~corti-nico/ubuntu/vivid/anarchism/fix1426015 : revision 5

1

I.5 What could the social structure of anarchy look like?

2

3

The social and political structure of anarchy is similar to that of its

4

economic structure, i.e., it is based on a voluntary federation of

5

decentralised, directly democratic community assemblies (communes). In

6

these grassroots political units and their confederations, the concept

7

of "self-management" becomes that of "self-government", a form of

8

municipal organisation in which people take back control of their

9

living places from the bureaucratic state and the capitalist class

10

whose interests it serves. Bakunin's comments are very applicable here:

11

12

"[A] truly popular organisation begins from below, from the

13

association, from the commune. Thus starting out with the

14

organisation of the lowest nucleus and proceeding upward, federalism

15

becomes a political institution of socialism, the free and

16

spontaneous organisation of popular life." [The Political Philosophy

17

of Bakunin, pp. 273-4]

18

19

"A new economic phase demands a new political phase," argued Kropotkin,

20

"A revolution as profound as that dreamed of by the socialists cannot

21

accept the mould of an out-dated political life. A new society based on

22

equality of condition, on the collective possession of the instruments

23

of work, cannot tolerate for a week . . . the representative system . .

24

. if we want the social revolution, we must seek a form of political

25

organisation that will correspond to the new method of economic

26

organisation . . . The future belongs to the free groupings of

27

interests and not to governmental centralisation; it belongs to freedom

28

and not to authority." [Words of a Rebel, pp. 143-4]

29

30

Thus the social structure of an anarchist society will be the opposite

31

of the current system. Instead of being centralised and top-down as in

32

the state, it will be decentralised and organised from the bottom up.

33

As Kropotkin argued, "socialism must become more popular, more

34

communalistic, and less dependent upon indirect government through

35

elected representatives. It must become more self-governing."

36

[Anarchism, p. 185] In this, Kropotkin (like Bakunin) followed Proudhon

37

who argued that "[u]nless democracy is a fraud, and the sovereignty of

38

the People a joke, it must be admitted that each citizen in the sphere

39

of his [or her] industry, each municipal, district or provincial

40

council within its own territory, is the only natural and legitimate

41

representative of the Sovereign, and that therefore each locality

42

should act directly and by itself in administering the interests which

43

it includes, and should exercise full sovereignty in relation to them."

44

[General Idea of the Revolution, p. 276] While anarchists have various

45

different conceptions of how this communal system would be constituted

46

(as we will see), they is total agreement on these basic visions and

47

principles.

48

49

The aim is "to found an order of things wherein the principle of the

50

sovereignty of the people, of man and of the citizen, would be

51

implemented to the letter" and "where every member" of a society

52

"retaining his independence and continuing to act as sovereign, would

53

be self-governing" and any social organisation "would concern itself

54

solely with collective matters; where as a consequence, there would be

55

certain common matters but no centralisation." This means that the

56

"federative, mutualist republican sentiment" (as summarised these days

57

by the expression self-management) will "bring about the victory of

58

Worker Democracy right around the world." [Proudhon, Anarchism, vol. 1,

59

Robert Graham (ed.), p. 74 and p. 77]

60

61

This empowerment of ordinary citizens through decentralisation and

62

direct democracy will eliminate the alienation and apathy that are now

63

rampant and (as always happens when people are free) unleash a flood of

64

innovation in dealing with the social breakdown now afflicting our

65

world. The gigantic metropolis with its hierarchical and impersonal

66

administration, its atomised and isolated "residents," will be

67

transformed into a network of humanly scaled participatory communities,

68

each with its own unique character and forms of self-government, which

69

will be co-operatively linked through federation with other

70

communities, from the municipal through the bio-regional to the global

71

level.

72

73

This means that the social perspective of libertarian socialism is as

74

distinctive as its economic vision. While mainstream socialism is

75

marked by support for centralised states, anarchists stay true to

76

socialism as equality and argue that means decentralisation. Thus

77

socialism "wears two distinct faces. When it is said that a man is a

78

Socialist, it is implies that he regards the monopoly of private

79

property in the means of production as the cause of the existing

80

unequal distribution of wealth and its attendant ills . . . Socialists

81

are divided into the centralising and decentralising parties, the party

82

of the State and the party of the federatic commune." [Charlotte M.

83

Wilson, Anarchist Essays, p. 37] Only such a federal, bottom-up, system

84

can ensure people can manage their own fates and ensure genuine freedom

85

and equality through mass participation and self-management.

86

87

Of course, it can (and has) been argued that people are just not

88

interested in "politics." Further, some claim that this disinterest is

89

why governments exist -- people delegate their responsibilities and

90

power to others because they have better things to do.

91

92

Such an argument, however, is flawed on empirical grounds. As we

93

indicated in [1]section B.2.6, centralisation of power in both the

94

French and American revolutions occurred because the wealthy few

95

thought that working class people were taking too much interest in

96

politics and social issues, not the reverse ("To attack the central

97

power, to strip it of its prerogatives, to decentralise, to dissolve

98

authority, would have been to abandon to the people the control of its

99

affairs, to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That is why the

100

bourgeoisie sought to reinforce the central government even more. . ."

101

[Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 143]). Simply put, the state is

102

centralised to facilitate minority rule by excluding the mass of people

103

from taking part in the decision making processes within society. This

104

is to be expected as social structures do not evolve by chance --

105

rather they develop to meet specific needs and requirements. The

106

specific need of the ruling class is to rule and that means

107

marginalising the bulk of the population. Its requirement is for

108

minority power and this is reflected in the structure of the state (see

109

[2]section H.3.7).

110

111

Even if we ignore the historical evidence on this issue, anarchists do

112

not draw this conclusion from the current apathy that surrounds us. In

113

fact, we argue that this apathy is not the cause of government but its

114

result. Government is an inherently hierarchical system in which

115

ordinary people are deliberately marginalised. The powerlessness people

116

feel due to the workings of the system ensure that they are apathetic

117

about it, thus guaranteeing that wealthy and powerful elites govern

118

society without hindrance from the oppressed and exploited majority.

119

120

Moreover, government usually sticks its nose into areas that most

121

people have no real interest in. Some things, as in the regulation of

122

industry or workers' safety and rights, a free society could leave to

123

those affected to make their own decisions (we doubt that workers would

124

subject themselves to unsafe working conditions, for example). In

125

others, such as the question of personal morality and acts, a free

126

people would have no interest in (unless it harmed others, of course).

127

This, again, would reduce the number of issues that would be discussed

128

in a free commune. Also, via decentralisation, a free people would be

129

mainly discussing local issues, so reducing the complexity of many

130

questions and solutions. Wider issues would, of course, be discussed

131

but these would be on specific issues and so more focused in their

132

nature than those raised in the legislative bodies of the state. So, a

133

combination of centralisation and an irrational desire to discuss every

134

and all questions also helps make "politics" seem boring and

135

irrelevant.

136

137

As noted above, this result is not an accident and the marginalisation

138

of "ordinary" people is actually celebrated in bourgeois "democratic"

139

theory. As Noam Chomsky notes:

140

141

"Twentieth century democratic theorists advise that 'The public must

142

be put in its place,' so that the 'responsible men' may 'live free

143

of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd,' 'ignorant and

144

meddlesome outsiders' whose 'function' is to be 'interested

145

spectators of action,' not participants, lending their weight

146

periodically to one or another of the leadership class (elections),

147

then returning to their private concerns. (Walter Lippman). The

148

great mass of the population, 'ignorant and mentally deficient,'

149

must be kept in their place for the common good, fed with 'necessary

150

illusion' and 'emotionally potent oversimplifications' (Wilson's

151

Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Reinhold Niebuhr). Their

152

'conservative' counterparts are only more extreme in their adulation

153

of the Wise Men who are the rightful rulers -- in the service of the

154

rich and powerful, a minor footnote regularly forgotten." [Year 501,

155

p. 18]

156

157

This marginalisation of the public from political life ensures that the

158

wealthy can be "left alone" to use their power as they see fit. In

159

other words, such marginalisation is a necessary part of a fully

160

functioning capitalist society and so libertarian social structures

161

have to be discouraged. Or as Chomsky put it, the "rabble must be

162

instructed in the values of subordination and a narrow quest for

163

personal gain within the parameters set by the institutions of the

164

masters; meaningful democracy, with popular association and action, is

165

a threat to be overcome." [Op. Cit., p. 18] This philosophy can be seen

166

in the statement of a US Banker in Venezuela under the murderous

167

Jimenez dictatorship:

168

169

"You have the freedom here to do whatever you want to do with your

170

money, and to me, that is worth all the political freedom in the

171

world." [quoted by Chomsky, Op. Cit., p. 99]

172

173

Deterring libertarian alternatives to statism is a common feature of

174

our current system. By marginalising and disempowering people, the

175

ability of individuals to manage their own social activities is

176

undermined and weakened. They develop a "fear of freedom" and embrace

177

authoritarian institutions and "strong leaders", which in turn

178

reinforces their marginalisation.

179

180

This consequence is hardly surprising. Anarchists maintain that the

181

desire to participate and the ability to participate are in a symbiotic

182

relationship: participation builds on itself. By creating the social

183

structures that allow participation, participation will increase. As

184

people increasingly take control of their lives, so their ability to do

185

so also increases. The challenge of having to take responsibility for

186

decisions that make a difference is at the same time an opportunity for

187

personal development. To begin to feel power, having previously felt

188

powerless, to win access to the resources required for effective

189

participation and learn how to use them, is a liberating experience.

190

Once people become active subjects, making things happen in one aspect

191

of their lives, they are less likely to remain passive objects,

192

allowing things to happen to them, in other aspects.

193

194

All in all, "politics" is far too important an subject to leave to

195

politicians, the wealthy and bureaucrats. After all, it is (or, at

196

least, it should be) what affects, your friends, community, and,

197

ultimately, the planet you live on. Such issues cannot be left to

198

anyone but you.

199

200

Hence a meaningful communal life based on self-empowered individuals is

201

a distinct possibility (indeed, it has repeatedly appeared throughout

202

history). It is the hierarchical structures in statism and capitalism,

203

marginalising and disempowering the majority, which is at the root of

204

the current wide scale apathy in the face of increasing social and

205

ecological disruption. Libertarian socialists therefore call for a

206

radically new form of political system to replace the centralised

207

nation-state, a form that would be based around confederations of

208

self-governing communities: "Society is a society of societies; a

209

league of leagues of leagues; a commonwealth of commonwealths of

210

commonwealths; a republic of republics of republics. Only there is

211

freedom and order, only there is spirit, a spirit which is

212

self-sufficiency and community, unity and independence." [Gustav

213

Landauer, For Socialism, pp. 125-126]

214

215

To create such a system would require dismantling the nation-state and

216

reconstituting relations between communities on the basis of

217

self-determination and free and equal confederation from below. In the

218

following subsections we will examine in more detail why this new

219

system is needed and what it might look like. As we have stressed

220

repeatedly, these are just suggestions of possible anarchist solutions

221

to social organisation. Most anarchists recognise that anarchist

222

communities will co-exist with non-anarchist ones after the destruction

223

of the existing state. As we are anarchists we are discussing anarchist

224

visions. We will leave it up to non-anarchists to paint their own

225

pictures of a possible future.

226

227

I.5.1 What are participatory communities?

228

229

A key concept in anarchist thought is that of the participatory

230

community. Traditionally, these participatory communities are called

231

communes in anarchist theory ("The basic social and economic cell of

232

the anarchist society is the free, independent commune" [A. Grachev,

233

quoted by Paul Avrich, The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution, p.

234

64]).

235

236

The reason for the use of the term commune is due to anarchism's roots

237

in France where it refers to the lowest level of administrative

238

division in the Republic. In France, a commune can be a city of 2

239

million inhabitants (hence the Paris Commune of 1871); a town of

240

10,000; or just a 10-person hamlet. It appeared in the 12th century

241

from Medieval Latin communia, which means a gathering of people sharing

242

a common life (from Latin communis, things held in common). Proudhon

243

used the term to describe the social units of a non-statist society and

244

subsequent anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin followed his lead. As

245

the term "commune", since the 1960s, often refers to "intentional

246

communities" where people drop out of society and form their own

247

counter-cultural groups and living spaces we have, in order to avoid

248

confusion, decided to use "participatory community" as well (anarchists

249

have also used other terms, including "free municipality").

250

251

These community organisations are seen as the way people participate in

252

the decisions that affect them and their neighbourhoods, regions and,

253

ultimately, planet. These are the means for transforming our social

254

environment from one disfigured by economic and political power and its

255

needs to one fit for human beings to life and flourish in. The creation

256

of a network of participatory communities ("communes") based on

257

self-government through direct, face-to-face democracy in grassroots

258

neighbourhood assemblies is the means to that end. As we argued in

259

[3]section I.2.3 such assemblies will be born in social struggle and so

260

reflect the needs of the struggle and those within it so our comments

261

here must be considered as generalisations of the salient features of

262

such communities and not blue-prints.

263

264

Within anarchist thought, there are two main conceptions of the free

265

commune. One vision is based on workplace delegates, the other on

266

neighbourhood assemblies. We will sketch each in turn.

267

268

The first type of participatory community (in which "the federative

269

Alliance of all working men's associations . . . will constitute the

270

commune") is most associated with Bakunin. He argued that the "future

271

social organisation must be made solely from the bottom upwards, by the

272

free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions,

273

then in communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation,

274

international and universal." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p.

275

170 and p. 206] This vision was stressed by later anarchist thinkers.

276

For example, Spanish anarchist Issac Puente thought that in towns and

277

cities "the part of the free municipality is played by local federation

278

. . . Ultimate sovereignty in the local federation of industrial unions

279

lies with the general assembly of all local producers." [Libertarian

280

Communism, p. 27] The Russian anarchist G. P. Maximoff saw the

281

"communal confederation" as being "constituted by thousands of freely

282

acting labour organisations." [The Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism, p.

283

43]

284

285

This vision of the commune was created during many later revolutions

286

(such as in Russia in 1905 and 1917 as well as Hungary in 1956). Being

287

based on workplaces, this form of commune has the advantage of being

288

based on groups of people who are naturally associated during most of

289

the day (Bakunin considered workplace bodies as "the natural

290

organisation of the masses" as they were "based on the various types of

291

work" which "define their actual day-to-day life" [The Basic Bakunin,

292

p. 139]). This would facilitate the organisation of assemblies,

293

discussion on social, economic and political issues and the mandating

294

and recalling of delegates. Moreover, it combines political and

295

economic power in one organisation, so ensuring that the working class

296

actually manages society.

297

298

Other anarchists counterpoise neighbourhood assemblies to workers'

299

councils. These assemblies will be general meetings open to all

300

citizens in every neighbourhood, town, and village, and will be the

301

source of public policy for all levels of confederal co-ordination.

