Anarchism

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29111557

The Haymarket Affair (1886)

Tue May 04, 1886

Image: *A Harper’s Weekly illustration of the Haymarket Riot from May 15, 1886.

A Harper’s Weekly illustration of the Haymarket Riot from May 15, 1886.

A Harper’s Weekly illustration of the Haymarket Riot from May 15, 1886.

A Harper's Weekly Illustration of the Haymarket Affair, May 15th, 1886

The Haymarket Affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre) was the bloody aftermath of a bombing that took place on this day in 1886 during a radical labor demonstration demanding an 8 hour day in Chicago, Illinois.

The strike began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day. After police began trying to disperse a May 4th rally associated with the strike, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers, four to eight civilians, and wounded approximately one hundred people on either side.

In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy. Seven were sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison. Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two of the sentences to terms of life in prison; another committed suicide in jail rather than face the gallows. The other four were hanged on November 11th, 1887.

The trial, widely believed to be a farce, was condemned internationally. The Haymarket Affair, and working class struggle more broadly, is commemorated annually on May 1st as "May Day" or "International Workers' Day".

• Date: 1886-05-04
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, libcom.org, theanarchistlibrary.org.
• Tags: #Labor, #Anarchism, #Riots, #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

I didn't think I could hate Facebook and the rich techbros any more than I already do, but holy shit, this book is making want to start learning how to build guillotines.

It also does a great job on showing how power and wealth just make people into sociopathic simulacra of humanity.

IT'S GOING DOWN: Tearing Into It: A Conversation with Dean Spade

Episode webpage: https://itsgoingdown.org/tearing-into-it-a-conversation-with-dean-spade/

Media file: https://media.blubrry.com/itsgoingdown/thebeautifulidea.show/content/media/2025/04/Discussion-with-Dean-Spade.mp3

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62560258

Hello dear fellow human beings!

Let me clarify a few things.

We are one, all of us, all stardust, right from the belly of an exploding star, right to our shared evolution, history, & current technological & societal progress. All humanity and all life is one and connected, and so are all of our problems.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, climate change, fascism, war, and even the global epidemic of loneliness & depression aren’t distinct disconnected problems. They are a singular globally connected problem. And it requires a singular globally connected solution.

All of these are problems of a skewed economy, aka wealth inequality. Those who don't have enough face poverty, hunger, homelessness, and a lifetime of financial insecurity. Those who have plenty, want even more, which leads to them dividing the masses by propaganda, eventually leading to fascism & war. Our collective mismanaged consumption is pushing us all towards climate catastrophe. All of these global issues are making us very lonely & depressed, and the overall society prone to crime & violence.

So how can we fix this skewed economy and our collective social issues? And is it even solvable?

Some might find the answer as obvious, some might consider it incorrect or impossible to achieve. Well, let me tell you folks, I've done the math, I've double checked my work, there is one and only one way out - Collectively!

Welcome to Collective Cake, a secular democratic global economic engine powered by all, and created for all. If we are the producers and if we are also the consumers, then we can manage our economy however we collectively want. It’s our Collective Cake, let’s take ownership and enjoy it best we can.

Is it a business? Or is it an cooperative? Is it a think tank? Or is it an economic union? Is it a democratically controlled, sustainability led unified global economy? It is anything & everything we want it to be. We get to collectively decide it!

Is it capitalism? Is it communism? Is it market socialism? All I will say about this is that capitalism is what exists right now, and market socialism is also capitalism, but the better kind. However, I want us all to refrain from using such labels while problem solving. Labels might help identify a sub-group, but it invariably causes division and we pick sides, we blindly love ours, and blindly hate theirs. An emotional response is not a well reasoned response. Lastly, if even one man cannot understand ambiguous or technical jargon, we have all collectively lost.

