Tag: direct democracy

The Politics of Social Ecology : Libertarian Municipalism (1998)

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Post date May 20, 2020
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Author(s)

Janet Biehl

“Libertarian municipalism is one of many political theories that concern themselves with the principles and practices of democracy.
In contrast to most such theories, however, it does not accept the conventional notion that the State and governmental systems typical of Western countries today are truly democracies. On the contrary, it considers them republican States with pretensions of being democratic. Republican States, to be sure, are more “democratic” than other kinds of States, like monarchies and dictatorships, in that they contain various kinds of representative institutions. But they are nonetheless States—overarching structures of domination in which a few people rule over the great majority.
A State, by its very nature, is structurally and professionally separated from the general population—in fact, it is set over and above ordinary men and women. It exercises power over them, making decisions that affect their lives. Its power in the last instance rests on violence, over whose legal use the State has a monopoly, in the form of its armies and police forces. In a structure where power is distributed so unevenly, democracy is impossible. Far from embodying rule by the people, even a republican State is incompatible with popular rule. Libertarian municipalism advances a kind of democracy, by contrast, that is no mere fig leaf for State rule.
The democracy it advances is direct democracy—in which citizens in communities manage their own affairs through face-to-face processes of deliberation and decision-making, rather than have the State do it for them.”
Janet Biehl

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Tags 1998, books, city, democratic confederalism, direct democracy, dual power, elections, forms of freedom, janet biehl, libertarian municipalism, medieval city, murray bookchin, popular assemblies, social ecology, state, statism - representationism, urbanization

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The Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan (2017)

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Post date May 6, 2020
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Kurdistan, Woman’s Revolution and Democratic Confederalism

Author(s)

Abdullah Öcalan

“Öcalan coined several slogans, such as ‘A country can’t be free unless the women are free’, and later he restated this more strongly as ‘To me women’s freedom is more precious than the freedom of the homeland’, thereby redefining national liberation as first and foremost women’s freedom. In his prison writings, women’s freedom is taken up constantly as an essential part of his discussions of history, contemporary society and political activism. The practice he observed in real socialist countries and his own theoretical efforts and practice since the1970s led Öcalan to the conclusion that the enslavement of women was the origin of all other forms of enslavement. This, he concludes, is not due to woman being biologically different to man, but because she was the founder and leader of the Neolithic matriarchal system.
[…] Öcalan has examined the issue of women’s freedom, the phenomena of power and state and how interrelated they all are. This has led him over and over again to return to an analysis of history. In doing so he stumbled over nation, state and nation-state and how detrimental these are for any movement; turning even the most revolutionary individuals into mere practitioners of capitalism. For Abdullah Öcalan it is not sufficient to produce critique and self-critique. He feels compelled to lay out what might constitute an alternative to the way of life that is being imposed on society. Therefore, he makes an effort to systematise the lives and struggles of all those oppressed and exploited throughout history, aswell as to propose an alternative model and way of life outside of capitalist modernity and thus classical civilisation.
[…] Öcalan’s voice is tremendously important as one of peace and reason, but it is all too often silenced by his solitary confinement on Imrali Island. His freedom is in the interest of all peoples in the Middle East – not only of the Kurds. As you will see, the writings in this book do not address only the Kurds. There is no ethno-centrist or even nationalist perspective here. Everybody can be inspired by them or benefit from them. The Rojava Revolution may be the initial spark to a wave of transformations in the Middle East and perhaps beyond. And with the support of you, the reader, this wave will also carry Abdullah Öcalan himself out of his prison cell and to freedom.”
International Initiative ‘Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan’ – Peace in Kurdistan

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Anarchism – A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 3 (2013)

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Post date May 4, 2020
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The New Anarchism 1974–2012

Volume 1 : From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Volume 2 : The Emergence of The New Anarchism (1939-1977)

Author(s)

