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About Us

Another World

Is Another World REALLY Possible?

International Study Group and Collaborative Writing Project

Sponsored by Marxist Education Project and Victor Serge Foundation

Convener: Richard Greeman

For full access to this Wiki or other questions, send email to AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com

Who We Are

Our ongoing Future Historians seminar has been meeting since September 2017. At present (May 2018) we are gathering biweekly via online teleconferencing that spans a dozen time zones – with participants from California to Moscow and points in between, including Paris, France; Rabat, Morocco; and Vermont, Washington DC, and Chicago.

Future Historians include: Anya Rebrii, Ukraine/NY, activist and anthropology student; Lola Girerd, Paris, writer and social psychologist; Brian Tokar, Vermont, Institute of Social Ecology, activist, author of Toward Climate Justice; Jenny Greeman, NY, actor and educator; Peter Hudis, Chicago, Marxist-humanist philosopher and activist, author of Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism and Franz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades; Silvia Federici, veteran feminist, author of Caliban and the Witch; Jason Hicks, NYC transit worker, union activist, DSA member, philosopher; Julia Guseva, Moscow, translator of Victor Serge, anarcho-syndicalist activist, co-founder of Praxis Center; Harry Halpin, Paris, Internet revolutionary and activist, team member World Wide Web Consortium, author of Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web; Alexei Gusev, Moscow, Historian of Russian Oppositions, Chair of Praxis Center; Maati Monjib, Rabat, Morocco, historian of Africa and press-freedom activist, currently facing five years in prison as an opponent of the monarchy; David Schwartzman, biogeochemist, DC Green Party activist, author of “Solar Communism” and Life, Temperature, and the Earth; Samuel Day Fassbinder, author of Greening the Academy and scholar of Marx and utopianism; and Fred Murphy, ecosocialism group leader at the Marxist Education Project and DSA climate-justice activist. Our convener is Richard Greeman, veteran international socialist active in the US, France, Russia, Latin America, and North Africa; best known as translator and scholar of the Franco-Russian revolutionary writer Victor Serge (1890-1947)

At our international online seminars, we Future Historians imagine that we are living in a peaceful, egalitarian, sustainable world a century from now, in 2118. Our job is to put together a centennial history book for teenagers called THEN AND NOW. We collectively research and discuss century-old Source Materials about capitalism’s catastrophes that were unfolding and impending in 2018, and the forms of resistance to them. Next, we weave these together to present an objective picture of the unsustainable THEN (2018). Finally, we extrapolate from the evidence to reconstruct the different paths that led from THEN to NOW (2118), under the heading HOW?

In real life, we are individuals with varied viewpoints and backgrounds spread across the globe from L.A. to Moscow, including women and men, students, a subway track worker, a few academics and various longtime socialists and radicals. Unlike many leftist groups, we don't denounce each other as traitors or deviants, although we have many differing views. Why? Well, to begin with we’ve all been dead for at least sixty years. So looking backward from the perspective of 2118, we are able see the complimentarity of the different roads (for example “reform” and “revolution”) that led to the Emergence of new societies from the shell of the old. Our picture of the future world is inclusive (of everything but capitalism), rather than exclusive, pluralist rather than sectarian.

Our process: examine the historical evidence and collectively piece together a plausible picture of our possible better world and the roads that led to it. One rule: no gods, no extra-terrestials.

Our goal: create a history textbook for the teenagers of 2018, a utopian work in the tradition of Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) and Morris's News from Nowhere, books whose popularity helped bring to life a new socialist movement at the end of the 19th century. We aspire to a fictional ecotopia with the potential to go viral and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Join us in betting on a possible future – even if the odds are a hundred to one! In a world spinning madly towards perdition, what have we got to lose?

Format

This is a “hybrid” project, combining readings and online discussions of each session's TOPIC with a live, biweekly international meeting via online teleconferencing. YouTube recordings of our sessions are posted on our YouTube channel.

Readings are uploaded to the Future Historians Dropbox. Participants prepare readings and deliver short reports on the week’s topic, and we all discuss it. Between live sessions, further discussions take place online both via comments on the documents and through a Google Groups listserv.

How to Participate

You can participate in a variety of ways, depending on your energy and interest. The Future Historians International Research and Collaborative Writing Project makes use of a variety of media platforms including this Wiki, a Dropbox account, and a Google Groups listerv - details below.

THIS WIKI is open for all to read. It is a work in progress. The draft of the proposed history book is divided into TOPICS, listed in the left-hand menu. Each of the TOPICS is (or will be) divided into three sections: THEN, NOW and HOW (they can be read in any order).

These somewhat arbitrary divisions, grouped into a dozen or more TOPICS, permit us to organize the results of our research, our discussions, our visions of possible better worlds, and our extrapolations of roads leading to them. They represent the basic bricks that will form the completed work. Once they are in place, we can revisit, develop, and synthesize them.

If you want to contribute to this Wiki, we invite to become an active member of the seminar by sending an email to us at AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com. If you prefer not to join but have suggestions, send them to the same address and they will be welcomed, discussed, and perhaps incorporated.

Those with a special interest in one or more Topics are also welcome to join us as guests for an individual session. Again, please email us at AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com and introduce yourself.

MEMBERSHIP normally entails a commitment to do a minimum amount of regular reading of materials submitted by other Members. We try to keep the readings SHORT. Each Member should regularly contribute research (gathering Source readings on the Topic), and writing (preparing materials to be posted on the Wiki). Normally, about 2/3 of the Members are active in any given week, depending on their other commitments and their interest in the topic.

THE DROPBOX: We have been using an online file-sharing service, Dropbox.com, with dedicated folders under each TOPIC for posting and discussing written materials, normally to be read before each meeting. From time to time, ad-hoc Teams form around an upcoming TOPIC (e.g. “Internationalism”). For access to the Future Historians Dropbox, send a request to AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com.

THE GOOGLE GROUP: We also conduct discussions by email using a Google Groups listserv. So far this has proved rather dynamic, as when the emails arrive people naturally respond to them and the discussion develops rapidly. These discussions will be continued in different THREADS which correspond to the TOPICS, so the results can be synthesized and added to the growing narratives of THEN, NOW and HOW? You may request to join the listserv by emailing AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com.

The Research part of our task involves finding useful materials that can be adapted to our purpose, cut down to a reasonable length, and eventually incorporated as a brick in the edifice of our narrative. Particularly useful are reports of resistance, struggle, and self-organization that can be extrapolated from THEN into HOW and get us to NOW.

Up to now, when we found an interesting report or analysis on a particular topic in the form of a book or article (for example of the Food Crisis), we shared the URL and a very short summary on the weekly Reading List. If it’s long, we also copy/paste essential excerpts for all to read or produce a digest that can be adapted to the narrative on the Wiki. Now with listserv threads, perhaps the Teams can refine them for later use. We are a project under construction, still growing.

Please join us.

Let's Begin

about-us.1525663587.txt.gz · Last modified: 2018/05/06 23:26 by admin