Anarchism and Social Ecology
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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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The guillotine is a meme. We do not advocate it seriously.
This is not true. It is associated with radical politics because of the revolutionary tribunal. And because of Robespierre regime, not in spite of it. Let me make a quick summary:
When we, in France, praise the guillotine, it is more out of desperation and nostalgia for that time when powerful people had to defend in front of a biased justice but, for once, biased against them.
Later on, yes, it became the tool of execution of a variety of autocratic regimes. The Commune was an extremely progressist movement. When it burns down the guillotine, it is the death penalty in general that it rejects but it does not reject the idea of opposing with violence to the authoritarian government. But this time the government had fled so they formed a militia to attack them. Had them win, we would have seen another type of popular justice. Probably less bloody though.
Who do you include in your "we"? I think it might be useful to be more precise here so.
Most people I personally met that made jokes/memes/references to guillotines, to putting people against a wall and shooting them or to gulags were some kind of communists and communists implemented / used the death penalty when they got into power many times (or even every time?).
Good point.
I am mostly in a leftist bubble. Most people I know who will make gulag or guillotine jokes as a solution would vote strongly against people actually seriously advocating those.
People who unironically want a return of the death penalty (and therefore a state-sanctioned use of the guillotine) are usually from the far-right.
The guillotine is the symbol of when the people managed to judge the dominant caste with extremely harsh sentences. It is a reminder that governments can do "aggressive" things like taxing high revenues much more aggressively. Or put in jail fraudulent CEOs. That we have done much harsher in the past.
Lemmygrad is 100% not joking about guillotines and gulags.
The problem with all this, and that the guillotine is symbolic of, is that state power is always used against the weak. The guillotine isn't a defensive weapon. It can only be used, by definition, after an enemy has been subjugated. The logic of the guillotine, and it's symbolism, is revenge. The core logic of fascism is also revenge. The path from leftist ideals to reactionary dictatorship cloaked in those ideals follows that path.
Vengeance feels right because we are fighting against generations of injustice, but it can't end in a world without injustice. The world anarchists want to create is one that is fundamentally compassionate, even to those who have harmed us. Because everyone is a human, and everyone makes mistakes.
The defense of the revolution is the revolution. If the formerly rich are a threat to the post-revolutionary order, what has the revolution achieved? The world should be better for them too. They no longer have to chase wealth or fear for their lives, they can have time to work out whatever trauma drove them to hoard all that wealth.
The guillotine cannot reform. It cannot help. It can only kill those who are, by definition, no longer a threat. It cannot be used for anything but revenge, and there is no place for revenge in a revolution that seeks to build a better world.
This is why I advocate for gun ownership but refused to testify against the person who shot me. This is one of my favorite crimethinc pieces and I reference it a lot.
I am telling you about France, and while tankies certainly exist, their relevance in the far left is nil. People who seriously advocate for guillotines are the people for the return of the death penalty (mostly far right). And no one on the far left advocates for gulags or "reeducation". Stalinists have no party. Maoist neither. The fringest left wing party you will find are LO and NPA and while they are revolutionary, they do not advocate such things.
Like I said, the guillotine is mostly used as the symbol of our ability to punish powerful people.
I would obviously not support a movement that proposes to install a new revolutionary tribunal or a cheka, these are seeds of authoritarianism that lead nowhere.