302

Such "town meetings" will bring people directly into the political

303

process and give them an equal voice in the decisions that affect their

304

lives. Such anarchists point to the experience of the French Revolution

305

of 1789 and the "sections" of the Paris Commune as the key example of

306

"a people governing itself directly -- when possible -- without

307

intermediaries, without masters." It is argued, based on this

308

experience, that "the principles of anarchism . . . dated from 1789,

309

and that they had their origin, not in theoretical speculations, but in

310

the deeds of the Great French Revolution." [Peter Kropotkin, The Great

311

French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 210 and p. 204] Anarchists also point to

312

the clubs created during the 1848 Revolution in France and in the Paris

313

Commune of 1871 not to mention the community assemblies created in

314

Argentina during the revolt against neo-liberalism at the start of the

315

21st century.

316

317

Critics of workers' councils point out that not all people work in

318

traditional workplaces (many are parents who look after children, for

319

example). By basing the commune around the workplace, such people are

320

automatically excluded. Moreover, in most modern cities many people do

321

not live near where they work. It would mean that local affairs could

322

not be effectively discussed in a system of workers' councils as many

323

who take part in the debate are unaffected by the decisions reached. In

324

addition, some anarchists argue that workplace based systems

325

automatically generate "special interests" and so exclude community

326

issues. Only community assemblies can "transcend the traditional

327

special interests of work, workplace, status, and property relations,

328

and create a general interest based on shared community problems."

329

[Murray Bookchin, From Urbanisation to Cities, p. 254]

330

331

However, such communities assemblies can only be valid if they can be

332

organised rapidly in order to make decisions and to mandate and recall

333

delegates. In the capitalist city, many people work far from where they

334

live and so such meetings have to be called for after work or at

335

weekends (thus the key need is to reduce the working day/week and to

336

communalise industry). For this reason, many anarchists continue to

337

support the workers' council vision of the commune, complemented by

338

community assemblies for those who live in an area but do not work in a

339

traditional workplace (e.g. parents bringing up small children, the

340

old, the sick and so on). It should be noted that this is something

341

which the supporters of workers' councils have noticed and some argue

342

for councils which are delegates from both the inhabitants and the

343

enterprises of an area.

344

345

These positions are not hard and fast divisions, far from it. Puente,

346

for example, thought that in the countryside the dominant commune would

347

be "all the residents of a village or hamlet meeting in an assembly

348

(council) with full powers to administer local affairs." [Op. Cit., p.

349

25] Kropotkin supported the soviets of the Russian Revolution, arguing

350

that the "idea of soviets . . . of councils of workers and peasants . .

351

. controlling the economic and political life of the country is a great

352

idea. All the more so, since it necessarily follows that these councils

353

should be composed of all who take part in the production of natural

354

wealth by their own efforts." [Anarchism, p. 254]

355

356

Which method, workers' councils or community assemblies, will be used

357

in a given community will depend on local conditions, needs and

358

aspirations and it is useless to draw hard and fast rules. It is likely

359

that some sort of combination of the two approaches will be used, with

360

workers' councils being complemented by community assemblies until such

361

time as a reduced working week and decentralisation of urban centres

362

make purely community assemblies the more realistic option. It is

363

likely that in a fully libertarian society, community assemblies will

364

be the dominant communal organisation but in the period immediately

365

after a revolution this may not be immediately possible. Objective

366

conditions, rather than predictions, will be the deciding factor. Under

367

capitalism, anarchists pursue both forms of organisation, arguing for

368

community and industrial unionism in the class struggle (see sections

369

[4]J.5.1 and [5]J.5.2).

370

371

Regardless of the exact make up of the commune, it has certain key

372

features. It would be free a association, based upon the self-assumed

373

obligation of those who join them. In free association, participation

374

is essential simply because it is the only means by which individuals

375

can collectively govern themselves (and unless they govern themselves,

376

someone else will). "As a unique individual," Stirner argued, "you can

377

assert yourself alone in association, because the association does not

378

own you, because you are one who owns it or who turns it to your own

379

advantage." The rules governing the association are determined by the

380

associated and can be changed by them (and so a vast improvement over

381

"love it or leave") as are the policies the association follows. Thus,

382

the association "does not impose itself as a spiritual power superior

383

to my spirit. I have no wish to become a slave to my maxims, but would

384

rather subject them to my ongoing criticism." [Max Stirner, No Gods, No

385

Masters, vol. 1, p. 17]

386

387

Thus participatory communities are freely joined and self-managed by

388

their members with no division between order givers and order takers as

389

exists within the state. Rather the associated govern themselves and

390

while the assembled people collectively decide the rules governing

391

their association, and are bound by them as individuals, they are also

392

superior to them in the sense that these rules can always be modified

393

or repealed (see [6]section A.2.11 for more details). As can be seen, a

394

participatory commune is new form of social life, radically different

395

from the state as it is decentralised, self-governing and based upon

396

individual autonomy and free agreement. Thus Kropotkin:

397

398

"The representative system was organised by the bourgeoisie to

399

ensure their domination, and it will disappear with them. For the

400

new economic phase that is about to begin we must seek a new form of

401

political organisation, based on a principle quite different from

402

that of representation. The logic of events imposes it." [Words of a

403

Rebel, p. 125]

404

405

This "new form of political organisation has to be worked out the

406

moment that socialistic principles shall enter our life. And it is

407

self-evident that this new form will have to be more popular, more

408

decentralised, and nearer to the folk-mote self-government than

409

representative government can ever be." Kropotkin, like all anarchists,

410

considered the idea that socialism could be created by taking over the

411

current state or creating a new one as doomed to failure. Instead, he

412

recognised that socialism would only be built using new organisations

413

that reflect the spirit of socialism (such as freedom, self-government

414

and so on). He, like Proudhon and Bakunin before him, therefore argued

415

that "[t]his was the form that the social revolution must take -- the

416

independent commune. . . [whose] inhabitants have decided that they

417

will communalise the consumption of commodities, their exchange and

418

their production." [Kropotkin, Anarchism, p. 184 and p. 163]

419

420

In a nutshell, a participatory community is a free association, based

421

upon the mass assembly of people who live in a common area, the means

422

by which they make the decisions that affect them, their communities,

423

bio-regions and the planet. Their essential task is to provide a forum

424

for raising public issues and deciding upon them. Moreover, these

425

assemblies will be a key way of generating a community (and community

426

spirit) and building and enriching social relationships between

427

individuals and, equally important, of developing and enriching

428

individuals by the very process of participation in communal affairs.

429

By discussing, thinking and listening to others, individuals develop

430

their own abilities and powers while at the same time managing their

431

own affairs, so ensuring that no one else does (i.e. they govern

432

themselves and are no longer governed from above by others). As

433

Kropotkin argued, self-management has an educational effect on those

434

who practice it:

435

436

"The 'permanence' of the general assemblies of the sections -- that

437

is, the possibility of calling the general assembly whenever it was

438

wanted by the members of the section and of discussing everything in

439

the general assembly. . . will educate every citizen politically. .

440

. The section in permanence -- the forum always open -- is the only

441

way . . . to assure an honest and intelligent administration." [The

442

Great French Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 210-1]

443

444

As well as integrating the social life of a community and encouraging

445

the political and social development of its members, these free

446

communes will also be integrated into the local ecology. Humanity would

447

life in harmony with nature as well as with itself -- as discussed in

448

[7]section E.2, these would be eco-communities part of their local

449

eco-systems with a balanced mix of agriculture and industry (as

450

described by Kropotkin in his classic work Fields, Factories and

451

Workshops). Thus a free commune would aim to integrate the individual

452

into social and communal life, rural and urban life into a balanced

453

whole and human life into the wider ecology. In this way the free

454

commune would make human habitation fully ecological, ending the sharp

455

and needless (and dehumanising and de-individualising) division of

456

human life from the rest of the planet. The commune will be a key means

457

of the expressing diversity within humanity and the planet as well as

458

improving the quality of life in society:

459

460

"The Commune . . . will be entirely devoted to improving the

461

communal life of the locality. Making their requests to the

462

appropriate Syndicates, Builders', Public Health, Transport or

463

Power, the inhabitants of each Commune will be able to gain all

464

reasonable living amenities, town planning, parks, play-grounds,

465

trees in the street, clinics, museums and art galleries. Giving,

466

like the medieval city assembly, an opportunity for any interested

467

person to take part in, and influence, his town's affairs and

468

appearance, the Commune will be a very different body from the

469

borough council . . .

470

471

"In ancient and medieval times cities and villages expressed the

472

different characters of different localities and their inhabitants.

473

In redstone, Portland or granite, in plaster or brick, in pitch of

474

roof, arrangements of related buildings or patterns of slate and

475

thatch each locality added to the interests of travellers . . . each

476

expressed itself in castle, home or cathedral.

477

478

"How different is the dull, drab, or flashy ostentatious monotony of

479

modern England. Each town is the same. The same Woolworth's, Odeon

480

Cinemas, and multiple shops, the same 'council houses' or

481

'semi-detached villas' . . . North, South, East or West, what's the

482

difference, where is the change?

483

484

"With the Commune the ugliness and monotony of present town and

485

country life will be swept away, and each locality and region, each

486

person will be able to express the joy of living, by living

487

together." [Tom Brown, Syndicalism, p. 59]

488

489

The size of the neighbourhood assemblies will vary, but it will

490

probably fluctuate around some ideal size, discoverable in practice,

491

that will provide a viable scale of face-to-face interaction and allow

492

for both a variety of personal contacts. This suggests that any town or

493

city would itself be a confederation of assemblies -- as was, of

494

course, practised very effectively in Paris during the Great French

495

Revolution.

496

497

Such assemblies would meet regularly, at the very least monthly

498

(probably more often, particularly during periods which require fast

499

and frequent decision making, like a revolution) and deal with a

500

variety of issues. In the words of the CNT's resolution on libertarian

501

communism:

502

503

"the foundation of this administration will be the commune. These

504

communes are to be autonomous and will be federated at regional and

505

national levels to achieve their general goals. The right to

506

autonomy does not preclude the duty to implement agreements

507

regarding collective benefits . . . [A] commune without any

508

voluntary restrictions will undertake to adhere to whatever general

509

norms may be agreed by majority vote after free debate . . . the

510

commune is to be autonomous and confederated with the other communes

511

. . . the commune will have the duty to concern itself with whatever

512

may be of interest to the individual.

513

514

"It will have to oversee organising, running and beautification of

515

the settlement. It will see that its inhabitants are housed and that

516

items and products be made available to them by the producers'

517

unions or associations.

518

519

"Similarly, it is to concern itself with hygiene, the keeping of

520

communal statistics and with collective requirements such as

521

education, health services and with the maintenance and improvement

522

of local means of communication.

523

524

"It will orchestrate relations with other communes and will take

525

care to stimulate all artistic and cultural pursuits.

526

527

"So that this mission may be properly fulfilled, a communal council

528

is to be appointed . . . None of these posts will carry any

529

executive or bureaucratic powers . . . [its members] will perform

530

their role as producers coming together in session at the close of

531

the day's work to discuss the detailed items which may not require

532

the endorsement of communal assemblies.

533

534

"Assemblies are to be summoned as often as required by communal

535

interests, upon the request of the communal council or according to

536

the wishes of the inhabitants of each commune . . . The inhabitants

537

of a commune are to debate among themselves their internal

538

problems." [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish

539

Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 106-7]

540

541

Thus the communal assembly discusses that which affects the community

542

and those within it. As these local community associations will be

543

members of larger communal bodies, the communal assembly will also

544

discuss issues which affect wider areas, as indicated, and mandate

545

their delegates to discuss them at confederation assemblies. This

546

system, we must note, was applied with great success during numerous

547

revolutions (see [8]section J.5.4) and so cannot be dismissed as

548

wishful thinking.

549

550

However, of course, the actual framework of a free society will be

551

worked out in practice. As Bakunin correctly argued, society "can, and

552

must, organise itself in a different fashion [than what came before],

553

but not from top to bottom and according to an ideal plan" [Michael

554

Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 205] What does seem likely is that

555

confederations of communes will be required. We turn to this in the

556

[9]next section.

557

558

I.5.2 Why are confederations of participatory communities needed?

559

560

Since not all issues are local, the community assemblies will also

561

elect mandated and recallable delegates to the larger-scale units of

562

self-government in order to address issues affecting urban districts,

563

the city or town as a whole, the county, the bio-region, and ultimately

564

the entire planet. Thus the assemblies will confederate at several

565

levels in order to develop and co-ordinate common policies to deal with

566

common problems. In the words of the CNT's resolution on libertarian

567

communism:

568

569

"The inhabitants of a commune are to debate among themselves their

570

internal problems . . . Federations are to deliberate over major

571

problems affecting a country or province and all communes are to be

572

represented at their reunions and assemblies, thereby enabling their

573

delegates to convey the democratic viewpoint of their respective

574

communes.

575

576

"If, say, roads have to be built to link villages of a county or any

577

matter arises to do with transportation and exchange of produce

578

between agricultural and industrial counties, then naturally every

579

commune which is implicated will have its right to have its say.

580

581

"On matters of a regional nature, it is the duty of the regional

582

federation to implement agreements which will represent the

583

sovereign will of all the region's inhabitants. So the starting

584

point is the individual, moving on through the commune, to the

585

federation and right on up finally to the confederation.

586

587

"Similarly, discussion of all problems of a national nature shall

588

follow a like pattern . . . " [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in

589

the Spanish Revolution, p. 107]

590

591

In other words, the commune "cannot any longer acknowledge any

592

superior: that, above it, there cannot be anything, save the interests

593

of the Federation, freely embraced by itself in concert with other

594

Communes." [Kropotkin, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 259]

595

596

Federalism is applicable at all levels of society. As Kropotkin pointed

597

out, anarchists "understand that if no central government was needed to

598

rule the independent communes, if national government is thrown

599

overboard and national unity is obtained by free federation, then a

600

central municipal government becomes equally useless and noxious. The

601

same federative principle would do within the commune." [Anarchism, pp.

602

163-164] Thus the whole of society would be a free federation, from the

603

local community right up to the global level. And this free federation

604

would be based squarely on the autonomy and self-government of local

605

groups. With federalism, co-operation replaces coercion.

606

607

This need for co-operation does not imply a centralised body. To

608

exercise your autonomy by joining self-managing organisations and,

609

therefore, agreeing to abide by the decisions you help make is not a

610

denial of that autonomy (unlike joining a hierarchical structure, where

611

you forsake autonomy within the organisation). In a centralised system,

612

we must stress, power rests at the top and the role of those below is

613

simply to obey (it matters not if those with the power are elected or

614

not, the principle is the same). In a federal system, power is not

615

delegated into the hands of a few (obviously a "federal" government or

616

state is a centralised system). Decisions in a federal system are made

617

at the base of the organisation and flow upwards so ensuring that power

618

remains decentralised in the hands of all. Working together to solve

619

common problems and organise common efforts to reach common goals is

620

not centralisation and those who confuse the two make a serious error

621

-- they fail to understand the different relations of authority each

622

generates and confuse obedience with co-operation.

