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc.), it is clear Malm has no idea what these actions advocate, let alone the continuation and intensification of eco-anarchist attacks in Europe and the rest of the world between 2010–2016 (see Return Fire magazine, 325, Act for Freedom Now, Avalanche etc.). More still, many of these actions, especially Earth Liberation Front (ELF) actions, were supported by local struggles.[5]

He conveniently forgets all the direct actions and sabotage in direct connection to popular movements that helped save wetlands and stop motorways across the UK [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg89], or the vital role decentralized direct action and sabotage play in the highly effective struggle of the Mapuche people to recover their territory [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.3 pg59], to name just two examples – and there are countless.

And because environmental justice and social justice go hand in hand, we shouldn’t forget the vital role that arson attacks and other major decentralized sabotage actions had in the divestment campaign against the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1980s, or the change in public attitudes towards the racist police in the United States accomplished by direct and decentralized attacks across that country [R.F. – see The Siege of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis].

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[–] Five 5 points 1 year ago

I've seen the film 'version' of the book, and it shares none of this ideological baggage.

Marxism Today posted a video criticizing the film, but clarifying their concerns didn't apply to the book. My initial take was that they were missing the point of the movie, but now I suspect malice instead of mistake. Their irrelevant criticisms were aimed at promoting the book and undermining the film for exactly this reason.