Politics
General
(an mess of old and new, slowly totally redoing)
See also Organisation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics - the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.
It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and nonviolent, or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation. The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches have fundamentally differing views on whether it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether conflict or co-operation is more essential to it.
A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising internal and external force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.
In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders. An election is usually a competition between different parties. A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_sociology - an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how power is distributed and changes throughout and amongst societies, political sociology's focus ranges across individual families to the state as sites of social and political conflict and power contestation.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_identity - a form of social identity marking membership of certain groups that share a common struggle for a certain form of power. This can include identification with a political party, but also positions on specific political issues, nationalism, inter-ethnic relations or more abstract ideological themes.
Political identities develop in individuals and evolve over time. A significant amount of research has focused on parental influence on the political identity of individuals. In addition to the socialisation of politics through the family, the influence on the political identity of personal factors such as genetics or certain personality traits, has also been the subject of much debate. In the course of their lives and experiences, some individuals take particular political trajectories and sometimes change their political identity. Militancy and radicalisation are two forms and expressions that political identities can take. Apart from family and personal influences, there are also more general factors that can have an impact on an individual's political identity. Every person is part of a historical context, a culture, a political system and a generation, all of which influence the way people perceive politics. Political identities underpin a range of behaviours and have many implications, such as collective political mobilisation and voting behaviour.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_psychology - an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens for understanding psychology. As an interdisciplinary field, political psychology borrows from a wide range of disciplines, including: anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, media, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
Political psychology aims to understand interdependent relationships between individuals and contexts that are influenced by beliefs, motivation, perception, cognition, information processing, learning strategies, socialization and attitude formation. Political psychological theory and approaches have been applied in many contexts such as: leadership role; domestic and foreign policy making; behavior in ethnic violence, war and genocide; group dynamics and conflict; racist behavior; voting attitudes and motivation; voting and the role of the media; nationalism; and political extremism. In essence political psychologists study the foundations, dynamics, and outcomes of political behavior using cognitive and social explanations.
to sort
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_panchayat - (transl. 'Village council') is a basic governing institution in Indian villages. It is a political institution, acting as cabinet of the village. The Gram sabha work as the general body of the Gram panchayat. The members of the Gram panchayat are elected directly by the people. The President of Gram Panchayat is called Pradhan or SarpanchThere are about 250,000 Gram panchayats in India.
- PDF: The Case for Universalism - An assessment of the evidence on the effectiveness and efficiency of the universal welfare state. Mike Danson, Robin McAlpine, Paul Spicker and Willie Sullivan. December 2012
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-neoliberalism - a set of ideals characterized by its rejection of neoliberalism and the economic policies embodied by the Washington Consensus. While there is scholarly debate about the defining features of post-neoliberalism, it is often associated with economic policies of nationalization and wealth redistribution, opposition to deregulation, financialization, free trade, and the weakening of labour relations, and left-wing politics more generally. The movement has had particular influence in Latin America, where the "Pink Tide" brought about a substantial shift towards left-wing wing governments in the 2000s. According to Roger Merino, examples of post-neoliberal governments include the former governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_tide - or turn to the left, is the revolutionary wave and perception of a turn towards left-wing governments in Latin American democracies straying away from the neoliberal economic model. As a term, both phrases are used in contemporary 21st-century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to refer to the shift representing a move toward more progressive economic policies and coinciding with a parallel trend of democratization of Latin America following decades of inequality
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_wave - or revolutionary decade is one series of revolutions occurring in various locations within a similar time-span. In many cases, past revolutions and revolutionary waves have inspired current ones, or an initial revolution has inspired other concurrent "affiliate revolutions" with similar aims. The causes of revolutionary waves have become the subjects of study by historians and political philosophers, including Robert Roswell Palmer, Crane Brinton, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hoffer, and Jacques Godechot. Writers and activists, including Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind, have used the phrase "revolutionary wave" to describe discrete revolutions happening within a short time-span.
Political science
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_science - a social science discipline that deals with systems of government and the analysis of political activity and political behavior. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics which is commonly thought of as the determining of the distribution of power and resources.
Political scientists "see themselves engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions, and from these revelations they attempt to construct general principles about the way the world of politics works." Political science draws upon the fields of economics, law, sociology, history, anthropology, public administration, public policy, national politics, international relations, comparative politics, psychology, political organization, and political theory.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_studies - a subdiscipline of political science that includes the analysis of the process of policymaking (the policy process, and the contents of policy (policy analysis). Policy analysis includes substantive area research (such as health or education policy), program evaluation and impact studies, and policy design. It "involves systematically studying the nature, causes, and effects of alternative public policies, with particular emphasis on determining the policies that will achieve given goals." It emerged in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_analysis - or public policy analysis is a technique used in the public administration sub-field of political science to enable civil servants, nonprofit organizations, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials. People who regularly use policy analysis skills and techniques on the job, particularly those who use it as a major part of their job duties are generally known by the title Policy Analyst. The process is also used in the administration of large organizations with complex policies. It has been defined as the process of "determining which of various policies will achieve a given set of goals in light of the relations between the policies and the goals." Policy analysis can be divided into two major fields: Analysis of existing policy, which is analytical and descriptive – it attempts to explain policies and their development Analysis for new policy, which is prescriptive – it is involved with formulating policies and proposals (for example: to improve social welfare,
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation - a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public sector and private sector, as well as the voluntary sector, stakeholders might be required to assess—under law or charter—or want to know whether the programs they are funding, implementing, voting for, receiving or opposing are producing the promised effect. To some degree, program evaluation falls under traditional cost–benefit analysis, concerning fair returns on the outlay of economic and other assets; however, social outcomes can be more complex to assess than market outcomes, and a different skillset is required. Considerations include how much the program costs per participant, program impact, how the program could be improved, whether there are better alternatives, if there are unforeseen consequences, and whether the program goals are appropriate and useful. Evaluators help to answer these questions. Best practice is for the evaluation to be a joint project between evaluators and stakeholders.
Program evaluations can involve both quantitative and qualitative methods of social research. People who do program evaluation come from many different backgrounds, such as sociology, psychology, economics, social work, as well as political science subfields such as public policy and public administration who have studied a similar methodology known as policy analysis. Some universities also have specific training programs, especially at the postgraduate level in program evaluation, for those who studied an undergraduate subject area lacking in program evaluation skills.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_politics - a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relating to political institutions, political behavior, conflict, and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics may be referred to by other names, such as comparative government.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window - the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after American policy analyst Joseph Overton, who stated that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) - the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective. More broadly, it may refer to the cultural appropriation of any subversive symbols or ideas by mainstream culture.The concept of recuperation was formulated by members of the Situationist International, its first published instance in 1960. The term conveys a negative connotation because recuperation generally bears the intentional consequence (whether perceived or not) of fundamentally altering the meaning behind radical ideas due to their appropriation or being co-opted into the dominant discourse. It was originally conceived as the opposite of their concept of détournement, in which images and other cultural artifacts are appropriated from mainstream sources and repurposed with radical intentions.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_political_theory - or explanatory political theory is the study of politics using formal methods such as social choice theory, game theory, and statistical analysis. In particular, social choice theoretic methods are often used to describe and (axiomatically) analyze the performance of rules or institutions. The outcomes of the rules or institutions described are then analyzed by game theory, where the individuals/parties/nations involved in a given interaction are modeled as rational agents playing a game, guided by self-interest. Based on this assumption, the outcome of the interactions can be predicted as an equilibrium of the game. The founder of the field was William H. Riker. In his book The Theory of Political Coalitions (1962), he applied the principles of game theory to the study of politics. The original creation of PPT was developed while Riker was the leader of Rochester School of Political Science, generating the Rochester School movement.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice - or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science". Its content includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents (voters, politicians, bureaucrats) and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways – using (for example) standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_choice_theory - a theoretical framework for analysis of combining individual opinions, preferences, interests, or welfares to reach a collective decision or social welfare in some sense. Whereas choice theory is concerned with individuals making choices based on their preferences, social choice theory is concerned with how to translate the preferences of individuals into the preferences of a group. A non-theoretical example of a collective decision is enacting a law or set of laws under a constitution. Another example is voting, where individual preferences over candidates are collected to elect a person that best represents the group's preferences.
Social choice blends elements of welfare economics and public choice theory. It is methodologically individualistic, in that it aggregates preferences and behaviors of individual members of society. Using elements of formal logic for generality, analysis proceeds from a set of seemingly reasonable axioms of social choice to form a social welfare function (or constitution). Results uncovered the logical incompatibility of various axioms, as in Arrow's theorem, revealing an aggregation problem and suggesting reformulation or theoretical triage in dropping some axiom(s).
Political systems and spectrums
- The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures - "During its current term, 460 deputies voted 5545 times since the 8th of November 2011. The Sejm website publishes the individual results of the votes as PDF files. I put the results into an SQLite database with an unholy hodgepodge of shell scripts, wget, pdftohtml, and Python. ... we can visualize 5539 dimensions of R in a much smaller number of dimensions" [1]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity - a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. For example, the intent of equal employment opportunity is that the important jobs in an organization should go to the people who are most qualified – persons most likely to perform ably in a given task – and not go to persons for reasons deemed arbitrary or irrelevant, such as circumstances of birth, upbringing, having well-connected relatives or friends, religion, sex, ethnicity, race, caste, or involuntary personal attributes such as disability, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kritarchy - also called kritocracy, was the system of rule by Biblical judges (שופטים, shoftim) in ancient Israel, started by Moses according to the Book of Exodus, before the establishment of a united monarchy under Saul. Because the name is a compound of the Greek words κριτής, krites ("judge") and ἄρχω, árkhō ("to rule"), its colloquial use has expanded to cover rule by judges in the modern sense as well. To contrast such a rule by (modern) judges with the actual form of the 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, judge Albie Sachs coined the term dikastocracy for it, from δικαστής ("judge"), rejecting the coinage "juristocracy" for being an admixture of Latin and Greek. The word "jurocracy" has also been used by others.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_unitarism - designates various theories, concepts or policies that advocate or enforce a fully unified and centralized system of government, with ultimate goal in creating a unitary state. In practice, unitarism is often manifested as a political doctrine or movement within complex political entities (confederations, federations, and other political unions), advocating for the highest degree of political integration and unification, beyond mere administrative centralization. One of the main goals of political unitarists (proponents of unitarism) is to abolish or substantially suppress all forms of regional self-government and autonomy, by transferring powers of confederated states, federal units, autonomous regions or cantons directly to the central government. Unitarization and regionalization are often confused with centralization and decentralization, respectively.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state - A unitary system of government can be considered to be the opposite of federalism. In federations, the provincial/regional governments share powers with the central government as equal actors through a written constitution, to which the consent of both is required to make amendments. This means that the sub-national units have a right to existence and powers that cannot be unilaterally changed by the central government. There are, however, similarities between federalism and devolution. Devolution within a unitary state, like federalism, may be symmetrical, with all sub-national units having the same powers and status, or asymmetric, with sub-national units varying in their powers and status. Many unitary states have no areas possessing a degree of autonomy. In such countries, sub-national regions cannot decide their own laws. Examples are Romania, Ireland and Norway.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_federalism - refers to a federal system of government in which each constituent state to the federation possess equal powers. In a symmetric federalism no distinction is made between constituent states. This is in contrast to asymmetric federalism, where a distinction is made between constituent states.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_federalism - or asymmetrical federalism is found in a federation or other types of union in which different constituent states possess different powers: one or more of the substates has considerably more autonomy than the other substates, although they have the same constitutional status. This is in contrast to symmetric federalism, where no distinction is made between constituent states. As a result, it is frequently proposed as a solution to the dissatisfaction that arises when one or more constituent units feel significantly different needs from the others, as the result of an ethnic, linguistic or cultural difference.
Liberty
- Home page | libcom.org - a resource for everyone fighting to improve their lives, communities and working conditions.
Power
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political) - the capacity of an individual to influence the actions, beliefs, or conduct (behaviour) of others. The term authority is often used for power that is perceived as legitimate by the social structure.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authority_(sociology) - the legitimate or socially approved power which one person or a group possesses and practices over another. The element of legitimacy is vital to the notion of authority and is the main means by which authority is distinguished from the more general concept of power. Power can be exerted by the use of force or violence. Authority, by contrast, depends on the acceptance by subordinates of the right of those above them to give them orders or directives.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_distance - refers to the unequal distribution of power between parties, and the level of acceptance of that inequality; whether it is in the family, workplace, or other organizations.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy - a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by a radical feminist Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, adultism, adultcentrism, economic injustice, prison-industrial complex, ephebiphobia, gerontophobia, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism, speciesism and other forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_mobilization - the process of getting resources from the resource provider, using different mechanisms, to implement an organization's predetermined goals. It is a theory that is used in the study of social movements and argues that the success of social movements depends on resources (time, money, skills, etc.) and the ability to use them. It deals in acquiring the needed resources in a timely, cost-effective manner. Resource mobilization advocates having the right type of resource at the right time at the right price by making the right use of acquired resources thus ensuring optimum usage of the same.
It is a major sociological theory in the study of social movements that emerged in the 1970s. It emphasizes the ability of a movement's members to acquire resources and to mobilize people towards accomplishing the movement's goals. In contrast to the traditional collective behaviour theory, which views social movements as deviant and irrational, resource mobilization sees them as rational social institutions that are created and populated by social actors with a goal of taking political action.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political - also termed The private is political, is a political argument used as a rallying slogan of student movement and second-wave feminism from the late 1960s. It underscored the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures. In the context of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it was a challenge to the nuclear family and family values. The phrase has been repeatedly described as a defining characterization of second-wave feminism, radical feminism, women's studies, or feminism in general.
The phrase was popularized by the publication of a 1969 essay by feminist Carol Hanisch under the title "The Personal is Political" in 1970, but she disavows authorship of the phrase, as she says that "As far as I know, that was done by Notes from the Second Year editors Shulie Firestone and Anne Koedt after Kathie Sarachild brought it to their attention as a possible paper to be printed in that early collection". According to Kerry Burch, Shulamith Firestone, Robin Morgan, and other feminists given credit for originating the phrase have also declined authorship. "Instead," Burch writes, "they cite millions of women in public and private conversations as the phrase's collective authors." Gloria Steinem has likened claiming authorship of the phrase to claiming authorship of "World War II."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_rights - or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activism - consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range from mandate building in a community , petitioning elected officials, running or contributing to a political campaign, preferential patronage of businesses, and demonstrative forms of activism like rallies, street marches, strikes, sit-ins, or hunger strikes.
Activism may be performed on a day-to-day basis in a wide variety of ways, including through the creation of art , computer hacking , or simply in how one chooses to spend their money . For example, the refusal to buy clothes or other merchandise from a company as a protest against the exploitation of workers by that company could be considered an expression of activism. However, the most highly visible and impactful activism often comes in the form of collective action, in which numerous individuals coordinate an act of protest together in order to make a bigger impact. Collective action that is purposeful, organized, and sustained over a period of time becomes known as a social movement.
Historically, activists have used literature, including pamphlets, tracts, and books to disseminate or propagate their messages and attempt to persuade their readers of the justice of their cause. Research has now begun to explore how contemporary activist groups use social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action combining politics with technology.
- The Four Types of Activist - Everything2.com - According to the doctrine of most PR firms, there are four basic types of activists - radicals, opportunists, idealists and realists. PR firms deal with antagonistic movements by dividing the different types, using different tactics for each group:
- Isolate the radicals.
- Get the opportunists on the payroll if needed, or ignore them.
- Cultivate/educate the idealists and convert them to realists.
- Co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_bargaining - a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.
The union may negotiate with a single employer or may negotiate with a group of businesses, depending on the country, to reach an industry-wide agreement. Collective bargaining consists of the process of negotiation between representatives of a union and employers in respect of the terms and conditions of employment of employees, such as wages, hours of work, working conditions, grievance procedures, and about the rights and responsibilities of trade unions. The parties often refer to the result of the negotiation as a collective bargaining agreement or as a collective employment agreement.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement - consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. The trade union movement (trade unionism) consists of the collective organisation of working people developed to represent and campaign for better working conditions and treatment from their employers and, by the implementation of labour and employment laws, from their governments. The standard unit of organisation is the trade union. The political labour movement in many countries includes a political party that represents the interests of employees, often known as a "labour party" or "workers' party". Many individuals and political groups otherwise considered to represent ruling classes may be part of, and active in, the labour movement. The labour movement developed as a response to the industrial capitalism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism.
- Progressive Politics for a New Era - Jon Cruddas MP visits the RSA to discuss unleashing creativity in a fast paced world, to enable people to shape a better future for themselves and others.
- The Tyranny Of Structurelessness - Originally published in The Second Wave vol. 2, no. 1. (1972) [2]
- Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India - The Atlantic - By rejecting patent applications, developing countries have kept down the costs of much-needed medications. Can they continue to do so without harming efforts to develop new drugs?
- What if jobs are not the solution but the problem? | Aeon Essays - Economists believe in full employment. Americans think that work builds character. But what if jobs aren’t working anymore? [3]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully_pulpit - a conspicuous position that provides an opportunity to speak out and be listened to. This term was coined by United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who referred to his office as a "bully pulpit", by which he meant a terrific platform from which to advocate an agenda. Roosevelt used the word bully as an adjective meaning "superb" or "wonderful", a more common usage at that time.