623

624

As in the economic federation of syndicates, the lower levels will

625

control the higher, thus eliminating the current pre-emptive powers of

626

centralised government hierarchies. Delegates to higher-level

627

co-ordinating councils or conferences will be instructed, at every

628

level of confederation, by the assemblies they come from on how to deal

629

with any issues. These instructions will be binding, committing

630

delegates to a framework of policies within which they must act and

631

providing for their recall and the nullification of their decisions if

632

they fail to carry out their mandates. Delegates may be selected by

633

election and/or sortition (i.e. random selection by lot, as for jury

634

duty currently). As Murray Bookchin argued:

635

636

"A confederalist view involves a clear distinction between policy

637

making and the co-ordination and execution of adopted policies.

638

Policy making is exclusively the right of popular community

639

assemblies based on the practices of participatory democracy.

640

Administration and co-ordination are the responsibility of

641

confederal councils, which become the means for interlinking

642

villages, towns, neighbourhoods, and cities into confederal

643

networks. Power flows from the bottom up instead of from the top

644

down, and in confederations, the flow of power from the bottom up

645

diminishes with the scope of the federal council ranging

646

territorially from localities to regions and from regions to

647

ever-broader territorial areas." [From Urbanisation to Cities, p.

648

253]

649

650

Thus the people will have the final word on policy, which is the

651

essence of self-government, and each citizen will have his or her turn

652

to participate in the co-ordination of public affairs. In other words,

653

self-government will be the people themselves organised in their

654

community assemblies and their confederal co-ordinating councils, with

655

any delegates limited to implementing policy formulated by the people.

656

Such policies will still be subject to approval by the neighbourhood

657

and community assemblies through their right to recall their delegates

658

and revoke their decisions. Needless to say, the higher the

659

confederation the less often it would meet and the less it would have

660

to consider in terms of issues to decide. On such a level, only the

661

most general issues and decisions could be reached (in effect, only

662

guidelines which the member confederations would apply as they saw

663

fit).

664

665

In such a system there will, undoubtedly, be the need for certain

666

individuals to be allocated certain tasks to do. We stress the word

667

"tasks" because their work is essentially administrative in nature,

668

without power. For example, an individual or a group of individuals may

669

be elected to look into alternative power supplies for a community and

670

report back on what they discover. They cannot impose their decision

671

onto the community as they do not have the power to do so. They simply

672

present their findings to the body which had mandated them. These

673

findings are not a law which the electors are required to follow, but a

674

series of suggestions and information from which the assembled people

675

chose what they think is best. Or, to use another example, someone may

676

be elected to overlook the installation of a selected power supply but

677

the decision on what power supply to use and which specific project to

678

implement has been decided upon by the whole community. Similarly with

679

any delegate elected to a confederal council.

680

681

The scales and levels of confederation can only be worked out in

682

practice. In general, it would be safe to say that confederations would

683

be needed on a wide scale, starting with towns and cities and then

684

moving onto regional and other levels. No village, town or city could

685

be self-sufficient nor would desire to be -- communication and links

686

with other places are part and parcel of life and anarchists have no

687

desire to retreat back into an isolated form of localism:

688

689

"No community can hope to achieve economic autarchy, nor should it

690

try to do so. Economically, the wide range of resources that are

691

needed to make many of our widely used goods preclude self-enclosed

692

insularity and parochialism. Far from being a liability, this

693

interdependence among communities and regions can well be regarded

694

as an asset -- culturally as well as politically . . . Divested of

695

the cultural cross-fertilisation that is often a product of economic

696

intercourse, the municipality tends to shrink into itself and

697

disappear into its own civic privatism. Shared needs and resources

698

imply the existence of sharing and, with sharing, communication,

699

rejuvenation by new ideas, and a wider social horizon that yields a

700

wider sensibility to new experiences." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 237]

701

702

Combined with this consideration, we must also raise the issue of

703

economies of scale. A given level of confederation may be required to

704

make certain social and economic services efficient (we are thinking of

705

economies of scale for such social needs as universities, hospitals,

706

and cultural institutions). While every commune may have a doctor,

707

nursery, local communal stores and small-scale workplaces, not all can

708

have a university, hospital, factories and so forth. These would be

709

organised on a wider level, so necessitating the appropriate

710

confederation to exist to manage them. Ties between bio-regions or

711

larger territories based on the distribution of such things as

712

geographically concentrated mineral deposits, climate dependent crops,

713

and production facilities that are most efficient when concentrated in

714

one area will unite communities confederally on the basis of common

715

material needs as well as values.

716

717

This means that the scale and level of the confederations created by

718

the communes will be varied and extensive. It would be hard to

719

generalise about them, particularly as different confederations will

720

exist for different tasks and interests. Moreover, any system of

721

communes would start off based on the existing villages, towns and

722

cities of capitalism. That is unavoidable and will, of course, help

723

determine the initial scale and level of confederations.

724

725

In urban areas, the town or city would have to be broken down into

726

confederations and these confederations would constitute the town or

727

city assembly of delegates. Given a huge city like London, New York or

728

Mexico City it would be impossible to organise in any other way.

729

Smaller towns would probably be able to have simpler confederations. We

730

must stress that few, if any, anarchists consider it desirable to have

731

huge cities in a free society and one of the major tasks of social

732

transformation will be to break the metropolis into smaller units,

733

integrated with the local environment. However, a social revolution

734

will take place in these vast metropolises and so we have to take them

735

into account in our discussion.

736

737

In summary, the size and scale of confederations will depend on

738

practical considerations, based on what people found were optimal sizes

739

for their neighbourhood assemblies and the needs of co-operation

740

between them, towns, cities, regions and so on. We cannot, and have no

741

wish, to predict the development of a free society. Therefore the scale

742

and levels of confederation will be decided by those actually creating

743

an anarchist world although it is almost certain that levels of

744

confederation would be dependent on the number of delegates required.

745

After a certain number, the confederation assembly may became difficult

746

to manage, so implying that another level of confederation is required.

747

This would, undoubtedly, be the base for determining the scale and

748

level of confederation, ensuring that any confederal assembly can

749

actually manage its activities and remain under the control of lower

750

levels.

751

752

Finally, confederations are required to ensure solidarity can be

753

expressed in the unlikely situation of local oppression. After all,

754

history is full of local communities which have been oppressive to

755

minorities within them (most obviously, the American South) and so

756

confederation is required so that members of any such minority can

757

appeal for help and mutual aid to end its domination. Equally, though,

758

confederation is needed to ensure that local communes can experiment

759

and try out new ideas without having to wait until the majority agree

760

to it as would be required in a centralised system.

761

762

Thus confederations of communes are required to co-ordinate joint

763

activity and discuss common issues and interests. It is also required

764

to protect individual, community and social freedom as well as allowing

765

social experimentation and protecting the distinctiveness, dignity,

766

freedom and self-management of communities and so society as a whole.

767

Thus "socialism is federalist" and "true federalism, the political

768

organisation of socialism, will be attained only when these popular

769

grass-roots institutions [namely, "communes, industrial and

770

agricultural associations"] are organised in progressive stages from

771

the bottom up." [Bakunin, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 402]

772

773

I.5.3 Would confederations produce bureaucrats and politicians?

774

775

Of course, any organisation holds the danger that the few who have been

776

given tasks to perform could misuse their position for personal benefit

777

or, over time, evolve into a bureaucracy with power over the rest of

778

society. As such, some critics of social anarchism suggest that a

779

system of communes and confederations would simply be a breeding ground

780

for politicians and bureaucrats. This is obviously the case with the

781

state and many generalise from this experience for all forms of social

782

organisation, including the anarchist commune.

783

784

While recognising that this is a danger, anarchists are sure that such

785

developments are unlikely in an anarchy. This is because, based on our

786

analysis and critique of the state, we have long argued for various

787

institutional arrangements which reduce the danger of such things

788

developing. These include electing delegates rather than

789

representatives, giving these delegates a binding mandate and

790

subjecting them to instant recall by their electors. They would not, in

791

general, be paid and so, in other words, delegates are expected, as far

792

as possible, to remain in their current communities and conduct their

793

communal tasks after their usual work. For the few exceptions to this

794

that may occur, delegates would receive the average pay of their

795

commune, in mutualism and collectivism or, in communism, no special

796

access to communal resources. Moreover, it seems likely that regular

797

rotation of delegates would be utilised and, perhaps, random selection

798

as happens in jury duty today in many countries. Lastly, communes could

799

leave any confederation if its structure was becoming obviously

800

misshapen and bureaucratic.

801

802

By these methods, delegates to communal bodies would remain under the

803

control of their electors and not, as in the state, become their

804

masters. Moreover, anarchists have stressed that any communal body must

805

be a working organisation. This will reduce bureaucratic tendencies as

806

implementing tasks will be done by elected delegates rather than

807

faceless (and usually unelected) bureaucrats. This means, as Bakunin

808

put it in 1868, that "the Communal Council" (made up of delegates "with

809

binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times") would

810

create "separate executive committees from among its membership for

811

each branch of the Commune's revolutionary administration." [Bakunin,

812

No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 155] Thus would no longer be a body of

813

people, a government, separate from the delegates of the people. This,

814

it should be noted, echoed Proudhon's comments from 1848:

815

816

"It is up to the National Assembly, through organisation of its

817

committees, to exercise executive power, just the way it exercises

818

legislative power . . . Besides universal suffrage and as a

819

consequence of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the

820

binding mandate. Politicians balk at it! Which means that in their

821

eyes, the people, in electing representatives, do not appoint

822

mandatories but rather abjure their sovereignty! That is assuredly

823

not socialism: it is not even democracy." [Op. Cit., p. 63]

824

825

Due to mandating and recall, any delegate who starts to abuse their

826

position or even vote in ways opposed to by the communal assembly would

827

quickly be recalled and replaced. As such a person may be an elected

828

delegate of the community but that does not mean that they have power

829

or authority (i.e., they are not a representative but rather a

830

delegate). Essentially they are an agent of the local community who is

831

controlled by, and accountable to, that community. Clearly, such people

832

are unlike politicians. They do not, and cannot, make policy decisions

833

on behalf of (i.e., govern) those who elected them -- they are not

834

given power to make decisions for people. In addition, people in

835

specific organisations or with specific tasks will be rotated

836

frequently to prevent a professionalisation of politics and the problem

837

of politicians being largely on their own once elected. And, of course,

838

they will continue to work and live with those who elected them and

839

receive no special privileges due to their election (in terms of more

840

income, better housing, and so on). This means that such delegates

841

would be extremely unlikely to turn into representatives or bureaucrats

842

as they would be under the strict control of the organisations that

843

elected them to such posts. As Kropotkin argued, the general assembly

844

of the community "in permanence - the forum always open -- is the only

845

way . . . to assure an honest and intelligent administration" as it is

846

based upon "distrust of all executive powers." [The Great French

847

Revolution, Vol. 1, p. 211]

848

849

The current means of co-ordinating wide scale activity -- centralism

850

via the state -- is a threat to freedom as, to quote Proudhon, "the

851

citizen divests himself of sovereignty, the town and the Department and

852

province above it, absorbed by central authority, are no longer

853

anything but agencies under direct ministerial control." "The

854

Consequences" he continued, "soon make themselves felt: the citizen and

855

the town are deprived of all dignity, the state's depredations

856

multiply, and the burden on the taxpayer increases in proportion. It is

857

no longer the government that is made for the people; it is the people

858

who are made for the government. Power invades everything, dominates

859

everything, absorbs everything." [The Principle of Federation, p. 59]

860

In such a regime, the generation of a specific caste of politicians and

861

bureaucrats is inevitable.

862

863

Moreover, "[t]he principle of political centralism is openly opposed to

864

all laws of social progress and of natural evolution. It lies in the

865

nature of things that every cultural advance is first achieved within a

866

small group and only gradually finds adoption by society as a whole.

867

Therefore, political decentralisation is the best guaranty for the

868

unrestricted possibilities of new experiments. For such an environment

869

each community is given the opportunity to carry through the things

870

which it is capable of accomplishing itself without imposing them on

871

others. Practical experimentation is the parent of ever development in

872

society. So long as each distinct is capable of effecting the changes

873

within its own sphere which its citizens deem necessary, the example of

874

each becomes a fructifying influence on the other parts of the

875

community since they will have the chance to weigh the advantages

876

accruing from them without being forced to adopt them if they are not

877

convinced of their usefulness. The result is that progressive

878

communities serve the others as models, a result justified by the

879

natural evolution of things." [Rudolf Rocker, Pioneers of American

880

Freedom, pp. 16-7] The contrast with centralisation of the state could

881

not be more clear. Rocker continued:

882

883

"In a strongly centralised state, the situation is entirely reversed

884

and the best system of representation can do nothing to change that.

885

The representatives of a certain district may have the overwhelming

886

majority of a certain district on his [or her] side, but in the

887

legislative assembly of the central state, he [or she] will remain

888

in the minority, for it lies in the nature of things that in such a

889

body not the intellectually most active but the most backward

890

districts represent the majority. Since the individual district has

891

indeed the right to give expression of its opinion, but can effect

892

no changes without the consent of the central government, the most

893

progressive districts will be condemned to stagnate while the most

894

backward districts will set the norm." [Op. Cit., p. 17]

895

896

Little wonder anarchists have always stressed what Kropotkin termed

897

"local action" and considered the libertarian social revolution as

898

"proceed[ing] by proclaiming independent Communes which Communes will

899

endeavour to accomplish the economic transformation within . . . their

900

respective surroundings." [Peter Kropotkin, Act For Yourselves, p. 43]

901

Thus the advanced communities will inspire the rest to follow them by

902

showing them a practical example of what is possible. Only

903

decentralisation and confederation can promote the freedom and

904

resulting social experimentation which will ensure social progress and

905

make society a good place to live.

906

907

Moreover, confederation is required to maximise self-management and

908

reduce the possibility that delegates will become isolated from the

909

people who mandated them. As Rocker explained:

910

911

"In a smaller community, it is far easier for individuals to observe

912

the political scene and become acquainted with the issues which have

913

to be resolved. This is quite impossible for a representative in a

914

centralised government. Neither the single citizen nor his [or her]

915

representative is completely or even approximately to supervise the

916

huge clockwork of the central state machine. The deputy is forced

917

daily to make decisions about things of which he [or she] has no

918

personal knowledge and for the appraisal of which he must therefore

919

depend on others [i.e. bureaucrats and lobbyists]. That such a

920

system necessarily leads to serious errors and mistakes is

921

self-evident. And since the citizen for the same reason is not able

922

to inspect and criticise the conduct of his representative, the

923

class of professional politicians is given added opportunity to fish

924

in troubled waters." [Op. Cit., p. 17-18]

925

926

These principles, it must be stressed, have worked well on a mass scale

927

For example, this is how anarcho-syndicalist unions operate and, as was

928

the case with the CNT in Spain in the 1930s, worked well with over one

929

million members. There were also successfully applied during the

930

Spanish Revolution and the federations of collectives produced by it.