There's a lot for us talk about. Not a debate to be won, but a problem to be solved. Not using violence, but by strategy and collective action. Before we talk about the what or the how, we must talk more about the why. I have some thoughts that I'll share, but it doesn't matter for we can collectively decide and do anything we want. The matchstick has been lit.

Next week, I'll share my thoughts on our collective ethos or "our water".

Stay tuned!

Love, fakir

PS: enjoy this lovely animation that was released over 50 years ago!

Cross-posted from "Up to 4 Anarchist instances and 9 ACAB instances!" by @[email protected] in [email protected]

Let's go for 5 and 10 at least!

by Colin Denny Donoghue

While it’s true many people are wrapped up in a consumer-corporate lifestyle and think trying to change the world is a naïve or impossible task not worth even trying, many other people are more actively compassionate and are giving a lot of time and effort to try and make this world a better place. Some of those engaged in this productive work, like The School of Living, have a better vision than others on how to achieve the goal of a healthier and more just society; from its founder Ralph Borsodi’s book Flight From the City, along with the later Decentralism by Mildred J. Loomis, to current vegan homesteading projects like Ahimsa Village, I find the ideas and praxis of philosophy toward achieving a sustainable society to be very on-target. Unfortunately many others do not yet see how crucial it is for people to be connected to the Earth in a more direct, natural and free way in order for there to be global social-justice, and in order to restore our environment, health, and sanity.

In “close-but-no-cigar” fashion (i.e. missing the crucial point), modern conservationists, scientists, sociologists and radical activists give key ideas for stopping and reversing the destructive ecological & health crisis we face, namely: we need much more decentralization of power, localization of organic food production, and we need much less environmental destruction, pollution, waste and radiation. As good as these ideas are, the critical problem with them is that their version of decentralization, localization and sustainability only go to a certain limited extent (limited within corporate/statist/monetary systemic restraints), and are alternatives accessible only to a relatively narrow segment of the world population. Here I will argue that the decentralist/localization/sustainability movement absolutely needs to go further, i.e. all the way to the universal individual level, in order for us to achieve the significant positive change the world needs. This “extreme” decentralization, localization and sustainable living would not only be more effective, but is in fact the only way to a globalization of equality and personal/environmental health. And it leads to a clear and specific destination: communities of sovereign zero-waste veganic homesteads. That way of life produces none of the environmental/health/life-destruction that is dominant now, and also fosters human equality, well-being and flourishing; more on why this is the real solution will be explained shortly.

The difference in perspective between what most people are offering as solutions and what’s offered here is fundamentally a difference between inside & outside-the-box thinking; the former is limited within the socioeconomic box (the box that is actually the main source of the problems), looking for within-the-system top-down solutions from State policies and programs (or the International Monetary Fund, etc.), rather than bottom-up solutions from autonomous individuals & the Earth’s ecology. This can also be looked at as a collectivist versus individualist way of thinking, though the former is often mistakenly equated with community, and the latter with a selfish isolationist perspective. In reality, collectivism means forced assimilation into a social-system while individualism has the ethical superiority of valuing individual sovereignty, self-responsibility, and voluntary relations.

archived (Wayback Machine)

To embrace veganism and forgo the consumption and utilization of animal products is not an end, but a beginning; a new start affording the practitioner an opportunity to see everyday realities in a different light.

However, to speak of the suffering of non-human animals and the benefits of a vegan lifestyle is often a disheartening situation to the vegan, for typically the first reaction of her audience is to disagree. Opponents of veganism say that the way vegans view human-animal relationships (i.e. radically) is wrong, and that, looming on the horizon, is a severe cost for such blatant societal insubordination. Ultimately, they prophesize, the error of veganism will become obvious and, eventually, the idea thrown away.

In a strange way, however, veganisms’s critics are correct.

Not until one realizes what makes veganism “unreasonable,” will the individual realize the true reasoning behind what it means to be vegan. Not until one questions what it is that depicts veganism as “wrong,” in the eyes of non-vegans will one gain the ability to adequately address the wrongs driving their refusal to accept humanity’s violent and unwarranted treatment of non-human animals. Not until the principles of veganism are applied to the rubric of injustice as a whole will one understand the need for veganism at all.

