1.
Age of Enlightenment
–
The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, The Century of Philosophy. In France, the doctrines of les Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy. French historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715, the year that Louis XIV died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution, some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of the scientific revolution. Les philosophes of the widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffee houses. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church, a variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution, earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, and Baruch Spinoza. The major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence, others like James Madison incorporated them into the Constitution in 1787. The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie, the ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by an intellectual movement known as Romanticism. René Descartes rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for enlightenment thinking and his attempt to construct the sciences on a secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter. His skepticism was refined by John Lockes 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his dualism was challenged by Spinozas uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in his Tractatus and Ethics. Both lines of thought were opposed by a conservative Counter-Enlightenment. In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines, the political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution. Francis Hutcheson, a philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words. Much of what is incorporated in the method and some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by his protégés David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume became a figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy. Immanuel Kant tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the sphere through private
2.
Decentralization
–
Decentralization is the process of redistributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority. While centralization, especially in the sphere, is widely studied and practiced. The meaning of decentralization may vary in part because of the different ways it is applied, the word centralization came into use in France in 1794 as the post-French Revolution French Directory leadership created a new government structure. The word decentralization came into usage in the 1820s, centralization entered written English in the first third of the 1800s, mentions of decentralization also first appear during those years. In the mid-1800s Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the French Revolution began with a push towards decentralization. in the end, pierre-Joseph Proudhon, influential anarchist theorist wrote, All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words, agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a formula, political federation or decentralization. In early twentieth century America a response to the centralization of economic wealth and it blamed large-scale industrial production for destroying middle class shop keepers and small manufacturers and promoted increased property ownership and a return to small scale living. The decentralist movement attracted Southern Agrarians like Robert Penn Warren, as well as journalist Herbert Agar, hatfield, Mildred J. Loomis and Bill Kauffman. In the next few years a number of best-selling books promoted decentralization. ”Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, naisbitt’s book outlines 10 “megatrends”, the fifth of which is from centralization to decentralization. In 1996 David Osborne and Ted Gaebler had a best selling book Reinventing Government proposing decentralist public administration theories which became labeled the New Public Management, stephen Cummings wrote that decentralization became a revolutionary megatrend in the 1980s. In 1983 Diana Conyers asked if decentralization was the latest fashion in development administration, Cornell Universitys project on Restructuring Local Government states that decentralization refers to the global trend of devolving responsibilities to regional or local governments. In 1983, Decentralization was identified as one of the Ten Key Values of the Green Movement in the United States, according to a 1999 United Nations Development Programme report, A large number of developing and transitional countries have embarked on some form of decentralization programmes. The movement toward local accountability and greater control over ones destiny is, however, not solely the result of the negative attitude towards central government. Rather, these developments, as we have noted, are principally being driven by a strong desire for greater participation of citizens and private sector organizations in governance. ”Those studying the goals and processes of implementing decentralization often use a systems theory approach. ”However. Norman Johnson of Los Alamos National Laboratory wrote in a 1999 paper, an important property of agent systems is the degree of connectivity or connectedness between the agents, a measure global flow of information or influence. If each agent is connected to all agents, then the system is highly connected. Instead each party, also called a peer, makes local autonomous decisions towards its goals which may possibly conflict with those of other peers. Peers directly interact with other and share information or provide service to other peers
3.
Direct action
–
Direct action occurs when a group takes an action which is intended to reveal an existing problem, highlight an alternative, or demonstrate a possible solution to a social issue. This can include nonviolent and less often violent activities which target persons, groups, examples of non-violent direct action can include sit-ins, strikes, workplace occupations, blockades, or hacktivism, while violent direct action may include political violence or assaults. Tactics such as sabotage and property destruction may be considered violent if people are hurt in the action, by contrast, electoral politics, diplomacy, negotiation, and arbitration are not usually described as direct action, as they are politically mediated. Direct action tactics have been around for as long as conflicts have existed, the radical union the Industrial Workers of the World first mentioned the term direct action in a publication in reference to a Chicago strike conducted in 1910. American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote an essay called Direct Action in 1912 which is widely cited today. In his 1920 book, Direct Action, William Mellor placed direct action firmly in the struggle between worker and employer for control over the life of society. Mellor defined direct action as the use of form of economic power for securing of ends desired by those who possess that power. Mellor considered direct action a tool of both owners and workers and for this reason he included within his definition lockouts and cartels, as well as strikes, over and over they were arrested, fined, and imprisoned. Till they finally compelled their persecutors to let them alone, —de Cleyre, undated Martin Luther King felt that non-violent direct actions goal was to create such a crisis and foster such a tension as to demand a response. The rhetoric of Martin Luther King, James Bevel, and Mohandas Gandhi promoted non-violent revolutionary direct action as a means to social change. Noteworthy, Gandhi and Bevel had been influenced by Leo Tolstoys The Kingdom of God Is Within You. By the middle of the 20th century, the sphere of action had undoubtedly expanded. Some sections of the movement used direct action, particularly during the 1980s. In the US, mass protests opposed nuclear energy, weapons, many groups also set up semi-permanent peace camps outside air bases such as Molesworth and Greenham Common, and at the Nevada Test Site. Environmental movement organizations such as Greenpeace have used direct action to pressure governments, on April 28,2009, Greenpeace activists, including Phil Radford, scaled a crane across the street from the Department of State, calling on world leaders to address climate change. Soon thereafter, Greenpeace activists dropped a banner off of Mt. Rushmore, placing President Obamas face next to other historic presidents, overall, more than 2,600 people were arrested while protesting energy policy and associated health issues under the Barack Obama Administration. In 2009, hundreds blocked the gates of the coal fired power plant that powers the US Congress building, following the Power Shift conference in Washington, D. C. Anti-globalization activists made headlines around the world in 1999, when they forced the Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 to end early with direct action tactics
4.