931

932

So the way communes and confederations are organised protect society

933

and the individual against the dangers of centralisation, from the

934

turning of delegates into representatives and bureaucrats. As Bakunin

935

stressed, there are two ways of organising society, "as it is today,

936

from high to low and from the centre to circumference by means of

937

enforced unity and concentration" and the way of the future, by

938

federalism "starting with the free individual, the free association and

939

the autonomous commune, from low to high and from circumference to

940

centre, by means of free federation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected

941

Writings, p. 88] In other words, "the organisation of society from the

942

bottom up." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 131] This suggests that a free

943

society will have little to fear in way of its delegates turning into

944

politicians or bureaucrats as it includes the necessary safeguards

945

(election, mandates, recall, decentralisation, federalism, etc.) which

946

will reduce such developments to a small, and so manageable, level (if

947

not eliminate it totally).

948

949

I.5.4 How will anything ever be decided by all these meetings?

950

951

Anarchists have little doubt that the confederal structure will be an

952

efficient means of decision making and will not be bogged down in

953

endless meetings. We have various reasons for thinking this. After all,

954

as Murray Bookchin once noted, "[h]istory does provide us with a number

955

of working examples of forms that are largely libertarian. It also

956

provides us with examples of confederations and leagues that made the

957

co-ordination of self-governing communities feasible without impinging

958

on their autonomy and freedom." [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 436]

959

960

Firstly, we doubt that a free society will spend all its time in

961

assemblies or organising confederal conferences. Certain questions are

962

more important than others and few anarchists desire to spend all their

963

time in meetings. The aim of a free society is to allow individuals to

964

express their desires and wants freely -- they cannot do that if they

965

are continually at meetings (or preparing for them). So while communal

966

and confederal assemblies will play an important role in a free

967

society, do not think that they will be occurring all the time or that

968

anarchists desire to make meetings the focal point of individual life.

969

Far from it!

970

971

Thus communal assemblies may occur, say, once a week, or fortnightly or

972

monthly in order to discuss truly important issues. There would be no

973

real desire to meet continuously to discuss every issue under the sun

974

and few people would tolerate this occurring. This would mean that such

975

meetings would current regularly and when important issues needed to be

976

discussed, not continuously (although, if required, continuous assembly

977

or daily meetings may have to be organised in emergency situations but

978

this would be rare). Nor is it expected that everyone will attend every

979

meeting for "[w]hat is decisive, here, is the principle itself: the

980

freedom of the individual to participate, not the compulsive need to do

981

so." [Op. Cit., p. 435] This suggests that meetings will be attended by

982

those with a specific interest in an issue being discussed and so would

983

be focused as a result.

984

985

Secondly, it is extremely doubtful that a free people would desire

986

waste vast amounts of time at such meetings. While important and

987

essential, communal and confederal meetings would be functional in the

988

extreme and not forums for hot air. It would be the case that those

989

involved in such meetings would quickly make their feelings known to

990

time wasters and those who like the sound of their own voices. Thus

991

Cornelius Castoriadis:

992

993

"It might be claimed that the problem of numbers remains and that

994

people never would be able to express themselves in a reasonable

995

amount of time. This is not a valid argument. There would rarely be

996

an assembly over twenty people where everyone would want to speak,

997

for the very good reason that when there is something to be decided

998

upon there are not an infinite number of options or an infinite

999

number of arguments. In unhampered rank-and-file workers' gatherings

1000

(convened, for instance, to decide on a strike) there have never

1001

been 'too many' speeches. The two or three fundamental opinions

1002

having been voiced, and various arguments exchanged, a decision is

1003

soon reached.

1004

1005

"The length of speeches, moreover, often varies inversely with the

1006

weight of their content. Russian leaders sometimes talk on for four

1007

hours at Party Congresses without saying anything . . . For an

1008

account of the laconicism of revolutionary assemblies, see Trotsky's

1009

account of the Petrograd soviet of 1905 -- or accounts of the

1010

meetings of factory representatives in Budapest in 1956." [Political

1011

and Social Writings, vol. 2, pp. 144-5]

1012

1013

As we shall see below, this was definitely the case during the Spanish

1014

Revolution as well.

1015

1016

Thirdly, as these assemblies and congresses are concerned purely with

1017

joint activity and co-ordination. Different associations and syndicates

1018

have a functional need for co-operation and so would meet more

1019

regularly and take action on practical activity which affects a

1020

specific section of a community or group of communities. Not every

1021

issue that a member of a community is interested in is necessarily best

1022

discussed at a meeting of all members of a community or at a confederal

1023

conference. As Herbert Read suggested, anarchism "proposes to liquidate

1024

the bureaucracy first by federal devolution" and so "hands over to the

1025

syndicates all . . . administrative functions" related to such things

1026

as "transport, and distribution, health and education." [Anarchy and

1027

Order, p. 101] Such issues will be mainly discussed in the syndicates

1028

involved and so community discussion would be focused on important

1029

issues and themes of general policy rather than the specific and

1030

detailed laws discussed and implemented by politicians who know nothing

1031

about the issues or industries at hand.

1032

1033

By reducing conferences to functional bodies based on concrete issues,

1034

the problems of endless discussions can be reduced, if not totally

1035

eliminated. In addition, as functional groups would exist outside of

1036

these communal confederations (for example, industrial collectives

1037

would organise conferences about their industry with invited

1038

participants from consumer groups), there would be a limited agenda in

1039

most communal get-togethers.

1040

1041

In other words, communal assemblies and conferences will have specific,

1042

well defined agendas, and so there is little danger of "politics" (for

1043

want of a better word!) taking up everyone's time. Hence, far from

1044

discussing abstract laws and pointless motions on everything under the

1045

sun and on which no one actually knows much about, the issues discussed

1046

in these conferences will be on specific issues which are important to

1047

those involved. In addition, the standard procedure may be to elect a

1048

sub-group to investigate an issue and report back at a later stage with

1049

recommendations. The conference can change, accept, or reject any

1050

proposals. As Kropotkin argued, anarchy would be based on "free

1051

agreement, by exchange of letters and proposals, and by congresses at

1052

which delegates met to discuss well specified points, and to come to an

1053

agreement about them, but not to make laws. After the congress was

1054

over, the delegates [would return] . . . not with a law, but with the

1055

draft of a contract to be accepted or rejected." [Conquest of Bread, p.

1056

131]

1057

1058

Is this system fantasy? Given that such a system has existed and worked

1059

at various times, we can safely argue that it is not. Obviously we

1060

cannot cover every example, so we point to just two -- revolutionary

1061

Paris and Spain.

1062

1063

As Murray Bookchin points out, Paris "in the late eighteenth century

1064

was, by the standards of that time, one of the largest and economically

1065

most complex cities in Europe: its population approximated a million

1066

people . . . Yet in 1793, at the height of the French Revolution, the

1067

city was managed institutionally almost entirely by [48] citizen

1068

assemblies. . . and its affairs were co-ordinated by the Commune .. .

1069

and often, in fact, by the assemblies themselves, or sections as they

1070

were called, which established their own interconnections without

1071

recourse to the Commune." ["Transition to the Ecological Society", pp.

1072

92-105, Society and Nature, no. 3, p. 96]

1073

1074

Here is his account of how communal self-government worked in practice:

1075

1076

"What, then, were these little-know forty-eight sections of Paris .

1077

. . How were they organised? And how did they function?

1078

1079

"Ideologically, the sectionnaires (as their members were called)

1080

believed primarily in sovereignty of the people. This concept of

1081

popular sovereignty, as Albert Soboul observes, was for them 'not an

1082

abstraction, but the concrete reality of the people united in

1083

sectional assemblies and exercising all their rights.' It was in

1084

their eyes an inalienable right, or, as the section de la Cite

1085

declared in November 1792, 'every man who assumes to have

1086

sovereignty will be regarded as a tyrant, usurper of public liberty

1087

and worthy of death.'

1088

1089

"Sovereignty, in effect, was to be enjoyed by all citizens, not

1090

pre-empted by 'representatives' . . . The radical democrats of 1793

1091

thus assumed that every adult was, to one degree or another,

1092

competent to participate in management public affairs. Thus, each

1093

section . . . was structured around a face-to-face democracy:

1094

basically a general assembly of the people that formed the most

1095

important deliberative body of a section, and served as the

1096

incarnation of popular power in a given part of the city . . . each

1097

elected six deputies to the Commune, presumably for the purpose

1098

merely of co-ordinating all the sections in the city of Paris.

1099

1100

"Each section also had its own various administrative committees,

1101

whose members were also recruited from the general assembly."

1102

[The Third Revolution, vol. 1, p. 319]

1103

1104

Little wonder Kropotkin argued that these "sections" showed "the

1105

principles of anarchism . . . had their origin, not in theoretical

1106

speculations, but in the deeds of the Great French Revolution" [The

1107

Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 204]

1108

1109

Communal self-government was also practised, and on a far wider scale,

1110

in revolutionary Spain where workers and peasants formed communes and

1111

federations of communes (see [10]section I.8 for fuller details).

1112

Gaston Leval summarised the experience:

1113

1114

"There was, in the organisation set in motion by the Spanish

1115

Revolution and by the libertarian movement, which was its

1116

mainspring, a structuring from the bottom to the top, which

1117

corresponds to a real federation and true democracy . . . the

1118

controlling and co-ordinating Comites, clearly indispensable, do not

1119

go outside the organisation that has chosen them, they remain in

1120

their midst, always controllable by and accessible to the members.

1121

If any individuals contradict by their actions their mandates, it is

1122

possible to call them to order, to reprimand them, to replace them.

1123

It is only by and in such a system that the 'majority lays down the

1124

law.'

1125

1126

"The syndical assemblies were the expression and the practice of

1127

libertarian democracy, a democracy having nothing in common with the

1128

democracy of Athens where the citizens discussed and disputed for

1129

days on end on the Agora; where factions, clan rivalries, ambitions,

1130

personalities conflicted, where, in view of the social inequalities

1131

precious time was lost in interminable wrangles . . .

1132

1133

"Normally those periodic meetings would not last more than a few

1134

hours. They dealt with concrete, precise subjects concretely and

1135

precisely. And all who had something to say could express

1136

themselves. The Comite presented the new problems that had arisen

1137

since the previous assembly, the results obtained by the application

1138

of such and such a resolution . . . relations with other syndicates,

1139

production returns from the various workshops or factories. All this

1140

was the subject of reports and discussion. Then the assembly would

1141

nominate the commissions, the members of these commissions discussed

1142

between themselves what solutions to adopt, if there was

1143

disagreement, a majority report and a minority report would be

1144

prepared.

1145

1146

"This took place in all the syndicates throughout Spain, in all

1147

trades and all industries, in assemblies which, in Barcelona, from

1148

the very beginnings of our movement brought together hundreds or

1149

thousands of workers depending on the strength of the organisations.

1150

So much so that the awareness of the duties, responsibilities of

1151

each spread all the time to a determining and decisive degree . . .

1152

1153

"The practice of this democracy also extended to the agricultural

1154

regions . . . the decision to nominate a local management Comite for

1155

the villages was taken by general meetings of the inhabitants of

1156

villages, how the delegates in the different essential tasks which

1157

demanded an indispensable co-ordination of activities were proposed

1158

and elected by the whole assembled population. But it is worth

1159

adding and underlining that in all the collectivised villages and

1160

all the partially collectivised villages, in the 400 Collectives in

1161

Aragon, in the 900 in the Levante region, in the 300 in the

1162

Castilian region, to mention only the large groupings . . . the

1163

population was called together weekly, fortnightly or monthly and

1164

kept fully informed of everything concerning the commonweal.

1165

1166

"This writer was present at a number of these assemblies in Aragon,

1167

where the reports on the various questions making up the agenda

1168

allowed the inhabitants to know, to so understand, and to feel so

1169

mentally integrated in society, to so participate in the management

1170

of public affairs, in the responsibilities, that the recriminations,

1171

the tensions which always occur when the power of decision is

1172

entrusted to a few individuals, be they democratically elected

1173

without the possibility of objecting, did not happen there. The

1174

assemblies were public, the objections, the proposals publicly

1175

discussed, everybody being free, as in the syndical assemblies, to

1176

participate in the discussions, to criticise, propose, etc.

1177

Democracy extended to the whole of social life." [Collectives in the

1178

Spanish Revolution, pp. 205-7]

1179

1180

These collectives organised federations embracing thousands of communes

1181

and workplaces, whole branches of industry, hundreds of thousands of

1182

people and whole regions of Spain. As such, it was a striking

1183

confirmation of Proudhon's argument that under federalism "the

1184

sovereignty of the contracting parties . . . serves as a positive

1185

guarantee of the liberty of . . . communes and individuals. So, no

1186

longer do we have the abstraction of people's sovereignty . . . but an

1187

effective sovereignty of the labouring masses." The "labouring masses

1188

are actually, positively and effectively sovereign: how could they not

1189

be when the economic organism -- labour, capital, property and assets

1190

-- belongs to them entirely . . . ?" [Anarchism, vol. 1, Robert Graham

1191

(ed.), p. 75]

1192

1193

In other words, it is possible. It has worked. With the massive

1194

improvements in communication technology it is even more viable than

1195

before. Whether or not we reach such a self-managed society depends on

1196

whether we desire to be free or not.

1197

1198

I.5.5 Aren't participatory communities and confederations just new states?

1199

1200

No. As we have seen in [11]section B.2, a state can be defined both by

1201

its structure and its function. As far as structure is concerned, a

1202

state involves the politico-military and economic domination of a

1203

certain geographical territory by a ruling elite, based on the

1204

delegation of power into the hands of the few, resulting in hierarchy

1205

(centralised authority). As such, it would be a massive theoretical

1206

error to confuse any form of social organisation with the specific form

1207

which is the state.

1208

1209

As we have discussed in [12]section H.3.7, the state has evolved its

1210

specific characteristics as a result of its function as an instrument

1211

of class rule. If a social organisation does not have these

1212

characteristics then it is not a state. Thus, for anarchists, "the

1213

essence of the state" is "centralised power or to put it another way

1214

the coercive authority of which the state enjoys the monopoly, in that

1215

organisation of violence know as 'government'; in the hierarchical

1216

despotism, juridical, police and military despotism that imposes laws

1217

on everyone." [Luigi Fabbri, "Anarchy and 'Scientific' Communism", in

1218

The Poverty of Statism, pp. 13-49, Albert Meltzer (ed.), pp. 24-5] This

1219

is why Malatesta stressed that the state "means the delegation of

1220

power, that is the abdication of initiative and sovereignty of all into

1221

the hands of a few." [Anarchy, p. 41] If a social organisation is not

1222

centralised and top-down then it is not a state.