They are correct because veganism in isolation defeats the purpose for which it is intended.

And so it goes, for the alienation experienced as an effect of breaking social conventions is often enough to make one “question” her commitment to veganism.

As a philosophy, veganism stands in defiance to ideologies touching the core of Western thought. Opposed to the irrational belief systems which establishment institutions socialize people to “accept,” the principles of veganism challenge individuals to confront the dogma they are issued and to construct new ethics and values based on the premises of compassion and justice.

Confronting the existing belief systems, however, is a frightening concept to a society that has voluntarily conscripted itself to the dominant social paradigms of the state. However, as Brian Dominick so skillfully illustrates in the following essay, it is precisely this confrontation that we must agree to make if we are honest in seeking a true assessment of what social liberation has to offer. In the totality of this process, veganism is but one element in the compound structure of social revolution. It is in this light that Brian’s essay shines its brightest. Animal Liberation and Social Revolution is a compact framework designed to assist us as we embark on the endeavor of recognizing what roles compassion, critical thinking, and rationality (ought to) play in our simultaneous deconstruction and transformation of society. Relentless in his quest to set the proverbial wheels of this transformation in motion, Brian presses us to confront the oppressive ideologies we harbor within ourselves and to uncover their linkages to the injustice that pervades every sphere of our existence.

It is Brian’s belief that each of us has been given the tools to draw these necessary conclusions. It makes no difference if you are an anarchist approaching veganism, a vegan approaching anarchism, or neither of the two. All that is required is the willingness to roll up your sleeves, sharpen those tools and start drawing, in a concerted effort, to challenge humanity’s myopic vision of what constitutes a just society.

—Joseph M. Smith

November, 1995

archived (Wayback Machine)

Interesting... Also cool illustration

Hey everyone came here after reddit started censoring everyone and anything.

I'll put down some suggestions and whatever folks are interested in I'll do weekly/bi-weekly posts talking about the chapter with folks.

Please comment if you are interested and/or have a suggestion

these are all a bit longer and I've read 2/3 (Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin and Anarchism by Goldman) the third is a fascinating one but I'm also open to other suggestions for what to read together.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread

I'll also include a really short essay in the comments and short story for personal reading here.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you

https://files.libcom.org/files/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf

I have attempted to read Anarchist books before. I found it difficult to read, boring, laborious, dated, and frankly the entire notion of Anarchist literature felt like it was missing the point of it’s subject matter. I will say that I am also someone who struggles to read a lot or at all, just for a point of comparison.

Then I stumbled into this book. It was a fucking amazing read, I could not put it away. Now it’s a biography, and that to me kind of sucked, as I had thought that biographies were what old people read in their infinite spare time, once they had finished every other book in the universe. That said, the guy’s life could just be fiction book. So does it really matter?

The book admittedly romanticizes a lot of nuance of Ben’s life away. The portrayal of street life, is made out be excited freedom balanced with the hardship of the road. Where that balance definitely feels further towards the freedom end of the spectrum. But it also leans into other challenges Ben faces latter in life, such as being deemed less important to the abortion rights movement by the very women he is fighting for, because he’s male. Unlike fiction and like real life the book doesn’t exactly have a happy ending. In large part because of Reitman’s relationship with Emma Goldman, but also because real life sucks.

What I am really saying is that for someone who always thought of themselves as an Anarchist, this book was the first one that I was truly able to sit down and read to completion without feeling like a lullaby was playing over my head. So I highly recommend it to anyone who read the first paragraph of this, and went – “yeah that’s me”.

For a slightly more broad point, this book is a really good example of actions speaking louder than words. I personally feel that the actions discussed here present a far more compelling argument against the state and capital than any theoretical guide ever could.