- Related projects - Metagovernment - Government of, by, and for all the people - Collaborative governance and related ideas of direct democracy through Web 2.0 technologies are rapidly emerging. As these concepts are explored, numerous groups are forming, each with various approaches. Historical
- Networked Politics | About - Historical
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity - a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as "the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level". The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, neuropsychology, cybernetics, management and in military command (mission command). The OED adds that the term "subsidiarity" in English follows the early German usage of "Subsidiarität". More distantly, it is derived from the Latin verb subsidio (to aid or help), and the related noun subsidium (aid or assistance). The development of the concept of subsidiarity has roots in the natural law philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and was mediated by the social scientific theories of Luigi Taparelli, SJ, in his 1840–43 natural law treatise on the human person in society. In that work, Taparelli established the criteria of just social order, which he referred to as "hypotactical right" and which came to be termed subsidiarity following German influences.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism) - The term subsidiarity as employed in Catholic social thought was inspired by the teaching of Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, who served as Bishop of Mainz in the mid- to late 19th century. It is most well-known, however, from its subsequent incorporation into Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo anno. This encyclical’s formulation of subsidiarity is the touchstone from which further interpretations tend to depart: "Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them." As with many social encyclicals in the modern period, this one occurs in the historical context of the intensifying struggle between communist and capitalist ideologies, exactly forty years—hence the title—after the Vatican's first public stance on the issue in Rerum novarum. Promulgated in 1931, Quadragesimo anno is a response to German National Socialism (Nazism) and Soviet communism, on one hand, and to Western European and American capitalist individualism on the other.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(postcolonialism) - designates and identifies the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire. Antonio Gramsci coined the term subaltern to identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and displaces specific people and social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, in order to deny their agency and voices in colonial politics. The terms subaltern and subaltern studies entered the vocabulary of post-colonial studies through the works of the Subaltern Studies Group of historians who explored the political-actor role of the common people who constitute the mass population, rather than re-explore the political-actor roles of the social and economic elites in the history of India.
As a method of investigation and analysis of the political role of subaltern populations, Karl Marx's theory of history presents colonial history from the perspective of the proletariat; that the who? and the what? of social class are determined by the economic relations among the social classes of a society. Since the 1970s, the term subaltern denoted the colonized peoples of the Indian subcontinent, imperial history told from below, from the perspective of the colonised peoples, rather than from the perspective of the colonisers from Western Europe. By the 1980s, the Subaltern Studies method of historical enquiry was applied to South Asian historiography. As a method of intellectual discourse, the concept of the subaltern originated as a Eurocentric method of historical enquiry for the study of non-Western peoples (of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East) and their relation to Western Europe as the centre of world history. Subaltern studies became the model for historical research of the subaltern's experience of colonialism in the Indian subcontinent.
Momentum model
- Momentum Model - a synthesis of best practices from diverse sources including: research from the field of civil resistance, social movement theory, labor and community organizing, organic systems theory, and the long history of socialist strategy as well as through on-the-ground experimentation within our own community of practice. We see ourselves as descendants and students of social movements from around the world, such as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the Civil Rights movement in the US, the Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe, and decolonization efforts throughout the Global South.
- What is Frontloading? — Momentum - a term coined by Paul Engler, but almost all successful movements and campaigns have engaged in serious, strategic planning of some sort. This particular process was influenced by the kinds of strategic planning used in the Indian independence movement, Otpor, and the civil rights movement, as well as organizers such as Marshall Ganz and Bill Moyers. Frontloading was translated into the Momentum Community by Cosecha, who then coached IfNotNow, who in turn coached Sunrise, who in turn coached Dissenters and the list goes on and on. But
Participation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_control - is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, distributists and Christian democrats, and has been combined with various socialist and mixed economy systems.
Workers' councils are a form of workers' control. Council communism, such as in the early Soviet Union, advocates workers' control through workers' councils and factory committees. Syndicalism advocates workers' control through trade unions. Guild socialism advocates workers' control through a revival of the guild system. Participatory economics represents a recent variation on the idea of workers' control.
Workers' control can be contrasted to control of the economy via the state, such as nationalization and central planning versus control of the means of production by owners, which workers can achieve through employer provided stock purchases, direct stock purchases, etc., as found in capitalism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_self-management - also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by democratic, libertarian and market socialists as well as anarchists and communists.
There are many variations of self-management. In some variants, all the worker-members manage the enterprise directly through assemblies while in other forms workers exercise management functions indirectly through the election of specialist managers. Self-management may include worker supervision and oversight of an organization by elected bodies, the election of specialized managers, or self-directed management without any specialized managers as such. The goals of self-management are to improve performance by granting workers greater autonomy in their day-to-day operations, boosting morale, reducing alienation and eliminating exploitation when paired with employee ownership.
An enterprise that is self-managed is referred to as a labour-managed firm. Self-management refers to control rights within a productive organization, being distinct from the questions of ownership and what economic system the organization operates under. Self-management of an organization may coincide with employee ownership of that organization, but self-management can also exist in the context of organizations under public ownership and to a limited extent within private companies in the form of co-determination and worker representation on the board of directors.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance - also known as open governance and open politics, is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry, employing their collective wisdom to benefit the decision-making process and improve democracy. Theories on how to constrain, limit or enable this participation vary. Accordingly, there is no one dominant theory of how to go about authoring legislation with this approach. There are a wide array of projects and movements which are working on building open-source governance systems.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy - a blend of the terms electronic and democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is credited to digital activist Steven Clift. By using 21st-century ICT, e-democracy seeks to enhance democracy, including aspects like civic technology and E-government. Proponents argue that by promoting transparency in decision-making processes, e-democracy can empower all citizens to observe and understand the proceedings. Also, if they possess overlooked data, perspectives, or opinions, they can contribute meaningfully. This contribution extends beyond mere informal disconnected debate; it facilitates citizen engagement in the proposal, development, and actual creation of a country's laws. In this way, e-democracy has the potential to incorporate crowdsourced analysis more directly into the policy-making process.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-government - short for electronic government) is the use of technological communications devices, such as computers and the Internet, to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offers new opportunities for more direct and convenient citizen access to government and for government provision of services directly to citizens. The term consists of the digital interactions between a citizen and their government (C2G), between governments and other government agencies (G2G), between government and citizens (G2C), between government and employees (G2E), and between government and businesses/commerces (G2B). E-government delivery models can be broken down into the following categories: This interaction consists of citizens communicating with all levels of government (city, state/province, national, and international), facilitating citizen involvement in governance using information and communication technology (ICT) (such as computers and websites) and business process re-engineering (BPR). Brabham and Guth (2017) interviewed the third party designers of e-government tools in North America about the ideals of user interaction that they build into their technologies, which include progressive values, ubiquitous participation, geolocation, and education of the public.
Other definitions stray from the idea that technology is an object and defines e-government simply as facilitators or instruments and focus on specific changes in Public Administration issues
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_political_campaign - open-source politics, or Politics 2.0, is the idea that social networking and e-participation technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns. Netroots evangelists and web consultants predict a wave of popular democracy as fundraisers meet on MySpace or Facebook, YouTubers crank out attack ads and bloggers do opposition research. Typically these terms describe short-term limited-life efforts to achieve a specific goal. Longer term projects involving embedded institutions (of journalism, parties, government itself) are more often called "open-source governance" projects. All open politics share some very basic assumptions however including the belief that online deliberation can improve decisions.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-participation - e-participation) refers to the use of ICT in facilitating citizen participation in government-related processes, encompassing areas such as administration, service delivery, decision-making, and policy-making.
- Policy Lab - Our mission is to radically improve policy making through design, innovation and people-centred approaches. We bring multidisciplinary expertise to help teams understand the present, imagine the future and design ways to achieve the policy impact they intend. We were set up in 2014 as part of the Civil Service Reform plan to make policy making more open and continue to work in support of government reform to create A Modern Civil Service.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_of_free_and_open-source_software_by_public_institutions - The use of free software instead of proprietary software can give institutions better control over information technology. A growing number of public institutions have started a transition to free-software solutions. This grants independence and can also address the often-argued need for public access to publicly funded developments. This is the only way that public services can ensure that citizen data is handled in a trustworthy manner since non-free software doesn't allow total control (or even knowledge) over the employed functions of the needed programs.
Transparency / openness
See Open data
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(behavior) - As an ethic that spans science, engineering, business, and the humanities, transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. Transparency implies openness, communication, and accountability.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_government - the governing doctrine which maintains that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction, it opposes reason of state and other considerations which have tended to legitimize extensive state secrecy. The origins of open-government arguments can be dated to the time of the European Age of Enlightenment, when philosophers debated the proper construction of a then nascent democratic society. It is also increasingly being associated with the concept of democratic reform. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 for example advocates for public access to information as a criterion for ensuring accountable and inclusive institutions.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Initiative - an effort by the administration of President of the United States Barack Obama to "[create] an unprecedented level of openness in Government.". The directive starting this initiative was issued on January 20, 2009, Obama's first day in office.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Partnership - a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national and sub-national governments to promote open government, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. In the spirit of multi-stakeholder collaboration, OGP is overseen by a steering committee including representatives of governments and civil society organizations.
Reform and change
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountability_for_reasonableness - an ethical framework that describes the conditions of a fair decision-making process. It focuses on how decisions should be made and why these decisions are ethical. It was developed by Norman Daniels and James Sabin and is often applied in health policy and bioethics. The concept of accountability for reasonableness emphasises that decision-making processes should be fair, transparent, and inclusive when making decisions about the allocation of limited healthcare resources, such as funding for medical treatments, medical services, or health programs.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reformist_reform - also referred to as abolitionist reform, anti-capitalist reform, revolutionary reform, structural reform and transformative reform, is a reform that "is conceived, not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands". On the other hand, reformist reforms essentially maintain the status quo and do not threaten the existing structure. These have been described as reforms that rationalize or "fine-tune the status quo" by implementing modifications "from the top down", but that fail to address root causes of the issue. As described by philosopher André Gorz, who coined the term non-reformist reform, non-reformist reforms in a capitalist system are anti-capitalist reforms, or reforms that do not base their validity and their right to exist "on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationale", but rather on human ones.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_opportunity - also known as the political process theory or political opportunity structure, is an approach of social movements that is heavily influenced by political sociology. It argues that success or failure of social movements is affected primarily by political opportunities. Social theorists Peter Eisinger, Sidney Tarrow, David S. Meyer and Doug McAdam are considered among the most prominent supporters of the theory.
Prefigurative
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefigurative_politics - the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement [...] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal". Besides this definition, Leach also gave light to the definition of the concept stating that the term "refers to a political orientation based on the premise that the ends a social movement achieves are fundamentally shaped by the means it employs, and that movement should therefore do their best to choose means that embody or prefigure the kind of society they want to bring about". Prefigurativism is the attempt to enact prefigurative politics.
- Prefigurative Politics and Design - OCAD University, July 22-23, 2021, Pivot 2021, Virtual Conference, Alix GERBER, Designing Radical Futures
"It is difficult to imagine what life might be like without capitalism, patriarchy, and modernism, yet these systems did not always exist: they were built. As professional designers who want to work towards something different, what can we do? Some have turned to prefigurative politics for a path forward. Prefiguration is a political strategy of working towards social transformation by “building the new world in the shell of the old”. For example: solidarity economies prefigure an economy based in cooperation rather than competition through shared ownership of production; and transformative justice initiatives prefigure a world without police by finding new ways for people to keep each other safe. These efforts question the fundamental values and beliefs underlying the oppressive systems we rely on today by building something different. This paper grapples with questions like: How have professional designers worked with prefigurative projects in the past? What roles do designers think we could play in prefigurative projects? When designerly frameworks and methods, timelines, partnerships and outcomes carry the baggage of an industrial field born out of capitalism and modernism, is it possible for a design practice to contribute towards building social systems based in fundamentally different values?"
- The prefigurative politics of place-making: Analysis of a neighbourhood-based campaign for a social centre - ScienceDirect - This article analyses the production of meaning embedded in places through prefigurative practices. Although the use of space by activist groups is widely studied in the sociology of social movements and urban geography, this article extends the body of literature on place-making by analysing the prefigurative dimension between militant practices and living spaces. Drawing on walking interviews with Montreal's activists that campaigned for a social centre in Canada, this article argues that the strategies inform place-making of local grassroots mobilisations that aimed to develop urban alternatives, and that the meaning attributed to places depends on the individual and collective experience of activists engaging in prefigurative politics. In this sense, place-making derives from the lived collective experience therein and the individual's treatment of these spaces. The results show that the repetition of the action, as well as its emotional and symbolic intensity, are factors that favour the contribution of prefigurative practices to the place-making process.
- PDF: Rethinking Prefigurative Politics: Introduction to the Special Thematic Section - This special thematic section responds to the 21st century proliferation of social movements characterised by the slogans ‘another world is possible’ and ‘be the change you want to see’. It explores prefigurative politics as a means of instantiating radical social change in a context of widening global inequalities, climate change, and the crises and recoveries of neoliberal global capitalism. ‘Prefigurative politics’ refers to a range of social experiments that both critique the status quo and offer alternatives by implementing radically democratic practices in pursuit of social justice. This collection of articles makes the case for psychologists to engage with prefigurative politics as sites of psychological and social change, in the dual interests of understanding the world and changing it. The articles bridge psychology and politics in three different ways. One group of articles brings a psychological lens to political phenomena, arguing that attention to the emotional, relational and intergroup dynamics of prefigurative politics is required to understand their trajectories, challenges, and impacts. A second group focuses a political lens on social settings traditionally framed as psychological sites of well-being, enabling an understanding of their political nature. The third group addresses the ‘border tensions’ of the psychological and the political, contextualising and historicising the instantiation of prefigurative ideals and addressing tensions that arise between utopian ideals and various internal and external constraints. This introduction to the special section explores the concept and contemporary debates concerning prefigurative politics, outlines the rationale for a psychological engagement with this phenomenon, and presents the articles in the special thematic section. The general, prefigurative, aim is to advance psychology’s contribution to rethinking and remaking the world as it could be, not only documenting the world as it is.
Dual power
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_power_(leftist_theory) - a term first used by Vladimir Lenin, although conceptually first outlined by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, which described a situation in the wake of the February Revolution in which two powers, the workers councils (or Soviets, particularly the Petrograd Soviet) and the official state apparatus of the Provisional Government coexisted with each other and competed for legitimacy. Lenin argued that this essentially unstable situation constituted a unique opportunity for the Soviets to seize power by smashing the Provisional Government and establishing themselves as the basis of a new form of state power. This notion has informed the strategies of subsequent communist-led revolutions, including the Chinese Revolution led by Mao.
Libertarian socialists have more recently appropriated the term to refer to the nonviolent strategy of achieving a libertarian socialist economy and polity by means of incrementally establishing and then networking institutions of direct participatory democracy to contest the existing power structures of state and capitalism. This does not necessarily mean disengagement with existing institutions; for example, Yates McKee describes a dual power approach as "forging alliances and supporting demands on existing institutions — elected officials, public agencies, universities, workplaces, banks, corporations, museums — while at the same time developing self-organized counter-institutions." In this context, the strategy itself is sometimes also referred to as "counterpower" to differentiate it from the term's Leninist origins.
Basic income
Democracy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting - also known as preferential voting or ranked choice voting, pertains to any voting system where voters use a rank to order candidates or options—in a sequence from first, second, third, and onwards—on their ballots. Ranked voting systems vary based on the ballot marking process, how preferences are tabulated and counted, the number of seats available for election, and whether voters are allowed to rank candidates equally.
- http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/epi/summary/v005/5.1.estlund.html
- http://people.su.se/~guarr/Demokratikurs/List%20C%20and%20Goodin%20R%20on%20Epistemic%20Democracy%20Generalizing%20the%20Condorcet%20Jury%20Theorem.pdf
- http://www.stolaf.edu/people/fuerstei/epistemicdem.pdf
- http://www.trinitinture.com/documents/martimarmol.pdf
Delegative
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegate_model_of_representation - a model of a representative democracy. In this model, constituents elect their representatives as delegates for their constituency. These delegates act only as a mouthpiece for the wishes of their constituency/state and have no autonomy from the constituency only the autonomy to vote for the actual representatives of the state. This model does not provide representatives the luxury of acting in their own conscience and is bound by imperative mandate. Essentially, the representative acts as the voice of those who are not present.
- The Dominance of the Activerts - One of the great failures of the German Green movement was the day when it had to admit its approach to direct democracy had failed. After over ten years of practice and even taking it into the Bundestag, the Green Party is now among the most vehement advocates of representative democracy. What happened? What went wrong? Continuous direct democracy had led to the 'dictatorship of the active ones,' or as some people in the Occupy movement put it, the 'domination of the extroverts.' Let me discuss the problem and the solution. This doesn't just affect political parties, it's about any kind of association of humans.
- DemocracyOS - an online space for deliberation and voting on political proposals. The software aims to stimulate better arguments and come to better rulings.
Semi-democratic
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy - a mode of governance close to Caesarism, Bonapartism or caudillismo with a strong leader in a newly created otherwise democratic government. The concept arose from Argentinian political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell, who notes that representative democracy as it exists is usually linked solely to highly developed capitalist countries. However, newly installed democracies do not seem to be on a path of becoming fully representative democracies. O'Donnell calls the former delegative democracies, for they are not fully consolidated democracies but may be enduring.
