(copied from the document on the conference mailed to INDEP):
Conference: Transformation to a (more) socially and ecologically just future
The path to more democracy – anti-authoritarian and power-critical approaches
Location: Vienna & Hybrid
Time: October 3-5, 2025
Organizers & Editors: Josef Mühlbauer, Thomas Stölner, Utta Isop, Michael Wissgott, Uwe Bittlingmayer
Languages: German and English
Hosting Institutions: Community College Vienna, University of Vienna, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Empowerment for Peace, Vienna Institute for Children’s Philosophy, University of Education Freiburg
At our conference, we want to present and examine various theories and practices of social transformation towards a society free of domination, especially from the field of domination-free thinkers.
Aim of the conference:
This hybrid conference aims to bring together scientific, practice-oriented and civil society perspectives and actors to reflect on solutions and alternatives to the existing multiple crisis (Brand 2009) or to the “ecological-social crisis” (Dörre 2021). The results should not only be discussed locally, but an anthology of theoretical-conceptual and practice-oriented contributions should also be put together following this conference.
Call for talks and workshops:
Please send abstracts of max. 1800 characters (approx. 300 words = 1 page) to:
thomas.stoelner@gmx.de or josef.muehlbauer@empowermentforpeace.org or Utta.Isop@aau.at or uwe.bittlingmayer@ph-freiburg.de
Please also indicate your preferred form of presentation and an alternative.
On Friday and Saturday, the main program will be lectures and discussions. On Sunday, workshops and experimental formats will be offered. We ask you to indicate on which day and in which format you would like to present your event so that we can take your preferences into account. Workshops can last 90 minutes or 180 minutes.
We ask that you submit your call to us by March 16, 2025 at the latest.
Background
We have endeavored to present a well-founded collection of concrete concepts for a more just, democratic, and non-hierarchical society in our “Anarchist Concepts of Society” (Stölner et al. 2023). At our next conference, we want to address how to get there. We therefore want to sketch out at least six paths or transformation strategies to get there. This is all the more important as we
develop long-term social perspectives in organizing against autocracies and right-wing extremism.
- Revolutionary Way
In classical anarchism, Bakunin, among others, advocated a revolutionary path (Bakunin 2017). He and other revolutionary anarchists believed that a violent overthrow of state power was necessary. We are decidedly not of this opinion due to the anarchist principle that the goal must be seen in the means, and therefore want to offer a space to revolutionary non-violent proposals.
Another approach could be explored here with Cornelius Castoriadis and Alice Pechriggl (Thinkers of Revolution 2022) between council communism, anarchism and operaism. From the ideas of the Marxist-Leninist spectrum, which could lead to a society free of domination, no concrete paths have been taken in this direction from a historical perspective. We would like to see contributions at this point that show why this has failed from an anarchist point of view.
- Gradual or evolutionary change (reformism)
In the anarchist spectrum, the ideas of Murray Bookchin could be pursued further here (Bookchin 1985), who, with his concept of “libertarian municipalism”, has put forward a proposal that people in Rojava are trying to implement. In this context, a critical appraisal of the further developments of
Abdullah Öcalan would be interesting (Öcalan/Kurdistan 2012). Have grassroots, locally organized councils been created in Rojava that have undermined state power? To what extent could this approach be adopted in other societies?
Another approach could be sought in the work of Eduard Bernstein, from the perspective of what could be realized from it and why this social-democratic, reformist approach failed.
As a representative of revisionism of social democracy, Bernstein advocated a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism through democratic reforms (Bernstein 1921). He considered revolutionary violence to be counterproductive and relied on parliamentary processes to gradually transform capitalism.
Modern approaches to a reformist transition can be found in the work of Hannes Kuch (Kuch 2023), who would exhaust all possibilities available in the Federal Republic of Germany to advance a liberal socialism and envisions a gradual and targeted transition to a democratic planned economy. The international movements for social organization based on democratic equality (equality by lot) and citizens’ councils also point in this direction, for example, as proposed by John Burnheim. Burnheim, like Karl Polanyi, envisions a society in which large-scale property, such as land, soil, natural resources, labor and money, are organized in councils regulated by democratic equality (Burnheim 1987). Furthermore, it is also worth considering Ulrike Herrmann’s approach (Herrmann 2022) of leaving the state in place for the transition in order to prevent major social upheaval and impoverishment, and to let it dissolve into a democratic planned economy that she did not foresee.
- Direct action and civil society organization
Another approach focused on direct action and the creation of alternative institutions and communities. These approaches are based on the idea that domination can be dismantled by developing self-management and self-reliance. Rudolf Rocker (Rocker 1979) was a representative of this anarcho-syndicalist tendency. Anarcho-syndicalism organizes workers in unions and the takeover of the means of production by these unions. How could the building of a strong, independent labor movement succeed today and how could direct actions such as general strikes undermine the existing capitalist and state power structures?
In recent decades, movements such as the anti-globalization movement (e.g., the Zapatistas in Mexico or Occupy Wall Street) and the climate justice movement have seen direct action and the creation of self-governing structures as paths to a society free of domination (Graeber 2013). These
movements rely on spontaneous, decentralized actions to destabilize domination and to try out new forms of living and organizing. Other movements such as the disability movements and the anti-racist movements such as Black Voices in Austria should also be mentioned. To what extent do
these approaches go in terms of bringing about a democratic society free of domination, or can they be seen as significant pieces in the puzzle of the transformation process?