Hello, I'm not 100% sure if this post fits here, but I figured it might be interesting and (possibly) of use to some people. Namely, for those who don't know, there are major protests going on in Serbia since November, which has caused monumental changes to the society here, and I feel like many aspects of these events align strongly with anarchist principles. With that in mind, I'd like to give a brief rundown of what happened just to give some context, and the effects it had on the society in terms of self-organisation, given that these are real events with real people participating.

1. Corruption and deaths

I'll be brief here. The Serbian government since 2012 has been run by the mafia. By that I mean both things like that the government exerts huge power over everyone employed in the public sector (and abuses it constantly) and things like the fact that the biggest illegal cannabis plantation in Europe was accidentally discovered in Serbia, and the officer who discovered that got suspended and nobody was prosecuted. After dozens upon dozens of scandals, each of which would be enough to bring down a government in any sane country, the general populace basically gave up on the idea of having a country at all, it is taken for granted that every single institution is in service to one man (Aleksandar Vucic, the current president), and the opposition in the parliament was and still is a joke.

On the 1st of November 2024, the canopy above the train station in the city of Novi Sad collapsed, killing 15 people (initially, one more person was confirmed dead last week). The train station was renovated and reopened that same year in July. Students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade started blocking the roads for 15 mins (1 minute for each killed), when they were attacked by a group of hooligans (who are often used as a sort of a paramilitary for the government).

2. The students revolt

As the police did not move a finger, the students from the faculty took over the faculty building and announced that the faculty is blocked. Studets from other faculties and universities soon followed, and soon all universities in Serbia stopped working, as the students took over. They announced 4 demands that they want to be met before things can return to normal. The demands are ingenious in their own right, but the thing I want to focus on here is how the students organised themselves.

First of all, nobody is allowed inside the university buildings except other students, you get checked when entering. They have transformed every building to include places to eat, sleep, and have formed teams, each with their tasks. Food and supplies are given as donations, as the students have overwhelming support from the general populace.

Every major decision is made in a plenary session (or plenum). Every student can participate, make proposals, and voice their opinion on the topic at hand. After the discussions end, the question is decided by voting. If a decision passes, working groups are formed and the decision gets executed. The most important thing here is that there are absolutely no leaders. Every time someone needs to appear in public, the decision is made inside a plenum, and every time the representative is someone else to avoid any one person being perceived as a leader. This has made it insanely hard for the government to battle against the students, as they cannot target a signle person or a small group, and it also made so that the students are receiving support from everyone, from ultranationalists to vegan anarchists, as the movement is based purely around the concrete demands (that can be simply summed up as: "We want the institutions to function as intended"), and not any specific charismatic leader or ideology.

3. Actions taken

The students and people together started regularly blocking the roads all over Serbia every day for 15 minutes at 11:52 (the time when the canopy collapsed). While this went on without incidents most of the time, there were notable moments when thugs came out of a car and started attacking people, and a number of times people rammed the crowd with their cars. Each of these incidents caused more people to join the protests.

Education workers in primary and secondary schools went on strike in support of the student demands, as did the lawyers. Soon, the students started calling for mass protests. They blocked an important highway in Belgrade by staying there for 24h, a few weeks later all 3 bridges in Novi Sad across the Danube were blocked, 2 for 3h and the biggest one for 24h. After the 24h expired, a "citizen plenum" was held, where it was put up to a vote for all present whether the blockades should be extended for 3 more hours (it was just symbolic, but I would call it a notable event). 2 weeks later another mass demonstration was held in Kragujevac, then 2 weeks later in Nis. These three cities are respectively in the norther, central and southern part of the country. The students thus motivated people from all over the country to join in, as most protests have historically been only in Belgrade and Novi Sad, the two biggest cities. Then, two weeks ago, protests were held in Belgrade, the biggest ones in Serbian history.

