Articles

Picture of women fighters from Rojava

Democratic Autonomy in Rojava

10.10.2014
Starting in 2012 a communalist social system has been in the process of transforming Rojava (West Kurdistan, or Syrian Kurdistan). This firsthand account of the institutions of that transformation was written in the early summer of 2014 and thus before the current war.
Anarchist protestors against the police

Anarchism, Power, and Government

01.10.2014
No society can exist without an orderly way of administering itself: this necessarily implies government and regulation. Still, most left-libertarians dismiss every government as a state. What distinguishes the politics of social ecology from anarchism?
Turn the Tide light protest

Defying Apocalypse

21.09.2014
For some, the prospect of a civilizational collapse is invigorating: the more dire a future we face, the greater the urgency of radical action. But for most people, facing the unthinkable is merely a path to disengagement and despair. If apocalypse is inevitable, why bother with activism at all?
PVD Funeral in Kurdish Syria

Is Obama’s Best Ally against ISIS a Force Associated with Bookchin’s Communalism?

12.09.2014
The war against the Islamic State (IS) has brought Westerners’ attention to the North Kurdish freedom struggle. But radical Kurdish ideas of democratic autonomy have also become part of the culture of Rojava, or West Kurdistan, the ethnic Kurdish area situated in northernmost Syria.
Books from New Compass, September 2014

New Compass Publications September 2014

10.09.2014
New Compass is a cooperative publishing venture that seeks to contribute to a free, secular, and ecological society. We present ideas on participatory democracy, social ecology, and movement building. These days we publish several new books and pamplets: check them out!
Anarchist graffiti

Anarchism as Individualism

05.08.2014
Anarchism is essentially a negative conception of liberty in its most abstract form, Murray Bookchin argued. Indeed, if the wild mix of anarchists today and yesterday all share one thing in common, it is their rejection of state coercion of the individual.
Green leaves, pic by Camilla Skriung

Green fingers, red stockings

08.07.2014
Ecofeminists see feminism and ecology as two sides of the same coin. In order to liberate women, we must therefore change our views on the relationship between humans and nature. Read this intro to ecofeminism, originally published in the magazine Fett.
Unsere Netz Demonstration

Hamburg Buys its Energy Grid Back

21.04.2014
"Energy supply is a basic public service that should not serve profit motives," says the civil society-led alliance “Our Hamburg – Our Grid.” They called the citizens to action and campaigned for years for the successful buyback of the energy grid in the city.

Democratic Confederalism and Feminism

14.04.2014
In the latest publication from New Compass Press "Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan", we journey into the Kurdish regions of Turkey to learn how the Kurdish Freedom Movement develops an alternative social model. This excerpt from the book presents the feminist aspects of its struggle.
The Stroming of the Bastille

Nationalism and the Great Revolutions

03.04.2014
During and after the great revolutions in the eighteenth century nationalist expressions did not have the meaning they often have today. What role did nationalism play in these revolutions, and how did these revolutionaries understand their actual patriotic allegiance?

Reality-Mongering Gets us Nowhere

25.03.2014
Oxfam's recent anti-inequality campaign is a futile attempt to petition a deaf political system. Instead of believing that tax redistribution is the only way of reducing inequality, an assault must be made on the underlying relationships that produce the inequality in the first place.

What is Capitalism?

14.03.2014
Life under capitalism is beholden to its own myths of work, prosperity, and progress. Understanding what the world was like before the rise of capitalism, and envisioning a different world beyond capitalism, calls for an examination of its myths and the structures on which those myths are built.

Crime Scene Kurdistan

02.12.2013
Meet the group behind the book on the kurdish fight for democratic autonomy. TATORT exposes the German-Turkish military cooperation, German involvement in damaging Turkish infrastructure projects, and the criminalization of Kurdish political activities.

Why Competition in Agriculture is Unsustainable

15.11.2013
Farmers are stuck in a treadmill. They are forced by competition to increase productivity, and the increased productivity leads to lower prices. The resulting loss of small-scale farmers and natural diversity, shows that the competitive model is unsustainable.

After the Evictions

06.11.2013
Three years after the financial meltdown of 2008, the U.S. Occupy movement opened the possibility for a left regroupment, creating a historic bloc of "the 99%." Yet the forceful eviction from the squares just two months after the movement emerged cut short this development.

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