Robert Graham

“Anarchy, a society without government, has existed since time immemorial. Anarchism, the doctrine that such a society is desirable, is a much more recent development.
For tens of thousands of years, human beings lived in societies without any formal political institutions or constituted authority. About 6,000 years ago, around the time of the so-called dawn of civilization, the first societies with formal structures of hierarchy, command, control and obedience began to develop. At first, these hierarchical societies were relatively rare and isolated primarily to what is now Asia and the Middle East. Slowly they increased in size and influence, encroaching upon, sometimes conquering and enslaving, the surrounding anarchic tribal societies in which most humans continued to live. Sometimes independently, sometimes in response to pressures from without, other tribal societies also developed hierarchical forms of social and political organization.
Still, before the era of European colonization, much of the world remained essentially anarchic, with people in various parts of the world continuing to live without formal institutions of government well into the 19th century. It was only in the 20th century that the globe was definitively divided up between competing nation states which now claim sovereignty over virtually the entire planet.
The rise and triumph of hierarchical society was a far from peaceful one. War and civilization have always marched forward arm in arm, leaving behind a swath of destruction scarcely conceivable to their many victims, most of whom had little or no understanding of the forces arrayed against them and their so-called primitive ways of life. It was a contest as unequal as it was merciless.
[…]
Anarchists and their precursors, such as Fourier, were among the first to criticize the combined effects of the organization of work, the division of labour and technological innovation under capitalism. Anarchists recognized the importance of education as both a means of social control and as a potential means of liberation. They had important things to say about art and free expression, law and morality. They championed sexual freedom but also criticized the commodification of sex under capitalism. They were critical of all hierarchical relationships, whether between father and children, husband and wife, teacher and student, professionals and workers, or leaders and led, throughout society and even within their own organizations. They emphasized the importance of maintaining consistency between means and ends, and in acting in accordance with their ideals now, in the process of transforming society, not in the distant future. They opposed war and militarism in the face of widespread repression, and did not hesitate to criticize the orthodox Left for its authoritarianism and opportunism.
They developed an original conception of an all-encompassing social revolution, rejecting state terrorism and seeking to reduce violence to a minimum.”
Robert Graham

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Tags 2013, african anarchism, alan carter, alan ritter, anarchism, anarchist aesthetic, anarchist criminology, anarchist history, anarchist organization, anarchist strategy, anarcho-syndicalism, anarchy, argentina, assemblies, bas usmali, biotechnology, black anarchism, books, borders, brian tokar, capitalism, chiapas, chrimethinc., consensus, counter-culture, cuba, culture, david graeber, democracy, democratic confederalism, direct action, direct democracy, ecology, economics, ecotechnology, egypt, egyptian revolution, especifismo, ethics, feminism, freedom, graham robert, green anarchism, hakim bey, harold barclay, hong kong, japan, jeff ferrell, jesse cohn, kurdistan, libertarianism, murray bookchin, mutualism, neo-anarchism, nuclear power, nuclear state, patriarchy, peter marshall, philippines, popular assemblies, post anarchism, power, propaganda, psychatry, rojava, sam mbah, saul newman, schools of anarchism, state, state formation, statism - representationism, syria, TAZ, technology, uruguay, zapatismo, zapatistas

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The Next Revolution (2015)

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Post date March 30, 2020
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Author(s)

Murray Bookchin

Debbie Bookchin (editor)

Blair Taylor (editor)

Ursula K. Le Guin (foreword)

“Murray Bookchin spent a lifetime opposing the rapacious ethos of grow-or-die capitalism. The nine essays in this book represent the culmination of that labor: the theoretical underpinning for an egalitarian and directly democratic ecological society, with a practical approach for how to build it.
He critiques the failures of past movements for social change, resurrects the promise of direct democracy and, in the last essay in this book, sketches his hope of how we might turn the environmental crisis into a moment of true choice—a chance to transcend the paralyzing hierarchies of gender, race, class, nation, a chance to find a radical cure for the radical evil of our social system.
Reading it, I was moved and grateful, as I have so often been in reading Murray Bookchin. He was a true son ofthe Enlightenment in his respect for clear thought and moral responsibility and in his honest, uncompromising search for a realistic hope.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (Foreword)

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Democratic Confederalism (2011)

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Post date March 16, 2020
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Author(s)

