What is democracy, precisely? Will it ever deliver on what it promises? How significant is the difference between state democracy and direct democracy? Is anarchism a kind of direct democracy, or something else entirely? And how do democratic discourse and procedures serve the social movements that adopt them?
This spring, we’re publishing a ten-part series exploring these questions, presenting an anarchist analysis of democracy in all its forms. The flagship text, “From Democracy to Freedom,” traces democracy from its origins up to today, examining its representative, direct, and consensus-based variants. We’ll follow up with case studies from participants in several of the recent movements that have been acclaimed as models of direct democracy: 15M in Spain (2011), the occupation of Syntagma Square in Greece (2011), Occupy in the United States (2011-2012), the Slovenian uprising (2012-2013), the plenums in Bosnia (2014), and the Rojava revolution (2012-2016). We’ll conclude the series with guest contributions on the subject from Paul Z. Simons, Uri Gordon, and others.
To kick off the series, we’ve prepared an updated online version of our classic text on this subject, The Party’s Over. We also encourage everyone to read the English translation of Contra la Democracia (“Against Democracy”) from Spain. Here’s an incomplete syllabus for the whole series:
The Party’s Over
From Democracy to Freedom
From Democracy to Freedom Audio Zine
From 15M to Podemos: The Regeneration of Spanish Democracy
Destination Anarchy! Every Step Is an Obstacle (from Syntagma to Syriza)
Democracy and Autonomy in the Occupy Movement
“Gotovo je!”: Reflections on Direct Democracy in Slovenia
Born in Flames, Died in Plenums: The Bosnian Experiment with Direct Democracy
Lessons from Rojava: Democracy and Commune (Paul Z. Simons)
Democracy: The Patriotic Temptation (Uri Gordon)
You’re invited to form a reading group to participate in this project! We have set up a discussion platform where groups around the world can compare notes on the texts and the topic itself, in hopes of drawing on the conversation for a future episode of the Ex-Worker podcast. If you’re interested, get together some friends and write us at rollingthunder@crimethinc.com for details.
Further Reading
Democracy’s Bankrupt
Contra la Democracia
Malatesta: Neither Democrats, nor Dictators: Anarchists and Democracy and Anarchy