» Member Booksellers Alliance of Radical Booksellers. Books on Anarchism. Our Enemy, The State by Albert J. Nock, Chapter 1. Madalyn Murray O'Hair Playboy Interview - Antitheist Atheist. Direct democracy. Direct democracy (also known as pure democracy)[1] is a form of democracy in which people decide (e.g. vote on, form consensus on, etc.) policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then decide policy initiatives.[2] Depending on the particular system in use, it might entail passing executive decisions, the use of sortition, making laws, directly electing or dismissing officials and conducting trials.
Two leading forms of direct democracy are participatory democracy and deliberative democracy. Most countries that are representative democracies allow for three forms of political action that provide limited direct democracy: referendum (plebiscite), initiative, and recall[citation needed]. Referendums can include the ability to hold a binding vote on whether a given law should be rejected. History[edit] Modern-era citizen lawmaking began in the towns of Switzerland in the 13th century.
Examples[edit] Ancient Athens[edit] Freethought. For the Ukrainian language newspaper published in Australia, see The Free Thought. Freethought or free thought is a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, or other dogmas.[1][2][3] The cognitive application of freethought is known as "freethinking", and practitioners of freethought are known as "freethinkers".[1][4] Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason.
Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or the intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Symbol[edit] The pansy, symbol of freethought History[edit] Pre-modern movement[edit] Free love. Free love is a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social and financial bondage. The Free Love movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It claimed that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else.[1] Many people believe marriage is an important aspect of life to "fulfil earthly human happiness.
" According to today's stereotype, earlier middle-class Americans wanted the home to be a place of stability in an uncertain world. While the phrase free love is often associated with promiscuity in the popular imagination, especially in reference to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, historically the free-love movement has not advocated multiple sexual partners or short-term sexual relationships. The women's movement[edit] The history of free love is entwined with the history of feminism. Sex, to proponents of free love, was not only about reproduction. Anarchism. The central tendency of anarchism as a social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist anarchism being primarily a literary phenomenon[25] which nevertheless did have an impact on the bigger currents[26] and individualists have also participated in large anarchist organisations.[27][28] Many anarchists oppose all forms of aggression, supporting self-defense or non-violence (anarcho-pacifism),[29][30] while others have supported the use of some coercive measures, including violent revolution and propaganda of the deed, on the path to an anarchist society.[31] Etymology and terminology[edit] The term anarchism is a compound word composed from the word anarchy and the suffix -ism,[32] themselves derived respectively from the Greek ἀναρχία, i.e. anarchy[33][34][35] (from ἄναρχος, anarchos, meaning "one without rulers";[36] from the privative prefix ἀν- (an-, i.e.
"without") + ἀρχός, archos, i.e. History[edit] Origins[edit] Collectivist anarchism. For the collectivization of the means of production, it was originally envisaged that workers will revolt and forcibly collectivize the means of production.[1] Once collectivization takes place, money would be abolished to be replaced with labour notes and workers' salaries would be determined, in democratic organizations of voluntary membership, based on job difficulty and the amount of time they contributed to production. These salaries would be used to purchase goods in a communal market.[2] This contrasts with anarcho-communism where wages would be abolished, and where individuals would take freely from a storehouse of goods "to each according to his need. " Thus, Bakunin's "Collectivist Anarchism," notwithstanding the title, is seen as a blend of individualism and collectivism.[3] Collectivist anarchism is most commonly associated with Mikhail Bakunin, the anti-authoritarian sections of the First International, and the early Spanish anarchist movement.
The First International[edit] Individualist anarchism. Overview[edit] Individualist anarchism of different kinds have a few things in common. These are: 1. The concentration on the individual and his/her will in preference to any construction such as morality, ideology, social custom, religion, metaphysics, ideas or the will of others.[9][10] 2. 3.
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, American individualist anarchism "stresses the isolation of the individual — his right to his own tools, his mind, his body, and to the products of his labor. In European individualist anarchism a different social context helped the rise of European individualist illegalism and as such "The illegalists were proletarians who had nothing to sell but their labour power, and nothing to discard but their dignity; if they disdained waged-work, it was because of its compulsive nature. Another important tendency within individualist anarchist currents emphasizes individual subjective exploration and defiance of social conventions.