An Exchange between John Griffin and Takis Fotopoulos. (2000.)

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons.

Source: Anarchist Voices.

John Griffin: Dodgy Logic and the Olympians.

Whilst considering this book and Richard Griffin's (no relation) article in TL4 about science and "postmodernism", my thoughts strayed to the earliest of the ancient Greek philosophers, those who came before Socrates. A good deal of what they had to say really lay in the realm of science, as we would now call it, for their purpose was to grasp what made the world tick. As the centuries unfolded, the sciences developed as separate branches of enquiry, and philosophy increasingly concerned itself with how we humans fitted into the world, that is with mind. Faced with contemporary disasters like Marxism and nuclear bombs, one branch of "postmodernism" has made the separation with science the more emphatic by expressing disenchantment and even hostility towards it.

I persist in using the inverted commas because I’m not sure what "postmodernism" is. If it were limited to a critique of the philosophy and science spawned by our authoritarian cultures - the inhuman bigness, reductionism and needless gadgetry ― i would have no quarrel with it.

Felix Stalder: Bourgeois Anarchism and Authoritarian Democracies. (2008.)

Published with the permission of the author.

Source: First Monday.

Abstract

Nathan Revercomb: The anarchist urban ecosystem. (2010.)

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons.

Source: Beyond Revolution.

The anarchist urban ecosystem: Water.

This series will attempt to roughly give some examples as to how the urban environment can be altered so that cities can not only sustain themselves but also become ecologically rich environs benefiting mankind and servicing nature. In order for us to do so, we must create radical shifts in the way we think about the vital needs of our civilization and follow the examples biology can give us. Many of these changes can be implemented right now and could be greatly supplemented and developed in an anarchist society and indeed some of these concepts and ideas can indeed form the basis of an anarchist revolution.

The modern cityscape is one that can be characterized as a concrete jungle or an ecological wasteland. Today’s cities are deserts and suck the life out of their surroundings. They are in their current state absolutely dependent and inefficient. From the anarchist perspective, they are abominations that serve as giant machines to centralize wealth and resources to unjustly keep but a minority of a few in a life of luxury.