1223

1224

In a system of federated participatory communities there is no ruling

1225

elite, and thus no hierarchy, because power is retained by the

1226

lowest-level units of confederation through their use of direct

1227

democracy and mandated, rotating, and recallable delegates to

1228

confederal bodies. This eliminates the problem in "representative"

1229

democratic systems of the delegation of power leading to the elected

1230

officials becoming isolated from and beyond the control of the mass of

1231

people who elected them. An anarchist society would make decisions by

1232

"means of congresses, composed of delegates, who discuss among

1233

themselves, and submit proposals, not laws, to their constituents"

1234

[Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, p. 135] So it is based on

1235

self-government, not representative government (and its inevitable

1236

bureaucracy). As Proudhon put it, "the federal system is the contrary

1237

of hierarchy or administrative and governmental centralisation" and so

1238

"a confederation is not exactly a state . . . What is called federal

1239

authority . . . is no longer a government; it is an agency created . .

1240

. for the joint execution of certain functions". [The Principle of

1241

Federation, pp. 40-1]

1242

1243

Perhaps it will be objected that communal decision making is just a

1244

form of "statism" based on direct, as opposed to representative,

1245

democracy -- "statist" because the individual is still be subject to

1246

the rules of the majority and so is not free. This objection, however,

1247

confuses statism with free agreement (i.e. co-operation). Since

1248

participatory communities, like productive syndicates, are voluntary

1249

associations, the decisions they make are based on self-assumed

1250

obligations (see [13]section A.2.11), and dissenters can leave the

1251

association if they so desire. Thus communes are no more "statist" than

1252

the act of promising and keeping your word.

1253

1254

In addition, in a free society, dissent and direct action can be used

1255

by minorities to press their case (or defend their freedom) as well as

1256

debate. As Carole Pateman argues, "[p]olitical disobedience is merely

1257

one possible expression of the active citizenship on which a

1258

self-managing democracy is based." [The Problem of Political

1259

Obligation, p. 162] In this way, individual liberty can be protected in

1260

a communal system and society enriched by opposition, confrontation and

1261

dissent. Without self-management and minority dissent, society would

1262

become an ideological cemetery which would stifle ideas and individuals

1263

as these thrive on discussion ("those who will be able to create in

1264

their mutual relations a movement and a life based on the principles of

1265

free understanding . . . will understand that variety, conflict even,

1266

is life and that uniformity is death" [Kropotkin, Anarchism, p. 143]).

1267

So a society based on voluntary agreements and self-management would,

1268

out of interpersonal empathy and self-interest, create a society that

1269

encouraged individuality and respect for minorities.

1270

1271

Therefore, a commune's participatory nature is the opposite of statism.

1272

April Carter agrees, stating that "commitment to direct democracy or

1273

anarchy in the socio-political sphere is incompatible with political

1274

authority" and that the "only authority that can exist in a direct

1275

democracy is the collective 'authority' vested in the body politic . .

1276

. it is doubtful if authority can be created by a group of equals who

1277

reach decisions be a process of mutual persuasion." [Authority and

1278

Democracy, p. 69 and p. 380] Which echoes, we must note, Proudhon's

1279

comment that "the true meaning of the word 'democracy'" was the

1280

"dismissal of government." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 42] Bakunin

1281

argued that when the "whole people govern" then "there will be no one

1282

to be governed. It means that there will be no government, no State."

1283

[The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 287] Malatesta, decades later,

1284

made the same point: "government by everybody is no longer government

1285

in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word." [No

1286

Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 38] And, of course, Kropotkin argued that

1287

by means of the directly democratic sections of the French Revolution

1288

the masses "practic[ed] what was to be described later as Direct

1289

Self-Government" and expressed "the principles of anarchism." [The

1290

Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 200 and p. 204]

1291

1292

Anarchists argue that individuals and the institutions they create

1293

cannot be considered in isolation. Authoritarian institutions will

1294

create individuals who have a servile nature, who cannot govern

1295

themselves. We, therefore, consider it common sense that individuals,

1296

in order to be free, must have take part in determining the general

1297

agreements they make with their neighbours which give form to their

1298

communities. Otherwise, a free society could not exist and individuals

1299

would be subject to rules others make for them (following orders is

1300

hardly libertarian). Somewhat ironically, those who stress

1301

"individualism" and denounce communes as new "states" advocate a social

1302

system which produces extremely hierarchical social relationships based

1303

on the authority of the property owner. In other words, abstract

1304

individualism produces authoritarian (i.e., state-like) social

1305

relationships (see [14]section F.1). Therefore, anarchists recognise

1306

the social nature of humanity and the fact any society based on an

1307

abstract individualism (like capitalism) will be marked by authority,

1308

injustice and inequality, not freedom. As Bookchin pointed out: "To

1309

speak of 'The Individual' apart from its social roots is as meaningless

1310

as to speak of a society that contains no people or institutions."

1311

[Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left, p. 154]

1312

1313

Society cannot be avoided and "[u]nless everyone is to be

1314

psychologically homogeneous and society's interests so uniform in

1315

character that dissent is simply meaningless, there must be room for

1316

conflicting proposals, discussion, rational explication and majority

1317

decisions - in short, democracy." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 155] Those

1318

who reject democracy in the name of liberty (such as many supporters of

1319

capitalism claim to do) usually also see the need for laws and

1320

hierarchical authority (particularly in the workplace). This is

1321

unsurprising, as such authority is the only means left by which

1322

collective activity can be co-ordinated if self-management is rejected

1323

(which is ironic as the resulting institutions, such as a capitalist

1324

company, are far more statist than self-managed ones).

1325

1326

So, far from being new states by which one section of a community

1327

(historically, almost always a wealthy elite) imposes its ethical

1328

standards on another, the anarchist commune is just a public forum. In

1329

this forum, issues of community interest (for example, management of

1330

the commons, control of communalised economic activity, and so forth)

1331

are discussed and policy agreed upon. In addition, interests beyond a

1332

local area are also discussed and delegates for confederal conferences

1333

are mandated with the wishes of the community. Hence, administration of

1334

things replaces government of people, with the community of communities

1335

existing to ensure that the interests of all are managed by all and

1336

that liberty, justice and equality for all are more than just ideals.

1337

Moreover, a free society would be one without professional bodies of

1338

armed people (i.e., there would be no armed forces or police). It would

1339

not have the means of enforcing the decisions of conferences and

1340

communes which reflected the interests of a few (would-be politicians

1341

or bureaucrats) rather than popular opinion.

1342

1343

Of course, it could be argued that popular opinion can be as oppressive

1344

as any state, a possibility anarchists are aware of and take steps to

1345

combat. Remember, the communities and confederations of a free society

1346

would be made up of free people. They would not be too concerned with

1347

the personal behaviour of others unless it impacted on their own lives.

1348

As such, they would not be seeking to restrict the liberty of those who

1349

live with them. A community, therefore, is unlikely to make decisions

1350

like, for example, outlawing homosexuality or censoring the press. This

1351

is not to say that there is no danger of majorities abusing minorities.

1352

As we discuss in the [15]next section, anarchists suggest means of

1353

reducing it, even eliminating it. Suffice to say, a free society would

1354

seek to encourage diversity and so leave minorities free to live their

1355

own lives (assuming they are not oppressing or exploiting others, of

1356

course).

1357

1358

For these reasons, a libertarian-socialist society would not have a

1359

state. Structurally, it would be based on egalitarian and decentralised

1360

institutions, the direct opposite of the hierarchical and centralised

1361

state. Functionally, it would be based on mass participation of all to

1362

ensure they manage their own affairs rather than, as in a state,

1363

exclusion of the many to ensure the rule of an elite. The communes and

1364

confederations of a libertarian system are not just states with new

1365

names but rather the forums by which free people manage their own

1366

affairs rather than being ruled by a state and its politicians and

1367

bureaucrats.

1368

1369

This is why Proudhon argued that "under the democratic constitution . .

1370

. the political and the economic are . . . one and the same system . .

1371

. based upon a single principle, mutuality . . . and form this vast

1372

humanitarian organism of which nothing previously could give the idea .

1373

. . [I]s this not the system of the old society turned upside down"?

1374

[Anarchism, vol. 1, Robert Graham (ed.), pp. 74-5]

1375

1376

I.5.6 Won't there be a danger of a "tyranny of the majority" under libertarian

1377

socialism?

1378

1379

While the "tyranny of the majority" objection does contain an important

1380

point, it is often raised for self-serving reasons. This is because

1381

those who have historically raised the issue (for example, and as

1382

discussed in [16]section B.2.5, creators of the 1789 American

1383

constitution like Hamilton and Madison) saw the minority to be

1384

protected as the rich. In other words, the objection is not opposed to

1385

majority tyranny as such (they have no objections when the majority

1386

support their right to their riches and powers) but rather attempts of

1387

the majority to change their society to a fairer and freer one. Such

1388

concerns can easily be dismissed as an ingenious argument in favour of

1389

rule by the few -- particularly as its proponents (such as the

1390

propertarian right and other defenders of capitalism) have no problem

1391

with the autocratic rule of property owners over their wage-slaves!

1392

1393

However, as noted, the objection to majority rule does contain a valid

1394

point and one which anarchists have addressed -- namely, what about

1395

minority freedom within a self-managed society? So this is a danger,

1396

one raised by people who are most definitely not seeking minority rule.

1397

For example, someone who was sympathetic to anarchism, George Orwell,

1398

suggested:

1399

1400

"the totalitarian tendency . . . is explicit in the anarchist . . .

1401

vision of Society. In a Society in which there is no law, and in

1402

theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public

1403

opinion. But pubic opinion, because of the tremendous urge to

1404

conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system

1405

of law. When human beings are governed by 'thou shalt not', the

1406

individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they

1407

are supposedly governed by 'love' or 'reason', he is under

1408

continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same

1409

way as everyone else." [Inside the Whale and Other Essays, p. 132]

1410

1411

There is, of course, this danger in any society, be its decision making

1412

structure direct (anarchy) or indirect (by some form of government).

1413

However, this does not really address the issue to point out this

1414

obvious fact. Anarchists are at the forefront in expressing concern

1415

about it, recognising that the majority is often a threat to freedom by

1416

its fear of change (see, for example, Emma Goldman's classic essay

1417

"Minorities versus Majorities"). We are well aware that the mass, as

1418

long as the individuals within it do not free themselves, can be a

1419

dead-weight on others, resisting change and enforcing conformity. As

1420

Goldman argued, "even more than constituted authority, it is social

1421

uniformity and sameness that harass the individual the most." [Red Emma

1422

Speaks, p. 116] Hence Malatesta's comment that anarchists "have the

1423

special mission of being vigilant custodians of freedom, against all

1424

aspirants to power and against the possible tyranny of the majority."

1425

[Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 161]

1426

1427

However, rather than draw elitist conclusions from this fact of life

1428

under capitalism and urge forms of government and organisation which

1429

restrict popular participation (and promote rule, and tyranny, by the

1430

few) -- as classical liberals do -- libertarians argue that only a

1431

process of self-liberation through struggle and participation can break

1432

up the mass into free, self-managing individuals (as discussed in

1433

[17]section H.2.11 attempts by Leninists to portray anarchists as

1434

elitists are both hypocritical and false). Moreover, we also argue that

1435

participation and self-management is the only way that majorities can

1436

come to see the point of minority ideas and for seeing the importance

1437

of protecting minority freedoms. This means that any attempt to

1438

restrict participation in the name of minority rights actually enforces

1439

the herd mentality, undermining minority and individual freedom rather

1440

than protecting it. As Carole Pateman argues:

1441

1442

"the evidence supports the arguments . . . that we do learn to

1443

participate by participating and that feelings of political efficacy

1444

are more likely to be developed in a participatory environment.

1445

Furthermore, the evidence indicates that experience of a

1446

participatory authority structure might also be effective in

1447

diminishing tendencies towards non-democratic attitudes in the

1448

individual." [Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 105]

1449

1450

So while there is cause for concern (and anarchists are at the

1451

forefront in expressing it), the "tyranny of the majority" objection

1452

fails to take note of the vast difference between direct and

1453

representative forms of democracy.

1454

1455

In the current system, as we pointed out in [18]section B.5, voters are

1456

mere passive spectators of occasional, staged, and highly rehearsed

1457

debates among candidates pre-selected by the corporate elite, who pay

1458

for campaign expenses. The public is expected to choose simply on the

1459

basis of political ads and news sound bites. Once the choice is made,

1460

cumbersome and ineffective recall procedures insure that elected

1461

representatives can act more or less as they (or rather, their wealthy

1462

sponsors) please. The function, then, of the electorate in bourgeois

1463

"representative government" is ratification of "choices" that have been

1464

already made for them! This is also the case in referendum, where the

1465

people "are not to propose the questions: the government is to do that.

1466

Only to questions proposed by the government, the people may answer Yes

1467

or No, like a child in the catechism. The people will not even have a

1468

chance to make amendments." [Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution,

1469

p. 148]

1470

1471

By contrast, in a libertarian society decisions are made following

1472

public discussion in community assemblies open to all. After decisions

1473

have been reached, outvoted minorities -- even minorities of one --

1474

still have ample opportunity to present reasoned and persuasive

1475

counter-arguments to try to change the decision. This process of

1476

debate, disagreement, challenge, and counter-challenge, which goes on

1477

even after the defeated minority has temporarily acquiesced in the

1478

decision of the majority, is virtually absent in the representative

1479

system, where "tyranny of the majority" is truly a problem. In

1480

addition, minorities can secede from an association if the decision

1481

reached by it are truly offensive to them.

1482

1483

And let us not forget that in all likelihood, issues of personal

1484

conduct or activity will not be discussed in the neighbourhood

1485

assemblies. Why? Because we are talking about a society in which most

1486

people consider themselves to be unique, free individuals, who would

1487

thus recognise and act to protect the uniqueness and freedom of others.

1488

Unless people are indoctrinated by religion or some other form of

1489

ideology, they can be tolerant of others and their individuality. If

1490

this is not the case now, then it has more to do with the existence of

1491

authoritarian social relationships -- relationships that will be

1492

dismantled under libertarian socialism -- and the type of person they

1493

create rather than some innate human flaw.

1494

1495

Thus there will be vast areas of life in a libertarian socialist

1496

community which are none of other people's business. Anarchists have

1497

always stressed the importance of personal space and "private" areas.

1498

Indeed, for Kropotkin, the failure of many "utopian" communities

1499

directly flowed from a lack of these and "the desire to manage the

1500

community after the model of a family, to make it 'the great family.'

