Links

Ram's Horn (A web site by Kathleen and Brewster Kneen with a focus on food systems and analysis.)

Participatory Economics (Participatory Economics or Parecon for short, is an extensive subsection of the ZNet web site that looks at ways of developing and implementing alternative economic institutions.)

Anarchy and Parecon (An essay by Tom Wetzel in which he links the institutional framework of Participatory Economics to social anarchism.)

The Self-Managed City (An essay by Tom Wetzel that outlines possible alternatives to urban growth/development.)

Inclusive Democracy (Features an extensive set of articles by Takis Fotopoulos, founder of the Inclusive Democracy Project. Fotopoulos is a Greek ex-patriat who fled Greece during the U.S. backed military coup. He became a professor of political economy and was the senior economics lecturer at the North London University until his retirement. He as written extensively on democratic discourse and argues that the two fundamental problems that must be addressed immediately are the crisis of representative democracy and the internationalization of markets.)

Monthly Review (In his article "Organizing Ecological Revolution" John Bellamy Foster describes what he thinks is the only solution to the current mal-developed institutional framework that threatens life itself.

Articles by Murray Bookchin

Murray Bookchin is a social philosopher and co-founder of the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont, U.S.A. and has written extensively on the topic of hierarchy, nature, and freedom.

The Modern Crisis (This article provides a brief historical background of liberation movements and Bookchin concludes that they are insufficient to counteract a globalised world. In their place Bookchin describes his own movement of Libertarian Municipalism.

Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy (This article is an argument against both the private ownership and state ownership of the means of production. Bookchin argues that both of these arrangements are hierarchal in structure and therefore cannot be held accountable to ordinary people. His third option is the municipalization of the economy in which the major firms of a municipality are owned by the citizens of the municipality in a co-management arrangement with the workers in those firms.)

The Politics of the 21st Century (A detailed expose of Bookchin's Libertarian Municipalism)

Radicalizing Democracy (Bookchin firmly rejects a "representative democracy" as being anything but and looks direct democracy as an accountable alternative.)

Radical Politics in an era of Advanced Capitalism (In this article Bookchin rejects the notion that a proletarian revolution is the answer to the "Modern Crisis" instead he believes that it require a combination of the "New Social Movements" (e.g. radical feminism, radical greens, radical equality activists) and a new "Public Sensibility" around the municipality and confederalism, will emerge as the force that reverses the current trend in the concentration of unaccountable power.)

Thoughts on Liberatian Municipalism ( Bookchin describes communtarianism as being a "lifestyle" movement in which those who possess relative privilege and personal freedom attempt to improve their lives within the dominant social institutional framework rather than a radical political programme which addresses structural inequalities. He goes on to explain why a political programme is vital to correcting our current course.)d

What is Communalism? (This article follows on the heels of the article that precedes it in which Bookchin protrays Communalism as an authentic political strategy.)

 

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