Anarchy & Covid19.

What Might an Anarchist Society Look Like?

     1 The world’s resources would be held in common and shared with all the diverse life on Earth.
    2 People would manage their own lives, work and communities, and everyone would have a say in decision making through decentralised forms of organisation.
   3 Relationships in all areas of life would be based on mutual respect and equality regardless of gender, skin colour, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture etc.
    4 Work wouldn’t be boring and repetitive, but instead would be a means of voluntary self expression and fulfillment; unpopular or difficult jobs would be shared.
    5 Education would be integrated into daily life to produce free individuals who think for ourselves.
     6 Goods and services would be produced ecologically for human needs based on the principle “from each according to ability, to each according to need”

      Anarchist, by word and deed, strive for that better world for all, anarchism has the books, the leaflets, the history, the road map, and there has been the experience in several places in the world where these became practice. However the world changes and anarchism like that world must also change. We have to convince people that our philosophy would work in drastic situations, pandemic is the most resent event that anarchist must show that it could cope with, and better than, the present centralised autocratic state/capitalism system. That requires honest debate, co-operation and open mindedness.

     The group Anarchist Writers has produced an interesting article that perhaps will open and encourage that debate among anarchists and the general public.

Anarchy and Covid-19

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 20:22 — Anarcho

       A standard reproach against anarchism is that it would not be able to withstand crises as well as hierarchies. This is often the underlying assumption of Marxist diatribes against Anarchism – although these usually invoke euphemisms to avoid admitting that what is really being suggested is that they and their party should be in power. Hence the assertions on the need for a centralised “workers’ State” to organise defence against the counter-revolution (i.e., anyone who disagrees with them), plan the economy, and so on – skilfully avoiding discussing the grim inefficiencies and tyrannies of the Bolshevik regime or the various counter-examples which show the opposite (most obviously, the response of the CNT-FAI to Franco’s coup).

      The coronavirus crisis – like any crisis – sees people “rally to the flag” and be more willing to view those in power in a good light. This happened in the UK with the serial lying, incompetent, self-serving, waffling, racist, sexist, homophobic lazy waste of space known as “Boris” but better called Johnson (and not only because that is his surname). It even happened with Trump – although his bump in the polls was both smaller in size and shorter in duration. Still, Trump does serve a purpose – making even Johnson and his response to the crisis seem better by default.

     Which raises a question – what would an anarchist society, an anarchy, do in the face of a coronavirus crisis?

This is no idle question for addressing a serious issue and the concerns it generates in the general public (i.e., people we want to become anarchists) should be something anarchists do. We must apply our ideas to real events if we take our ideas seriously and seek to see them applied – rather than an excuse to sound ultra-radical.

Now, there may be a tendency for some anarchists – as with “crime” (i.e., anti-social behaviour) – to simply say that a free society would not have any. This, as with crime, is not very convincing and, for example, Kropotkin did not suggest that. He argued, like other anarchist thinkers, that anti-social behaviour would, indeed, be vastly reduced in a decent society, but it would never disappear completely. Therefore any which remained would be dealt with via free arbitration between the parties in conflict, as well as community solidarity and self-defence conducted as humanely as an illness would be.

     The same can be said for Covid-19. Yes, a free society would be one based on workers’ control, so it is unlikely that it would be lacking in safe and hygienic working conditions. It would not have the same pressures from bosses to cut corners to maximise profits (and in non-mutualist anarchies there would be no market pressures to do likewise). It would not experience the hollowing out of society and its various institutions (not least health-care) that neo-liberalism has produced nor would it have people with low-paid, insecure jobs who have to drag themselves into work because they have bills to pay but, by so doing, spread the virus. It would not have obscenities like billionaires having a net worth far in excess of the costs of paying their workers decent sick pay for months.

Continue reading HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Avalanche 10.

 

       Avalanche puts out an appeal for all your tales, stories, adventures, activities, actions, planned and past. It helps to unite and strength us, and sets out a learning process from other's experiences. It also alerts the public at large that we are not asleep as the world goes crashing along on its destructive corporate capitalist course.

 Contributions for Avalanche 10:

Dear comrades,
       We make this call out for contributions for the next issue of the anarchist correspondence paper Avalanche.
Texts concerning anarchist interventions, ongoing struggles, past
experiences, critical evaluations, broader reflections on the anarchist struggle, can be send until the 1st of march 2017 to the following email:
correspondance@riseup.net
        Thanks for telling us as fast as possible if you think on sending a contribution.

Queridos companeros,
Hacemos esto llamamiento a contribuciones por el proximo numero de la revista de correspondencia anarquista Avalancha.
Se puede mandar textos sobre intervenciones anarquistas, conflictos en curso, experiencias del pasado, balances criticas, reflexiones mas amplias sobre la lucha anarquista, antes del 1 de marzo 2017 en este correo:
correspondance@riseup.net
       Gracias de decirnos lo mas antes possible si pensais en mandar una contribucion.

Chers compagnons,
On lance cet appel aux contributions pour le prochain numéro du journal de correspondance anarchiste Avalanche.
Les textes concernant d’interventions anarchistes, des conflits en cours, des expériences du passé, des évaluations critiques ou des réflexions plus amples sur la lutte anarchiste peuvent être envoyé avant le 1 mars 2017 à l’adresse suivante:
correspondance@riseup.net.
Merci de nous prévenir si vous pensiez envoyer une contribution.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

WELCOME TO MY WORLD.

    For all those anarchists with an imagination and a vision of their utopian better world, you know, the one that we are all working so hard to achieve. Could you put it into words, what is the anarchist world you're struggling so hard to create, what would it look like? I have no doubt we will all come up with a different picture, but I have no doubt there will be some basics that will be universal, a deep respect for the other, co-operation and mutual aid, will be the basic building blocks.

A wee challenge from Combustion Books:

Introducing the Anarchist Imagination

     Everyone knows the world is a mess. There’s starvation and ecocide, racism and sexism. The rich get richer and the poor get dead, all while species go extinct and carbon warms up the air. It’s not surprising that so much of our fiction is as bleak as our future threatens to be.

      But we can imagine other worlds. We can imagine better ways to organize ourselves, better ways to treat one another, better ways to treat the earth. And specifically, we can imagine worlds without the authoritarianism of the state and capitalism. The question, then, is: what would those worlds look like?

     Combustion Books, a worker-run publisher of genre fiction, is looking to publish a new line of books: The Anarchist Imagination. We are looking for novella-length (15,000-40,000 words) anarchist utopias.

       Our intention is not, of course, to put down blueprints that must be followed line by line. We offer no prescription for future society. Instead, the utopia is a form we can use to explore our revolutionary desires, to showcase ideas we might put into practice, to give us glimpses of what we fight for.

     The utopia is a peculiar form of fiction to write, to be sure, and we’re looking for stories that balance the exposition of society with compelling narrative and character. The stories can be set in our own world–past, present, or future–or in fantasy. The politics can be anything anti-state, the economics anything that isn’t capitalism. As this series goes on, we hope to showcase just how wide this terrain can be.

Submissions can be sent to submissions@combustionbooks.org.
You can also view our regular submission guidelines.

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