1501

They lived all in the same house and were thus forced to continuously

1502

meet the same 'brethren and sisters.' It is already difficult often for

1503

two real brothers to live together in the same house, and family life

1504

is not always harmonious; so it was a fundamental error to impose on

1505

all the 'great family' instead of trying, on the contrary, to guarantee

1506

as much freedom and home life to each individual." In an anarchist

1507

society, continual agreement on all issues is not desired. The members

1508

of a free society "need only agree as to some advantageous method of

1509

common work, and are free otherwise to live in their own way." [Small

1510

Communal Experiments and Why they Fail, pp. 8-9 and p. 22]

1511

1512

Which brings us to another key point. When anarchists talk of

1513

democratising or communalising the household or any other association,

1514

we do not mean that it should be stripped of its private status and

1515

become open to regulation by general voting in a single, universal

1516

public sphere. Rather, we mean that households and other relationships

1517

should take in libertarian characteristics and be consistent with the

1518

liberty of all its members. Thus a society based on self-management

1519

does not imply the destruction of private spheres of activity -- it

1520

implies the extension of anarchist principles into all spheres of life,

1521

both private and public. It does not mean the subordination of the

1522

private by the public, or vice versa.

1523

1524

As an example, we can point to inter-personal relationships. Anarchists

1525

are opposed to the patriarchy implicit (and, in the past, explicit) in

1526

marriage and suggest free love as an alternative. As discussed in

1527

[19]section H.4.2 , free love means that both people in a relationship

1528

have equal decision making power rather than, as in marriage, the woman

1529

becoming the property of the husband. Thus, self-management in this

1530

context does not mean the end of interpersonal relationships by the

1531

imposition of the commune onto all spheres of life but, obviously, the

1532

creation of interpersonal relationships based on equality and liberty.

1533

1534

So it is highly unlikely that the "tyranny of the majority" will exert

1535

itself where most rightly fear it -- in their homes, how they act with

1536

friends, their personal space, how they act, and so on. As long as

1537

individual freedom and rights are protected, it is of little concern

1538

what people get up to (included the rights of children, who are also

1539

individuals and not the property of their parents). Direct democracy in

1540

anarchist theory is purely concerned with common resources, their use

1541

and management. It is highly unlikely that a free society would debate

1542

issues of personal behaviour or morality and instead would leave them

1543

to those directly affected by them -- as it should be, as we all need

1544

personal space and experimentation to find the way of life that best

1545

suits us.

1546

1547

Today an authoritarian worldview, characterised by an inability to

1548

think beyond the categories of domination and submission, is imparted

1549

by conditioning in the family, schools, religious institutions, clubs,

1550

fraternities, the army, etc., and produces a type of personality that

1551

is intolerant of any individual or group perceived as threatening to

1552

the perpetuation of that worldview and its corresponding institutions

1553

and values. Thus, as Bakunin argued, "public opinion" is potentially

1554

intolerant "simply because hitherto this power has not been humanised

1555

itself; it has not been humanised because the social life of which it

1556

is ever the faithful expression is based . . . in the worship of

1557

divinity, not on respect for humanity; in authority, not on liberty; on

1558

privilege, not on equality; in the exploitation, not on the

1559

brotherhood, of men; on iniquity and falsehood, not on justice and

1560

truth. Consequently its real action, always in contradiction of the

1561

humanitarian theories which it professes, has constantly exercised a

1562

disastrous and depraving influence." [God and the State, p. 43f] In

1563

other words, "if society is ever to become free, it will be so through

1564

liberated individuals, whose free efforts make society." [Emma Goldman,

1565

Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 44] In an anarchist society a conscious

1566

effort will be made to dissolve the institutional and traditional

1567

sources of the authoritarian/submissive type of personality, and thus

1568

to free "public opinion" of its current potential for intolerance.

1569

1570

This is not to suggest that such a society of free individuals will not

1571

become stuck in routine and, over time, become oppressive to minorities

1572

who question certain aspects of public opinion or how it works. Public

1573

opinion and social organisations can evolve over generations in ways

1574

which no one expects. The best know, albeit fictional, example is in

1575

Ursula Le Guin's classic science-fiction book The Dispossessed where

1576

the anarchist society of Anarres has developed something of a weak

1577

informal bureaucracy due to the routine of everyday life and the

1578

unconscious pressures of public opinion. When the protagonist, Shevek,

1579

and his friends try to point this out and do something about (including

1580

Shevek leaving Anarres for the capitalist world of Urras), most on the

1581

planet are extremely hostile to this activity (precisely because it is

1582

going against the normal routine). Significantly, though, a large

1583

minority end up supporting their activities, activities which can occur

1584

precisely because the society is still fundamentally

1585

communist-anarchist and so the dissenters have a rich libertarian

1586

tradition and sensibility to base their direct action on as well having

1587

use-rights over the resources they need to propagate their ideas and

1588

practice their protest.

1589

1590

In the real world, the best example would be the Mujeres Libres in the

1591

Spanish anarchist movement during the 1930s (see Martha A. Ackelsberg's

1592

classic Free Women Of Spain: Anarchism And The Struggle For The

1593

Emancipation Of Women for more on this important movement). This

1594

organisation arose in response to the fact that many male anarchists,

1595

while expressing a theoretical commitment to sexual equality, were as

1596

sexist as the system they were fighting against and so they

1597

subconsciously reflected the oppressive public opinion of what a

1598

woman's position should be. Unsurprisingly, many anarchist women were

1599

(rightly) angry at this and their marginalised status within a

1600

libertarian movement that ostensibly sought to abolish all forms of

1601

domination and hierarchy. In response, and often in the face of the

1602

hostility or indifference of their male comrades, they organised

1603

themselves to change this situation, to combat and transform public

1604

opinion both within and outwith the anarchist movement. Their

1605

activities meet with some success before, like the rest of the

1606

libertarian revolution, it was crushed by Franco's victory in the civil

1607

war.

1608

1609

We can, therefore, suggest that a free society is unlikely to see

1610

public opinion becoming authoritarian. This is because, as the example

1611

of the Mujeres Libres shows, members of that society would organise to

1612

combat such developments and use various means to raise the problem to

1613

public awareness and to combat it. Once a free society has been gained,

1614

the task of anarchists would be to ensure it remained free and that

1615

would mean keeping a constant watch on possible sources of authority,

1616

including those associated with organisations developing informal

1617

bureaucracies and public opinion. While a free society would place

1618

numerous safeguards against such developments, no system would be

1619

perfect and so the actions of dissident minorities would be essential

1620

to point out and protest as if such dangers appeared to be developing.

1621

1622

As such, it should be noted that anarchists recognise that the practice

1623

of self-assumed political obligation implied in free association also

1624

implies the right to practice dissent and disobedience as well. As

1625

Carole Pateman notes:

1626

1627

"Even if it is impossible to be unjust to myself, I do not vote for

1628

myself alone, but along with everyone else. Questions about

1629

injustice are always appropriate in political life, for there is no

1630

guarantee that participatory voting will actually result in

1631

decisions in accord with the principles of political morality." [The

1632

Problem of Political Obligation, p. 160]

1633

1634

If an individual or group of individuals feel that a specific decision

1635

threatens their freedom (which is the basic principle of political

1636

morality in an anarchist society) they can (and must) act to defend

1637

that freedom:

1638

1639

"The political practice of participatory voting rests in a

1640

collective self-consciousness about the meaning and implication of

1641

citizenship. The members of the political association understand

1642

that to vote is simultaneously to commit oneself, to commit one's

1643

fellow citizens, and also to commit oneself to them in a mutual

1644

undertaking . . . a refusal to vote on a particular occasion

1645

indicates that the refusers believe . . . [that] the proposal . . .

1646

infringes the principle of political morality on which the political

1647

association is based . . . A refusal to vote [or the use of direct

1648

action] could be seen as an appeal to the 'sense of justice' of

1649

their fellow citizens." [Pateman, Op. Cit., p. 161]

1650

1651

As they no longer consent to the decisions made by their community they

1652

can appeal to the "sense of justice" of their fellow citizens by direct

1653

action and indicate that a given decision may have impacts which the

1654

majority were not aware. Hence direct action and dissent is a key

1655

aspect of an anarchist society and help ensure against the tyranny of

1656

the majority. Anarchism rejects the "love it or leave it" attitude that

1657

marks an authoritarian organisation.

1658

1659

This vision of self-assumed obligation, with its basis in individual

1660

liberty, indicates the basic flaw of Joseph Schumpeter's argument

1661

against democracy as anything bar a political method of arriving at

1662

decisions (in his case who will be the leaders of a society).

1663

Schumpeter proposed "A Mental Experiment" of imagining a country which,

1664

using a democratic process, "reached the decision to persecute

1665

religious dissent" (such as Jews and witches). He argued that we should

1666

not approve of these practices just because they have been decided upon

1667

by a majority or using a democratic method and, therefore, democracy

1668

cannot be an end in itself. [Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, pp.

1669

240-3]

1670

1671

However, such systematic persecution would conflict with the rules of

1672

procedure required if a country's or community's political method is to

1673

be called "democratic." This is because, in order to be democratic, the

1674

minority must be in a position for its ideas to become the majority's

1675

via argument and that requires freedom of speech, discussion and

1676

association. A country or community in which the majority persecutes or

1677

represses a minority automatically ensures that the minority can never

1678

be in a position to become the majority (as the minority is barred by

1679

force from becoming so) or convince the majority of the errors of its

1680

way (even if it cannot become the majority physically, it can become so

1681

morally by convincing the majority to change its position).

1682

Schumpeter's example utterly violates democratic principles and so

1683

cannot be squared with the it (Rousseau's somewhat opaque distinction

1684

between "the General Will" and majority rule sought to express this).

1685

Thus majority tyranny is an outrage against both democratic theory and

1686

individual liberty (unsurprisingly, as the former has its roots in the

1687

latter).

1688

1689

This argument applies with even more force to a self-managed community

1690

too and so any system in which the majority tyrannises over a minority

1691

is, by definition, not self-managed as one part of the community is

1692

excluded from convincing the other ("the enslavement of part of a

1693

nation denies the federal principal itself." [Proudhon, The Principle

1694

of Federation, p. 42f]). Thus individual freedom and minority rights

1695

are essential to self-management. As Proudhon argued, "a new spirit has

1696

dawned on the world. Freedom has opposed itself to the State, and since

1697

the idea of freedom has become universal people have realised that it

1698

is not a concern of the individual merely, but rather that it must

1699

exist in the group also." [quoted by Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, p.

1700

28] Unsurprisingly, then, the "freedom of the collectivity to crush the

1701

individual is not, however, true Liberty in the eyes of Anarchists. It

1702

is one of those shams, which the Revolution is to destroy." [Charlotte

1703

M. Wilson, Anarchist Essays, p. 25]

1704

1705

It should be stressed, however, that most anarchists do not think that

1706

the way to guard against possible tyranny by the majority is to resort

1707

to decision-making by consensus (where no action can be taken until

1708

every person in the group agrees) or a property system (based in

1709

contracts). Both consensus (see [20]section A.2.12) and contracts (see

1710

[21]section A.2.14) soon result in authoritarian social relationships

1711

developing in the name of "liberty." Rather, we seek new forms of free

1712

agreement to replace contract and new forms of decision making which do

1713

not replace the possible tyranny of the majority with the real tyranny

1714

of a minority.

1715

1716

Then there is freedom of association. As Malatesta argued, "for if it

1717

is unjust that the majority should oppress the minority, the contrary

1718

would be quite as unjust; and if the minority has a right to rebel, the

1719

majority has a right to defend itself . . . it is true that this

1720

solution is not completely satisfactory. The individuals put out of the

1721

association would be deprived of many social advantages, which an

1722

isolated person or group must do without, because they can only be

1723

procured by the co-operation of a great number of human beings. But

1724

what would you have? These malcontents cannot fairly demand that the

1725

wishes of many others should be sacrificed for their sakes." [A Talk

1726

about Anarchist-Communism, p. 29] In other words, freedom of

1727

association means the freedom not to associate and so communities can

1728

expel individuals or groups of individuals who constantly hinder

1729

community decisions -- assuming they do not leave voluntarily and seek

1730

a community more in tune with their needs. This a very important

1731

freedom for both the majority and the minority, and must be defended.

1732

1733

So while minorities have significant rights in a free society, so does

1734

the majority. We can imagine that there will be ethical reasons why

1735

participants will not act in ways to oppose joint activity -- as they

1736

took part in the decision making process they would be considered

1737

childish if they reject the final decision because it did not go in

1738

their favour. Moreover, they would also have to face the reaction of

1739

those who also took part in the decision making process. It would be

1740

likely that those who ignored such decisions (or actively hindered

1741

them) would soon face non-violent direct action in the form of

1742

non-co-operation, shunning, boycotting and so on. Anarchists think that

1743

such occurrences would be rare.

1744

1745

As an isolated life is impossible, the need for communal associations

1746

is essential. It is only by living together in a supportive community

1747

can individuality be encouraged and developed along with individual

1748

freedom. However, anarchists are aware that not everyone is a social

1749

animal and that there are times that people like to withdraw into their

1750

own personal space. Thus our support for free association and

1751

federalism along with solidarity, community and self-management. Most

1752

anarchists have recognised that majority decision making, though not

1753

perfect, is the best way to reach decisions in a political system based

1754

on maximising individual and so social freedom. Self-management in

1755

grassroots confederal assemblies and workers' councils ensures that

1756

decision making is "horizontal" in nature (i.e. between equals) and not

1757

hierarchical (i.e. governmental, between order giver and order taker).

1758

In other words, anarchists support self-management because it ensures

1759

liberty -- not because we subscribe to the flawed assumption that the

1760

majority is always right.

1761

1762

I.5.7 What if I don't want to join a commune?

1763

1764

As would be expected, no one would be forced to join a commune nor take

1765

part in its assemblies. To suggest otherwise would be contrary to

1766

anarchist principles. Thus a commune would be a free society, in which

1767

individual liberty would be respected and encouraged.

1768

1769

However, what about individuals who live within the boundaries of a

1770

commune but decide not to join? For example, a local neighbourhood may

1771

include households that desire to associate and a few that do not (this

1772

is actually happened during the Spanish Revolution). What happens to

1773

the minority of dissenters?

1774

1775

Obviously individuals can leave to find communities more in line with

1776

their own concepts of right and wrong if they cannot convince their

1777

neighbours of the validity of their ideas. And, equally obviously, not

1778

everyone will want to leave an area they like. So we must discuss what

1779

happens to those who decide to not to find a more suitable

1780

neighbourhood. Are the communal decisions binding on non-members?

1781

Obviously not. If an individual or family desire not to join a commune

1782

(for whatever reason), their freedoms must be respected. However, this

1783

also means that they cannot benefit from communal activity and

1784

resources (such a free parks, hospitals, and so forth) and have to pay

1785

for their use. As long as they do not exploit or oppress others, an

1786

anarchist community would respect their decision (as discussed in

1787

[22]section G.2.1, for example).

