Showing posts with label chaos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chaos. Show all posts

Friday 25 May 2012

COLLAPSE AND CHAOS??


        The collapse of any powerful system, be it monarchy, state or what ever, is always followed by chaos. What we are witnessing at the moment is the collapse of the current powerful force, a financially controlled  economic system. How it plays out will depend on the people, will they take control of their own lives in co-operation with each other, or will the seek out a new Messiah?

         The social unrest, economic gloom and austerity in Europe today mirrors one of the greatest crises in British history, says the historian Michael Wood.
        The news from Europe is getting worse by the day. Economic gloom across the continent and multiple crises in the currency zone. With rising unemployment and inflation there are riots in the streets with forecasts of anarchy in some parts of western Europe. And along with the simmering discontent there is a worrying rise of radical groups and populist right wing movements. In the fringes, secessionists are pushing for independence, indeed for the break up of the whole European order under which we have all lived secure and comfortable for so long.
         At home in Britain there are worrying signs in every town - cuts in public services have led to closures of public baths and libraries, the failure of road maintenance, breakdowns in the food supply and civic order. While political commentators and church leaders talk about a "general decline in morality" and "public apathy", the rich retreat to their mansions and country estates and hoard their cash.
       It all sounds eerily familiar doesn't it? But this is not Angela Merkel's eurozone - it is Roman Britannia towards the year 400, the period of the fall of the Roman Empire.

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Friday 27 April 2012

"ANARCHY", IN COMMON PARLANCE, CHAOS, VIOLENT DISORDER!!


        I have always maintained that if you ask 100 people what the meaning of anarchy is, you'll get 100 different answers. Most will be wrong and will be answers like chaos and disorder, and will be based on ignorance of all things anarchistic. The establishment, state, mainstream media are all involved in perpetuating that line of thought, probably because they see anarchism as their greatest threat.

This from The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest:

In common parlance “anarchy” refers to a state of chaos or violent disorder and “anarchism” to the rebellious or merely perverse pursuit of this state. Indeed, the word “anarchist” was first used in the seventeenth century as an epithet against the defeated Levellers in the English Civil War. While the ideas and practices that would become known as anarchism were distinctly foreshadowed by movements such as the Diggers and the Ranters in the seventeenth century as well as by eighteenth-century thinkers such as William Godwin (and arguably by far more ancient schools of thought, from the Cynics of the fifth century bce to the Taoists of a century later), it was not until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon turned this epithet into a positive self-description that we can speak of anarchism per se, as a historical entity. Historically speaking, however, anarchism is the name for a movement, originating in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, characterized by its vision of a society of generalized self-management, its opposition to all forms of hierarchy and domination, and its particular emphasis on means of transformative action that prefigure the desired ends. The word also serves to name the goal of the movement – substantive and universal freedom, sometimes called “anarchy” – elements of which may be found in every society that has ever existed, particularly among peoples living without private property and the state.


Principles and Practices

Popular misunderstandings concerning anarchism, fed by more than a century and a half of sensationalistic media representations, are widespread – and, unfortunately, many scholarly accounts of anarchism do little to correct these distortions. The association of anarchy with chaos and senseless violence, while owing something to a certain phase in anarchist history (that of “propaganda by the deed”), is readily dispelled by even a cursory reading of works by actual self-described anarchists: “Anarchism … is not bombs, disorder, or chaos,” writes Alexander Berkman (1870–1936). “It is not a war of each against all. It is not a return to barbarism … Anarchism is the very opposite of all that” (Berkman 2003: xv). Similarly, Emma Goldman (1869–1940) defines anarchism as “the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary” (1910: 56). The entry on anarchism that Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wrote for the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica defined it as “a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government” (2002: 284). These three explanations of anarchism – it would be difficult to find any more widely accepted by anarchists – show that anarchism is a form of social order rather than mere disorder or absence of organization; the form of social order anarchism represents is intended to maximize freedom, and to do so without recourse to the kinds of coercive institutions that are typically assumed to be necessary, variously called “government,” “law,” or “authority”; and in place of these institutions, anarchists propose to produce social order through a system of “free agreements” to meet individuals' “needs.”
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Friday 13 April 2012

WHERE TO NOW, WHERE, TODAY?


      From The Anarchist International:


Thesis:
The majority of the Anarchist International does not reside in the country, in the small town, or on the periphery of capitalism. The majority of us inhabit the centers of global capital and spend our lives close to our enemies heart. One side effect of living in such close proximity to these glowing cores of money and power is a confusion as to what reality is like for those who live far away and near the edge. Military suppression, famines, civil war, and urban guerrilla warfare are commonplace in nation states such as India, China, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. Those inhabiting the interior sometimes trick themselves into thinking they understand what living in these situations is like, but obviously they do not.

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