For a representative democracy to exist, there must be an important interaction effect. The successful cases have featured a decisive coalition of broadly supported political leaders who take great care in creating and strengthening democratic political institutions. By contrast, the delegative form is partially democratic, for the president has a free rein to act and justify his or her acts in the name of the people. The president can "govern as he sees fit" even if it does not resemble promises made while running for election. The president claims to represent the whole nation rather than just a political party, embodying even the Congress and the judiciary.
O'Donnell's notion of delegative democracy has been criticized as being misleading, because he renders the delegative model that is core to many current democratic governments worldwide into a negative concept.
Republicanism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism - a political ideology centred on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it emphasizes the idea of self-rule and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. It has had different definitions and interpretations which vary significantly based on historical context and methodological approach.
Republicanism may also refer to the non-ideological scientific approach to politics and governance. As the republican thinker and second president of the United States John Adams stated in the introduction to his famous A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, the "science of politics is the science of social happiness" and a republic is the form of government arrived at when the science of politics is appropriately applied to the creation of a rationally designed government. Rather than being ideological, this approach focuses on applying a scientific methodology to the problems of governance through the rigorous study and application of past experience and experimentation in governance. This is the approach that may best be described to apply to republican thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli , John Adams, and James Madison.
The word "republic" derives from the Latin noun-phrase res publica , which referred to the system of government that emerged in the 6th century BCE following the expulsion of the kings from Rome by Lucius Junius Brutus and Collatinus.
This form of government in the Roman state collapsed in the latter part of the 1st century BCE, giving way to what was a monarchy in form, if not in name. Republics recurred subsequently, with, for example, Renaissance Florence or early modern Britain. The concept of a republic became a powerful force in Britain's North American colonies, where it contributed to the American Revolution. In Europe, it gained enormous influence through the French Revolution and through the First French Republic of 1792–1804.
State
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_as_a_Vocation - an essay by German economist and sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). It originated in the second lecture of a series (the first was Science as a Vocation) he gave in Munich to the "Free (i.e. Non-incorporated) Students Union" of Bavaria on 28 January 1919. This happened during the German Revolution when Munich itself was briefly the capital of the Bavarian Socialist Republic. Weber gave the speech based on handwritten notes which were transcribed by a stenographer. The essay was published in an extended version in July 1919, and translated into English only after World War II. The essay is today regarded as a classic work of political science and sociology.
Parliamentary
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system - or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support of the legislature, typically a parliament, to which it is accountable. In a parliamentary system, the head of state is usually a person distinct from the head of government. This is in contrast to a presidential system, where the head of state often is also the head of government and, most importantly, where the executive does not derive its democratic legitimacy from the legislature.
Countries with parliamentary systems may be constitutional monarchies, where a monarch is the head of state while the head of government is almost always a member of parliament, or parliamentary republics, where a mostly ceremonial president is the head of state while the head of government is regularly from the legislature. In a few parliamentary republics, among some others, the head of government is also head of state, but is elected by and is answerable to parliament. In bicameral parliaments, the head of government is generally, though not always, a member of the lower house.
Parliamentarianism is the dominant form of government in Europe, with 32 of its 50 sovereign states being parliamentarian. It is also common in the Caribbean, being the form of government of 10 of its 13 island states, and in Oceania. Elsewhere in the world, parliamentary countries are less common, but they are distributed through all continents, most often in former colonies of the British Empire that subscribe to a particular brand of parliamentarianism known as the Westminster system.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty - also called parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy, is a concept in the constitutional law of some parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation and so it is not bound by written law or by precedent.
In some countries, parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers, which limits the legislature's scope often to general law-making and makes it subject to external judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances. However, in such countries the legislative body still retains the sovereignty by the possibility to alter the constitution, which usually requires greater majority, often 2/3 of votes instead of 1/2.
Collectivism
See Living
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivism - any philosophic, political, religious, economic, or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human. Collectivism is a basic cultural element that exists as the reverse of individualism in human nature (in the same way high context culture exists as the reverse of low context culture). Collectivist orientations stress the importance of cohesion within social groups (such as an "in-group", in what specific context it is defined) and in some cases, the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists often focus on community, society, nation or country. It has been used as an element in many different and diverse types of government and political, economic and educational philosophies throughout history and most human societies in practice contain elements of both individualism and collectivism. Some examples of collectivist cultures include Pakistan, India and Japan.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism - a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual man and woman and the community. Although the community might be a family unit, communitarianism usually is understood, in the wider, philosophical sense, as a collection of interactions, among a community of people in a given place (geographical location), or among a community who share an interest or who share a history. Communitarian philosophy is derived from the assumption that a person's individuality is the product of community relationships, rather than a product derived only from personal traits.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-communalism - an environmental philosophy based on ideals of simple living, self-sufficiency, sustainability, and local economies. Eco-communalists envision a future in which the economic system of capitalism is replaced with a global web of economically interdependent and interconnected small local communities. Decentralized government, a focus on agriculture, biodiversity, ethnic diversity, and green economics are all tenets of eco-communalism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model - is consensus decision-making, based on the acclaimed Dutch version of consensus-based economic and social policy making in the 1980s and 1990s. It gets its name from the Dutch word (polder) for tracts of land enclosed by dikes.The polder model has been described as "a pragmatic recognition of pluriformity" and "cooperation despite differences". It is thought that the Dutch politician Ina Brouwer was the first to use the term poldermodel, in her 1990 article "Het socialisme als poldermodel?" (Socialism as polder model?), although it is uncertain whether she coined the term or simply seems to have been the first to write it down.
Cooperativism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_federation - or secondary co-operative is a co-operative in which all members are, in turn, co-operatives. Historically, co-operative federations have predominantly come in the form of co-operative wholesale societies and co-operative unions. Co-operative federations are a means through which co-operatives can fulfill the sixth Co-operative Principle, co-operation among co-operatives. The International Co-operative Alliance notes that “Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_wholesale_society - or CWS, is a form of co-operative federation (that is, a co-operative in which all the members are co-operatives), in this case, the members are usually consumer cooperatives. According to co-operative economist Charles Gide, the aim of a co-operative wholesale society is to arrange “bulk purchases, and, if possible, organise production.” In other words, a co-operative wholesale society is a form of federal co-operative through which consumers co-operatives can collectively purchase goods at wholesale prices, and in some cases collectively own factories or farms.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_cooperative / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_farm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group - or as Co-op, is a British consumer co-operative with a group of retail businesses including grocery retail and wholesale, legal services, funerals and insurance retailing. The Co-operative Group has over 65,000 employees across the UK. The group has its headquarters in One Angel Square in Manchester.
The Group also manages the Co-operative Federal Trading Services, formerly the Co-operative Retail Trading Group (CRTG), which sources and promotes goods for food stores of the co-operative movements of the UK, notably under mandate to deploy buying power to develop and source ethical goods, including ecologically less damaging, fairly traded, consumer focused lines, following the legacy of a strong stance against the practices of the confederate slaveholders and cotton. The Group formally managed a retail buying group in travel, workplace clothing and other commodities, including wheat. Today The Group also manages a federal buying group for end of life care, including more than 40% of coffins prepared for clients at U.K cooperatives, produced in union recognizing factories in England, from FCSC endorsed supplies of timber.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_Federal_Trading_Services - the central buying group for co-operative retail societies in the United Kingdom. It came into its current structure in 2015, though its predecessor was established in 1993, and it supplies almost all food bought for sale by the over 4,000 co-operative foodstores in the UK. The buying group is owned and controlled by each of its member societies but is managed by The Co-operative Group on their behalf. It operates by pooling the collective £8.5bn buying power for 18 co-operative societies in the UK, allowing them to negotiate better prices from suppliers, so as to compete effectively with other UK supermarket chains.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance - an insurance company owned entirely by its policyholders. It is a form of consumers' co-operative. Any profits earned by a mutual insurance company are either retained within the company or rebated to policyholders in the form of dividend distributions or reduced future premiums. In contrast, a stock insurance company is owned by investors who have purchased company stock; any profits generated by a stock insurance company are distributed to the investors without necessarily benefiting the policyholders.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative - or platform co-op, is a cooperatively owned, democratically governed business that establishes a computing platform, and uses a website, mobile app or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services. Platform cooperatives are an alternative to venture capital-funded platforms insofar as they are owned and governed by those who depend on them most—workers, users, and other relevant stakeholders.
- Rootstock - a social investment society set up as an initiative of the Radical Routes network of co-operatives. Radical Routes is a growing network of housing co-ops, co-operatively run social centres and workers' co-operatives working for social change. By making a socially responsible, ethical investment in Rootstock you will be helping to provide capital for people starting up housing and workers' co-ops and social centres in the UK.
We invite individuals and organisations to make ethical investments in Rootstock. Rootstock then invests money in Radical Routes. Radical Routes is then able to make loans to its member co-operatives. All Radical Routes co-operatives are fully mutual, not-for-profit organisations. Rootstock's ethical investment fund is responsible for helping to house hundreds of people and create bases from which people can work to change the world for the better.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune
See Living
Socialism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism - Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them. They differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, the degree to which they rely on markets or planning, how management is to be organised within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.
A socialist economic system is based on the organisational precept of production for use, meaning the production of goods and services to directly satisfy economic demand and human needs where objects are valued based on their use-value or utility, as opposed to being structured upon the accumulation of capital and production for profit. In the traditional conception of a socialist economy, coordination, accounting and valuation would be performed in kind (using physical quantities), by a common physical magnitude, or by a direct measure of labour-time in place of financial calculation. On distribution of output there have been two proposals, one which is based on the principle of to each according to his contribution and another on the principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The advisability, feasibility and exact methods of resource allocation and valuation are the subject of the socialist calculation debate.
The socialist political movement includes a diverse array of political philosophies. Core dichotomies within the socialist movement include the distinction between reformism and revolutionary socialism and between state socialism and libertarian socialism. State socialism calls for the nationalisation of the means of production as a strategy for implementing socialism, while libertarian socialists generally place their hopes in decentralized means of direct democracy such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions, and workers' councils coming from a general anti-authoritarian stance. Democratic socialism highlights the central role of democratic processes and political systems and is usually contrasted with non-democratic political movements that advocate socialism. Some socialists have adopted the causes of other social movements, such as environmentalism, feminism and liberalism.
Utopian
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism - the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction. Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism viewed utopian socialism as not being grounded in actual material conditions of existing society. These visions of ideal societies competed with revolutionary and social democratic movements.
As a term or label, utopian socialism is most often applied to, or used to define, those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label utopian by later socialists as a pejorative in order to imply naïveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic. A similar school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century which makes the case for socialism on moral grounds is ethical socialism.
One key difference between utopian socialists and other socialists such as most anarchists and Marxists is that utopian socialists generally do not believe any form of class struggle or social revolution is necessary for socialism to emerge. Utopian socialists believe that people of all classes can voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it is presented convincingly. They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society and that their small communities can demonstrate the feasibility of their plan for society. Because of this tendency, utopian socialism was also related to classical radicalism, a left-wing liberal ideology.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owenism - the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative movement. The Owenite movement undertook several experiments in the establishment of utopian communities organized according to communitarian and cooperative principles. One of the best known of these efforts, which were largely unsuccessful, was the project at New Harmony, Indiana, which started in 1825 and was abandoned by 1829. Owenism is also closely associated with the development of the British trade union movement, and with the spread of the Mechanics' Institute movement.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Warren - was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like James J. Martin and Peter Marshall among others as the first American anarchist (although Warren never used the term anarchism himself) and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, the first anarchist periodical published, was an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_the_limit_of_price - a maxim coined by Josiah Warren, indicating a (prescriptive) version of the labor theory of value. Warren maintained that the just compensation for labor (or for its product) could only be an equivalent amount of labor (or a product embodying an equivalent amount). Thus, profit, rent, and interest were considered unjust economic arrangements. As Samuel Edward Konkin III put it, "the labor theory of value recognizes no distinction between profit and plunder."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Time_Store - was the first in a series of retail stores created by American individualist anarchist Josiah Warren to test his economic labor theory of value. The experimental store operated from May 18, 1827 until May 1830. He sold things at-cost plus a small markup for his time. It is usually considered to be the first time alternative currency labor notes were used, and as such the first experiment in what would later be called mutualism. He also founded stores in New Harmony, Indiana and at Modern Times, Long Island. The store in Cincinnati closed in 1830 with Warren being satisfied he demonstrated running and managing a business without the "erection of any power over the individual". His theory — replacing money with time — was turned into an actual practical demonstration project. It was the first such activity, preceding similar labor notes in Europe by more than 20 years, and still has implications for other concepts of currency such as cryptocurrencies. Nonetheless, at the time it was the most popular mercantile institution in Cincinnati
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_Community_of_Modern_Times - was a Utopian community existing from 1851 to 1864 in what is now Brentwood, New York, United States. Founded by Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews , the community based its structure on Warren’s ideas of individual sovereignty and equitable commerce. Modern Times existed until 1864 when its citizens decided to change the name of the town to Brentwood. Writers have cited different reasons for the community’s failure.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Prosper_Considerant - was a French utopian socialist philosopher and economist who was a disciple of Charles Fourier.
- The Society for Utopian Studies - Founded in 1975, The Society for Utopian Studies (SUS) is an international, interdisciplinary association devoted to the study of utopianism in all its forms, with a particular emphasis on literary and experimental utopias. Scholars representing a wide variety of disciplines are active in the association, and approach utopian studies from such diverse backgrounds as American Studies, Architecture, the Arts, Classics, Cultural Studies, Economics, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Gender Studies, History, Languages and Literatures, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology and Urban Planning. Although many Society members are involved in social activism or communitarianism, the purpose of the Society itself is to study utopianism rather than to pursue utopian projects.
Mutualism / mutual aid
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid_(organization_theory) - a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions.
Revolutionary
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_socialism - a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests. Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe it is inevitable but not predetermined. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple political and social movements that may define "revolution" differently from one another. These include movements based on orthodox Marxist theory such as De Leonism, impossibilism and Luxemburgism, as well as movements based on Leninism and the theory of vanguardist-led revolution such as the Stalinism, Maoism, Marxism–Leninism and Trotskyism. Revolutionary socialism also includes other Marxist, Marxist-inspired and non-Marxist movements such as those found in democratic socialism, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and social democracy. Revolutionary socialism is contrasted with reformist socialism, especially the reformist wing of social democracy and other evolutionary approaches to socialism. Revolutionary socialism is opposed to social movements that seek to gradually ameliorate capitalism's economic and social problems through political reform.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_revolution - or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists and anarchists.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanquism - refers to a conception of revolution generally attributed to Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) which holds that socialist revolution should be carried out by a relatively small group of highly organised and secretive conspirators. Having seized power, the revolutionaries would then use the power of the state to introduce socialism. It is considered a particular sort of "putschism"—that is, the view that political revolution should take the form of a putsch or coup d'état. Blanquism is distinguished from other socialist currents (especially Marxist ones) in various ways: on the one hand, contrary to Marx, Blanqui did not believe in the predominant role of the working class, nor did he believe in popular movements—instead he believed that revolution should be carried out by a small group of professional, dedicated revolutionaries, who would establish a temporary dictatorship by force. This dictatorship would permit the implementation of the basis of a new order, after which power would then be handed to the people. In another respect, Blanqui was more concerned with the revolution itself rather than the future society that would result from it—if his thought was based on precise socialist principles, it rarely goes so far as to imagine a purely socialist society. For Blanquists, the overturning of the bourgeois social order and the revolution are ends sufficient in themselves, at least for their immediate purposes.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution - the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class. For theorists, these revolutions will not necessarily occur simultaneously, but where and when local conditions allow a revolutionary party to successfully replace bourgeois ownership and rule, and install a workers' state based on social ownership of the means of production. In most Marxist schools, such as Trotskyism and Communist Left, the essentially international character of the class struggle and the necessity of global scope are critical elements and a chief explanation of the failure of socialism in one country. The end goal of such internationally oriented revolutionary socialism is to achieve world socialism, and later, a communist society.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_revolution - the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850, but since then it has been used to refer to different concepts by different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism. Trotsky's theory also argues that the bourgeoisie in late-developing capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat; and that the proletariat can and must therefore seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry. He also opposed the socialism in one country principle, stating that socialist revolutions needed to happen across the world in order to combat the global capitalist hegemony.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_one_country - was a Soviet state policy to strengthen socialism within the country rather than socialism globally. Given the defeats of the 1917–1923 European communist revolutions, Joseph Stalin encouraged the theory of the possibility of constructing socialism in the Soviet Union. The theory was eventually adopted as Soviet state policy. As a political theory, its exponents argue that it contradicts neither world revolution nor world communism. The theory opposes Leon Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and the communist left's theory of world revolution.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstitial_revolution - a theoretical means of societal transformation through progressively and strategically enlarging spaces of social empowerment. Interstitial revolution (or transformation, builds on the concept of prefigurative politics which has a long history in anti-capitalist thinking, going back nearly two hundred years in the anarchist tradition. Prefigurativism is neatly summed up by the early twentieth century Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World which declared: "By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the old." This has classically been the approach recommended by several theorists of social anarchism, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Gustav Landauer, Paul Goodman, and Murray Bookchin. In recent years, prominent analytical Marxists (including John Holloway and Erik Olin Wright) have called attention to the lack of strategy for greater systemic change within prefigurativism and have attempted to construct models of societal transformation utilizing interstitial devices as an alternative to the traditional Marxist theory of revolution.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen's_Association - often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trade unions that were based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen's meeting held in St. Martin's Hall, London. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.In Europe, a period of harsh reaction followed the widespread Revolutions of 1848. The next major phase of revolutionary activity began almost twenty years later with the founding of the IWA in 1864. At its peak, the IWA reported having 8 million members while police reported 5 million. In 1872, it split in two over conflicts between statist and anarchist factions and dissolved in 1876. The Second International was founded in 1889.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_labour_law - the body of rules spanning public and private international law which concern the rights and duties of employees, employers, trade unions and governments in regulating Work and the workplace. The
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_spontaneity - also known as spontaneism, is a revolutionary socialist tendency that believes the social revolution can and should occur spontaneously from below by the working class itself, without the aid or guidance of a vanguard party and that it cannot and should not be brought about by the actions of individuals such as professional revolutionaries or political parties who might attempt to foment such a revolution. In his work What Is to Be Done? (1902,, Vladimir Lenin argued fiercely against revolutionary spontaneity as a dangerous revisionist concept that strips away the disciplined nature of Marxist political thought and leaves it arbitrary and ineffective. Rosa Luxemburg, who defended spontaneity on Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, and the Spartacist League which had attempted to overturn capitalism during the 1919 German Revolution would become main targets of Lenin's attacks after World War I.
