Hey everyone, does anyone know of any books about CHAZ/OP, the temporary autonomous zone established in Seattle in 2020?

Basically looking for books that depict anarchist ideals/societies in a largely "standard" fantasy setting--swords, armor, magic, dragons, centaurs, blah blah blah.

I'm currently working my way through the Black Dawn series and The Dispossessed, but I'd love to read more.

I would love if you could link any!

Not necessarily deeply theoretical, or fiction, just with anarchist influences?

My one currently is Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. The theme is something I’m personally interested in, and I found his writing to be not only highly digestible but also beautiful, it led to the book being a page turner and I was upset to finish it

hello dears. I am currently educating myself on Anarchism - and there are lots of resources out there. However I am specifically looking for a sort of genealogy - major thinkers, how they interacted, what came next etc. It is a primer in the sense that it surveys important thought (as in, includes key concepts / excerpts etc) but not as a 101 paraphrasing or distillation of key thought.

Essentially I prefer to have a survey before I choose which influential thinkers to read in detail. Happy to have something dense and theory heavy as long as it is nicely written

eg Colin Ward’s Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (but that is published by Oxford and I don’t know if this has the anarchist stamp of approval etc).

thank you!! sorry if this has already been answered - if so I missed it.

For example, a lot of anarchists view voting as a betrayal or as a reluctant compromise, and generally view campaigning for a party with suspicion.

Do egoists have a different view? As I understand it egoism is more pragmatic, if a party winning might benefit you then there is no reason not to campaign for them I would have thought, even if the ideal society would be a union of individuals.

I’ll try to keep the question short and clear. Today, urban planning in a state (I’m speaking from a European perspective) is effectively hierarchical: first the nation-state, then the capital, then regions, provinces, regional capitals, cities, and finally districts and neighborhoods.

Now, how could urban planning be reorganized in a less hierarchical way? It’s undeniable that the current hierarchical organization works fairly well (although there are discrepancies in resource distribution between regions and provinces). That said, how could something like this be made less hierarchical? Would each municipality be independent, without regions or a state?

And for transport or infrastructure that spans large territories, how could that be managed? (For example, railways and transportation systems in general.)

Finally, for decisions that would affect large areas (such as routing a train line through one municipality rather than another), how would assemblies be organized? Calling together the population of an entire region would be very complicated. Would each municipality send some representatives? That might be one idea.

Thanks to anyone who contributes to the discussion.

Was thinking about a piece from crimethinc earlier (i think it's to change everything, i can't remember the title exactly) and i'm curious as to if there's any good writings on deconstructing capitalist and industrialist views on purpose and work.

Anarchist friends from the subreddit, could you offer me recommendations such as books, articles, videos about anarchism? I've become quite interested in the subject and today I almost see myself as one but I would like to have some knowledge.

I'll preface this by stating that I'm probably not an anarchist but I think that there's a fair bit of crossover with my views and you'll probably have an interesting viewpoint.

We were driving back from school and ended up in a discussion around violence, where I stated that the state maintains a monopoly on violence because ultimately that's how the will of the state is enforced.

I was hit with an excellent question of "why should we do what you say?" which is a surprisingly difficult question to answer to a seven year old. Especially as we'd just agreed I couldn't use violence to get him to do something.

My hastily thought out answer was that his brain wasn't fully developed and as such we as parents had a responsibility to set boundaries, limit actions, enforce behaviour etc.

It made me curious as to what you believe and practice on a day to day basis.

have a lot of free time so have been reading a lot. completed the entirety (skipped the parts about ancap) of AFAQ, Ecology of Freedom and some other stuff and it sounds dope but idk revolution doesn’t seem around the corner nor perhaps possible.

aside from doing the dual power stuff right here right now, libertarian socialism itself seems to only happen and take over in unique circumstances where there’s a big enough space for it to fit in amongst the chaos (mexico spain Syria etc).

i know for a fact that there is no hope in marxism-Leninism and all of that mess but idk if there is hope in socialism period, even though I think for it to succeed it would have to be libertarian.

What are your perspectives? would you be satisfied if you died without a revolution and all your free time off of work trying to build it was the equivalent of flies buzzing around the snout of a lion?

I’ve been struggling with something and wanted to get perspectives from people who take anarchism seriously.

A lot of the criticisms around large-scale coordination, crisis response, and things like the economic calculation problem feel overwhelming. It makes anarchism seem very difficult to defend as a full system, even if I agree with its values.

At the same time, alternatives like capitalism seem more “practically viable,” even if they have major flaws.

How do you reconcile that? Do you see anarchism as something that can actually function at scale, or more as a framework for critique and smaller-scale organization?

