Takis Fotopoulos (
Greek: Τάκης Φωτόπουλος, born 14 October 1940) is a
Greekpolitical philosopher, economist and writer who founded the Inclusive Democracy movement, aiming at a
synthesis of
classical democracy with
libertarian socialism[1] and the radical currents in the
new social movements. He is an
academic, and has written many books and over 900 articles. He is the editor of The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (which succeeded Democracy & Nature) and is the author of Towards An Inclusive Democracy (1997) in which the foundations of the Inclusive Democracy project were set.[2] His latest book is The New World Order in Action: Volume 1: Globalization, the Brexit Revolution and the "Left"- Towards a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations (December 2016). Fotopoulos is Greek and lives in
London.[3]
Early life
Fotopoulos was born on the Greek island of
Chios and his family moved to
Athens soon afterwards. After graduating from the
University of Athens with degrees in
Economics and
Political Science and in
Law, he moved to London in 1966 for postgraduate study at the
London School of Economics on a Varvaressos scholarship from Athens University. He was a student
syndicalist and activist in Athens[a] and then a political activist in London, taking an active part in the
1968 student protests there, and in organisations of the revolutionary Greek Left during the struggle against the
Greek military junta of 1967–1974. During this period, he was a member of the Greek group called
Revolutionary Socialist Groups in London, which published the newspaper Μαμή ("Midwife", from the Marxian dictum, "violence is the midwife of revolution") for which he wrote several articles.[4] Fotopoulos married Sia Mamareli (a former lawyer) in 1966; the couple have a son, Costas (born in 1974), who is a composer and pianist.
Academia and afterwards
Fotopoulos was a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the
Polytechnic of North London from 1969 to 1989, until he began editing the journal Society & Nature, later Democracy & Nature and subsequently the online International Journal of Inclusive Democracy.[2][3] He was also a columnist of Eleftherotypia,[5] the second-biggest newspaper in Greece.[6]
Inclusive Democracy
Fotopoulos developed the political project of Inclusive Democracy (ID) in 1997 (an exposition can be found in Towards An Inclusive Democracy). The first issue of Society & Nature declared that:
our ambition is to initiate an urgently needed dialogue on the crucial question of developing a new liberatory social project, at a moment in
History when the
Left has abandoned this traditional role.[7]
It specified that the new project should be seen as the outcome of a synthesis of the democratic, libertarian socialist and
radical Green traditions.[8] Since then, a dialogue has followed in the pages of the journal, in which supporters of the
autonomy project like
Cornelius Castoriadis,
social ecology supporters including its founder
Murray Bookchin, and Green activists and academics like
Steven Best have taken part.
The starting point for Fotopoulos' work is that the world faces a multi-dimensional crisis (economic, ecological, social, cultural and political) which is caused by the concentration of power in elites, as a result of the market economy, representative democracy and related forms of hierarchical structure. An inclusive democracy, which involves the equal distribution of power at all levels, is seen not as a utopia (in the negative sense of the word) or a "vision" but as perhaps the only way out of the present crisis, with trends towards its creation manifesting themselves today in many parts of the world. Fotopoulos is in favor of
market abolitionism, although he would not identify himself as a market abolitionist as such because he considers market abolition as one aspect of an inclusive democracy which refers only to the
economic democracy component of it. He maintains that "modern hierarchical society," which for him includes both the
capitalist market economy and "
socialist" statism, is highly oriented toward economic growth, which has glaring environmental contradictions. Fotopoulos proposes a model of economic democracy for a stateless, marketless and moneyless economy but he considers that the economic democracy component is equally significant to the other components of ID, i.e. political or
direct democracy, economic democracy, ecological democracy and democracy in the social realm. Fotopoulos' work has been critically assessed by important activists, theorists and scholars.[1][9][10][11][12][13][14]
Critical Perspectives on Globalisation, ed. by Robert Hunter Wade, Marina Della Giusta and Uma Kambhampati (Chelthenham, UK & Northampton, MA US: Edward Elgar publishing, 2006). (Takis Fotopoulos contribution:
"The global 'war' of the transnational elite").
Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex ed. by A.J.Nocella, Steven Best, Peter McLaren (AK Press, Oakland, CA & Edinburgh, 2010), 590 p, paperback,
ISBN978-1-904859-98-7. (Takis Fotopoulos contribution: "Systemic Aspects of Academic Repression in the New World Order". A
full version of this essay is published in The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 4, No. 4 (October 2008).
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, ed by Frederic L. Bender (second revised edition; New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2013),
ISBN978-0393935608. (Takis Fotopoulos & A. Gezerlis contribution: "Hardt & Negri's Empire: A new Communist Manifesto or a reformist Welcome to Neoliberal Globalization?," (extract), pp. 232–34.)
^He was elected as a member of the Administrative Council of the Law students Union in 1958-59, following the first victory of a
Left alliance in which he participated against EKOF, an
extreme right wing student association controlled by the 'deep' Greek state, which a few years later, in 1963, was responsible for the murder of Left parliamentarian Grigoris Lambrakis and 4 years later of the military coup which led to the military dictatorship (1967-74).
^
abTakis Fotopoulos bio at eipcp's (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies) website.
^As testified by the Left composer Lakis Karalis in an interview in the Athens newspaper Eleftherotypia (06/09/2008) and in an Arts web site
ΠροβολέαςArchived 2015-12-08 at the
Wayback Machine.
A talk given by Takis Fotopoulos about the Internationalization of the Capitalist Market Economy and the project of Inclusive Democracy (
University of Vermont (US), 19 April 1996), followed by a discussion with
Murray Bookchin, Dan Chodorkoff and others. Video in 3 parts:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3. Retrieved 21 April 2014.