Syndicalism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicate - a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism - a radical economic theory in the labour movement that was most active in the early 20th century. Its main idea is the establishment of local worker-based organizations and the advancement of the demands and rights of workers through strikes. According to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, it was predominant in the revolutionary left in the decade which preceded the outbreak of World War I because orthodox Marxism was mostly reformist at that time.
- YouTube: What is Syndicalism?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism - a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society. The end goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory therefore generally focuses on the labour movement.
The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action (action undertaken without the intervention of third parties such as politicians, bureaucrats and arbitrators) and direct democracy, or workers' self-management. Anarcho-syndicalists believe their economic theories constitute a strategy for facilitating proletarian self-activity and creating an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production that is centered on meeting human needs. Anarcho-syndicalists view the primary purpose of the state as being the defense of private property in the forms of capital goods and therefore of economic, social and political privilege. In maintaining this status quo, the state denies most of its citizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy that springs from it. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism is centered on the idea that power corrupts and that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must either be dismantled or replaced by decentralized egalitarian control.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_syndicalism - a form of anarcho-syndicalism that focuses on the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a democratic regime of workers' control as a means of effectively resolving issues surrounding climate change and the destruction of the natural environment, which advocates understand to be the logical consequences of free market capitalism and the regime of production for private profit rather than for the satisfaction of human needs.
Unions
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_representative - union steward, or shop steward, is an employee of an organization or company who represents and defends the interests of their fellow employees as a labor union member and official. Rank-and-file members of the union hold this position voluntarily while maintaining their role as an employee of the firm. As a result, the union steward becomes a significant link and conduit of information between the union leadership and rank-and-file workers.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_federation_competition_in_the_United_States - a history of the labor movement, considering U.S. labor organizations and federations that have been regional, national, or international in scope, and that have united organizations of disparate groups of workers. Union philosophy and ideology changed from one period to another, conflicting at times. Government actions have controlled, or legislated against particular industrial actions or labor entities, resulting in the diminishing of one labor federation entity or the advance of another.
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Historical_Catechism_of_American_Unionism - Published 1923. "In publishing this Catechism, the object sought has been to stimulate a desire for knowledge of American labor history. Labor progress we believe to be predicated upon a wider and deeper knowledge than is prevalent among the workers at the present time. This pamphlet is only an outline which it requires a study of American unionism to fill in. It is our hope that those who read this book will carry their investigations further afield. But, even as it is, this catechism fills a long felt want. It will help acquaint those who read it with some things they should know. The works from which this condensation is made are beyond the means of the average worker. They are available at the public libraries, but so few of the working class have either the time or the inclination to visit these institutions that it was deemed advisable to publish the Catechism as an experimental step in working class education. The price puts it within reach of even the poorest worker."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_shop - a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union (closed shop) as a condition of hiring or continued employment.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_security_agreement - a contractual agreement, usually part of a union collective bargaining agreement, in which an employer and a trade or labor union agree on the extent to which the union may compel employees to join the union, and/or whether the employer will collect dues, fees, and assessments on behalf of the union.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop - a pre-entry closed shop is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times to remain employed. This is different from a post-entry closed shop , which is an agreement requiring all employees to join the union if they are not already members. In a union shop, the union must accept as a member any person hired by the employer. By comparison, an open shop does not require union membership of potential and current employees. International Labour Organization covenants do not address the legality of closed shop provisions, leaving the question up to each individual nation. The legal status of closed shop agreements varies widely from country to country, ranging from bans on the agreement, to extensive regulation of the agreement to not mentioning it at all.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_shop - also known as a post-entry closed shop, is a form of a union security clause. Under this, the employer agrees to either only hire labor union members or to require that any new employees who are not already union members become members within a certain amount of time. Use of the union shop varies widely from nation to nation, depending on the level of protection given trade unions in general.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Workers'_Control - was founded in 1968 by Tony Topham and Ken Coates, the latter then a leader of the International Marxist Group and subsequently professor at the University of Nottingham and a member of the European Parliament from 1989 until 1999. The Institute drew together shop stewards and militant workers to discuss workers' control of production. It grew out of the Workers' Control Conferences organised from 1964 by Voice of the Unions and the Centre for Socialist Education. From around 100 at the first meeting in Nottingham, the figure grew to some 1200 in 1969. The Institute won sponsorship from a number of trade union leaders, including Hugh Scanlon. In the later opinion of the International Marxist Group's journal, the Institute over-accommodated to its sponsors and failed to organise its supporters: "only 26 people attended the AGM in 1970, and affiliation and membership fees have been maintained at a very high level."
- Renewal | Joe Guinan | Bring back the Institute for Workers’ Control - The movement for workers’ control in the 1970s was among the most promising of the many roads not taken in the forgotten history of the left.
- workerscontrol.net - Archive of Workers Struggle
- Trade Unions and Platform Workers in the UK: Worker Representation in the Shadow of the Law | Industrial Law Journal | Oxford Academic - Drawing on a series of interviews with key actors including representatives of the main trade unions, this paper considers the response of unions in the UK to the emergence and growth of platform work. Comparing the partly different strategies adopted by traditional and alternative unions in respect of the representation of platform workers’ interests, it demonstrates that the unions’ choices have been shaped by the characteristics and resources of the unions themselves, by prevailing political conditions and, perhaps above all, by the restrictive legal framework that excludes many platform workers from the scope of employment legislation. Without recourse to either a legally protected freedom to take industrial action or the statutory recognition procedure, unions have only exceptionally been able to negotiate collective agreements on behalf of platform workers. Instead, traditional unions have focussed on broader political strategies to fight precariousness, including wielding an influence on policymaking, especially through their relations with the Labour Party. Alternative unions have channelled resources into organising and mobilising platform workers and supporting them in campaigning, protesting and bringing strategic litigation.
Worldwide
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Big_Union_(concept) - was an idea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amongst trade unionists to unite the interests of workers and offer solutions to all labour problems.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World - nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_union_federation - GUF, is an international federation of national trade unions organizing in specific industry sectors or occupational groups. Historically, such federations in the social democratic tradition described as international trade secretariats (ITS), while those in the Christian democratic tradition described themselves as international trade federations. Equivalent sectoral bodies linked to the World Federation of Trade Unions described themselves as Trade Union Internationals.
Many unions are members of one or more global union federations, relevant to the sectors where they have their members. Individual unions may also be affiliated to a national trade union centre, which in turn can be affiliated to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) or the WFTU.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Trade_Union_Confederation - the world's largest trade union federation.HistoryThe federation was formed on 1 November 2006 out of the merger of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). The Founding Congress of the ITUC was held in Vienna and was preceded by the dissolution congresses of both the ICFTU and the WCL. The ITUC has three main regional organizations: the Asia-Pacific Regional Organization, the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas, and the African Regional Organisation. The Trade Union Development Cooperation Network (TUDCN) is an initiative of the ITUC whose main objective is to bring the trade union perspective into international development policy debates and improve the coordination and effectiveness of trade union development cooperation activities.The ITUC represents 207 million workers through its 331 affiliated organizations within 163 countries and territories. Sharan Burrow is the current General Secretary.The ITUC traces its origins back to the First International (also known as the International Workingmen's Association) and in 2014 commemorated the 150th anniversary of the founding of the International Working Men's Association at its own world congress held in Berlin.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Federation_of_Trade_Unions - an international federation of trade unions established in 1945. Founded in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, the organization built on the pre-war legacy of the International Federation of Trade Unions as a single structure for trade unions world-wide, following the World Trade Union Conference in London, United Kingdom.With the emergence of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the WFTU splintered, with most trade unions from the Western-aligned countries leaving and creating the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in 1949. Throughout the Cold War, membership of the WFTU was made up predominantly of trade unions from the Soviet-aligned and non-aligned countries. However, there were notable exceptions to this, such as the Yugoslav and Chinese unions, which departed following the Tito-Stalin and Sino-Soviet splits, respectively, or the French CGT and Italian CGIL unions, who were members. With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the WFTU lost the largest portion of its membership and financial support. Since the start of the 2000s, the organization shifted headquarters to Athens and recruited new members, claiming to have grown from representing 48 million workers in 2005 to 105 million in 2022.
- Progressive International - We unite, organise, and mobilise progressive forces around the world.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_International - an international organization uniting and mobilizing progressive left-wing activists and organizations. It was launched after the Democracy in Europe Movement and The Sanders Institute announced an open call for progressive forces to form a unified front.
General
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_union - a trade union (called labor union in American English) which represents workers from all industries and companies, rather than just one organisation or a particular sector, as in a craft union or industrial union. A general union differs from a union federation or trades council in that its members are individuals, not unions. The creation of general unions, from the early nineteenth century in the United Kingdom and somewhat later elsewhere, occurred around the same time as efforts began to unionise workers in new industries, in particular those where employment could be irregular.
Proponents of general unions claim that their broader range of members allows more opportunities for solidarity action and better coordination in general strikes and the like. Detractors claim that the broader remit means they tend to be more bureaucratic and respond less effectively to events in a single industry.
In the United Kingdom, general unions include the GMB and the Transport and General Workers' Union. In Australia a good example of a general union is the Australian Workers' Union.
- GMB - GMB union is an organising and campaigning union for all workers.
- Putting workers first · IWGB - Precarious workers have been on the frontlines of this crisis. The IWGB has fought for safe working conditions and rights throughout the pandemic.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Workers'_Union_of_Great_Britain - a trade union in the United Kingdom. The IWGB comprises eleven branches which organise workers within their chosen industry, run their own campaigns and have their own representative officials. Their members are predominantly low paid migrant workers in London. The IWGB began as a breakaway from Unite and UNISON. The dispute stemmed from disagreements over how to get better working conditions for cleaners at the University of London, and, more broadly, about how to run modern trade unions. The IWGB is one of the main trade unions in challenging employment law relating to the 'gig economy'.
Industrial
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_unionism - a labour union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations. Advocates of industrial unionism value its contributions to building unity and solidarity, many suggesting the slogans, "an injury to one is an injury to all" and "the longer the picket line, the shorter the strike." Industrial unionism contrasts with craft unionism, which organizes workers along lines of their specific trades, i.e., workers using the same kind of tools, or doing the same kind of work with approximately the same level of skill, even if this leads to multiple union locals (with different contracts, and different expiration dates) in the same workplace.
Trade/labour
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union - (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organisation of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers.
Trade unions typically fund their head office and legal team functions through regularly imposed fees called union dues. The union representatives in the workforce are usually made up of workplace volunteers who are often appointed by members through internal democratic elections. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committee, bargains with the employer on behalf of its members, known as the rank-and-file, and negotiates labour contracts (collective bargaining agreements) with employers.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federations_of_trade_unions - federations listed under each country are also known as national trade union centres and are organizations formed by trade unions which operate, in most cases, at the national level. The organizations listed in the worldwide section are industry/sectoral-specific (i.e. the GUFs) and international organizations representing national trade union centres (e.g. ITUC).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_trade_union_center - or national center or central) is a federation or confederation of trade unions in a country. Nearly every country in the world has a national trade union center, and many have more than one. In some regions, such as the Nordic countries, different centers exist on a sectoral basis, for example, for blue collar workers and professionals.
Among the larger national centers in the world are the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Strategic Organizing Center in the USA; the Canadian Labour Congress; the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Britain; the Irish Congress of Trade Unions; the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU); the Congress of South African Trade Unions; the Dutch FNV; the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish LO; the German DGB; the French CGT and CFDT; the Indian BMS, INTUC, AITUC and HMS; the Italian CISL, CGIL and UIL; the Spanish CCOO, CNT, CGT and USO; the Czech ČMKOS; the Japan Trade Union Confederation RENGO; the Argentinian CGT and CTA; the Brazilian CUT; the Armenian CTUA, and so on. Many national trade union centers are now members of the International Trade Union Confederation, although some belong to the World Federation of Trade Unions.
Craft
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_unionism - a model of trade unionism in which workers are organised based on the particular craft or trade in which they work. It contrasts with industrial unionism, in which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of differences in skill.
Under this approach, each union is organized according to the craft, or specific work function, of its members. For example, in the building trades, all carpenters belong to the carpenters' union, the plasterers join the plasterers' union, and the painters belong to the painters' union. Each craft union has its own administration, its own policies, its own collective bargaining agreements and its own union halls. The primary goal of craft unionism is the betterment of the members of the particular group and the reservation of job opportunities to members of the union and those workers allowed to seek work through the union's hiring hall.
Business
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_unionism - a type of trade union that is opposed to class or revolutionary unionism and has the principle that unions should be run like businesses.Business unions are believed to be of American origin, and the term has been applied in particular to phenomena characteristic of American unions. This idea originated over the court's difficulty when regulating worker's industrial rights, specifically following the decades after the Civil War. Hyman (1973) attributed the term "business unionism" to Hoxie, but Michael Goldfield (1987) notes that the term was in common usage before Hoxie published in 1915.According to Goldfield, Hoxie used the term to describe trade-consciousness, rather than class-consciousness; in other words, according to Hoxie, business unionists were advocates of "pure and simple" trade unionism, as opposed to class or revolutionary unionism. This sort of business unionism is what Eugene Debs often referred to as the "old unionism".
Social movement
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_movement_unionism - a trend of theory and practice in contemporary trade unionism. Strongly associated with the labour movements of developing countries, social movement unionism is distinct from many other models of trade unionism because it concerns itself with more than organizing workers around workplace issues, pay and terms and conditions. It engages in wider political struggles for human rights, social justice and democracy. Social movement unionism grew out of political struggles in developing countries and was theorized as a distinct industrial relations model in the late 1980s and early 1990s.In this model, trade unions are not distinct from social movements and form part of a wider ecosystem of political activism that includes faith groups, civic and residents' organizations and student groups. These are usually organized into democratic umbrella organizations along a popular front model. The umbrella organization generally has a programme or manifesto that all affiliates commit themselves to. Kim Moody theorized that the main characteristics of social movement unionism are: Militancy; Internal democracy; An agenda for radical social and economic change; A determination to embrace the diversity of the working class in order to overcome its fragmentation; A capacity to appeal beyond its membership by using union power to lead community struggles. Usually, the structure of this type of union tends to implement democratic processess in order to promote more militancy from union members.
"Industrial relations scholars take the inherent conflicts of interest between employersand employees as a basic starting point for their analyses. They study the diverse institu-tional arrangements that shape the employment relationship, ranging from norms and powerstructures on the shop floor to collective bargaining arrangements at different levels (Dun-lop, 1993 [1958]; Jackson, Kuruvilla, & Frege, 2013; Pries, 2010; Müller-Jentsch, 1995).Social movement scholars, on the other hand, explicitly distance themselves from explana-tions grounded in class relations as a sufficient condition for mobilisation and protest, argu-ing that factors such as resource mobilisation, political opportunities, framing, and identi-ties are paramount"
- Social movement unionism - Oxford Reference - Is a form of trade unionism advocated originally by critics of business unionism in the United States and Canada. Social movement unionism is a form of trade unionism that is mobilizing and campaigning and has three distinguishing features. First, it adopts broad goals oriented towards the achievement of social justice and is not confined to the narrow economic agenda of traditional collective bargaining. Second, it seeks to extend the terrain of union action outwards beyond the enterprise to the community and advocates the creation of broad labour-community alliances. Third, it seeks to recreate unions themselves as social movements which mobilize their members against workplace and wider social injustice. Although of North American provenance, the idea of social movement unionism has influenced academics and activists in the UK and Europe. It is associated with attempts to extend union organization to low-paid, marginal employees through aggressive organizing campaigns.
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-27063-7_15 - This is an abbreviated, updated (and footnote-free) version of a paper first published under the title of ‘Social Movement Unionism’ (Waterman 1993). 1 have traded in this title for the current one because a number of writers on trade unionism in the third world (mis)understood social movement unionism to mean an alliance between unions and ‘communities’. The latter were understood to be local and/or national-popular communities, and to exist primarily in the third world. Since my own notion was not intended to be either populist or thirdworldist, I have cheerfully abandoned it to them. Cheerfully, because I think it is possible to draw out of the present collection something closer to my original intention and the present title. Let us explore this further.
