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submitted 2 months ago by Five@slrpnk.net to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net
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[-] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I have terrible news for you about Prodhoun, Kropotkin, and Bakunin.

Yeah I'm aware 😞. Hence why we should read these texts critically and skeptically (every text in every field of endeavor forever, actually) with a historical understanding of the author's flaws and biases. In my view, these thinkers actually made original contributions to anarchist thought, unlike Chomsky with the exception of Manufacturing Consent. Frankly, I actually do think that, unless you are doing historical research into how anarchists used to think, we really need to recommend and consult contemporary works as much as possible. I.e., anarchism absolutely has a problem with the ghosts of problematic white men infecting our thoughts.

Most anarchists I know aren't obsessed with purity of character the same way hierarchical ideologies deify and airbrush their founders.

Neither am I...but Chomsky is absolutely beyond the pale. Like okay you don't have to be perfect or even that good, but come on... Chomsky's cooked.

it is possible for someone to roast and eat babies and still be able to say true and insightful things about politics. Moral failings do not make one politically impotent, and moral virtue is not a replacement for intellectual insight.

Yeah, some moral failings absolutely do, at least without some attempt at rehabilitation and fixing what was broken, for the simple reason that it demonstrates that the intellectual doesn't seriously believe in what they are arguing against. Again, we can absolutely disagree on the parameters of what moral failings makes someone politically impotent, but they certainly exist, e.g. roasting and eating babies... and I'm certain based on my perusals of the Epstein Files that Chomsky has provided one of the best practical examples in recent memory!

this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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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.

~Abdullah Öcalan

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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