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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Don't care about the people (I heard weird things about Moxie too), care about the ideas and the organizations they spawn. One of the strengths of open source (that may very well come from a libertarian mindset) is that you don't need to agree with its (technically) anarcho-communist nature to participate in it. Just like you don't need to be an enthusiastic capitalist to engage in a wage job at a private company or to rent a place to live, despite both these things being very capitalist in nature.
Open-source and internet are two things that most people use daily. Android, libreoffice, vlc, firefox (or even chrome) are known by most people. Explaining that they come from a volunteer work (some developers were paid by their employers to participate but their employers' participation is voluntary) has been the start of several interesting discussion on my side.
International research is also an interesting one: who is the boss of international research? Who decides the priority in e.g. machine learning research? COVID also gave a recent down-to-earth example (assuming you are not talking with conspiracy theorists) of how medical research organizes globally pretty well without the need for a hierarchy.
We are presuming that we care about people though, aren't we? The conversation started when you said that you give open-source as an example of anarchist free organization. This implies that you are giving it as an example to a person to convince them of the viability of anarchism, no?
You do not need to convince me of the viability of anarchism through examples like open-source or medicine. I am on this sublemmy because I already agree. We are discussing how to transmit our message to outsiders.
Moxie is... an interesting character (ever seen an anarchist become a CEO?) but he agrees (or at least agreed) with the ideas of anarchism. Actual anarchism, not "anarcho"-capitalism.
Cheers!
Ah sorry, I meant to not care about the person who authored/put forward some ideas, like Raymond or Marlinspike. Of course we care about convincing people!
I think I worded myself poorly. I was not giving Marlinespike and Raymond as examples to make a point about how open-source development is structured, but rather that it does not necessarily push you towards a particular political viewpoint (in contrast to you suggesting that it can be used to convince people of anarchism).
In truth, the only thing I can say about how OS influences people is that it tends to lead away from authoritarianism (and even that comes with caveats and exceptions, like Lemmy's very own Dessalines).
Yes, participating in it does not necessarily align one consciously with anarchist ideals, just like participating in a private company does not necessarily make someone an enthusiastic capitalist, but the fact that so many people contribute or use open source allows us to use it as a practical example of the type of collaboration that we think should become the norm in an ideal society.