- Social movement unionism in practice: organizational dimensions of union mobilization in the Los Angeles immigrant rights marches - Cassandra Engeman, 2015 - To revitalize union movements globally, labour scholars frequently prescribe social movement unionism. This union strategy adopts social change goals beyond member representation and contract negotiations and often requires allying with community organizations in pursuit of these goals. As a term, however, social movement unionism is often described in opposition to union organizational functions, such as member representation. This article challenges this organization-movement dichotomy by demonstrating the important influence of union organizational dimensions on the dynamics of social movement unionism. Analysis is based on case study research of labour union involvement in the 2006 immigrant rights marches in Los Angeles. Unions that participated in organizing these marches – thus, practicing social movement unionism – allied with large community organizations, preferred reform goals and advocated tactics perceived as effective. Such strategic decisions were informed by organizational considerations regarding members’ interests and unions’ long-term capacity for mobilization.
- [10] - Employer crackdowns on trade unionisation, neoliberal governments’ gutting of trade union protections, and increasing bureaucratisation and risk-averseness of unions themselves, have led to declines in traditional trade union membership. This coupled with informalisation, feminisation, increased migrant labour, newer workforces, and alternate modes of worker organising, has forced trade unions to alter their methods of organising in order to retain their base and their relevance. One way that this has manifested is through social movement unionism, where trade unions explicitly partner with social movements and NGOs on campaigns and social movement work. In this paper, I assess the viability of these social movement unionism coalitions by examining several case studies in the Global North and South through secondary and primary research and identifying conditions for success and failure. I argue that due to increased migration of workers from the Global South to the Global North, the relocation of labour and capital to the Global South itself, and increasingly radical feminist lenses in worker organising and social movements, unions who have prioritised strategies led by people of colour and praxis that is explicitly decolonial, feminist, and transnational have greater success. This is true both when unions work independently and when collaborating with social movements. When such collaborations between unions and non-union social movement forces fail, it is often due to the opaque and top-down organising methods that plague traditional trade unions, and using outdated organising models that preference white, heterosexual men. But when collaborations occur successfully, these coalitions exhibit explicitly feminist and decolonial modes of organising through horizontal and diversified leadership that centre the most directly impacted organisers and activists, transparent and democratic decisionmaking and communications channels, and expansive and radical worldviews that reach beyond campaign wins to orient towards transformative change.
Open-source
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_unionism - a term coined by academics Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers to explain a possible new model for organizing workers that depended on the labor movement "taking its own historical lessons with diversified membership seriously and relying more heavily on the Internet in membership communication and servicing". The idea was popularized in a June 2004 article for The Nation and more completely elaborated on in an earlier piece in the Spring 2002 issue of the academic journal WorkingUSA.
- Open Source Unionism - Freeman - 2002 - WorkingUSA - Wiley Online Library - "To increase density in the private sector, unions should explore a form of unionization that is open to nonmajority memberships. This form–-which the authors call “open source” unionism–-would make extensive use of the Internet to deliver individual services to workers. This article describes current union activity heading in this general direction. It assesses the legal and administrative feasibility of open source unionism and suggests ways unions could develop it further."
- A Proposal to American Labor | The Nation - Let’s create “open-source unions,” and welcome millions into the movement.
UK
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions_in_the_United_Kingdom - formed under UK labour law. The criteria for being an independent trade union, free from employer influence and domination, are set out in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 section 5. The body which oversees unions, and awards a certificate of independence for the purpose of collective bargaining is the Trades Union Certification Officer. For the context and history see Trade unions in the United Kingdom.
- Trade unions: current list - GOV.UK - This document contains the names of all trade unions entered on the list maintained by the Certification Officer under section 3 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.
- Unite The Union - Unite is the union for the 21st century, meeting the greatest challenges facing working people today.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Union - commonly known as Unite, is a British and Irish trade union which was formed on 1 May 2007 by the merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers' Union . Unite is the second largest trade union in the UK , with over 1.2 million members in construction, manufacturing, transport, logistics and other sectors. The general secretary of Unite is Sharon Graham, who was elected on 25 August 2021 with 46,696 votes on a turnout of 124,127 , with her term beginning on 26 August 2021
- UWU: Why an independent union for paid trade union staff is needed - LabourList - new trade union for trade union employees
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Federation_of_Trade_Unions_(UK) - a national trade union centre in the United Kingdom. It has 35 affiliates with a membership of just over 214,000 and describes itself as the "federation for specialist unions".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_affiliates_of_the_Trades_Union_Congress - member trade unions of the Trades Union Congress.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Trades_Union_Congress - the national trade union centre in Scotland. With 40 affiliated unions as of 2020, the STUC represents over 540,000 trade unionists. The STUC is a separate organisation from the English and Welsh Trades Union Congress (TUC), having been established in 1897 as a result of a political dispute with the TUC regarding political representation for the Labour movement.
- Labour Unions - We are the 11 trade unions that are part of the Labour Party, bringing the collective voices of 4 million people to the heart of the Party. We campaign for a Labour Government that will transform the lives of working people for the better.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Shop,_Distributive_and_Allied_Workers - a trade union in the United Kingdom, consisting of around 360,000 members. Usdaw members work in a variety of occupations and industries including: shopworkers, factory and warehouse workers, drivers, call centres, clerical workers, milkround and dairy process, butchers and meat packers, catering, laundries, chemical processing, home shopping and pharmaceutical. The retail sector employs around 2.77 million people.
- Bectu - the union for creative ambition. We represent over 40,000 staff, contract and freelance workers in the media and entertainment industries.
- Live Events Network: Who we are - In 2017 a number of London venue techs banded together and formed a union branch. Based in Bectu this branch – The London Union of Venue Technicians – was created to provide a rallying point for venue technicians to work within the industry to improve rates of pay, conditions and opportunities within the live events sector in London. This branch was joined by other London branches the London Union of crew and the London Live Events Network Branch. From these initial beginnings the Live Events Network has expanded to encompass much more of the UK. We now have the following branches under the LEN banner: Scottish Live Events Network (SLEN); Northern Live Events Network (NLEN); National Live Event Riggers (NLER); London Live Events Network (LLEN); London Union of Venue Technicians (LUVT); London Union of Crew (LUC); King’s Place (London); Royal Albert Hall (London)
Action
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest - also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance, is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate by attending, and share the potential costs and risks of doing so. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations. Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or they may undertake direct action in an attempt to enact desired changes themselves. Where protests are part of a systematic and peaceful nonviolent campaign to achieve a particular objective, and involve the use of pressure as well as persuasion, they go beyond mere protest and may be better described as a type of protest called civil resistance or nonviolent resistance.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action - originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power—such as economic or physical power—to directly achieve their goals. In contrast, actions that appeal to others might achieve their goals by, for example, highlighting an existing problem to the public or demonstrating a possible solution to authorities. The aim of direct action is to either obstruct a practice to which the activists object or to solve perceived problems that traditional societal institutions are not addressing to the satisfaction of the direct action participants.
Both direct action and actions appealing to others can include nonviolent and violent activities that target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the action participants. Nonviolent direct action may include sit-ins, strikes, and counter-economics. Violent direct action may include political violence, assault, arson, sabotage, and property destruction. Nonviolent direct action has historically been an assertive regular feature of the tactics employed by social movements, including Mahatma Gandhi's Indian Independence Movement and the King/Bevel-led Civil Rights Movement. Anarchists organize almost exclusively through direct action, which manifests as a varied set of actions, nonviolent or violent. Direct action is used by anarchists due to a rejection of party politics and refusal to work within hierarchical bureaucratic institutions.
- Miscellaneous direct action guides | libcom.org - Practical advice, tips, guides and resources to help you plan action as part of a variety of campaigns or struggles. Submitted by Steven. on October 13, 2004 The advice here concerns small group actions whose use may be decided upon by a larger campaign or movement. Due to their nature these types of action are often best undertaken by affinity groups.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_protest - a form of student activism that takes the form of protest at university campuses. Such protests encompass a wide range of activities that indicate student dissatisfaction with a given political or academics issue and mobilization to communicate this dissatisfaction to the authorities and society in general and hopefully remedy the problem.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_action - or job action, is a temporary show of dissatisfaction by employees—especially a strike or slowdown or working to rule—to protest against bad working conditions or low pay and to increase bargaining power with the employer and intended to force the employer to improve them by reducing productivity in a workplace. Industrial action is usually organized by trade unions or other organised labour, most commonly when employees are forced out of work due to contract termination and without reaching an agreement with the employer. Quite often it is used and interpreted as a euphemism for strike or mass strike, but the scope is much wider. Industrial action may take place in the context of a labour dispute or may be meant to effect political or social change. This form of communication tends to be their only means to voice their concerns about safety and benefits.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action - also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act (either by private business or by union workers). When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_strike_action - often referred to as a wildcat strike, is a strike action undertaken by unionised workers without union leadership's authorisation, support, or approval; this is sometimes termed an unofficial industrial action. The legality of wildcat strikes varies between countries and over time, although they are not typically criminal offenses.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action - also known as secondary action, a secondary boycott, a solidarity strike, or a sympathy strike, is industrial action by a trade union in support of a strike initiated by workers in a separate corporation, but often the same enterprise, group of companies, or connected firm. In Australia, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom, solidarity action is illegal, and strikes can only be against the contractual employer. Germany, Italy and Spain have restrictions in place that restrict the circumstances in which solidarity action can take place. The term "secondary action" is often used with the intention of distinguishing different types of trade dispute with a worker's direct contractual employer. Thus, a secondary action is a dispute with the employer's parent company, its suppliers, financiers, contracting parties, or any other employer in another industry.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_strike refers to a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions of political, social, and labour organizations and may also include rallies, marches, boycotts, civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, and other forms of direct or indirect action. Additionally, general strikes might exclude care workers, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses.
Historically, the term general strike has referred primarily to solidarity action, which is a multi-sector strike that is organised by trade unions who strike together in order to force pressure on employers to begin negotiations or offer more favourable terms to the strikers; though not all strikers may have a material interest in the negotiations, they all have a material interest in maintaining and strengthening the collective efficacy of strikes as a bargaining tool.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdictional_strike - a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to unorganized workers. Jurisdictional strikes occur most frequently in the United States in the construction industry. Construction unions frequently resolve those disputes through a privately created adjustment system. In other countries, jurisdiction strikes are often called demarcation disputes.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_dispute - a dispute between two trades unions as to whose members should do a particular job, and is associated with multi-unionism in an enterprise, where two labour unions claim the right to represent the same class or group of workers. This is particularly important in compulsory arbitration systems of industrial relations, as in Australia; where only one union may be the registered representative of a particular classification of worker.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitdown_strike - a labour strike and a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations. The attraction of the tactic is that it prevents employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or removing equipment to transfer production to other locations. Neal Ascherson has commented that an additional attraction is that it emphasizes the role of workers in providing for the people and allows workers to in effect hold valuable machinery hostage as a bargaining chip.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-in - a form of direct action under which workers whose jobs are under threat resolve to remain in their place of employment and to continue producing, without pay. Their intention is usually to show that their place of work still has long-term viability or that it can be effectively self-managed by the workers.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule - also known as an Italian strike, in Italian: Sciopero bianco, or slowdown in US usage) is a job action in which employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract or job, and strictly follow time-consuming rules normally not enforced. This may cause a slowdown or decrease in productivity if the employer does not hire enough employees or pay the appropriate salary and as such does not have the requirements needed to run at the level they desire. It is a form of protest against low pay and poor working conditions, and is considered less disruptive than a strike or lockout as obeying the rules is not susceptible to disciplinary action or loss of pay.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piquetero - a member of a group that has blocked a street with the purpose of demonstrating and calling attention over a particular issue or demand. The word is a neologism in the Spanish of Argentina, coming from piquete (in English, "picket"), that is, its specific meaning as a standing or walking demonstration of protest in a significant spot. The trend was initiated in Argentina in the mid-1990s, during the Administration of President Carlos Menem, soon becoming a frequent form of protest that still prevails on the South American socio-political scene. Seventy percent of the piqueteros are women, and some of their leaders are women too, like Milagro Sala from Jujuy.
Autonomism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism - also known as autonomist Marxism, is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism. Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio as well as Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno and Franco "Bifo" Berardi.
George Katsiaficas summarizes the forms of autonomous movements saying that "In contrast to the centralized decisions and hierarchical authority structures of modern institutions, autonomous social movements involve people directly in decisions affecting their everyday lives, seeking to expand democracy and help individuals break free of political structures and behavior patterns imposed from the outside". This has involved a call for the independence of social movements from political parties in a revolutionary perspective which seeks to create a practical political alternative to both authoritarian/state socialism and contemporary representative democracy.
Autonomism influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen/Autonomen, the worldwide social centre movement and today is influential in Italy, France and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to anarchists.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Caffentzis - an American political philosopher and an autonomist Marxist. He founded the Midnight Notes Collective, is a founder member of the co-ordinator of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine.
Communism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society - In Marxist thought, communist society or communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of Communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless, implying the end of the exploitation of labor.
Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is postulated to arise from advances in production technology and corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely-associated individuals. The term "communist society" should be distinguished from the Western concept of the "communist state", the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society - the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour. Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is postulated to arise from advances in production technology and corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely-associated individuals. The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marxist_communism - While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined communism as a political movement, there were already similar ideas in the past which one could call communist experiments. Marx himself saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state of humankind. Marx theorized that only after humanity was capable of producing surplus did private property develop.
Marxism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism - a method of socioeconomic analysis that analyzes class relations and societal conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation. It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Marxist methodology originally used a method of economic and sociopolitical inquiry known as historical materialism to analyze and critique the development of capitalism and the role of class struggle in systemic economic change. According to Marxist perspective, class conflict within capitalism arises due to intensifying contradictions between the highly productive mechanized and socialized production performed by the proletariat, and the private ownership and appropriation of the surplus product (profit) by a small minority of the population who are private owners called the bourgeoisie. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor, social unrest between the two antagonistic classes will intensify, until it culminates in social revolution. The eventual long-term outcome of this revolution would be the establishment of socialism – a socioeconomic system based on social ownership of the means of production, distribution based on one's contribution, and production organized directly for use. As the productive forces and technology continued to advance, Marx hypothesized that socialism would eventually give way to a communist stage of social development, which would be a classless, stateless, humane society erected on common ownership and the principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while de-emphasizing or rejecting other aspects, and sometimes combine Marxist analysis with non-Marxian concepts; as a result, they might reach contradictory conclusions from each other. Lately, however, there is movement toward the recognition that the main aspect of Marxism is philosophy of dialectical materialism and historicism, which should result in more agreement between different schools.
Marxist analyses and methodologies have influenced multiple political ideologies and social movements, and Marxist understandings of history and society have been adopted by some academics in the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, media studiesPrefigurative_politics, political science, theater, history, sociology, art history and theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, and philosophy.
Marxism has been adopted by a wide number of academics and theorists working in various disciplines, and has also received a variety of criticisms from within academia. Critics have taken issue with particular Marxist claims or accused Marxism as a whole of being internally inconsistent, refuted based on new information, and a pseudoscience.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_historiography - or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided societies that struggle against each other, and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes (historical materialism,. Marxist historians follow the tenets of the development of class-divided societies, especially modern capitalist ones. Yet, the way Marxist historiography has developed in different regional and political contexts has varied. Marxist historiography has had unique trajectories of development in the West, in the Soviet Union, and in India, as well as in the pan-Africanist and African-American traditions, adapting to these specific regional and political conditions in different ways. Marxist historiography has made contributions to the history of the working class, and the methodology of a history from below.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Communism - a brief 1847 work written by Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of Marxism. It is structured as a catechism, containing 25 questions about communism for which answers are provided. In the text, Engels presents core ideas of Marxism such as historical materialism, class struggle, and proletarian revolution. Principles of Communism served as the draft version for the Communist Manifesto.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto - a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The text is the first and most systematic attempt by Marx and Engels to codify for widespread consumption the core historical materialist idea that, as stated in the text's opening words, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published against the backdrop of the Revolutions of 1848 and their subsequent repression across Europe, the Manifesto remains one of the world's most influential political documents.
Marx and Engels combine materialism with the Hegelian dialectical method to analyze the development of European society through its modes of production, including primitive communism, antiquity, feudalism, and capitalism, noting the emergence of a new, dominant class at each stage. The text outlines the relationship between the means of production, relations of production, forces of production, and the mode of production, and posits that changes in society's economic base effect changes in its superstructure. Marx and Engels assert that capitalism is marked by the exploitation of the proletariat by the ruling bourgeoisie, which is "constantly revolutionising the instruments [and] relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society". They argue that capital's need for a flexible labour force dissolves the old relations, and that its global expansion in search of new markets creates "a world after its own image".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism - a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science. As a materialist philosophy, Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of functional contradictions within and among social relations, which derive from, but are not limited to the contradictions that occur in social class, labour economics, and socioeconomic interactions.
In contrast with the idealist perspective of Hegelian dialectics, the materialist perspective of Marxist dialectics emphasizes that contradictions in material phenomena could be resolved with dialectical analysis, from which is synthesized the solution that resolves the contradiction, whilst retaining the essence of the phenomena. Marx proposed that the most effective solution to the problems caused by contradiction was to address the contradiction and then rearrange the systems of social organization that are the root of the problem.