The queer-feminist anarchism-sympathizing organizations worldwide repeatedly overlap with anarcha-feminist organizations, as we also see in German-speaking countries. In addition to alternative and queer gender structures, other forms of decision-making and economic activity are
also tried out here (see, for example, the GemSe – Gemeinsam Sein; queer-feminist space in Carinthia / Koroška) Abbey Volcano and others (2017) and Utta Isop (2023&2024) point to the connections between the feminist-queer and anarchist movements, which are even less theorized than they are in practice
- Education and a change in consciousness
We have already emphasized the importance of philosophizing in our conference proceedings “Anarchist Concepts of Society” and would like to emphasize this again for the transformation in order to initiate the necessary profound change in consciousness that is needed to get on the path to
a society free of domination. The ability to think, to question and to relate to each other empathetically are fundamental skills that develop and refine these abilities in a process-oriented way, based on a philosophical attitude. In his work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1970), the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire emphasized that education is a key to the liberation from domination (Freire 1984). He developed the concept of dialogical education in which learners are empowered to think critically and liberate themselves. In a similar way to philosophizing, people can recognize their oppression and find ways to overcome it together.
However, as the many years of experience of Gerlinde Krehn, an activist and promoter of philosophical practice, show, people rarely come to resistive action on their own through knowledge alone, although such action seems indispensable for transformation. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus provides an explanation for the persistence of many people in their oppressed and
oppressive practice (Bourdieu 2011). One way to overcome these strongly body-centered ways of thinking and acting could be addressed with Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed (Boal 1982).
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “cultural hegemony” describes how domination is maintained through ideological control via culture (Gramsci 2024)1. He saw the possibility of breaking this cultural dominance and paving the way for a society free of domination in the education and development of a counter-hegemony. How far has the theory and practice of this approach come in the meantime, and what can it contribute to a path towards a liberated society?
The approach of intersectionality, as developed by feminist, gender-critical, queer and anti-racist movements, points to the interconnectedness of structures of domination and paths to liberation (Volcano, Abbey et al. 2013). Conferences, events and publications of the autonomous queer-
feminist scene, such as the Association of Feminist Scientists (https://www.vfw.or.at/), the Austrian Society for Gender Studies (ÖGGF https://www.oeggf.at/ziele), the Association for the promotion of women in philosophy (SWIP https://swip-philosophinnen.org/), die Frauenhetz (http:// frauenhetz.jetzt/) and the Anschläge (https://anschlaege.at/) annually update the current state of emancipatory research, among many others. Black Voices (2024), for example, points to the importance of a racism-critical approach in times of transformation with intersectional signs.
- Solidarity-based economies and economic democracies
Half Earth Socialism (Vettese/Pendergrass 2022), Participatory Economy (Albert 2006; Hahnel 2021), Communism (Sutterlütti/Meretz 2018), Economy for the Common Good (Felber 2018), Ecommony (Habermann 2016) and many other economic models and practices , as presented at the Social Economy Enquete in Graz (2023) and our last conference (), offer more or less concretely
formulated concepts and principles for creating a possibility of orientation based on the commons, which is indispensable for transformation. What do they envision for the transformation and what else do they need to make it happen? What role can unions play, including ones for sysadmins, gamers, and influencers?
- Culture, music, art and lifestyle
What contributions can performances, music, art and culture make to the transformation into sustainable, peaceful and democratic social structures? What is the effect of changing lifestyles, such as veganism and much more? Projects such as schau.raume (https://www.schau.raeume.cc/de/ueber/wer), dadazirkus.at (https://www.dadazirkus.at), das Ventil (https://www.ventil.space/) or Vada (https://vada.cc/) point to the interweaving of biographies, everyday life, art, theater and performance.
Conclusion
There are a variety of approaches for achieving a society free of domination. These range from revolutionary uprisings to gradual reforms and the development of parallel structures, as well as educational initiatives and economic alternatives. Each movement or theory emphasizes different
levers – whether it is direct action, local self-organization or consciousness raising. Which of these are most promising and most likely to be realized against the disastrous mainstream? Is it worth referring to tactics and strategy? What ethical principles speak for one implementation and against the other? What else should guide us besides ethical principles? Do the means have to be seen as the goal? What could a social-ecological transformation look like that does not take on authoritarian traits, but at the same time cannot be reduced to mere thought experiments? How can an ecologically and socially just transformation succeed? Which approaches, which practical examples and which theoretically sound contributions can help here?
- How have anarchists imagined the future in the past?
- How do literature, art, culture and music envision a future free of domination?
- What is necessary to change the future?
- Which cultural ideas need to be gotten rid of or changed and what new ideas are needed?
- Who are the agents of change?
- What role does the imagination play in changing the world?
- What is the relationship between anarchist theory and the future?
- What similarities and connections can be found between anti-racist, queer-feminist,
intersectional and other social movements with anarchist movements? - What forms, structures, symbols, and ways of organizing solidarities are needed?
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