From Centre Leo Apostel
Complex Anarchism Symposium, 19-23 May 2025 in Brussels
About
With the upcoming Complex Anarchism Symposium, we will be exploring the intersection between anarchism and complexity science. Anarchy, despite its popular definition as a state of disorder, is rather a mode of being where we organize ourselves voluntarily, that is, without coercion from a central controller or hierarchical system. During the symposium, we aim to apply and explore the interplay between these practices and concepts in order to experiment with alternative ways to organize our society.
Below you can find more information on suggested topics, methodology and ways to contribute. In our vision text you can find more background info on the motivations and ideas underpinning this event.
Practical
Timing: May 19-23, 2025
Location: Brussels region, Belgium.
- From Monday evening to Friday, we will be staying at 'Den Everketel', a scouting location in Vilvoorde, near Brussels. Sleeping options include a dormitory or tents.
- On Monday (and possibly Friday), we will spend the day at the Caldarium in Brussels (Wautierstraat 121, 1020 Laken). If you can only join for one day, Monday is the best option.
Price: We ask for a sliding-scale or free donation, either to cover basic living costs or to support the expenses of the organisers, some speakers, and those who cannot afford to contribute as much.
Get involved
We encourage any and all who want to bring their unique perspective or interests to our event. If you wish to attend, please fill out this form. That way, we can estimate the number of participants and can contact you later with more info. If you want to contribute to our organisation directly, you can reach out via the same form.
If you have a workshop or activity proposal, please add it at propositions. This can be fully worked out or a vague idea or methodology you want to try out. We aim for this to be a place of exchange and co-developing, where proposals can connect and build upon each other, or where new ideas can emerge. If you do not yet have a clear idea, take a look at existing proposals to give feedback or get inspired.
We have a Notion space for asynchronous collaboration, regular online meetings, and a Signal group for communication. If you can think of other people, places, organizations, or email lists where there might be interest, do not hesitate to share!
Topics
Across disciplines
- How can complex systems concepts help us self-organize within and between groups and societies?
- How could anarchistic principles structure human collaboration?
- How can we learn from spontaneous coordination of animals, body parts, or neurons to better organize human collectives?
Across scales
- How do system constraints and network structures (collectives vs. hierarchies) incentivize individual strategies (altruism vs. competition)?
- How do individual properties (homogeneity vs. heterogeneity) influence group-level information processing (coherence vs. adaptability)?
Alternative perspectives
- How could a decentralized economic system work (oeconomy)? How can we reorganize society to prioritize common goods or living conditions (degrowth)?
- Which kinds of features could help prevent entrapment in ‘vicious cycles’ (of corruption, wealth inequality, addiction)?
- How can we use different mathematical structures that are more 'anarchistic', e.g. not following a total order?
- How would bottom-up (active/direct) participation in complex systems differ from top-down prediction and control?
Realizing change
- How could anarchism and co-creative mutual aid groups evolve in the future?
- What role can people with a background in exact sciences play in social practices?
Methodology/concept
Our aim is to put theory into practice – to create a self-organised space for experimentation and collaboration across disciplines and scales. Rather than one-sided information transmission of typical conferences, we will develop alternative means to bring each other together and facilitate spontaneous exchange of ideas and practices. Think about unconference, open space technology, games to illustrate concepts, simulation games, LARP, future narrating, projects, hackaton, relational mapping, map out the symposium, the symposium as a game/challenge, discussions, talks, co-creation of a paper/zine,…
Vision
The text below offers a deeper exploration of the motivations and ideas underpinning the Complex Anarchism Symposium (19-23 May 2025 in Brussels).
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
Comments
few things....
anarchist from… (not verified) Thu, 03/27/2025 - 07:35
Just to remind you few things...
- many anarchists are not high educated and they don't understand academic terminology, you should always speak in that way that even person with 8 years of school can understand what you speak.