Dialectical materialism recognises the evolution of the natural world, and thus the emergence of new qualities of being human and of human existence. Engels used the metaphysical insight that the higher level of human existence emerges from and is rooted in the lower level of human existence. That the higher level of being is a new order with irreducible laws, and that evolution is governed by laws of development, which reflect the basic properties of matter in motion.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism - also known as the materialist conception of history, is a methodology used by some communist and Marxist historiographers that focuses on human societies and their development through history, arguing that history is the result of material conditions rather than ideals. This was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the "materialist conception of history". It is principally a theory of history which asserts that the material conditions of a society's mode of production or in Marxist terms, the union of a society's productive forces and relations of production, fundamentally determine society's organization and development. Historical materialism is an example of Marx and Engels' scientific socialism, attempting to show that socialism and communism are scientific necessities rather than philosophical ideals.
Historical materialism is materialist as it does not believe that history has been driven by individual's consciousness or ideals, but rather subscribes to the philosophical monism that matter is the fundamental substance of nature and henceforth the driving force in all of world history; this drove Marx and other historical materialists to abandon ideas such as rights (e.g. "right to life, liberty, and property" as liberalism professed). In contrast, idealists believe that human consciousness creates reality rather than the materialist conception that material reality creates human consciousness. This put Marx in direct conflict with groups like the liberals who believed that reality was governed by some set of ideals, when he stated in The German Ideology: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence".
Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. It posits that social classes and the relationship between them, along with the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect contemporary economic activity. Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded by some writers. It now has many Marxist and non-Marxist variants. Many Marxists contend that historical materialism is a scientific approach to the study of history.
- Critique of the Gotha Programme - Critique of the Gotha Programme is a critique of the draft programme of the United Workers' Party of Germany. In this document Marx address the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the two phases of communist society, the production and distribution of the social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class. Lenin later wrote: The great significance of Marx's explanation is, that here too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, 'concocted' definitions and fruitless disputes over words (What is socialism? What is communism?), Marx gives analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic maturity of communism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_schools_of_thought - From the late 19th century onward, Marxism has developed from Marx's original revolutionary critique of classical political economy and materialist conception of history into a comprehensive world-view. There are now many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Some schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts which has then led to contradictory conclusions.[
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Marxism - a trend in political philosophy and social theory which deconstructs Karl Marx's writings and Marxism proper, bypassing orthodox Marxism. The term post-Marxism first appeared in Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theoretical work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. It can be said that post-Marxism as a political theory was developed at the University of Essex by Laclau and Mouffe. Philosophically, post-Marxism counters derivationism and essentialism (for example, it does not see economy as a foundation of politics and the state as an instrument that functions unambiguously and autonomously on behalf of the interests of a given class). Recent overviews of post-Marxism are provided by Ernesto Screpanti, Göran Therborn and Gregory Meyerson.
Left
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism - or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
In general, there are two currents of left communism, namely the Italian and Dutch–German left. The communist left in Italy was formed during World War I in organizations like the Italian Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Italy. The Italian left considers itself to be Leninist in nature, but denounces Marxism–Leninism as a form of bourgeois opportunism materialized in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The Italian left is currently embodied in organizations such as the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) and the International Communist Party. The Dutch–German left split from Vladimir Lenin prior to Stalin's rule and supports a firmly council communist and libertarian Marxist viewpoint as opposed to the Italian left which emphasised the need for an international revolutionary party.
Left communism differs from most other forms of Marxism in believing that communists should not participate in bourgeois parliaments, and some argue against participating in conservative trade unions. However, many left communists split over their criticism of the Bolsheviks. Council communists criticised the Bolsheviks for elitist party functions and emphasised a more autonomous organisation of the working class, without political parties. Although she was murdered in 1919 before the communist left appeared as a distinct current, Rosa Luxemburg has heavily influenced most left communists. Proponents of left communism have included Amadeo Bordiga, Onorato Damen, Jacques Camatte, Herman Gorter, Antonie Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Sylvia Pankhurst and Paul Mattick.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_centralism - a method of political organisation advocated by party-orientated left communists, in particular the Italian Left. It was a concept advanced in the Theses of Lyons (1926) in the context of the Third International: "The communist parties must achieve an organic centralism which, whilst including maximum possible consultation with the base, ensures a spontaneous elimination of any grouping which aims to differentiate itself. This cannot be achieved with, as Lenin put it, the formal and mechanical prescriptions of a hierarchy, but through correct revolutionary politics." "The repression of fractionism isn't a fundamental aspect of the evolution of the party, though preventing it is."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Reform_or_Revolution%3F - pamphlet by Polish-German Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg argues that trade unions, reformist political parties and the expansion of social democracy—while important to the proletariat's development of class consciousness—cannot create a socialist society as Eduard Bernstein, among others, argued. Instead, she argues from a historical materialist perspective that capitalism is economically unsustainable and will eventually collapse and that a revolution is necessary to transform capitalism into socialism. The pamphlet was heavily influential in revolutionary socialist circles and along with Luxemburg's other work an important precursor to left communist theory.
Soviet
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy - before the Commies screwed it up for the Commies!
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_party - a political party that seeks to realize the social and economic goals of communism. The term communist party was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As the ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when social democracy in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction ("of the majority") and the Menshevik faction ("of the minority"). To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once the policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy.
In contrast, the Menshevik faction included Leon Trotsky, who emphasized that the party should not neglect the importance of mass populations in realizing a communist revolution. In the course of the revolution, the Bolshevik party which became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) assumed government power in Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919, the concept of communist party leadership was adopted by many revolutionary parties, worldwide. In an effort to standardize the international communist movement ideologically and maintain central control of the member parties, the Comintern required that parties identify as a communist party.Under the leadership of the CPSU, the interpretations of orthodox Marxism were applied to Russia and led to the Leninist and Marxist–Leninist political parties throughout the world. After the death of Lenin, the Comintern's official interpretation of Leninism was the book Foundations of Leninism (1924) by Joseph Stalin.
Bolshevism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevism - a revolutionary Marxist current of political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat". It originated at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and was associated with the activities of the Bolshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party – and first of all, the founder of the faction, Vladimir Lenin. Remaining on the soil of Marxism, Bolshevism at the same time absorbed elements of the ideology and practice of the revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century (Sergey Nechaev, Pyotr Tkachev, Nikolay Chernyshevsky) and had many points of contact with such domestic left–wing radical movements as populism. The main theorist of Bolshevism was Lenin, besides him, the theoreticians of Bolshevism include Joseph Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin, Yevgeny Preobrazhensky and sometimes Rosa Luxemburg.
In October 1917, the Bolshevik faction organized an armed uprising against the Provisional Government, formed by other (including socialist) parties and seized power (see the October Revolution). The historical consequences of these actions both for Russia and for the world as a whole have opposite assessments.Some researchers also attribute the activities of Joseph Stalin to the Bolshevik theory, who headed the All–Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and at the same time possessed full state power in the Soviet Union. However, others (both Stalin's contemporaries and later) do not confuse "Bolshevism" and "Stalinism" proper, considering them to be multidirectional (revolutionary and thermidorian) phenomena. The expression "Bolshevism", as well as "communism" later, has become established in Western historiography in the sense of a certain set of features of Soviet power in a certain political period. At present, the very name "Bolsheviks" is actively used by various groups of Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik_Centre - a select group of Bolsheviks that led the organization in secret. The Centre conducted its activities in secret in part so as to avoid the prohibition by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ("RSDLP") on separate committees outside of the RSDLP.The Bolshevik Centre emerged from the group that ran the newspaper Proletarian. It was initially charged with the collection and disbursement of the funds for revolutionary propaganda. It operated illegally after the RSDLP dissolved it through a Central Committee joint plenum decision made in February 1910.The Bolshevik Centre was headed by a "Finance Group" consisting of Vladimir Lenin, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov. Other members included Viktor Taratuta, Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and V.A. Desnitsky. The group was involved in the attempt to unify the Party funds in a wider move to consolidate the Communist Party. An account stated that Lenin dominated this group through his connivance with Taratuta, Manev, and Zinoviev. There were instances, however, when the Bolshevik Centre contradicted Lenin. This was demonstrated in its actions concerning the newspapers Proletarian, Pravda, and the creation of a St. Petersburg newspaper.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Opposition - a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927 headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923 on the one hand and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.
Leninism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism - a political ideology developed by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a revolutionary vanguard party, as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in the Russian Empire (1721–1917). Leninist revolutionary leadership is based upon The Communist Manifesto (1848) identifying the communist party as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, the Bolsheviks viewed history through the theoretical framework of dialectical materialism, which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to instituting socialism; and, as the revolutionary national government, to realize the socio-economic transition by all means.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism - a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party. It is mainly associated with Leninism, wherein the party's political vanguard of revolutionaries practiced democratic centralism to select leaders and officers, determine policy, and execute it. Democratic centralism has primarily been practised by Marxist–Leninist and Trotskyist parties, but has also occasionally been practised by other democratic socialist and social democratic parties. Scholars have disputed whether democratic centralism was implemented in practice in the Soviet Union and China, pointing to violent power struggles, backhanded political maneuvering, historical antagonisms and the politics of personal prestige in those states.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism - in the context of Leninist revolutionary struggle, relates to a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically "advanced" sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations to advance the objectives of communism. They take actions to draw larger sections of the working class toward revolutionary politics and to serve as manifestations of proletarian political power opposed to the bourgeoisie.
Foundations This section relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources.
Vladimir Lenin popularised political vanguardism as conceptualised by Karl Kautsky, detailing his thoughts in one of his earlier works, What is to be done?. Lenin argued that Marxism's complexity and the hostility of the establishment (the autocratic, semi-feudal state of Imperial Russia) required that a close-knit group of individuals pulled from the working class vanguard to safeguard the revolutionary ideology within the particular circumstances presented by the Tsarist régime (Russian Empire) at the time. While Lenin wished for a revolutionary organisation akin to the contemporary Social Democratic Party of Germany, which was open to the people and more democratic in organisation, the Russian autocracy prevented this. Leninists argue that Lenin's ideal vanguard party would have open membership: "The members of the Party are they who accept the principles of the Party program and render the Party all possible support." This party could be completely transparent, at least internally: the "entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience". A party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that "the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every party man in the politics brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the "survival of the fittest"". The party would be completely open while educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled in them. In its first phase, the vanguard party would exist for two reasons. Firstly, it would protect Marxism from outside corruption from other ideas, as well as advance its plans. Secondly, it would educate the proletariat in Marxism in order to cleanse them of their "false individual consciousness" and instill the revolutionary "class consciousness" in them.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F - a political pamphlet written by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin (credited as N. Lenin, in 1901 and published in 1902, a development of a "skeleton plan" laid out in an article first published in early 1901. Its title is taken from the 1863 novel of the same name by the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky. The text's central focus is the ideological formation of the proletariat.: 30 In What Is to Be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously become political simply by fighting economic battles with employers over wages, working hours, and the like. To educate the working class on Marxism, Lenin insists that Marxists should form a political party, or vanguard, of dedicated revolutionaries in order to spread Marxist political ideas among the workers. The pamphlet, in part, precipitated the split of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party between Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_party - a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term "communist party" was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As a ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction ("of the majority") and the Menshevik faction ("of the minority"). To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed the centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy.
In contrast, the Menshevik faction, which initially included Leon Trotsky, emphasized that the party should not neglect the importance of mass populations in realizing a communist revolution. In the course of the revolution, the Bolshevik party which became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) assumed government power in Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919, the concept of communist party leadership was adopted by many revolutionary parties, worldwide. In an effort to standardize the international communist movement ideologically and maintain central control of the member parties, the Comintern required that its members use the term "communist party" in their names.
Under the leadership of the CPSU, the interpretations of orthodox Marxism were applied to Russia and led to the emergence of Leninist and Marxist–Leninist political parties throughout the world. After the death of Lenin, the Comintern's official interpretation of Leninism was the book Foundations of Leninism (1924) by Joseph Stalin.
Marxism–Leninism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism–Leninism - a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of Marxism and Leninism, and seeks to establish socialist states and develop them further. Marxist–Leninists espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of Marxism and Leninism, but generally they support the idea of a vanguard party, one-party state, state-dominance over the economy, internationalism, opposition to bourgeois democracy, and opposition to capitalism. It remains the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, and was the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the other ruling parties making up the Eastern Bloc.
Marxism–Leninism first became a distinct philosophical movement in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, when Joseph Stalin and his supporters gained control of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks). It rejected the notions, common among Marxists at the time, of world revolution as a prerequisite for building socialism in Russia (in favor of the concept of Socialism in One Country), and of a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism (signified by the introduction of the First Five-Year Plan). The internationalism of Marxism–Leninism was expressed in supporting revolutions in foreign countries (e.g., initially through the Communist International or through the concept of "socialist-leaning countries" of late Soviet Union). The goal of Marxism–Leninism is the development of a state into a socialist republic through the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard, the part of the working class who come to class consciousness as a result of the dialectic of class struggle. The socialist state, representing a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (as opposed to that of the bourgeoisie) is governed by the party of the revolutionary vanguard through the process of democratic centralism, which Vladimir Lenin described as "diversity in discussion, unity in action." It seeks the development of socialism into the full realisation of communism, a classless social system with common ownership of the means of production and with full social equality of all members of society.
Marxism–Leninism as a philosophy and a political movement has been widely criticised, due to its relations with Stalinism, the Soviet Union, state repression in Marxist–Leninist run states and classical Marxism. Trotskyists claim that Marxism–Leninism led to the establishment of a degenerated workers' state. Others, such as philosopher Eric Voegelin, claim that Marxism–Leninism is in its core (as in the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) inherently oppressive; claiming that the "Marxian vision dictated the Stalinist outcome not because the communist utopia was inevitable but because it was impossible". Criticism like this has itself been criticised for "philosophical determinism"—i.e., that the negative events in the movement's history were predetermined by their convictions. Historian Robert Vincent Daniels argues that Marxism was used to "justify Stalinism, but it was no longer allowed to serve either as a policy directive or an explanation of reality" during Stalin's rule. In complete contrast, E. Van Ree argues that Stalin continued to be in "general agreement" with the classical works of Marxism until his death.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_and_Historical_Materialism - by Joseph Stalin, is a central text within the Soviet Union's political theory Marxism–Leninism. The work first appeared as a chapter in the Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which drew heavily from the philosophical works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin. It describes the Bolshevik Party's official doctrine on dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
to sort
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_socialism - a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production or to a communist society. State socialism was first theorised by Ferdinand Lassalle. It advocates a planned economy controlled by the state in which all industries and natural resources are state-owned.
Aside from anarchists and other libertarian socialists, there was, in the past, confidence amongst socialists in the concept of state socialism as being the most effective form of socialism. Some early social democrats in the late 19th century and early 20th century, such as the Fabians, claimed that British society was already mostly socialist and that the economy was significantly socialist through government-run enterprises created by conservative and liberal governments which could be run for the interests of the people through their representatives' influence, an argument reinvoked by some socialists in post-war Britain. State socialism declined starting in the 1970s, with stagflation during the 1970s energy crisis, the rise of neoliberalism and later with the fall of state socialist nations in the Eastern Bloc during the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Libertarian socialists often treat state socialism as synonymous with state capitalism, arguing that the economic systems of Marxist–Leninist states such as the Soviet Union were not genuinely socialist due to their autocratic nature. Democratic and libertarian socialists claim that these states had only a limited number of socialist characteristics. However, others maintain that workers in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states had genuine control over the means of production through institutions such as trade unions. Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian state socialism and democratic state socialism, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as Britain, France, Sweden and Western social-democracies in general, among others.
As a classification within the socialist movement, state socialism is held in contrast with libertarian socialism, which rejects the view that socialism can be constructed using existing state institutions or governmental policies. By contrast, proponents of state socialism claim that the state—through practical governing considerations—must play at least a temporary part in building socialism. It is possible to conceive of a democratic socialist state that owns the means of production and is internally organised in a participatory, cooperative fashion, thereby achieving both social ownership of productive property and workplace democracy. Today, state socialism is mainly advocated by Marxist–Leninists and other socialists supporting a socialist state.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state - or socialist republic (sometimes Workers' State), refers to any state that is constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. In Western usage, the term "Communist state" is often used in reference to single-party socialist states governed by parties adhering to a variant of Marxism–Leninism; however these states officially refer to themselves as "socialist states" that are in the process of building socialism and do not describe themselves as "communist" or as having achieved communism. Aside from the "Communist states", a number of other states have described their orientation as "socialist" in their constitutions.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism - a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an interpretation of Marxism distinct from both classical and Orthodox Marxism and the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union.
Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development. An important theme was the origins of Karl Marx's thought in the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the recovery of what they called the "Young Marx" . Although early figures, such as György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci were prominent politically, Perry Anderson in the mid-1970s characterised Western Marxism after the Second World War as predominantly undertaken by university-based philosophers, exemplified by Theodor Adorno, Galvano Della Volpe and Herbert Marcuse, among others.
Since the 1960s, the concept has been closely associated with the New Left. While many Western Marxists were adherents of Marxist humanism, the term also encompasses figures and schools of thought, such as the structural Marxists Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas, that were strongly critical of Hegelianism and humanism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austromarxism - The Austromarxist group congregated since 1904 around magazines such as the Blätter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus and the Marx-Studien. Far from being a homogeneous movement, it was a home for such different thinkers and politicians as the Neokantian Max Adler and the orthodox Marxist Rudolf Hilferding. In 1921 the Austromarxists formed the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (also known as 2½ International or the Vienna International), hoping to unite the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, something which eventually failed. Austromarxism inspired later movements such as Eurocommunism and the New Left, all searching for a democratic socialist middle ground between communism and social democracy and a way to eventually unite the two movements.
