‘’The environmental action is either revolutionary or it’s nothing. The ecology either will reveal the class social causes and the cruel relationships that have created a totally poisoned planet, or it will be an essence of capitalism.’
Murray Bookchin
As the capitalistic accumulation is getting bigger, as the gap between the rich and the poor is enlarged, as long as the capital is globalized, as the police state protects itself with the help of bureaucracy , as long as people watch their toil getting sold for a penny, as the wealthy north consumes and the pour south suffers, that’s when we realize that our problems are strongly related. That’s why an holistic answer needs to be given, that will confront the problems as parts of one and only mechanism. The capitalistic expansion, the repression of the state and the environmental degradation are parts of the same problem and certainly they cannot be confronted through a mild socialism, or less participation from the state, or through the green capitalism’s tricks.
AGRICULTURE AND CAPITALISM
Our struggle for the earth and for liberty is more topical than ever. The multinational companies of the genetically modifies products, control the market of the seeds and put pressure on the states to vote for laws that will control or ban the use of local varieties. Furthermore, nowadays the farmer of the ‘developed’ west is forced to intensify his production with pesticides and genetically modified products in order to compete the pour and maltreated farmer of the developing world, that offers his work just to ensure for himself a piece of bread. At the same time, a large part of the croplands don’t even concern our food but they are kept as storage for the environmentally conscious Europeans and Americans. The biofuels are suggested as a ‘nit’ solution for the climate crisis and huge areas are pledged, but this has as a result the rise of the food price and the starvation of an even larger amount of the human population. In each case however, the capitalist system tends to maintain the levels of the prices where the most profit is ensured. Another large part of the crops is intended for consumption of an enormous number of the non-human animals which are breed in order to end up as food for the wealthy north. These animals are the stakes in humans’ meals.
HUMAN LIBERATION /ANIMAL LIBERATION
The animals in the industrial breeding is just a brick in the wall of the exploitation of the non-human lives. Those who are maltreated in circus and zoos, those who suffer and slaughtered in the science labs and those who are trapped in small cages at the pet shops, are all included. We stand against the philosophy of the sterile city and we fight for the liberation of all animals not as ‘pet-friends’ or ‘conscious citizens’, but as anarchists and fanatic lovers of freedom, as people who understand that other species have to satisfy their vital needs and instincts.
‘’I am a fanatic lover of freedom , which i consider as the only environment in which the intelligence, dignity and happiness of the human kind can be grown and evolved.’’
- Bakounin
ECOLOGY AND ANARCHY
Some years now in Greece, an anarchist thinking has started to develop against speciesism, the discriminatory treatment of the other species. We would rather not hide ourselves behind this identity and create an additional part of the anarchist theory and movement. We strongly believe however, that the empowerment of this theory will contribute in the further evolution of the anarchist thinking and it will urge this evolution to a better level of a more broadened freedom. That’s how we pursue total liberation of the earth, the human and the non-human animals.
Through this article of self-presentation we declare that we’re interested in promoting -inside and outside the anarchist circle- all those elements of the eco-anarchist way of thinking, which are highly significant. We are strictly against the concept of the creation of an eco-anarchist lifestyle, which has no purpose except from self- reference and consumption into meaningless debates. We are interested in the impregnation of all the elements of anarchism that have a forceful and influential character and can lead to a liberated and ecological society. That hectic force in which we found ourselves as the citizens of south Europe, doesn’t have to make us set priorities in our struggles. We can fight simultaneously for the defense of the immigrants, the imprisoned comrades, the working class, the unemployed, the homosexuals with the same passion for the defense of the non-human animals.
THE STRUGGLES THEN, TODAY AND FOREVER
We are well aware that today, more than ever, the struggles demand strategy, enlisting and solidarity. The examples of the struggles that include those elements , that we have referred to earlier, are many. One of them is the struggle against the diversion of Acheloos river, the struggle of the residents in islands such as Lesvos and Crete against the wind farms, the networks of solidarity, the networks of the product and service exchange, the struggle of the residents of Keratea. Surely, we must not forget the struggle of the residents in Chalkidiki that tried to put an end to the gold mines. Two members of the struggle are already in custody for this case and others are expecting their trial. Moreover, the anarchist Nikos Maziotis was convicted and accused for a bomb set in 1997 as an indication of solidarity to the struggle of the residents in Chalkidiki against the company TVXGold.
We do not forget either, the imprisoned comrades of the ALF and the ELF that are serving their sentences in the prisons of the USA and Europe.
What we have as a weapon against the economic crisis, the terrorism of the state, the medieval working status quo, the environmental degradation, is the horizontal, anti-hierarchical structures, the direct actions, the solidarity and anarchy. We fight for the liberation of human and non -human animals, for the liberated eco-communities in cities and villages, for the earth and freedom.
Anarchist Collective
Black/Green
Thessaloniki, June 2013