- as i saw in my 24 years of anarchism, anarchists are far away from anarchism, they speak one thing and do other thing, they are still capitalists in their heads. they don't have capability to make anarchist community and what to say about society. for example common problem with western anarchists they are egoistic individuals who don't give a shit to help to the other people and therefore they don't have good personality to be a ble to create better society than capitalists. to create better society, we must fight together againt cops and spies and ruling class, how to fight against cops with idiots who watch only their ass? you can learn something from criminals, they must fight with other crimis and with cops, therefore they must create brotherhood and must be ready to die each for other, if they don't do it they will be destroyed. how many anarchists will die each for others? idiots even don't want to give place to sleep several days to other anarchist from other country, I asked idiot from indymedia in brussels to give me place to sleep several days and he refused to do it although i told him I am anarchist and I also administrate indymedia in my country. it was in 2004 when I visited brussels. I visited berlin also and I slept 3 months in abandoned buildings, anarchist squats kopi and in rigaer strasse refused to give me place to sleep. they don't give a shit that I am anarchist the same as they are.
so, to be short, western anarchists are egoistic individuals and they don't have capability to create better community and surely not society. even if they accept immigrant anarchist they will push us always to support them and never to criticize them, they dont accept critics and they don't have self critics, you are first of all immigrant when you come to west europe and you are not equal with domestic anarchists.
there is no freedom and autonomy of individuals in anarchist groups in west europe. it is not allowed to criticize and to be different.
if you tell me you are not egoist, let's see is it really so, I tell you go to deportation prison and marry immigrant to save him/her from deportation. I am sure you will never do it, you have solidarity with immigrants, thats verbal support, but you don't have mutual aid which is concrete help like political marriage to stop deportation. you will misuse immigrants and prisons to speak against government but you will never help to immigrants to save themselves from prison and racist deportation. as you see, I can proove very easy that you are egoist from west europe and you don't give a shit for human beings.
you opened wide topics in your symposium, it is not possible to talk about so many things, I will just say that there is no digital freedom and tools in capitalism, they create totalitarian capitalism and mass espionage of society is one step in building totalitarian system. tor and privacy software are created by cia and military spies who finance developers to create tools for communication of activists in anti american countries where american capitalists can not exploit oil and gas and other things (iran, venezuela, russia, etc), if you use tor in europe, network administrator will spy you or report you to the secret service, and just to say because of many anarchists who use riseup servers for emails: riseup is created by micah anderson who also sit in board of calyx institute and when I checked in 2016 who is also with him there, I saw advisory board cia and nsa idiots. calyx finance creating of privacy tools and they also give training to activists in anti american countries. riseup email servers are created for (iranian) activists and it is honeypot for american and european anarchists. you can use wayback machine and type website of calyx institute and check 2016 year and you will see brian snow and one more idiot bob barr in advisory board, worked more than 15 years in cia and nsa. so, if you are smart, you will use tor email servers (for example dnmx.su) and gpg to encrypt messages, if you use riseup without encryption, you give them information about yourself and others on the plate. well, here it is 2016 bob barr and brian snow, sheck by yourself naive anarchists: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304223745/https://www.calyxinstitute.o…
You're getting worked up…
Tim Declercq Thu, 03/27/2025 - 12:09
In reply to few things.... by anarchist from… (not verified)
You're getting worked up over nothing, this is just some academics getting together to talk abstractions to each other. Note how there is no notion of struggle, let alone class struggle, definitely let alone revolutionary struggle in any of this. I'm sure even if they were to plaster everything plainly online for everyone to see the cops still couldn't be bothered with it as there is zero subversion, let alone threat, coming from this at all.
To give you an idea, at one point they want to talk about using more "anarchistic" mathematical structures that don't have a total order. The term total order in mathematics basically refers to a set such that every two elements can be ordered relative to each other, like how you can order numbers from small to big. It has literally nothing to do with anarchism or politics in general, but apparently they're going to spend their time arguing about this because someone doesn't like that when you can order numbers from small to big that is called a "total order" in mathematics and the term "total order" doesn't sound very "anarchistically."
In the meantime, in Belgium, for example in the past few weeks we've been having a historic self-organized strike movement in the railways outside of the official union structures. So maybe these academics could do something useful instead and join the strikes or something.
Add new comment