Libertarian socialism
focus on individuals and bottom-up group association, better social process ownership
- The principle of federation and the need to reconstitute the party of revolution - P.-J. Proudhon (1809-1867). Published in 1863.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovia - also known as the Free Territory (Ukrainian: Вільна територія vilna terytoriya; Russian: Вольная территория volnaya territoriya), resulted from an attempt to form a stateless anarchist society during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917 to 1921. It existed from 1918 to 1921, during which time "free soviets" and libertarian communes operated under the protection of Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army. The area had a population of around seven million.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabat - Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, better known simply as Nabat (Набат), was an anarchist organization that came to prominence in Ukraine during the years 1918 to 1920. The area where it held the most influence is sometimes referred to as Makhnovia, though Nabat had branches in all of the major cities in southern Ukraine. "Nabat" is a Russian/Ukrainian word meaning tocsin, or an alarm bell toll. The group published a newspaper by the same name.
- https://archive.org/details/nestormakhnopayasansdukraine - Nestor Makhno, peasant from UkraineAnarchist and communist, a conjunction of two terms unthinkable in the Soviet Union. However, it is what Nestor Makhno demanded in Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century. At a breathless pace, Hélène Chatelain reconstitutes his life from his writings, Soviet propaganda films, reactions of workers today and the memory he left in the heart of his people in Guliai-Polye. Between the Revolution of 1917 and 1921, Makhno is the initiator of the first communes in Ukraine. He shares some communist aspirations, nevertheless his local power and his refusal of violence and new directives can only throw shade on the emerging soviets. Lenin tries a mediation with Makhno to bring him back in the Bolshevik bosom, but he resists. The legend built by Soviet propaganda makes him a counter-revolutionary anarchist-bandit-antisemite; for those of Guliai-Polye, he on the contrary defends freedom and the poor, and the Makhnovist newspapers show that he also defended the Jews. "Workers of the world, go to the depths of your soul for only there will you find the truth."
Anarchism
- Radio 4: In Our Time - Anarchism
- YouTube: Noam Chomsky - What is Anarchism?
- http://www.chomsky.info/books/state01.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism - the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems. Although usually contrasted to social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Mutualism, an economic theory particularly influential within individualist anarchism whose pursued liberty has been called the synthesis of communism and property has been considered sometimes part of individualist anarchism and other times part of social anarchism. Many anarcho-communists regard themselves as radical individualists, seeing anarcho-communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists advocate mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that gives privilege and is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital, — that is, of property" by mutual credit.
Individualist anarchism represents a group of several traditions of thought and individualist philosophies within the anarchist movement. Among the early influences on individualist anarchism were William Godwin (philosophical anarchism), Josiah Warren (sovereignty of the individual), Max Stirner (egoism), Lysander Spooner (natural law), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (mutualism), Henry David Thoreau (transcendentalism), Herbert Spencer (law of equal liberty) and Anselme Bellegarrigue (civil disobedience). From there, individualist anarchism expanded through Europe and the United States, where prominent 19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker held that "if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny".
Within anarchism, individualist anarchism is primarily a literary phenomenon while social anarchism has been the dominant form of anarchism, emerging in the late 19th century as a distinction from individualist anarchism after anarcho-communism replaced collectivist anarchism as the dominant tendency. Individualist anarchism has been described as the anarchist branch most influenced by and tied to liberalism (the classical liberalism deriving anti-capitalist notions and socialist economics from classical political economists and the labor theory of value) as well as the liberal or liberal-socialist wing—contra the collectivist or communist wing—of anarchism and libertarian socialism. The very idea of an individualist–socialist divide is contested as individualist anarchism is largely socialistic and can be considered a form of individualist socialism, with non-Lockean individualism encompassing socialism. Individualist anarchism is the basis of most anarchist schools of thought, influencing nearly all anarchist tendensies and having contibuted to much of anarchist discourse
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoist_anarchism - or anarcho-egoism, often shortened as simply egoism, is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a 19th-century existentialist philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best known exponents of individualist anarchism".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism - also referred to as anarchist communism, communist anarchism, free communism, libertarian communism and stateless communism, is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought which advocates the abolition of the state, capitalism, wage labour and private property (while retaining respect for personal property, along with collectively-owned items, goods and services) in favor of common ownership of the means of production and direct democracy as well as a horizontal network of workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Some forms of anarcho-communism such as insurrectionary anarchism are strongly influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism to be the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.
Anarcho-communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French Revolution, but it was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International. The theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin took importance later as it expanded and developed pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist sections. To date, the best-known examples of an anarcho-communist society (i.e. established around the ideas as they exist today and achieving worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon) are the anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution, where anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked to create and defend anarcho-communism through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine from 1918 before being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Especifismo - one of the two main forms of anarchist activism championed by FARJ (Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro) and other South American anarchist organizations, the other being social insertion. Especifismo emerged as a result of anarchist experiences in South America over the last half of the 20th century starting with the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), which was founded in 1956 by anarchists who saw the need for an organization which was specifically anarchist.
Overview
Especifismo has been summarized as:
- The need for a specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis.
- The use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic political and organizing work.
- Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements via social insertion.
- https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:199534&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF [11]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_anarchism - an anarchist school of thought that puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. A green anarchist theory is normally one that extends anarchism beyond a critique of human interactions and includes a critique of the interactions between humans and non-humans as well. This often culminates in an anarchist revolutionary praxis that is not merely dedicated to human liberation, but also to some form of nonhuman liberation and that aims to bring about an environmentally sustainable anarchist society. Important early influences were Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy and Élisée Reclus. In the late 19th century, green anarchism emerged within individualist anarchist circles in Cuba, France, Portugal and Spain.
Important contemporary currents include anarcho-naturism as the fusion of anarchism and naturist philosophies; anarcho-primitivism which offers a critique of technology and argues that anarchism is best suited to uncivilised ways of life; eco-anarchism which combines older trends of primitivism as well as bioregional democracy, eco-feminism, intentional community, pacifism and secession that distinguish it from the more general green anarchism; green syndicalism, a green anarchist political stance made up of anarcho-syndicalist views; social ecology which argues that the hierarchical domination of nature by human stems from the hierarchical domination of human by human; and veganarchism which argues that human liberation and animal liberation are inseparable.
Collectivist anarchism / anarcho-collectivism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivist_anarchism - also known as anarcho-collectivism, is a revolutionary anarchist doctrine that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production as it instead envisions the means of production being owned collectively and controlled and managed by the producers themselves.For the collectivization of the means of production, it was originally envisaged that workers will revolt and forcibly collectivize the means of production. Once collectivization takes place, money would be abolished to be replaced with labour notes and workers' salaries would be determined in democratic organizations of voluntary membership based on job difficulty and the amount of time they contributed to production. These salaries would be used to purchase goods in a communal market. This contrasts with anarcho-communism, where wages would be abolished and where individuals would take freely from a storehouse of goods "to each according to his need". Notwithstanding the title, Mikhail Bakunin's collectivist anarchism is seen as a blend of individualism and collectivism. Collectivist anarchism is most commonly associated with Bakunin, the anti-authoritarian sections of the International Workingmen's Association and the early Spanish anarchist movement
Libertarian communism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism - also known as anarcho-communism, free communism, libertarian communism, and communist anarchism) is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, capitalism, wage labour, and private property (while retaining respect for personal property), and in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy, and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
Some forms of anarchist communism, such as insurrectionary anarchism, are strongly influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism is the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Some anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society. Anarcho-communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French Revolution, but was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International. The theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin took importance later as it expanded and developed pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist sections.
To date, the best-known examples of an anarchist communist society (i.e., established around the ideas as they exist today and achieving worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon), are the anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in 1936 anarchist communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante and Andalusia, as well as in the stronghold of Revolutionary Catalonia before being crushed by nationalist Falange Española forces under Franco, with support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as well as Spanish Communist Party repression (backed by the USSR) and international economic and armaments blockades by capitalist countries and the Second Spanish Republic itself. During the Russian Revolution, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked to create and defend—through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine—anarchist communism in the Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.
Agorism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism - a libertarian social philosophy that advocates creating a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution. It was first proposed by libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin III in 1975, with contributions partly by J. Neil Schulman.
Communalism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communalism_(Political_Philosophy) - Communalism (spelled with a capital C to differentiate it from other forms) is a libertarian socialist political philosophy developed by author and activist Murray Bookchin as a political system to complement his environmental philosophy of social ecology. Communalism proposes that markets and money be abolished and that land and enterprises - i.e., private property - be placed increasingly in the custody of the community – more precisely, the custody of citizens in free assemblies and their delegates in confederal councils. (However, Communalism makes allowances for personal property.) The planning of work, the choice of technologies, the management and distribution of goods are seen as questions that can only be resolved in practice. The maxim "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is taken as a bedrock guide for an economically rational society, where all goods are designed and manufactured to have the highest durability and quality, a society where needs are guided by rational and ecological standards, and where the ancient notions of limit and balance replace the capitalist imperative of "grow or die".
In such a municipal economy – confederal, interdependent, and rational by ecological, not only technological, standards – Communalists hold that the special interests that divide people today into workers, professionals, managers, capitalist owners and so on would be melded into a general interest (a social interest) in which people see themselves as citizens guided strictly by the needs of their community and region rather than by personal proclivities and vocational concerns. Here, it is hoped, citizenship would come into its own, and rational as well as ecological interpretations of the public good would supplant class and hierarchical interests.
Libertarian municipalism
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin - social ecology over deep ecology, social anarchism over lifestyle anarchism
- What is Communalism? - The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism
- "Where liberal thought generally reduced the social to the economic, various socialisms (apart from Marxism), among which Kropotkin denoted anarchism the "left wing," dissolved the economic into the social."
"The counterculture vision of a decentralized ecological society “neatly nested” into place will have to give way to a more dynamic vision of postcapitalist democratic urbanscapes and ruralscapes that are constantly adjusting to, and making and remaking, their surrounding social ecologies.
"Rather than fetish a municipal route to social change, this will have to involve enrolling many partners at many spatial scales of politics to facilitate social, technological, and ecological transformations. Most critically, the state — where it exists and where it is still relatively open to influence by progressive forces — is going to play a central role in this transition.
"The sensibility will have to be experimental and iterative rather than institutionally dogmatic and inflexible. The human scales of a democratic and ecological urban future are going to be multiple and varied. Anything less fails to understand the amount of trouble we are in."
Democratic confederalism
- Democratic Confederalism : Abdullah Öcalan : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
- PDF: Democratic-Confederalism - Ocalan
- YouTube: Rojava: What you need to know
- Social Ecology and Democratic Confederalism | The Anarchist Library - A reader from Make Rojava Green Again in cooperation with the association of the students from Kurdistan YXK and JXK
Horizontalidad
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontalidad - or horizontalism) is a social relationship that advocates the creation, development, and maintenance of social structures for the equitable distribution of management power. These structures and relationships function as a result of dynamic self-management, involving the continuity of participation and exchange between individuals to achieve the larger desired outcomes of the collective whole. As a specific term, horizontalidad is attributed to the radical movements that sprouted in December 2001, in Argentina, after the economic crisis. According to Marina Sitrin, it is a new social creation. Different from many social movements of the past, it rejected political programs, opting instead to create directly democratic spaces and new social relationship.
The related term "horizontals" arose during the anti-globalisation European Social Forum in London in 2004 to describe people organising in a style where they "aspire to an open relationship between participants, whose deliberative encounters (rather than representative status) form the basis of any decisions," in contrast to "verticals" who "assume the existence and legitimacy of representative structures, in which bargaining power is accrued on the basis of an electoral mandate (or any other means of selection to which the members of an organisation assent)". According to Paul Mason, "the power of the horizontalist movements is, first, their replicability by people who know nothing about theory, and secondly, their success in breaking down the hierarchies that seek to contain them. They are exposed to a montage of ideas, in a way that the structured, difficult-to-conquer knowledge of the 1970s and 1980s did not allow (...) The big question for horizontalist movements is that as long as you don't articulate against power, you're basically doing what somebody has called "reform by riot": a guy in a hoodie goes to jail for a year so that a guy in a suit can get his law through parliament".
- YouTube: Horizontal Governing - The Virtually Incorruptible Solution to Vertical Top Down Corruption.
Capitalism
- http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html via andy ducker
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs - a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history, and proposes unions and universal basic income as a potential solution.
- ‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless - Simon Walo, 2023 - Recent studies show that many workers consider their jobs socially useless. Thus, several explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed. David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs theory’, for example, claims that some jobs are in fact objectively useless, and that these are found more often in certain occupations than in others. Quantitative research on Europe, however, finds little support for Graeber’s theory and claims that alienation may be better suited to explain why people consider their jobs socially useless. This study extends previous analyses by drawing on a rich, under-utilized dataset and provides new evidence for the United States specifically. Contrary to previous studies, it thus finds robust support for Graeber’s theory on bullshit jobs. At the same time, it also confirms existing evidence on the effects of various other factors, including alienation. Work perceived as socially useless is therefore a multifaceted issue that must be addressed from different angles.
Libertarian capitalism
- YouTube: The NonViolent Zone - Matteson M. Muir
Panarchy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_%C3%89mile_de_Puydt#Panarchy - In an 1860 article, de Puydt first proposed the idea of panarchy: a political philosophy that emphasizes each individual's right to freely choose (join and leave) the jurisdiction of any governments they choose, without being forced to move from their current locale. A proponent of laissez-faire economics, he wrote that "governmental competition" would let "as many regularly competing governments as have ever been conceived and will ever be invented" exist simultaneously and detailed how such a system would be implemented. As David M. Hart writes: "Governments would become political churches, only having jurisdiction over their congregations who had elected to become members." Three similar ideas are "Functional Overlapping Competing Jurisdictions" (FOCJ) advocated by Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Reiner Eichenberger, "multigovernment" advocated by Le Grand E. Day and others, and "meta-utopia" from Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Conservatism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Statement - the founding statement of principles for Young Americans for Freedom. The views expressed in the statement, while not considered "traditional conservative principles" at the time, played a significant role in influencing Republican leaders in the 1980s. Written by M. Stanton Evans and adopted on September 11, 1960, the statement is named for the location of the inaugural meeting of Young Americans for Freedom, held at William F. Buckley, Jr.'s childhood home in Sharon, Connecticut
Fascism
Geographical and ecological
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionalism_(politics) - a political ideology that seeks to increase the political power, influence and self-determination of the people of one or more subnational regions. It focuses on the "development of a political or social system based on one or more" regions and/or the national, normative or economic interests of a specific region, group of regions or another subnational entity, gaining strength from or aiming to strengthen the "consciousness of and loyalty to a distinct region with a homogeneous population", similarly to nationalism. More specifically, "regionalism refers to three distinct elements: movements demanding territorial autonomy within unitary states; the organization of the central state on a regional basis for the delivery of its policies including regional development policies; political decentralization and regional autonomy".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregion - an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the term in a rank-less generalist sense, similar to the terms "biogeographic area" or "biogeographic unit". It may be conceptually similar to an ecoprovince. It is also differently used in the environmentalist context, being coined by Berg and Dasmann (1977).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregionalism - a philosophy that suggests that political, cultural, and economic systems are more sustainable and just if they are organized around naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics. Bioregionalism stresses that the determination of a bioregion is also a cultural phenomenon, and emphasizes local populations, knowledge, and solutions.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red–green_alliance - or red–green coalition is an alliance of "red" (often social-democratic or democratic socialist) parties with "green" (often green and/or occasionally agrarian) parties. The alliance is often based on common left political views, especially a shared distrust of corporate or capitalist institutions. While the "red" social-democratic parties tend to focus on the effects of capitalism on the working class, the "green" environmentalist parties tend to focus on the environmental effects of capitalism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentrism_(ethics) - in a political and ecological sense, is an ethical point of view that extends inherent value to all living things. It stands in contrast to anthropocentrism which centers on the value of humans. The related term zoocentrism limits inherent value specifically to animals. Advocates of biocentrism often promote the preservation of biodiversity, animal rights, and environmental protection. The term has also been employed by advocates of "left biocentrism", which combines deep ecology with an "anti-industrial and anti-capitalist" position (according to David Orton et al.).
Although they are similar in many ways, biocentrism and ecocentrism are two distinct ethical viewpoints. Biocentrism is "a kind of ethics of individualism" in that it emphasizes the value, rights, and survival of individual organic beings. Ecocentrism, on the other hand, takes a more holistic approach, giving moral priority to species and ecosystems rather than the individuals that compose them.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_environmentalism - a grassroots branch of the larger environmental movement that emerged from an ecocentrism-based frustration with the co-option of mainstream environmentalism. It is the ideology behind the radical environmental movement.
The radical environmental movement aspires to what scholar Christopher Manes calls "a new kind of environmental activism: iconoclastic, uncompromising, discontented with traditional conservation policy, at times illegal..." Radical environmentalism presupposes a need to reconsider Western ideas of religion and philosophy (including capitalism, patriarchy and globalization) sometimes through "resacralising" and reconnecting with nature.
The movement is typified by leaderless resistance organizations such as Earth First!, which subscribe to the idea of taking direct action in defense of Mother Earth including civil disobedience, ecotage and monkeywrenching. Movements such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Earth Liberation Army (ELA) also take this form of action, although focus on economic sabotage, rather than civil disobedience. Radical environmentalists include earth liberationists as well as anarcho-primitivists, animal liberationists, bioregionalists, green anarchists, deep ecologists, ecopsychologists, ecofeminists, neo-Pagans, Wiccans, Third Positionists, anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist protesters.
