Anarchism and complexity science: community kickstart

We are developing a community at the intersection of anarchism and complexity science. Despite being commonly associated with a state of disorder, anarchism’s central claim is that social organization could thrive without central control, outside the domination relations typical of hierarchical systems. It proposes an alternative mode of being where we organize ourselves voluntarily, and decentralize decision-making down to the level where everyone can directly participate in it. Such decentralized organization happens to be the norm in many systems across the natural world, from chemical reactions to neuronal dynamics, bird flocks or self-organized online communities. The interdisciplinary field of complexity science has a long history of studying these systems - of unraveling how their many interacting components yield emergent patterns, robust structures and self-organized goals.

We believe that the similarity between these political and scientific approaches is much deeper than a mere metaphor. Developing the horizontal social structures necessary for the society to “govern itself” requires of course concrete organising in the field, but could highly benefit from active complex systems research analysing, probing and simulating such kind of social structure. Beyond academia, various collectives and individuals are already actively engaging with social movements from a complex systems perspective, and could be made stronger, more visible, and better integrated to each other. In the other direction, anarchist approaches can inform scientific practices, and bring fresh air to the scientific understanding of biological, cognitive and social systems, which is not immune to a tendency to project our hierarchical political environment onto the rest of nature.

To make this potential convergence a reality, the first step is to gather the relevant people under the same roof, and get the discussion going. This is the aim of the Complex Anarchism Symposium, which we are organizing on 19-23 May 2025 in Brussels. This event is aimed as the starting point of an international community of academics, activists, community organizers and other groups or individuals, which could collaborate at the intersection of self-organized politics - including but not necessarily limited to anarchism - and complex systems approaches.

Organising this first event and developing this community requires funding - at the moment, we are on a shoestring budget. Part of it comes from sliding-scale registration fees, which allow those that need it to pay low fees or no fee at all. Another fraction of the costs will be covered through external funding.

But this budget is far from covering all the event’s expenses- in particular, urgently needed traveling funds for potential contributors that could not come otherwise. Nor does it cover any of the longer-term development of this community. We will continue our efforts to unlock external funding from relevant institutions, but the platform that we are building does not meet the standards of many classic funding sources, usually aimed at well-defined professional networks. And, in the long run, financial independence, based on a community of committed supporters, would of course be an invaluable asset, especially given the potentially sensitive political dimension of this project.

In other words, the success of this community does not depend only on the enthusiasm and energy of us organizers: it also depends on YOU, (hopefully) enthusiastic supporter, if you have the means to participate financially in this collective effort.

We’re looking to raise 15000€ to help us:

- Cover the traveling costs of the symposium’s contributors, so that all can come physically to build the collaborations, trust and personal ties that make a community.

- Maintain a public website.

- Maintain a digital space with the platform Bonfire - a customizable and federated social platform. See their website: https://bonfirenetworks.org/

- Develop documentation: print, publish and disseminate the documents emerging from the symposium and other follow-up projects - for example, we plan to make a zine summarizing the symposium.

- Organize future events.

See the Complex Anarchism Symposium page for more details on this project:

https://clea.research.vub.be/complex-anarchism-symposium-19-23-may-2025-in-brussels

JOIN THE EFFORT - HELP US TAKE THIS POLITICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND COMMUNITY PROJECT TO A NEW LEVEL