Free trade
–
Free trade is one of the most debated topics in economics of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century. Arguments over free trade can be divided into economic, moral, the World Trade Organization was created to open up markets and promote international trade based on the Free Trade paradigm. The WTO creates and monitors agreements to reduce trade barriers, and arbitrates in disputes over foreign market access and its definition of Free Trade is trade on a level playing field, so that the unlimited exchange of goods between countries is not necessarily Free. Therefore, any import restriction makes the domestic society as a whole worse off than it would be with unlimited imports, the artificial handicap of a foreign subsidy seems much less just to local production than advantages deriving from geography, natural resources, or native skill. Electorates often prefer fairplay to Utilitarian considerations, if trade barriers are already low, the threat of a trade war of tit-for-tat tariff increases may reduce the temptation for either partner in bilateral trade to raise import barriers. It would tend to decrease the power and revenue flowing to government bureaucrats. In the history of trade, two types of arguments have been advanced in favor of allowing purchases from abroad, and free trade in the broader sense. One set of arguments for free trade could be classified as moral arguments listed below, another set of arguments is essentially economic, that free trade will make society more prosperous. These are mostly technical arguments from the discipline of economics, starting especially with Smiths The Wealth of Nations, the 18th and 19th century intellectuals who backed free trade rarely did so under the rubric of increasing material wealth. In many cases this was given as the least important reason for free trade, rather, they argued that international society would be improved by increased commerce. Some of these, and later, sociopolitical arguments are listed here, adam Smith thought that protectionism against free trade was a scam on the public on behalf of producers, carried out in the name of nationalism. Even if overall economic interests had not been harmed by tariffs, classical economic analysis shows that free trade increases the global level of output because free trade permits specialization among countries. Specialization allows nations to devote their resources to the production of the particular goods. The benefits of specialization, coupled with economies of scale, increase the production possibility frontier. An increase in the production possibility frontier indicates that the absolute quantity of goods. Not only are the quantity of goods and services higher. Free trade policies are often associated with general laissez-faire economic politics and parties, voluntary exchange, by virtue of its voluntary nature, is assumed to be beneficial to the parties involved—why else would they engage in the exchange. Thus, the restriction of voluntary exchange restricts commerce and ultimately the accumulation of wealth in the absence of real-world externalities such as infant industry protection, here is the production possibilities frontier for a fictional country, Country A
5.