1788

1789

Many who oppose anarchist self-management in the name of freedom often

1790

do so because they desire to oppress and exploit others. In other

1791

words, they oppose participatory communities because they (rightly)

1792

fear that this would restrict their ability to grow rich off the labour

1793

of others (this type of opposition can be seen from history, when rich

1794

elites, in the name of liberty, have replaced democratic forms of

1795

social decision making with representative or authoritarian ones -- see

1796

[23]section B.2.5).

1797

1798

It goes without saying that the minority, as in any society, will exist

1799

within the ethical norms of the surrounding society and they will be

1800

have to adhere to them in the same sense that they have to adhere to

1801

not murdering people (few sane people would say that forcing people not

1802

to commit murder is a restriction of their liberty). Therefore, while

1803

allowing the maximum of individual freedom of dissent, an anarchist

1804

community would still have to apply its ethical standards to those

1805

beyond that community. Individuals would not be allowed to murder, harm

1806

or enslave others and claim that they are allowed to do so because they

1807

are not part of the local community (see [24]section I.5.8 on crime in

1808

an anarchist society).

1809

1810

Similarly, individuals would not be allowed to develop private property

1811

(as opposed to possession) simply because they wanted to. This

1812

rejection of private property would not be a restriction on liberty

1813

simply because stopping the development of authority hardly counts as

1814

an authoritarian act (for an analogy, supporters of capitalism do not

1815

think that banning theft is a restriction of liberty and because this

1816

view is -- currently -- accepted by the majority it is enforced on the

1817

minority). Regardless of what defenders of capitalism claim, "voluntary

1818

bilateral exchanges" affect third parties and can harm others

1819

indirectly. This can easily be seen from examples like concentrations

1820

of wealth which have effects across society or the ecological impacts

1821

of consumption and production. This means that an anarchist society

1822

would be aware that inequality, and so statism, could develop again and

1823

take precautions against it. As Malatesta put it, some "seem almost to

1824

believe that after having brought down government and private property

1825

we would allow both to be quietly built up again, because of respect

1826

for the freedom of those who might feel the need to be rulers and

1827

property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting our ideas."

1828

[Anarchy, p. 43]

1829

1830

The suggestion that denying property ownership is a restriction in

1831

freedom is wrong, as it is the would-be capitalist who is trying to ban

1832

freedom for others on their property. Members of a free society would

1833

simply refuse to recognise the claims of private property -- they would

1834

simply ignore the would-be capitalist's pretensions and "keep out"

1835

signs. Without a state, or hired thugs, to back up their claims, they

1836

would just end up looking silly.

1837

1838

This means that Anarchists do not support the liberty of being a boss

1839

(anarchists will happily work with someone but not for someone). Of

1840

course, those who desire to create private property against the wishes

1841

of others expect those others to respect their wishes. So, when

1842

would-be propertarians happily fence off their "property" and exclude

1843

others from it, could not these others remember these words from Woody

1844

Guthrie's This Land is Your Land, and act accordingly?

1845

1846

"As I went rumbling that dusty highway

1847

I saw a sign that said private property

1848

But on the other side it didn't say nothing

1849

This land was made for you and me"

1850

1851

While happy to exclude people from "their" property, such owners seem

1852

more than happy to use the resources held in common by others. They are

1853

the ultimate "free riders," desiring the benefits of society but

1854

rejecting the responsibilities that go with it. In the end, such

1855

"individualists" usually end up supporting the state (an institution

1856

they claim to hate) precisely because it is the only means by which

1857

private property and their "freedom" to exercise authority can be

1858

defended.

1859

1860

This does not mean denying the freedom to live your life as you see

1861

fit, using the resources you need to do so. It simply means not being

1862

able to proclaim ownership over more than you could reasonably use. In

1863

other words, "occupancy and use" would be the limits of possession --

1864

and so property would become "that control of a thing by a person which

1865

will receive either social sanction, or else unanimous individual

1866

sanction, when the laws of social expediency shall have been fully

1867

discovered." [Benjamin Tucker, Instead of a Book, p. 131] As we discuss

1868

in [25]section I.6.2, this perspective on use rights is shared by both

1869

individualist and social anarchists.

1870

1871

Therefore anarchists support the maximum of experiments while ensuring

1872

that the social conditions that allow this experimentation are

1873

protected against concentrations of wealth and power. As Malatesta put

1874

it: "Anarchism involves all and only those forms of life that respect

1875

liberty and recognise that every person has an equal right to enjoy the

1876

good things of nature and the products of their own activity." [The

1877

Anarchist Revolution, p. 14]

1878

1879

So, as a way to eliminate the problem of minorities seeking power and

1880

property for themselves, an anarchist revolution places social wealth

1881

(starting with the land) in the hands of all and promises to protect

1882

only those uses of it which are considered just by society as a whole.

1883

In other words, by recognising that "property" is a product of society,

1884

an anarchist society will ensure than an individual's "property" is

1885

protected by his or her fellows when it is based purely upon actual

1886

occupancy and use. Thus attempts to transform minority dissent into,

1887

say, property rights would be fought by simply ignoring the "keep out"

1888

signs of property owned, but not used, by an individual or group.

1889

Therefore, individuals are free not to associate, but their claims of

1890

"ownership" will be based around use rights, not property rights.

1891

Without a state to back up and protect property "rights," we see that

1892

all rights are, in the end, what society considers to be fair (the

1893

difference between law and social custom is discussed in [26]section

1894

I.7.3). What the state does is to impose "rights" which do not have

1895

such a basis (i.e. those that protect the property of the elite) or

1896

"rights" which have been corrupted by wealth and would have been

1897

changed because of this corruption had society been free to manage its

1898

own affairs.

1899

1900

In summary, individuals will be free not to join a participatory

1901

community, and hence free to place themselves outside its decisions and

1902

activities on most issues that do not apply to the fundamental ethical

1903

standards of a society. Hence individuals who desire to live outside of

1904

anarchist communities would be free to live as they see fit but would

1905

not be able to commit murder, rape, create private property or other

1906

activities that harmed individuals. It should be noted, moreover, that

1907

this does not mean that their possessions will be taken from them by

1908

"society" or that "society" will tell them what to do with them.

1909

Freedom, in a complex world, means that such individuals will not be in

1910

a position to turn their possessions into property and thus recreate

1911

capitalism (for the distinction between "property" and "possessions,"

1912

see [27]section B.3.1). This will not be done by "anarchist police" or

1913

by "banning" voluntary agreements, but purely by recognising that

1914

"property" is a social creation and by creating a social system that

1915

will encourage individuals to stand up for their rights and co-operate

1916

with each other to protect their freedom against those seeking to

1917

reduce others to the conditions of servants working their property for

1918

them.

1919

1920

I.5.8 What about crime?

1921

1922

For anarchists, "crime" can best be described as anti-social acts, or

1923

behaviour which harms someone else or which invades their personal

1924

space. Anarchists, in other words, "believe that to act criminally

1925

means to violate the liberty of others" and so criminals in a free

1926

society would be "those who would encroach on personal integrity,

1927

liberty and the well being of others." [Malatesta, At the Caf�, p. 100

1928

and p. 132]

1929

1930

This definition of crime is similar, of course, to that used in

1931

capitalist society but libertarians note that the state defines as

1932

"crime" many things which a sane society would not (such as, say,

1933

consensual acts of adults in private or expropriation of private

1934

property). Similarly, a free society would consider as anti-social many

1935

acts which the state defends under capitalism (such as the

1936

appropriation of resources or exploitation of others labour). This is

1937

to be expected, as social customs evolve and reflect the socio-economic

1938

basis of a given society. Hence Malatesta:

1939

1940

"Naturally the crimes we are talking about are anti-social acts,

1941

that is those which offend human feelings and which infringe the

1942

right of others to equality in freedom, and not the many actions

1943

which the penal code punishes simply because they offend against the

1944

privileges of the dominant classes." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and

1945

Ideas, pp. 105-6]

1946

1947

Anarchists argue that the root cause for crime is not some perversity

1948

of human nature or "original sin" but is due to the type of society by

1949

which people are moulded. For example, anarchists point out that by

1950

eliminating private property, crime could be reduced significantly,

1951

since most crime today is currently motivated by evils stemming from

1952

private property such as poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and

1953

alienation. Moreover, by adopting anarchist methods of

1954

non-authoritarian child rearing and education, most of the remaining

1955

crimes could also be eliminated, because they are largely due to the

1956

anti-social, perverse, and cruel "secondary drives" that develop

1957

because of authoritarian child-rearing practices (see [28]section J.6).

1958

However, as long as the few "violates the equal freedom of others . . .

1959

we must defend ourselves." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 106]

1960

1961

First, it cannot be said that governments are required to protect

1962

people from crime and criminals. Rather, as Alexander Berkman argued,

1963

"[d]oes not government itself create and uphold conditions which make

1964

for crime? Does not the invasion and violence upon which all

1965

governments rest cultivate the spirit of intolerance and persecution,

1966

of hatred and more violence?" Crime, then, "is the result of economic

1967

conditions, of social inequality, of wrongs and evils of which

1968

government and monopoly are parents. Government and law can only punish

1969

the criminal. They neither cure nor prevent crime. The only real cure

1970

for crime is to abolish its causes, and the government can never do

1971

because it is there to preserve those very causes." This suggests that

1972

crimes "resulting form government, from its oppression and injustice,

1973

from inequality and poverty, will disappear under Anarchy. These

1974

constitute by far the greatest percentage of crime." [What is

1975

Anarchism?, p. 151] Nor should we forget that today we are subject to

1976

rule by the anti-social, for the "owners and rulers" are "criminals"

1977

who are "powerful and have organised their dominance on a stable basis"

1978

("Who is more of a thief than the owners who get wealthy stealing the

1979

produce of the workers' labour?"). [Malatesta, At the Caf�, p. 100 and

1980

p. 130]

1981

1982

"Crime", therefore, cannot be divorced from the society within which it

1983

occurs. Society, in Emma Goldman's words, gets the criminals it

1984

deserves. For example, anarchists do not think it unusual nor

1985

unexpected that crime exploded under the pro-free market capitalist

1986

regimes of Thatcher and Reagan. Crime, the most obvious symptom of

1987

social crisis, took 30 years to double in Britain (from 1 million

1988

incidents in 1950 to 2.2 million in 1979). However, between 1979 and

1989

1992 the crime rate more than doubled, exceeding the 5 million mark in

1990

1992. These 13 years were marked by a government firmly committed to

1991

the "free market" and "individual responsibility." It was entirely

1992

predictable that the social disruption, atomisation of individuals, and

1993

increased poverty caused by freeing capitalism from social controls

1994

would rip society apart and increase criminal activity. Also

1995

unsurprisingly (from an anarchist viewpoint), under these pro-market

1996

governments we also saw a reduction in civil liberties, increased state

1997

centralisation, and the destruction of local government. As Malatesta

1998

put it, the classical liberalism which these governments represented

1999

could have had no other effect, for "the government's powers of

2000

repression must perforce increase as free competition results in more

2001

discord and inequality." [Anarchy, p. 47]

2002

2003

Hence the apparent paradox of governments with flowing rhetoric about

2004

"individual rights," the "free market" and "getting the state off our

2005

backs" increasing state power and reducing rights while holding office

2006

during a crime explosion is no paradox at all. "The conjuncture of the

2007

rhetoric of individual freedom and a vast increase in state power,"

2008

argues Carole Pateman, "is not unexpected at a time when the influence

2009

of contract doctrine is extending into the last, most intimate nooks

2010

and crannies of social life. Taken to a conclusion, contract undermines

2011

the conditions of its own existence. Hobbes showed long ago that

2012

contract -- all the way down -- requires absolutism and the sword to

2013

keep war at bay." [The Sexual Contract, p. 232]

2014

2015

Capitalism, and the contract theory on which it is built, will

2016

inevitably rip apart society. It is based upon a vision of humanity as

2017

isolated individuals with no connection other than that of money. Such

2018

a vision cannot help but institutionalise anti-social acts. As

2019

Kropotkin argued "it is not love and not even sympathy upon which

2020

Society is based in mankind. It is the conscience -- be it only at the

2021

stage of an instinct -- of human solidarity. It is the unconscious

2022

recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man [and woman] from

2023

the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one's

2024

happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or

2025

equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every

2026

other individual as equal to his [or her] own." [Mutual Aid, p. 16] The

2027

social atomisation required and created by capitalism destroys the

2028

basic bonds of society -- namely human solidarity -- and hierarchy

2029

crushes the individuality required to understand that we share a common

2030

humanity with others and so understand why we must be ethical and

2031

respect others rights. Significantly, as Richard Wilkinson and Kate

2032

Pickett note in The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost

2033

Always Do Better, more unequal societies have more crime and bigger

2034

prison populations (equality, as well as reducing crime, consistently

2035

deliver other advantages for people).

2036

2037

We are not saying, however, that anarchists reject the concept of

2038

individual responsibility. While recognising that rape, for example, is

2039

the result of a social system which represses sexuality and is based on

2040

patriarchy (i.e. rape has more to do with power than sex), anarchists

2041

do not "sit back" and say "it's society's fault." Individuals have to

2042

take responsibility for their own actions and recognise that

2043

consequences of those actions. Part of the current problem with "law

2044

codes" is that individuals have been deprived of the responsibility for

2045

developing their own ethical code, and so are less likely to develop

2046

"civilised" social standards (see [29]section I.7.3).

2047

2048

Therefore, while anarchists reject the ideas of law and a specialised

2049

justice system, they are not blind to the fact that anti-social action

2050

may not totally disappear in a free society. Nor are they blind to the

2051

fact that, regardless of our hopes about a free society reducing crime,

2052

we will not create it over-night ("all the bad passions . . . will not

2053

disappear at a stroke. There will still be for a long time those who

2054

will feel tempted to impose their will on others with violence, who

2055

will wish to exploit favourable circumstances to create privileges for

2056

themselves" [Malatesta, At the Caf�, p. 131]). Therefore, some sort of

2057

justice system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining

2058

crimes and to adjudicate disputes between people.

2059

2060

This does not, it must be stressed, signify some sort of contradiction

2061

within anarchism. Anarchists have never advocated the kind of "freedom"

2062

which assumes that people can do what they want. When people object to

2063

anarchy, they often ask about those who would steal, murder, rape and

2064

so forth and seem to assume that such people would be free to act as

2065

they like. This is, needless to say, an utter misunderstanding of both

2066

our ideas and freedom in general. Simply put, if people impose

2067

themselves by force on others then "they will be the government" and

2068

"we will oppose them with force" for "if today we want to make a

2069

revolution against the government, it is not in order to submit

2070

ourselves supinely to new oppressors." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 99]

2071

This applies to defending a free society against organised

2072

counter-revolution and against those within it conducting anti-social

2073

("criminal") activities. The principle is the same, it is just the

2074

scale which is different.