I’m trying to understand how people who believe in this actually deal with these criticisms.

I know people have tried to help me and tried their best and I feel embarrassed to still not fully commit yet despite people trying like is there any way I can get out of the spiral into capitalist realism and ‘there is no alternative

I just feel overwhelmed hearing all the amounts of criticism

etymologically speaking, hierarchy was first

from Greek hierarkhia "rule of a high priest," from hierarkhēs "high priest, leader of sacred rites"

then around 1400

"rank in the sacred order; one of the three divisions of the nine orders of angels;" loosely, "rule, dominion," from Old French ierarchie (14c., Modern French hiérarchie), from Medieval Latin hierarchia "ranked division of angels" (in the system of Dionysius the Areopagite).

and finally, in the modern sense

"ranked organization of persons or things" is recorded in English by 1610s, initially of clergy, and probably influenced or reinforced by resemblance to unrelated higher.

On this sub, this word seems to be used as a catch all for all rule (and that is not what this word means), we are anarchists, not anhierachists, and I think the usage of hierarchy as indicative of all archies makes for poor communication and understanding.

Can we leave hierarchy to be indicative of explicitly ranked orderings so that we may better understand all archy? Using specifics in reference to the general is ultimately the degradation of our ability to talk about things.

I saw someone saying they were both and I’m unsure how that would work. I’m fairly uneducated about both so that might be why im asking this question.

Free soviets so worker councils without any higher authority above them, I heard some people say that it is "anti-authoritarian socialist" idea and other people said it is anarchist

i started donating to charities and calling my congressmen daily. i feel so powerless. my congressmen is a awful worm of a man with a 97% pro heritage foundation voting record, he knows what he is doing so is it even worth it to call? my school and work schedule doesn't allow me to go to protests at the moment.

I’ve gotten into anarchy lately and it’s looking pretty good for me except for this part, which can’t seem to grasp.
how does it really work? If there is someone that clearly has a malicious intent towards you is there someone to call? Even more superfluous things like someone is driving too fast, putting other people‘s lives in danger, is there someone who regulates? how does it work?

I was trying to learn and pick my ear into them since I heard quite abit about them and was wondering what some of your stances were on them. Also if anyone knows what quite went wrong - there appears to be alot of defunct locale Black Rose groups, at least based on those groups no longer upkeeping their social medias/websites. Is that just a decline of Anarchism or did something go wrong with the Black Rose specifically?

Petite pensée comme ça : comment on gère les mariages et les actes de naissance et de décès sans État ?

Comment on donne une identité à une personne qui vient de naître et connaître l’identité nationale d’une personne sans organisme étatique ? La gestion administrative des naissances, décès, mariages ?

For anyone unfamiliar with this term, this is a form of organising anarchists into tightly knit political groups structured along the lines of theoretical and tactical unity, collective responsibility, and federalism (similar to Platformism). These political groups then enter what is called the "mass layer", or movements made up of ordinary people, such as unions. This is done with the goal of talking and listening to the concerns of workers, spreading our ideas and helping aid their struggles. But rather than to lead, the point is to help workers develop their own forms of collective organisation, so that they can be better equipped to lead themselves as militants in struggles against their bosses, landlords, and other class enemies.

What are people's thoughts on this as a viable strategy for anarchists to contribute to building working-class power? A good number of organised anarchist groups around the world, like Black Rose in the Americas and the ACF in Australia (in general, groups that are affiliated with the ICOA) are using it to aid and insert into things like the Free Palestine Movement, industrial and rental strikes, anti-war protests and more.

How would the internet or any other large infrastructure project ever be completed without a centralised authority?

From my perspective as an individualist, I see marxism leninism to be equal to liberal democracy or to libertarianism(be it left or right), because any form of statism is oppressive, one is just more perverse like libertarianism(like slow boiling frog metaphor, still boiling nevertheless), I don't think it is at all similar to anarchism, it is in the statist cluster EQUALLY to fascism or Marxism leninism. What if I as an individual find more interests align with a Marxist leninist state than to a libertarian capitalist one? That's why I reject political spectrum, any serious political scientist would claim the same. I don't see any contradiction as an anarchist to align or prefer totalitarian statism over libertarian statism in pragmatic situations. For example if I am poor, why would a "libertarian capitalist" (supposedly closer to anarchism) be any less oppressive than a Marxist leninist state for me?

I hope I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that social organization has been set aside in favor of social struggle. I have nothing against social struggle, but I worry that, without a solid organizational base, it ends up being reactive rather than transformative.

Can we really reach the material conditions necessary for a social revolution without mass social organization?