Free will
–
Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. It is closely linked to the concepts of responsibility, praise, guilt, sin and it is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame, There are numerous different concerns about threats to the possibility of free will, varying by how exactly it is conceived, which is a matter of some debate. Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices in which the outcome has not been determined by past events, determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with the existence of such free will. This problem has been identified in ancient Greek philosophy, and remains a focus of philosophical debate. In contrast, compatibilists hold that free will is compatible with determinism, compatibilists thus consider the debate between libertarians and hard determinists over free will vs determinism a false dilemma. Different compatibilists offer very different definitions of free will even means. Contemporary compatibilists instead identify free will as a capacity, such as to direct ones behavior in a way responsive to reason. The underlying questions are whether we have control over our actions, and if so, what sort of control and these questions predate the early Greek stoics, and some modern philosophers lament the lack of progress over all these millennia. On one hand, humans have a sense of freedom. On the other hand, a feeling of free will could be mistaken. The conflict between intuitively felt freedom and natural law arises when either causal closure or physical determinism is asserted, with causal closure, no physical event has a cause outside the physical domain, and with physical determinism, the future is determined entirely by preceding events. The puzzle of reconciling free will with a universe is known as the problem of free will or sometimes referred to as the dilemma of determinism. This dilemma leads to a dilemma as well, How are we to assign responsibility for our actions if they are caused entirely by past events. Compatibilists maintain that mental reality is not of itself causally effective, classical compatibilists have addressed the dilemma of free will by arguing that free will holds as long as we are not externally constrained or coerced. Modern compatibilists make a distinction between freedom of will and freedom of action, that is, separating freedom of choice from the freedom to enact it, given that humans all experience a sense of free will, some modern compatibilists think it is necessary to accommodate this intuition. Compatibilists often associate freedom of will with the ability to make rational decisions, a different approach to the dilemma is that of incompatibilists, namely, that if the world is deterministic then, our feeling that we are free to choose an action is simply an illusion. Metaphysical libertarianism is the form of incompatibilism which posits that determinism is false, yet even with physical indeterminism, arguments have been made against libertarianism in that it is difficult to assign Origination
6.
Gift economy
–
A gift economy, gift culture, or gift exchange is a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. This contrasts with an economy or a market economy, where goods. Social norms and custom govern gift exchange, Gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity. The nature of gift economies forms the subject of a debate in anthropology. Anthropological research into gift economies began with Bronisław Malinowskis description of the Kula ring in the Trobriand Islands during World War I. The Kula trade appeared to be gift-like since Trobrianders would travel great distances over dangerous seas to give what were considered valuable objects without any guarantee of a return. According to anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, it is the relationship between market and non-market exchange that attracts the most attention. Gift economies are said, by some, to communities. Gift ideology in highly commercialized societies differs from the typical of non-market societies. Gift economies must also be differentiated from several closely related phenomena, such as common property regimes, however, he claims that anthropologists, through analysis of a variety of cultural and historical forms of exchange, have established that no universal practice exists. Gift exchange is frequently embedded in political, kin, or religious institutions, gift-giving is a form of transfer of property rights over particular objects. The nature of property rights varies from society to society, from culture to culture. The nature of gift-giving is thus altered by the type of property regime in place, property is not a thing, but a relationship amongst people about things. According to Chris Hann, property is a relationship that governs the conduct of people with respect to the use. Anthropologists analyze these relationships in terms of a variety of actors bundle of rights over objects, an example is the current debates around intellectual property rights. Hann and Strangelove both give the example of a book, over which the author retains a copyright. The gifts given in Kula exchange still remain, in some respects, in the example used above, copyright is one of those bundled rights that regulate the use and disposition of a book. Gift-giving in many societies is complicated because private property owned by an individual may be limited in scope
7.
Individualism
–
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism, authoritarianism, communitarianism, Individualism makes the individual its focus and so starts with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation. Classical liberalism, existentialism, and anarchism are examples of movements that take the individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism thus involves the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization and it has also been used as a term denoting The quality of being an individual, individuality related to possessing An individual characteristic, a quirk. A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he rejected its collective idea of property. Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase ones happiness, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism, individuality is the state or quality of being an individual, a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. The individualist does not follow one particular philosophy, rather creates an amalgamation of elements of many, on a societal level, the individualist participates on a personally structured political and moral ground. Independent thinking and opinion is a trait of an individualist. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claims that his concept of general will in the contract is not the simple collection of individual wills. Societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly self-regarding behaviors, the principle of individuation, or principium individuationis, describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things. For Carl Jung, individuation is a process of transformation, whereby the personal and it is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place. Jung considered individuation to be the process of human development. Thus, the atom is replaced by a never-ending ontological process of individuation. Individuation is an incomplete process, always leaving a pre-individual left-over. The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation and also upon similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche, for Stiegler the I, as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to we, which is a collective individual. The I is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits, methodological individualism is the view that phenomena can only be understood by examining how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents
8.
Liberty
–
Liberty, in philosophy, involves free will as contrasted with determinism. In politics, liberty consists of the social and political freedoms to all community members are entitled. In theology, liberty is freedom from the effects of sin, spiritual servitude, as such, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Philosophers from earliest times have considered the question of liberty, according to Thomas Hobbes, a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do. John Locke rejected that definition of liberty, while not specifically mentioning Hobbes, he attacks Sir Robert Filmer who had the same definition. According to Locke, In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule, in political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it. Thus, freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it, A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, freedom is constrained by laws in both the state of nature and political society. Freedom of nature is to be no other restraint but the law of nature. Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society and made by the lawmaking power established in it. Persons have a right or liberty to follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others. John Stuart Mill, in his work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion, the modern concept of political liberty has its origins in the Greek concepts of freedom and slavery. To be free, to the Greeks, was to not have a master and that was the original Greek concept of freedom. It is closely linked with the concept of democracy, as Aristotle put it, This, another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand and this applied only to free men. In Athens, for instance, women could not vote or hold office and were legally and socially dependent on a male relative, the populations of the Persian Empire enjoyed some degree of freedom. Citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were given the rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men
9.