- UN Life Cycle Initiative Life Cycle Thinking is about understanding environmental, social and economic impacts into people’s hands at the time they are making decisions. It offers a way of incorporating sustainability in decision making processes and can be used by decision makers in both the public and private sector for the developement of policies and products, as well as for procurement and the provision of services.
Legal
See also Business
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality - in respect of a legal act, agreement, or contract is the state of being consistent with the law, or of being lawful or unlawful in a given jurisdiction, and the construct of power.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, legality is 1 : attachment to or observance of law. 2 : the quality or state of being legal.
Businessdictionary.com, thelawdictionary.org, and mylawdictionary.org definition explains concept of attachment to law as Implied warranty that an act, agreement, or contract strictly adheres to the statutes of a particular jurisdiction. For example, in insurance contracts it is assumed that all risks covered under the policy are legal ventures.
Laws
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence - the study and theory of law
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislation - the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to as "legislation" while it remains under consideration to distinguish it from other business. Legislation can have many purposes: to regulate, to authorize, to outlaw, to provide (funds), to sanction, to grant, to declare, or to restrict. It may be contrasted with a non-legislative act by an executive or administrative body under the authority of a legislative act.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casebook - a type of textbook used primarily by students in law schools. Rather than simply laying out the legal doctrine in a particular area of study, a casebook contains excerpts from legal cases in which the law of that area was applied. It is then up to the student to analyze the language of the case in order to determine what rule was applied and how the court applied it. Casebooks sometimes also contain excerpts from law review articles and legal treatises, historical notes, editorial commentary, and other related materials to provide background for the cases. The teaching style based on casebooks is known as the casebook method and is supposed to instill in law students how to "think like a lawyer." The casebook method is most often used in law schools in countries with common law legal systems, where case law is a major source of law.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casebook_method - similar to but not exactly the same as the case method, is the primary method of teaching law in law schools in the United States. It was pioneered at Harvard Law School by Christopher Columbus Langdell. It is based on the principle that rather than studying highly abstract summaries of legal rules (the technique used in most countries), the best way to learn American law is to read the actual judicial opinions which become the law under the rule of stare decisis (due to its Anglo-American common law origin).
- Open Casebooks | H2O - helps law faculty create high quality, open-licensed digital textbooks for free. Open-source software designed to replace bulky and expensive law textbooks with an easy-to-use web interface where instructors and students alike can author, organize, view and print public-domain course material.
- Perma.cc - Perma.cc helps scholars, journals, courts, and others create permanent records of the web sources they cite. Perma.cc is simple, easy to use, and is built and supported by libraries.
- Caselaw Access Project - expands public access to U.S. law. Our goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law School Library.
- Labs | Caselaw Access Project - A legal timeline tool that allows CAP users to plot caselaw alongside other events chronologically.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributive_justice - concerns the socially just allocation of resources. Often contrasted with just process, which is concerned with the administration of law, distributive justice concentrates on outcomes. This subject has been given considerable attention in philosophy and the social sciences.
Court
Restorative justice
Transformative justice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_justice - a general philosophical strategy for responding to conflicts. It takes the principles and practices of restorative justice beyond the criminal justice system. It applies to areas such as environmental law, corporate law, labor-management relations, consumer bankruptcy and debt, and family law. Transformative justice uses a systems approach, seeking to see problems, as not only the beginning of the crime but also the causes of crime, and tries to treat an offense as a transformative relational and educational opportunity for victims, offenders and all other members of the affected community. In theory, a transformative justice model can apply even between peoples with no prior contact.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Accountability - a community-based strategy, rather than a police/prison-based strategy, to address violence including domestic violence, sexual violence, and child abuse. Community Accountability is a process in which a community – a group of friends, a family, a church, a workplace, an apartment complex, a neighborhood, etc. – work together to do the following things: Create and affirm values and practices that resist abuse and oppression and encourage safety, support, and accountability Develop strategies to address abusive behavior of community members and help them to transform their behavior Work on the evolution of the community and all its members, to transform the political conditions that reinforce oppression and violence Provide safety and support to community members who are violently targeted with respect to their self-determination[
National systems
- http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/i-got-myself-arrested-so-i-could-look-inside-the-justice-system/282360/ [12]
Plurality and cecentralised laws
Prison
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon - a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates knowing whether they are being watched.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carceral_archipelago - first used by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault in his 1975 publication, Surveiller et Punir, to describe the modern penal system of the 1970s, embodied by the well-known penal institution at Mettray in France. The phrase combines the adjective "carceral", which means that which is related to jail or prison, with archipelago—a group of islands. Foucault referred to the "island" units of the "archipelago" as a metaphor for the mechanisms, technologies, knowledge systems and networks related to a carceral continuum. The 1973 English publication of the book by Solzhenitsyn called The Gulag Archipelago referred to the forced labor camps and prisons that composed the sprawling carceral network of the Soviet Gulag.
Concepts developed in Foucault's Discipline and Punish have been widely used by researchers in the growing, multi-disciplinary field of "carceral state" studies, as part of the "carceral turn" in the 1990s. Foucault, who died in the 1980s, did not witness the "unparalleled escalation of prison populations": 391 of the carceral state in the United States. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the incarceration rate in the US increased by a factor of five, reaching an incarceration rate of 1 in 100 by 2008. Until the carceral turn, scholars propose how what they describe as the American mass incarcerations and prison-industrial complex were almost invisible. In 1993, the international criminologist, Nils Christie, who was one of the first to warn of the perceived dangers of the alarming growth and danger of the crime control industry in the United States, comparing the size and scope of the industry to Western style gulags.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex - PIC, is a term, coined after the "military-industrial complex" of the 1950s, used by scholars and activists to describe the many relationships between institutions of imprisonment and the various businesses that benefit from them
Abolition
- http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/policing-is-a-dirty-job-but-nobodys-gotta-do-it-6-ideas-for-a-cop-free-world-20141216 [14]
Economics
- Marginal Revolution - the blog of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both of whom teach at George Mason University. MR began in August of 2003 and there have been new posts daily since that time. In numerous reviews and ratings over the years Marginal Revolution has consistently been ranked as the best or one of the best economic blogs on the web, but it is more (and less) than that, also representing the quirks of its authors.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microeconomics - a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources.
- http://www.unz.com/article/finance-is-not-the-economy/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577005
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_economy - economic and social activity facilitated by platforms. Such platforms are typically online sales or technology frameworks. By far the most common type are "transaction platforms", also known as "digital matchmakers". Examples of transaction platforms include Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, and Baidu. A second type is the "innovation platform", which provides a common technology framework upon which others can build, such as the many independent developers who work on Microsoft's platform.
- https://wiki.mises.org - a wiki project dedicated to the advancement of the Austrian School of Economics and related thought. Sponsored by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and founded on 5 November 2010, the repository now has 1,993 articles. We are always looking for more contributors – to begin, you can experiment in the sandbox, edit an existing article, or start a new one. See also the Community portal for information about the project.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design - a field in economics and game theory that takes an engineering approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts at the end of the game, then goes backwards, it is also called reverse game theory. It has broad applications, from economics and politics (markets, auctions, voting procedures) to networked-systems (internet interdomain routing, sponsored search auctions). Mechanism design studies solution concepts for a class of private-information games. Leonid Hurwicz explains that 'in a design problem, the goal function is the main "given", while the mechanism is the unknown. Therefore, the design problem is the "inverse" of traditional economic theory, which is typically devoted to the analysis of the performance of a given mechanism.' So, two distinguishing features of these games are: that a game "designer" chooses the game structure rather than inheriting one; that the designer is interested in the game's outcome.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency - or Pareto optimality is a state of allocation of resources from which it is impossible to reallocate so as to make any one individual or preference criterion better off without making at least one individual or preference criterion worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian engineer and economist, who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution.The Pareto frontier is the set of all Pareto efficient allocations, conventionally shown graphically. It also is variously known as the Pareto front or Pareto set.
A Pareto improvement is a change to a different allocation that makes at least one individual or preference criterion better off without making any other individual or preference criterion worse off, given a certain initial allocation of goods among a set of individuals. An allocation is defined as "Pareto efficient" or "Pareto optimal" when no further Pareto improvements can be made, in which case we are assumed to have reached Pareto optimality."Pareto efficiency" is considered as a minimal notion of efficiency that does not necessarily result in a socially desirable distribution of resources: it makes no statement about equality, or the overall well-being of a society. It is simply a statement of impossibility of improving one variable without harming other variables in the subject of multi-objective optimization (also termed Pareto optimization).
Besides economics, the notion of Pareto efficiency has been applied to the selection of alternatives in engineering and biology. Each option is first assessed, under multiple criteria, and then a subset of options is ostensibly identified with the property that no other option can categorically outperform the specified option.In addition to the context of efficiency in allocation, the concept of Pareto efficiency also arises in the context of efficiency in production: a set of outputs of goods is Pareto efficient if there is no feasible re-allocation of productive inputs such that output of one product increases while the outputs of all other goods either increase or remain the same.
- YouTube: Prof. Martin Chick - Time, Economics and a Political Economy of Britain since 1945 - The University of Edinburgh
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_economy - a third sector among economies between the private (business) and public sectors (government). It includes organizations such as cooperatives, nonprofit organizations and charities. Social economy theory attempts to situate these organizations into a broader political economic context. In particular it investigates the economic viability of cooperatives and the value of non-profit organizations and charities in traditional economic theory.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics - bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made, capital can substitute for natural capital (see the section on weak versus strong sustainability below). Ecological economics was founded in the 1980s as a modern discipline on the works of and interactions between various European and American academics (see the section on History and development below). The related field of green economics is in general a more politically applied form of the subject.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Georgescu-Roegen - a Romanian mathematician, statistician and economist. He is best known today for his 1971 magnum opus The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, in which he argued that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. A progenitor and a paradigm founder in economics, Georgescu-Roegen's work was decisive for the establishing of ecological economics as an independent academic sub-discipline in economics.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth - a term used for both a political, economic, and social movement as well as a set of theories that criticise the paradigm of economic growth. Degrowth is based on ideas from political ecology, ecological economics, feminist political ecology, and environmental justice, arguing that social and ecological harm is caused by the pursuit of infinite growth and Western "development" imperatives. Degrowth argues for a reduction in global consumption and production (social metabolism) and advocates a socially just and ecologically sustainable society with social and environmental well-being replacing gross domestic product (GDP) as the indicator of prosperity. Degrowth aims for social reorganisation that modifies the flow and usage of material. This restructuring aims to shift away from mainstream (capitalist) economic activity. While GDP is likely to shrink in a "degrowth society", i.e. in a society in which the objectives of the degrowth movement are achieved, this is not the primary objective of degrowth. The main argument of degrowth is that an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to the finiteness of the Earth. Degrowth highlights the importance of care work, self-organization, commons, community, open localism, work sharing.
- Degrowth - We are a political collective that runs the webportal degrowth.info, one of the most prominent online spaces providing resources on degrowth. We engage in collective political education by creating and sharing knowledge about degrowth and related struggles for radical transformation. We strive to put degrowth into practice through our own modes of internal organising and by developing a collective political voice which nurtures the conditions for a just social-ecological transformation.
- Computing the Perfect Model: Why Do Economists Shun Simulation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7097734
- Moneyless.org - A Rich Life without Money. Tips, Blogs, Stories, Books
- Solidarity economics : turbulence - Euclides André Mance celebrates a new mode of production which is expanding as part of a network revolution, and argues that it could form the material basis for new post-capitalist societie
Public goods
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics) - also referred to as a social good or collective good) is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. For such goods, users cannot be barred from accessing or using them for failing to pay for them. Also, use by one person neither prevents access of other people nor does it reduce availability to others. Therefore, the good can be used simultaneously by more than one person. This is in contrast to a common good, such as wild fish stocks in the ocean, which is non-excludable but rivalrous to a certain degree. If too many fish were harvested, the stocks would deplete, limiting the access of fish for others. A public good must be valuable to more than one user, otherwise, the fact that it can be used simultaneously by more than one person would be economically irrelevant.
Capital goods may be used to produce public goods or services that are "...typically provided on a large scale to many consumers." Unlike other types of economic goods, public goods are described as “non-rivalrous” or “non-exclusive,” and use by one person neither prevents access of other people nor does it reduce availability to others. Similarly, using capital goods to produce public goods may result in the creation of new capital goods. In some cases, public goods or services are considered "...insufficiently profitable to be provided by the private sector.... (and), in the absence of government provision, these goods or services would be produced in relatively small quantities or, perhaps, not at all."
Public goods include knowledge, official statistics, national security, common languages, law enforcement, public parks, free roads, television and radio broadcasts. Additionally, flood control systems, lighthouses, and street lighting are also common social goods. Collective goods that are spread all over the face of the earth may be referred to as global public goods. This is not limited to physical book literature, but also media, pictures and videos. For instance, knowledge is well shared globally. Information about men, women and youth health awareness, environmental issues, and maintaining biodiversity is common knowledge that every individual in the society can get without necessarily preventing others access. Also, sharing and interpreting contemporary history with a cultural lexicon, particularly about protected cultural heritage sites and monuments are other sources of knowledge that the people can freely access.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_public_good - global public good (or global good) is a public good available on a more-or-less worldwide basis. There are many challenges to the traditional definition, which have far-reaching implications in the age of globalization.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_heritage_of_humanity - also termed the common heritage of mankind, common heritage of humankind or common heritage principle) is a principle of international law that holds the defined territorial areas and elements of humanity's common heritage (cultural and natural) should be held in trust for future generations and be protected from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations.
Housing and property
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_housing - housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency homeless shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental (also known as social or subsidized housing,, to formal and informal rental, indigenous housing, and ending with affordable home ownership. Housing choice is a response to an extremely complex set of economic, social, and psychological impulses. For example, some households may choose to spend more on housing because they feel they can afford to, while others may not have a choice.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_movement - a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social interconnectedness. Its main object was the establishment of "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The settlement houses provided services such as daycare, English classes, and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas.
Online
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwork - a series of small tasks which together comprise a large unified project, and are completed by many people over the Internet. Microwork is considered the smallest unit of work in a virtual assembly line. It is most often used to describe tasks for which no efficient algorithm has been devised, and require human intelligence to complete reliably. The term was developed in 2008 by Leila Chirayath Janah of Samasource.
Technological
See also FLOS etc.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_utopianism - often called techno-utopianism or technoutopianism, is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal. techno-utopia is therefore an ideal society, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well-being of all its citizens, set in the near- or far-future, as advanced science and technology will allow these ideal living standards to exist; for example, post-scarcity, transformations in human nature, the avoidance or prevention of suffering and even the end of death.
Technological utopianism is often connected with other discourses presenting technologies as agents of social and cultural change, such as technological determinism or media imaginaries. A tech-utopia does not disregard any problems that technology may cause, but strongly believes that technology allows mankind to make social, economic, political, and cultural advancements. Overall, Technological Utopianism views technology's impacts as extremely positive.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several ideologies and movements, such as the cyberdelic counterculture, the Californian Ideology, cyber-utopianism, transhumanism, and singularitarianism, have emerged promoting a form of techno-utopia as a reachable goal. Cultural critic Imre Szeman argues technological utopianism is an irrational social narrative because there is no evidence to support it. He concludes that it shows the extent to which modern societies place faith in narratives of progress and technology overcoming things, despite all evidence to the contrary.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-utopianism - or web-utopianism or digital utopianism or utopian internet is a subcategory of technological utopianism and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized, democratic, and libertarian society. The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to digital socialism. Cyber-populists like the M5S use the wonder associated with digital technologies aka the digital sublime to develop their political vision.
Funding
- https://github.com/ralphtheninja/open-funding - A guide for researching ways of funding open source projects.
Technology
Audiobooks/podcasts
to look into properly at some point in the future..
Comedy
News
Public health
- About | PGP - a public health nonprofit specializing in large-scale media monitoring programs, social and behavior change interventions, and cross-sector initiatives. PGP applies the best evidence and practices from the public and private sectors to create bold projects for health. PGP’s programs and initiatives are evidence-based, tailored for particular populations, employ a collective impact model, and are scientifically evaluated. PGP is led by experts in public health, marketing, journalism, media, and business. We deploy our considerable resources and relationships to support communities and partners in their mission to make a healthier and more equitable world.
Activism
- CrimethInc. - everything that evades control: the daydream in the classroom, the renegade breaking ranks, the spray-painted walls that continue to speak even under martial law. It is the persistent sense that things could be otherwise, that there is nothing natural or inevitable about the prevailing social order. In a world optimized for administration, everything that cannot be classified or displayed on a screen is crimethink. It is the spirit of rebellion without which freedom is literally unthinkable.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_resistance - political action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance by civil groups to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine the adversary's sources of power, both domestic and international. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, and the creation of parallel institutions of government. Civil resistance movements' motivations for avoiding violence are generally related to context, including a society's values and its experience of war and violence, rather than to any absolute ethical principle. Cases of civil resistance can be found throughout history and in many modern struggles, against both tyrannical rulers and democratically elected governments. Mahatma Gandhi was the first to use it to free India from British imperialism. The phenomenon of civil resistance is often associated with the advancement of democracy.