A NoBlogs site[1] sent me back to Neither Victims Nor Executioners: An Ethic Superior To Murder by Albert Camus. The blog post [1] had me reading two articles about Libertarian Municipalism[2] and two more from The Ecologist.[3] The articles made this Albert Camus quote come to mind.
… A crisis which tears the the whole world apart must be met on a world scale. A social system for everybody which will somewhat ally each one’s misery and fear is today our logical objective. But that calls for action and for sacrifices, that is, for men. And if there are many today who, in their secret hearts, detest violence and killing, there are not many who care to recognize that this forces them to reconsider their actions and thoughts. Those who want to make such an effort, however, will find in such a social system a rational hope and a guide to action.
They will admit that little is to be expected from present-day governments, since these life and act according to a murderous code. Hope remains only in the most difficult task of all: to reconsider everything from the ground up, so as to shape a living society inside a dying society. Men must therefore, as individuals, draw up among themselves, within frontiers and across them, a new social contract which will unite them according to more reasonable principles.
The peace movement I speak of could base itself, inside nations, on work-communities and, internationally, on intellectual communities; the former, organized cooperatively would help as many individuals as possible to solve their material problems, while the latter would try to define the values by which this international community would live, and would also plead its cause on every occasion.
[1]
- https://communalism.noblogs.org/
- https://communalism.noblogs.org/post/2019/12/25/the-confederation-as-the-commune-of-communes/
[2]
- https://roarmag.org/magazine/confederation-commune-of-communes/
- http://social-ecology.org/wp/1999/08/thoughts-on-libertarian-municipalism/
[3]
- https://theecologist.org/2018/apr/23/how-build-new-world-shell-old
- https://theecologist.org/2018/sep/24/cool-peoples-movements-why-air-conditioners-arent-good-enough-working-class
An alternative translation of Neither Victims Nor Executioners is available on-line as a pdf file. And the last part is available as an html page.
- https://adamgomez.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/camus-neither-victims-nor-executioners.pdf
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/albert-camus-neither-victims-nor-executioneers
Maybe I should figure out how to do anchors and links within WordPress Posts. But I like to keep links out of the main text, The Shallows convinced me that you can read better when text has no links. That is why I avoid links in the text body and put in (probably irritating) little footnote markers.