Anarchism and Social Ecology
!anarchism@slrpnk.net
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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First of all I disagree about the impossibility to win against climate change. We already have basicly all the tools for a good life for everybody on the planet, which is mostly enviromentally friendly. The big answer to a lot of these problems is degrowth and some green growth. We can already see some rather large degrowth moves in more labour rights and the rather large fight against raising the pension age in France. Less work means less damage. As for going green, we do invest a lot in green technology and fossil fuels consumption is going down in large parts of the world. Even more we see a clear trend in lower populations over the coming years, so global growth is slowing. China might have a massive economic crisis, so the biggest growth source in terms of emissions might very well come to a halt. Just to be clear this is not fast enough by a wide margin, but this idea of complete collapse of the current system seems extremly unlikely to me. Countries can take a lot of hitting, before they collapse and humans can adapt surprisingly quickly. We just went trhou Covid to show that and many wars show similar developments. If you would tell the world that fossil fuels would no longer be available in a year, I am pretty sure the Americas and Europe as well as some other places would survive this somewhat well. Obviously with some big changes, but they would be recognisable to the outside world. Many poor countries would also do okay.
What is true is that conflict is rising in the world. China is growing in strength and is able to challenge the US, there is a large war in Europe, food prices cause instability, demographic trends enable workers to fight against capital more and more, climate change causes shortages in many countries and so much more. That creates possibilities, which should be seized. But this is not total collapse and that is honestly good news. Societies need some organization, which currently is provided by the state. Just removing the state, without replacing it with another form of organization, which can be anarchist, will just cause society to collapse. This would be a complete disaster. Just because something sucks, does not mean the opposite is better.
I agree and resonate a lot of what you've written except for the first part on winning climate change. I think the IPCC reports are pretty clear that we've already lost. Even if somehow we achieve world revolution, we will still end up in an apocalyptic 1.5C scenario. There's nothing to debate: a 1.5C scenario is already inevitable and it will be pretty bad. What isn't inevitable is a 2.0C or higher scenario. That's where we come in: solarpunks and anarchists alike have to struggle for reaching a 1.5C world and things like degrowth and just transition.
The world as we know it will end, but that doesn't need to mean mass death and devastation. That's where I depart from Desert because it seems to say that the mass death and devastation will create new avenues for freedom. Cool I guess, but I rather save as much people as I can.