Anarchism could help to save the world
David Priestland, The Guardian, July 3, 2015
“Anarchism’s challenges remain much the same as they were in Kropotkin’s day. How can a group so suspicious of established institutions build an effective movement for the long term? How can it win over a majority addicted to endless growth and ever higher living standards? And how can its ideal social order, founded on local participatory democracy, control the enormous concentrations of power in states and international markets?
“Yet much has changed to anarchism’s advantage. A more educated society is becoming ever less deferential and possibly less materialistic. Meanwhile, the failures of both state socialism in 1989 and global capitalism in 2008, and their glaring inability to deal with environmental degradation, demand that we question the way we live as never before. Kropotkin is no messiah, but his writings force us to imagine a politics that might just help save the world.”