Abdullah Öcalan

“In contrast to a centralist and bureaucratic understanding of administration and exercise of power, confederalism poses a type of political self-administration where all groups of the society and all cultural identities can express themselves in local meetings, general conventions and councils. This understanding of democracy opens the political space to all strata of the society and allows for the formation of different and diverse political groups. In this way it also advances the political integration of the society as a whole.
Politics becomes a part of everyday life.
Without politics the crisis of the state cannot be solved since the crisis is fuelled by a lack of representation of the political society. Terms like federalism or self administration as they can be found in liberal democracies need to be conceived anew.
Essentially, they should not be conceived as hierarchical levels of the administration of the nation-state but rather as central tools of social expression and participation. This, in turn, will advance the politicization of the society. We do not need big theories here, what we need is the will to lend expression to the social needs by strengthening the autonomy of the social actors structurally and by creating the conditions for the organization of the society as a whole.
The creation of an operational level where all kinds of social and political groups, religious communities, or intellectual tendencies can express themselves directly in all local decision-making processes can also be called participative democracy. The stronger the participation the more powerful is this kind of democracy.
While the nation-state is in contrast to democracy, and even denies it, democratic confederalism constitutes a continuous democratic process.”
Abdullah Öcalan

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Our Word is Our Weapon : Selected Writings by Subcomandante Marcos (2001)

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Post date March 12, 2020
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Author(s)

Subcomandante Marcos

Juana Ponce de Leon (editor)

“The indigenous of Chiapas aren’t the only humiliated and offended people in this world. In all places and at all times, regardless of race, color, customs, culture, and religious belief, the human creature we are so proud to be has always known how to humiliate and offend those whom, with sad irony, he continues to call his fellows. We have invented things that don’t exist in nature : cruelty, torture, and disdain.

By a perverse use of race, we’ve come to divide humanity into irreducible categories : rich and poor, master and slave, powerful and weak, wise and ignorant. And incessantly in each of these divisions we’ve made subdivisions so as to vary and freely multiply reasons for disdain, humiliation, and offense.

In recent years Chiapas has been the place where the most disdained, most humiliated, and most offended people of Mexico were able to recover intact a dignity and an honor that had never been completely lost, a place where the heavy tombstone of an oppression that has gone on for centuries has been shattered to allow the passage of a procession of new and different living people ahead of an endless procession of murders. These men, women, and children of the present are only demanding respect for their rights, not just as human beings and as part of this humanity but also as the indigenous who want to continue being indigenous.
They’ve risen up most especially with a moral strength that only honor and dignity themselves are capable of bringing to birth and nursing in the spirit, even while the body suffers from hunger and the usual miseries.”
José Saramago (Prologue)

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Tags books, chiapas, decolonization, direct democracy, indigenous rights, insurrection, mexico, subcomandante galeano, subcomandante marcos, zapatismo, zapatistas

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Society against the State (1974)

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Post date March 11, 2020
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Author(s)

Pierre Clastres

“Primitive societies are societies without a State. This factual judgment, accurate in itself, actually hides an opinion, a value judgment that immediately throws doubt on the possibility of constituting political anthropology as a strict science. What the statement says, in fact, is that primitive societies are missing something – the State – that is essential to them, as it is to any other society: our own, for instance. Consequently, those societies are incomplete ; they are not quite true societies –
they are not civilized – their existence continues to suffer the painful experience of a lack – the lack of a State – which, try as they may, they will never make up. Whether clearly stated or not, that is what comes through in the explorers’ chronicles and the work of researchers alike: society is inconceivable without the State; the State is the destiny of every society.
One detects an ethnocentric bias in this approach; more often than not it is unconscious, and so the more firmly anchored. Its immediate, spontaneous reference, while perhaps not the best known, is in any case the most familiar. In effect, each one of us carries within himself, internalized like the believer’s faith, the certitude that society exists for the State. How, then, can one conceive of the very existence of primitive societies if not as the rejects of universal history, anachronistic relics of a remote stage that everywhere else has been transcended ? Here one recognizes ethnocentrism’s other face, the complementary conviction that history is a one-way progression, that every society is condemned to enter into that history and pass through the stages which lead from savagery to civilization.
[…] But the assertion of an obvious evolution cannot justify a doctrine which, arbitrarily tying the state of civilization to the civilization of the State, designates the latter as the necessary end result assigned to all societies.”
Pierre Clastres

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