Propaganda of the deed
–
Propaganda of the deed is specific political action meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution. It is primarily associated with acts of left-wing resistance of the late 19th and early 20th century, most was an early influence on American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Berkman attempted propaganda by the deed when he tried in 1892 to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick following the deaths by shooting of several striking workers. By the 1880s, the propaganda of the deed had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, regicides and tyrannicides. In 1886, French anarchist Clément Duval achieved a form of propaganda of the deed, stealing 15,000 francs from the mansion of a Parisian socialite, caught two weeks later, he was dragged from the court crying Long live anarchy. and condemned to death. Duvals sentence was commuted to hard labor on Devils Island. In the anarchist paper Révolte, Duval famously declared that, Theft exists only through the exploitation of man by man, when Society refuses you the right to exist, you must take it. The policeman arrested me in the name of the Law, I struck him in the name of Liberty, as early as 1887, a few important figures in the anarchist movement had begun to distance themselves from individual acts of violence. Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in Le Révolté that a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite. A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of revolutionary action. The anarcho-syndicalist, Fernand Pelloutier, argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without the individual dynamiter. We want it to pervade and penetrate all the utterances of life, social and political, domestic and artistic, educational and recreational. There should be propaganda by word and action, the platform and the press, the corner, the workshop, and the domestic circle, acts of revolt. Those who agree with each other may co-operate, otherwise they should prefer to each on his own lines to trying to persuade one the other of the superiority of his own method. Later anarchist authors advocating propaganda of the deed included the German anarchist Gustav Landauer, for Gustav Landauer, propaganda of the deed meant the creation of libertarian social forms and communities that would inspire others to transform society. In Weak Statesmen, Weaker People, he wrote that the state is not something one can smash in order to destroy. The state is a relationship between human beings, one destroys it by entering into other relationships. In contrast, Errico Malatesta described propaganda by the deed as violent communal insurrections that were meant to ignite the imminent revolution, and this harmful tendency arises also when violence is used for a good end. e
10.
Refusal of work
–
Refusal of work is behavior which refuses to adapt to regular employment. As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures, radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within Marxism it has been advocated by Paul Lafargue and the Italian workerist/autonomists, the French ultra-left, International human rights law does not recognize the refusal of work or right not to work by itself except the right to strike. However the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention adopted by International Labour Organization in 1957 prohibits all forms of forced labour, wage slavery refers to a situation where a persons livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor, and to highlight similarities between owning and employing a person, the criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical social environment. Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted at least as early as Cicero, before the American Civil War, Southern defenders of African American slavery invoked the concept to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North. The introduction of labor in 18th century Britain was met with resistance – giving rise to the principles of syndicalism. Historically, some organizations and individual social activists, have espoused workers self-management or worker cooperatives as possible alternatives to wage labor. The Right to be Lazy is an essay by Cuban-born French revolutionary Marxist Paul Lafargue, in it he says that You reverse the perspective of power by returning to pleasure the energies stolen by work and constraint. As sure as work kills pleasure, pleasure kills work. Autonomist philosopher Bifo defines refusal of work as not so much the fact that workers do not like to be exploited. More simply he states Refusal of work means. I don’t want to go to work because I prefer to sleep, but this laziness is the source of intelligence, of technology, of progress. Autonomy is the self-regulation of the body in its independence. As a social development Bifo remembers that one of the ideas of the movement of autonomy proletarians during the 70s was the idea precariousness is good. Job precariousness is a form of autonomy from steady regular work, in the 1970s many people used to work for a few months, then to go away for a journey, then back to work for a while. This was possible in times of almost full employment and in times of egalitarian culture, as a response to these developments his view is that the dissemination of self-organized knowledge can create a social framework containing infinite autonomous and self-reliant worlds. Mistaking the individual capitalist rather than the enterprise as the problem, the workers themselves became a collective capitalist, taking on responsibility for the exploitation of their own labor. Thus, far from breaking with work, andré Gorz was an Austrian and French social philosopher. Also a journalist, he co-founded Le Nouvel Observateur weekly in 1964, a supporter of Jean-Paul Sartres existentialist version of Marxism after World War Two, in the aftermath of the May 68 student riots, he became more concerned with political ecology
