About

The aesthetic-cultural philosophy of solarpunk and the politics of social anarchism were practically made for each other. This site attempts to combine them.

  

Solarpunk is a new science-fiction and cultural movement dedicated to imagining a bright hopeful future powered by green energy, where technology is used for human-centric and eco-centric ends. It envisions moving us beyond artificial scarcity and toil while helping mend the rift between humanity and nature; looking beyond many of the dark and grim tropes so common in dystopian visions of the future. Artistically it takes influence from Art Nouveau, African and East-Asian art, and other attempts to blend the organic with the synthetic. It is a form of futurism which focuses on what we should hope for rather than on what to avoid.

Social anarchism is an ethical-political transition which grew out of the fusion of classical liberalism and anti-authoritarian socialism in the 19th century, combining a concern for personal freedom with the desire for popular liberation from social hierarchy, political authoritarianism, and economic exploitation. It seeks, in the long-term, a decentralised directly-democratic polity and economy of the commons based on direct participant-control of all institutions, while also prefiguring the values of such a society in the here-and-now: individual autonomy, voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, non-hierarchical forms of self-organisation.

Solarpunk Anarchists continues a pair of disciplines within social anarchism called social ecology and post-scarcity anarchism (PSA), which saw possibilities for freedom through utilising technology for liberatory ends – instead of the profiteering and dominative ends of the capitalist state system – repurposing technics to eliminate dull, dirty, and dangerous forms of labour, while decentralising their scale to allow greater human-control.

We believe the sensibilities of social ecology/PSA fit solarpunk like a glove, and produce written material which tries to bridge the gap between the world we’re stuck in now, and the liberated world we seek to create.