Also worth noting is that for the protests in Novi Sad, students from Belgrade walked 80km for 2 days to get to Novi Sad, even sleeping out in the open in the middle of winter. They were greated as liberators in every place the passed, and this walking of insane distances became a regular thing thereafter. All this caused more and more people to become involved.

4. The people join

Protests started being held all over the country. Pretty much every place that has more than 1000 inhabitants had at least one protest. It became so insane at one point that a website was created to keep track of upcoming ones (kudanaprotest.rs).

Local groups started being formed based on the exact same organisation as the student ones (all participants are equal, every decision is made inside a plenum). People formed groups to block roads themselves, other groups were formed to collect supplies for the students, other groups were formed to cook and bring fresh food to the students every day, etc etc. When the government announced that teachers in strike will not be receiving their salaries, groups formed a system by which people can donate money that would go towards teachers that have not been paid.

5. Local communities

As the students could not, and didn't even want to, be the leaders of any force, they asked the people to organise themselves by the way of public assemblies, or "zbor" in Serbian. A zbor is essentially the same thing as a plenum. Each city in Serbia is divided up into many 'local communities' or "mesna zajednica". They are not very influential bodies, and most are governed by the ruling party anyways, but they were identified as a perfect way to get people to organise themselves. Groups started popping out everywhere for each mesna zajednica, and thus entire neighbourhoods started connecting and attending zbors in their respective areas, with the idea that neighbourhoods could organise themselves and take over the mesne zajednice officially, and then they could all work together and start taking over the public positions in the cities. A decision made by a zbor can be taken to the city as a suggestion by the citizens, so it does have some limited value, but the main point here is that it made people all over the country come together with their neighbours to discuss how they can make their surroundings better.

6. The rise in popularity of decentralized organisation and the influence of aesthetics on public opinion

Direct democracy is now the norm in the minds of many. Suggesting that anything else is almost contraversial. It came to a point where many people are saying that we don't need any politicians or the parliament, zbors should take over everything. While this of course won't happen, it is very interesting how this idea became so widespread, and how decentralized organisations with direct democracy at their core were widely accepted when everyone saw how far the students managed to get. Also worth noting is that this was all started by students, young people, which dispelled the myth that youngsters nowadays don't care about politics.

On the other hand, people did not suddenly become informed overnight. Very often it can be heard how we should be wary of both the "right wing" and "left wing", instead we should just focus on our problems and solve them, and later we can "divide ourselves". The left is mostly associated with people being "woke" and "hating their nation", so that we have people in decentralised organisations, who participate in plenums, who are talking about forming unions, bashing the left and saying that we should stay away from "ideologies". I think that this really speaks volumes on how the left is thought of by most people. Unless I severely misunderstood the left wing and anarchism, solidarity, equality, direct democracy and local communities are the very pillars upon which these "ideologies" stand on, and they have been shown to be extremely popular in Serbian society, and still if you mention the "left", people will cringe, and if you mention "anarchism", people will run away. We can see right here that the ideas we stand behind are tangible and popular, but that we have a serious branding problem. I guess the conclusion is that actions speak much louder than words, as 'preaching' decentralisation and equality will get your into bad faith debates, whereas the students have shown the way by personal example.

7. Conclusion

Protests came and passed in Serbia many times in the last 13 years, but it is clear to everyone that this is something more. We are going through a change in society. The common people demonstrably can come together, organise, and fight a central authority and take matters into their own hands.

Huge protests were recently held in Greece, in Hungary, in Turkey, in North Macedonia, and other places, and there are many more to come. We still have a long way to go, but I hope that this can be of some use to inspire people in other places in the world. All this show of solidarity and community building was not forced, it formed organically as the students lead the way by personal example and sacrifice. Show people that they don't need a leader to keep them in line, show them that "the masses" are not stupid and can make intelligent decisions, show them how natural solidarity is, and show them how inequality has to be artificially created and upheld, and then they will come to understand.

Thank you for your attention.