Intro
The text below offers a deeper exploration of the motivations and ideas underpinning the Complex Anarchism Symposium (19-23 May 2025 in Brussels).
Vision
Anarchism has a long history, tracing back to the 19th century. Moreover, people have developed self-organised practices long before that, without calling it anarchism¹.
How could a contemporary version of non-hierarchical organisation look like, that addresses current social, ecological and economical challenges while taking into account present knowledge and infrastructure? How can an understanding of network dynamics, complexity theory and digital tools enhance us, to form vivid networked communities based on the principles of non-hierarchical self-organisation and global solidarity?²
Yet, the global challenges our societies face, are not trivial. Rather than connecting us, the digital era leads us further towards polarization, social isolation, information overload and platform capitalism. On top of many economical and political troubles on the global and local scale, the climate crisis (hand in hand with ruling oligarchs) acts as an indicator for our society's dysfunctions.
In this context, we are often tempted to blame individuals or isolate parts of the social system that we think are the culprits. We think we should also look at the structural aspects that enable the dynamics behind the stated dysfunctions. Only then will we be able to think about how we can change or get rid of them, and how we can create other contexts.
That is where complexity thinking comes in. We use 'complexity thinking' as an umbrella term for the broad fields of systems theory, complexity science and cybernetics. Their basic principle is to look at patterns, dynamics and structures rather than separate objects. In that way, it is possible to identify patterns that arise in different domains, such as the (inter)individual, social and ecosystems,… You can thereby make connections between domains, and imagine new ways of doing things by going at the roots of the dynamics. Often the question is about coordination: how do different elements interact? How can different needs, values and skills be matched? Which contexts bring what kind of interactions? This question of coordination plays in many fields, for example is in the economy and group organisation.
Today, economy is reduced to a money game, but we want to go back to the original meaning of oeconomy as the coordination of our needs, skills, resources and values (oeconomy roughly translates to “management of our shared home”). Right now, money and productivity have become the end instead of a means³, neglecting all our other values, collective inputs or externalities (like pollution), while artificially creating needs, bullshit jobs⁴ and a constant need to grow. This desocialisation could happen by the separation into private producers, who need violent protection from a state to exist.
We think other ways of coordinating are possible, where our needs, skills and values are actually taken into account. Ways of coordinating that do not rely on a government to know all our needs (it simply can’t), but are still (or really) decentralized, bottom-up, and based on local interactions. Alternatives are already being developed, and complexity principles and models can play a role here. Models that capture many-to-many reactions can go beyond one-to-one reciprocal zero-sum exchanges of capitalism⁵. While many countries in the world tend to seek answers in the rise of nationalism and the call for a strong leader, we rather want to work on the further development of promising concepts that focus on mechanisms for local-based decision making, community economies, and co-production of knowledge through participatory research to foster community resilience⁶, to call a few.
Power imbalances have not everywhere and always been the norm, historically several societies were based on conscious agreements which could be renegotiated continually. Such ways of organisation can give inspiration on how to topple down authoritarian leaders. Hence, complexity thinking can be of help to anarchist organisation, future thinking & strategy.
As an international, interdisciplinary group of young researchers, we come together for the first time in the COMPLEX ANARCHISM SYMPOSIUM from 19-23 MAY in BRUSSELS, facilitating main principles of cybernetics⁷, complexity theory and anarchism to evolve collective imaginations and concrete proposals for societal futures that provide scenarios beyond the authoritarian, eurocentric and anthropocentric lens. In today’s climate, we think it is important to conceptualize positive futures, against all odds. While still learning the lessons of the past, and not turning a blind eye to problems. We rather want to experiment with other ways of coordinating, organising, living our lives, constantly evolving, adapting to how things turn out. So imagine…
We woke up in an anarchistic future from hibernation. This Utopia's inhabitants decided to keep us separated from their community so as to preserve it from our still old, sometimes authoritarian habits. However, they believe we could inject their society with new ideas (which is why we got dehibernated in the first place). Our mission is to come up with new ways in which things could be organized. So, do you want to wake up from hibernation, join us, and see what an anarchist future could look like?
References
1 Graeber, David / Wengrow, Davig. (2021). The Dawn of everything. London: Penguin.
2 See for example: Elfen, Zenna. (2024). “P4P: Steps Toward More Adaptive Internets: Charting Open-Source, P2P and Local-First Networks.” Aarhus University. https://doi.org/10.17613/r486j-3cs81.
3 Herzogenrath, B., & Pisters, P. (Eds.). (2020). Society After Money: A Dialogue. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
4 Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit jobs. E mploi, 131.
5 Heylighen, F. (2017). The Offer Network Protocol: mathematical foundations and a roadmap for the development of a global brain. The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 226(2), 283-312.
6 Sittenfeld, D. / Farooque, M., et al. (2022). Citizen Science, Civics, and Resilient Communities: Informing Community Resilience Policies Through Local Knowledge, Community Values, and Community-Generated Data’. In: Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 7(1). Doi:10.5334/cstp.516
7 “Network concepts [as] cybernetics, a research context that unfolded a new conceptual and argumentative apparatus revolving around networks and systems, codes and circulation, diagrams and strategies in order to found a theory of regulation that is applicable to animals, machines and societies alike” from: August, Vincent. (2021). Network concepts in social theory: Foucault and cybernetics. In: European Journal of Social Theory, Ed. 24. DOI:10.1177/1368431021991046