this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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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.
~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
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If We Burn for more on this lesson. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn
Based off the wiki page, I was a little concerned this book might be advocating for vanguardism. I went looking for a more in-depth summary/analysis of the book, and found a presentation the author gave (along with a written transcript below) that I think gives a fairly good condensed summary: https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/vincent-bevins/
Based off that presentation, I think Bevins does a pretty good job of explaining some potential reasons those previous revolutionary attempts failed, and I agree with his assessment that a pre-existing large and strong labor movement helps determine if they are successful or not, as well as making a good point that that people will jump to a familiar solution even if it's not the best option, demonstrating the importance of prefiguration.
The success of Anarchist controlled Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War is a good example from history of how laying the seeds of alternative societal structures through education and strong militant unions (which teach people how to use their collective power and work together) grown slowly over many decades enabled them to hit the ground running, and ultimately come together to act out that wildly alternative method of society, instead of succumbing to the temptations of easy and familiar solutions.
So while the Bevins seems to take issue with horizontalism, I think his issue is more so that horizontalism's chances of success are proportionate to how established the zeitgeist is for how to work together collectively, the type of societal vision they want, and how established ideas on how to achieve and live in that vision. A less horizontal structure doesn't need to rely on all of that groundwork being first, since that vision can be dictated from a more central point. It makes it much easier than doing all that groundwork, but the downside is once that path is gone down, it seems to inevitably spiral out of control into dictatorship.
Yeah I think it being based on interviews with those involved keeps it pretty non-dogmatic, just descriptive of what happened. I like that he references Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal towards the end of that interview. An ecology of organisation is a good take.
Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal I'm a bit more skeptical of. Again, I'm basing that stance on an interview of the author talking about the book instead of actually reading the book itself in the interest of an expedient response, but if that interview accurately represents some of the ideas he's putting forward, then from what I can gather, he seems to be repackaging some anarchist ideas in a way that's more digestible for more ardent marxists/Marxist-leninists.
As an example, his concept of “horizontality without horizontalism” and “vanguards without vanguardism” (of sometimes needing leaders in certain situations) is already done by Anarchists who can collectively elect people into leadership roles when necessary; they just do so with the ability to recall them at any time if they aren't living up to their requirements, or abusing that position.
All that aside, If that book converts some of the more hard-core MLs into unknowingly adopting Anarchist practices under a different name, I'm not opposed to that outcome.
And vice versa, is I think the point.
Though I took it not as repackaging as such, just highlighting strategy and tactics from both along with pros and cons, and suggesting make use of whatever works in a given context. Kind of and pattern language approach to political organisation.
Thanks for sharing these interviews and your thoughts, good to read them.