Author Yavor Tarinski presents his new book Horizons of Direct Democracy: Revolutionary Politics in an Age of Social and Environmental Collapse, a new primer on the politics of direct democracy, in conversation with contributors Andrew Zonneveld, Eleanor Finley, and Modibo Kadalie.
Below you can watch the video recording of the book launch. It was a great and vibrant discussion with a beautiful and diverse panel!
The participants discuss various crucial contemporary topics through the stateless and anti-capitalist lens of direct democracy: migration and autonomy in Greece, organization and spontaneity in the Balkans, democracy as a procedure vs an ethos, and much more!
ABOUT THE BOOK —- “Horizons of Direct Democracy” is a short and accessible volume surveying the political thought of philosophers like Cornelius Castoriadis, CLR James while also dissecting real-world examples of direct democracy in action from the Baltic, to Latin America, Western Asia, and beyond.
〉 You can order the book HERE
“Firestorm Books” hosted the event and the book is published from “On Our Own Authority!”:
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS:
Yavor Tarinski is an independent researcher, activist and author. He participates in social movements around the Balkans, as well as in transnational organizations, dedicated to the production of grassroots knowledge. He is a member of the administrative board of the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology, of the editorial board of the Greek digital journal & publications Aftoleksi, as well as bibliographer at Agora International. Among his books are Concepts for Democratic and Ecological Society and Reclaiming Cities: Revolutionary Dimensions of Political Participation.
Eleanor Finley is an activist-scholar and cultural anthropologist who studies themes of social ecology, radical municipalism, and direct democracy. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as an Affiliate Researcher with Next System Studies at George Mason University. She is the author of the book Practicing Social Ecology: From Bookchin to Rojava and Beyond, Pluto Press 2025. She wrote about the book:
“Yavor Tarinski is extremely timely in this urgent, rigorous, and ambitious exploration of democratic revolution in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a truly rich array of examples, historical lessons, and practical cases, he illuminates how authority can be equitably shared and collectively managed, ensuring that no realm of society is elevated above others.”
Modibo Kadalie has spent nearly six decades as an activist, organizer, teacher, and scholar in the civil rights, Black power, and Pan-African movements. In Pan-African Social Ecology: Speeches, Conversations, and Essays, he reflects on the sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, urban rebellions, and anticolonial movements that have animated the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Kadalie demonstrates how the forms of direct democracy that have evolved through these freedom struggles present the promise of a future defined by social liberation as well as ecological healing. He says:
“I was enthralled by [Tarinski’s] intricate knowledge of so many different forms of democracy. … We are fellow travelers, for sure.”
Andrew Zonneveld is an independent scholar, writer, and musician from Atlanta, Georgia. He is author of All Will Be Equalized!: Georgia’s Freedom Seekers of the Swamps, Backwoods, and Sea Islands 1526-1890 and the editor of The Commune: Paris, 1871 and To Remain Silent is Impossible: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman in Russia. He says:
“Yavor Tarinski revives the anarchistic spirit and politics of direct democracy in this thorough yet accessible volume, which is destined to become a resource for generations of activists, organizers, students, and scholars to come.”