2075

2076

It should be remembered that just because the state monopolises or

2077

organises a (public) service, it does not mean that the abolition of

2078

the state means the abolition of what useful things it provided. For

2079

example, many states own and run the train network but the abolition of

2080

the state does not mean that there will no longer be any trains! In a

2081

free society management of the railways would be done by the rail

2082

workers themselves, in association with the community. The same applies

2083

to anti-social behaviour and so we find Kropotkin, for example,

2084

pointing to how "voluntary associations" would "substitute themselves

2085

for the State in all its functions," including "mutual protection" and

2086

"defence of the territory." [Anarchism, p. 284]

2087

2088

This applies to what is termed justice, namely the resolution of

2089

disputes and anti-social acts ("crime"). Anarchists argue that "people

2090

would not allow their wellbeing and their freedom to be attacked with

2091

impunity, and if the necessity arose, they would take measures to

2092

defend themselves against the anti-social activities of a few. But to

2093

do so, what purpose is served by people whose profession is the making

2094

of laws; while other people spend their lives seeking out and inventing

2095

law-breakers?" [Malatesta, Anarchy, pp. 43-4] This means that in a free

2096

society the resolution of anti-social behaviour would rest in the hands

2097

of all, not in a specialised body separate from and above the masses.

2098

As Proudhon put it, an anarchy would see the "police, judiciary,

2099

administration, everywhere committed to the hands of the workers"

2100

[General Idea of the Revolution, p. 281] And so:

2101

2102

"Let each household, each factory, each association, each

2103

municipality, each district, attend to its own police, and

2104

administer carefully its own affairs, and the nation will be policed

2105

and administered. What need have we to be watched and ruled, and to

2106

pay, year in and year out, . . . millions? Let us abolish prefects,

2107

commissioners, and policemen too." [Op. Cit., p. 273]

2108

2109

Precisely how this will work will be determined by free people based on

2110

the circumstances they face. All we can do is sketch out likely

2111

possibilities and make suggestions.

2112

2113

In terms of resolving disputes between people, it is likely that some

2114

form of arbitration system would develop. The parties involved could

2115

agree to hand their case to a third party (for example, a communal jury

2116

or mutually agreed individual or individuals). There is the possibility

2117

that the parties cannot agree (or if the victim were dead), then the

2118

issue could be raised at a communal assembly and a "court" appointed to

2119

look into the issue. These "courts" would be independent from the

2120

commune, their independence strengthened by popular election instead of

2121

executive appointment of judges, by protecting the jury system by

2122

random selection of citizens, and so "all disputes . . . will be

2123

submitted to juries which will judge not only the facts but the law,

2124

the justice of the law [or social custom], its applicability to the

2125

given circumstances, and the penalty or damage to be inflicted because

2126

of its infraction". [Benjamin Tucker, The Individualist Anarchists, p.

2127

160] For Tucker, the jury was a "splendid institution, the principal

2128

safeguard against oppression." [Liberty, vol. 1, no. 16, p. 1]

2129

2130

As Malatesta suggested, "when differences were to arise between men

2131

[sic!], would not arbitration voluntarily accepted, or pressure of

2132

public opinion, be perhaps more likely to establish where the right

2133

lies than through an irresponsible magistrate which has the right to

2134

adjudicate on everything and everybody and is inevitably incompetent

2135

and therefore unjust?" [Anarchy, p. 45] It is in the arbitration system

2136

and communal assemblies that what constitutes anti-social behaviour

2137

will be discussed and agreed.

2138

2139

In terms of anti-social events when they happen, "when there remains a

2140

residue of criminals, the collective directly concerned should think of

2141

placing them in a position where they can do no harm, without

2142

delegating to anyone the specific function of persecuting criminals"

2143

[Malatesta, At the Caf�, p. 101] In the case of a "police force", this

2144

would not exist either as a public or private specialised body or

2145

company. If a local community did consider that public safety required

2146

a body of people who could be called upon for help, we imagine that a

2147

new system would be created. Such a system would "not be entrusted to,

2148

as it is today, to a special, official body: all able-bodied

2149

inhabitants will be called upon to take turns in the security measures

2150

instituted by the commune." [James Guillaume, "On Building the New

2151

Social Order", pp. 356-79, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 371]

2152

2153

This system could be based around a voluntary militia, in which all

2154

members of the community could serve if they so desired. Those who

2155

served would not constitute a professional body; instead the service

2156

would be made up of local people who would join for short periods of

2157

time and be replaced if they abused their position. Hence the

2158

likelihood that a communal militia would become corrupted by power,

2159

like the current police force or a private security firm exercising a

2160

policing function, would be vastly reduced. Moreover, by accustoming a

2161

population to intervene in anti-social as part of the militia, they

2162

would be empowered to do so when not an active part of it, so reducing

2163

the need for its services even more. In this way "we will defend

2164

ourselves . . . without delegating to anyone the special function of

2165

the defence of society" and this is "the only effective method" of

2166

stopping and reducing anti-social activity. [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p.

2167

132]

2168

2169

Such a body would not have a monopoly on protecting others, but would

2170

simply be on call if required. It would no more be a monopoly of

2171

defence (i.e. a "police force") than the current fire service is a

2172

monopoly. Individuals are not banned from putting out fires today

2173

because the fire service exists, similarly individuals will be free to

2174

help stop anti-social crime by themselves, or in association with

2175

others, in an anarchist society.

2176

2177

Of course there are anti-social acts which occur without witnesses and

2178

so the "guilty" party cannot be readily identified. If such acts did

2179

occur we can imagine an anarchist community taking two courses of

2180

action. The injured party may look into the facts themselves or appoint

2181

an agent to do so or, more likely, an ad hoc group would be elected at

2182

a community assembly to investigate specific crimes of this sort

2183

(subject to control and recall by the community). Once the

2184

investigating body thought it had enough evidence it would inform the

2185

community as well as the affected parties and then organise a court. Of

2186

course, a free society will produce different solutions to such

2187

problems, solutions no-one has considered yet and so these suggestions

2188

are just that, suggestions.

2189

2190

As is often stated, prevention is better than cure. This is as true of

2191

crime as of disease and so crime is best fought by rooting out its

2192

causes as opposed to punishing those who act in response to these

2193

causes. As Emma Goldman argued, crime "is naught but misdirected

2194

energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political,

2195

social, moral conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels;

2196

so long as most people are out of place doing things they hate to do,

2197

living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all

2198

the laws on the statues can only increase, but never do away with,

2199

crime" [Red Emma Speaks, p. 71] Erich Fromm, decades later, made the

2200

same point:

2201

2202

"It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in

2203

individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of

2204

life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual

2205

frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting

2206

of the whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and

2207

expression of man's sensuous, emotional, and intellectual

2208

capacities. Life has an inner dynamism of its own; it tends to grow,

2209

to be expressed, to be lived . . . the drive for life and the drive

2210

for destruction are not mutually interdependent factors but are in a

2211

reversed interdependence. The more the drive towards life is

2212

thwarted, the stronger is the drive towards destruction; the more

2213

life is realised, the less is the strength of destructiveness.

2214

Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individual and

2215

social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the

2216

passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from

2217

which particular hostile tendencies -- either against others or

2218

against oneself -- are nourished." [The Fear of Freedom, p. 158]

2219

2220

Therefore, by reorganising society so that it empowers everyone and

2221

actively encourages the use of all our intellectual, emotional and

2222

sensuous abilities, crime would soon cease to be the huge problem that

2223

it is now. As for the anti-social behaviour or clashes between

2224

individuals that might still exist in such a society, it would be dealt

2225

with in a system based on respect for the individual and a recognition

2226

of the social roots of the problem. Restraint would be kept to a

2227

minimum. Anarchists think that public opinion and social pressure would

2228

be the main means of preventing anti-social acts in an anarchist

2229

society, with such actions as boycotting and ostracising used as

2230

powerful sanctions to convince those attempting them of the errors of

2231

their way. Extensive non-co-operation by neighbours, friends and work

2232

mates would be the best means of stopping acts which harmed others.

2233

Thus Malatesta:

2234

2235

"In order for crime to be treated rationally, in order to seek for

2236

its causes and really do everything possible to eliminate it, it is

2237

necessary for this task to be entrusted to those who are exposed to

2238

and suffer the consequences of crime, in other words the whole

2239

public, and not those to whom the existence of crime is a source of

2240

power and earnings." [At the Caf�, p. 135]

2241

2242

An anarchist system of justice, we should note, would have a lot to

2243

learn from aboriginal societies simply because they are examples of

2244

social order without the state. Indeed many of the ideas we consider as

2245

essential to justice today can be found in such societies. As Kropotkin

2246

argued, "when we imagine that we have made great advances in

2247

introducing, for instance, the jury, all we have done is to return to

2248

the institutions of the so-called 'barbarians' after having changed it

2249

to the advantage of the ruling classes." [The State: Its Historic Role,

2250

p. 18] Like aboriginal justice (as documented by Rupert Ross in

2251

Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice) anarchists

2252

contend that justice be achieved by the teaching and healing of all

2253

involved. Public condemnation of the wrongdoing would be a key aspect

2254

of this process, but the wrong doer would remain part of the community

2255

and so see the effects of their actions on others in terms of grief and

2256

pain caused. It would be likely that wrong doers would be expected to

2257

try to make amends for their act by community service or helping

2258

victims and their families.

2259

2260

So, from a practical viewpoint, almost all anarchists oppose prisons on

2261

both practical grounds and ethical grounds. Prisons have numerous

2262

negative affects on society as well as often re-enforcing criminal

2263

(i.e. anti-social) behaviour. Anarchists use the all-to-accurate

2264

description of prisons as "Universities of Crime" wherein the

2265

first-time criminal learns new techniques and have adapt to the

2266

prevailing ethical standards within them. Hence, prisons would have the

2267

effect of increasing the criminal tendencies of those sent there and so

2268

prove to be counter-productive. In addition, prisons do not affect the

2269

social conditions which promote many forms of crime. Simply put, prison

2270

"does not improve the prisoner . . . it does not prevent him from

2271

committing more crimes. It does not then achieve any of the ends it has

2272

set itself" [Kropotkin, Anarchism, p. 228] Moreover, they are a failure

2273

in terms of their impact on those subject to them: "We know what

2274

prisons mean -- they mean broken down body and spirit, degradation,

2275

consumption, insanity". [Voltairine de Cleyre, quoted by Paul Avrich,

2276

An American Anarchist, p. 146] The Makhnovists took the usual anarchist

2277

position on prisons:

2278

2279

"Prisons are the symbol of the servitude of the people, they are

2280

always built only to subjugate the people, the workers and peasants

2281

. . . Free people have no use for prisons. Wherever prisons exist,

2282

the people are not free . . . In keeping with this attitude, [the

2283

Makhnovists] demolished prisons wherever they went." [Peter

2284

Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 153]

2285

2286

With the exception of Benjamin Tucker, no major anarchist writer

2287

supported the institution. Few anarchists think that private prisons

2288

(like private policemen) are compatible with their notions of freedom.

2289

However, all anarchists are against the current "justice" system which

2290

seems to them to be organised around revenge and punishing effects and

2291

not fixing causes.

2292

2293

However, there are psychopaths and other people in any society who are

2294

too dangerous to be allowed to walk freely. Restraint in this case

2295

would be the only option and such people may have to be isolated from

2296

others for their own, and others, safety. Perhaps mental hospitals

2297

would be used, or an area quarantined for their use created (perhaps an

2298

island, for example). However, such cases (we hope) would be rare and

2299

"should be cared for according to the most humane methods of treating

2300

the mentally afflicted." [Voltairine de Cleyre, The Voltairine de

2301

Cleyre Reader, p. 160]

2302

2303

The one thing that needs to be avoided is the creation of a

2304

professional and specialised "justice" system as this would be a key

2305

means by which the state could reconstitute itself. As Malatesta

2306

explained, "the major damage caused by crime is not so much the single

2307

and transitory instance of the violation of the rights of a few

2308

individuals, but the danger that it will serve as an opportunity and

2309

pretext for the constitution of an authority that, with the outward

2310

appearance of defending society will subdue and oppress it." In other

2311

words, it "would truly be a great piece of foolishness to protect

2312

oneself from a few violent people, a few idlers and some degenerates,

2313

by opening a school for idleness and violence" [Op. Cit., p. 101 and p.

2314

132] The libertarian perspective on crime does not rest on an idealised

2315

vision of people. "We do not believe", as Malatesta suggested, "in the

2316

infallibility, nor even the general goodness of the masses", rather "we

2317

believe even less in the infallibility and goodness of those who seize

2318

power and legislate" and so we must "avoid the creation of bodies

2319

specialising in police work". [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p.

2320

109 and p. 108] As George Barrett argued:

2321

2322

"All that we can say is that . . . disputes are very much better

2323

settled without the interference of authority. If the two [parties]

2324

were reasonable, they would probably mutually agree to allow their

2325

dispute to be settled by some mutual friend whose judgement they

2326

could trust. But if instead of taking this sane course they decide

2327

to set up a fixed authority, disaster will be the inevitable result.

2328

In the first place, this authority will have to be given power

2329

wherewith to enforce its judgement in such matters. What will then

2330

take place? The answer is quite simple. Feeling it is a superior

2331

force, it will naturally in each case take to itself the best of

2332

what is disputed, and allot the rest to its friends.

2333

2334

"What a strange question is this. It supposes that two people who

2335

meet on terms of equality and disagree could not be reasonable or

2336

just. But, on the other hand, it supposes that a third party,

2337

starting with an unfair advantage, and backed up by violence, will

2338

be the incarnation of justice itself. Common-sense should certainly

2339

warn us against such a supposition, and if we are lacking in this

2340

commodity, then we may learn the lesson by turning to the facts of

2341

life. There we see everywhere Authority standing by, and in the name

2342

of justice and fair play using its organised violence in order to

2343

take the lion's share of the world's wealth for the governmental

2344

class." [Objections to Anarchism, pp. 349-50]

2345

2346

So instead of prisons and a legal code based on the concept of

2347

punishment and revenge, anarchists support the use of pubic opinion and

2348

pressure to stop anti-social acts and the need to therapeutically

2349

rehabilitate those who commit them. Rather than a parasitic legal

2350

system which creates and defends inequality and privilege, anarchists

2351

agree with Kropotkin: "Liberty, equality, and practical human sympathy

2352

are the most effective barriers we can oppose to the anti-social

2353

instinct of certain among us". [Op. Cit., p. 218] "We want justice, not

2354

rigid, but elastic", argued Tucker, "we want justice, not stern, but

2355

tempered with mercy, with eyes sharp enough to detect causes,

2356

conditions, and circumstances; we want justice, not superficial, but

2357

profound." The current system of rigid law imposed by the state and

2358

implemented by a judge was false and "no such justice is wanted in any

2359

civilised community." [Op. Cit., Vol. 13, No. 5, p. 4]

2360

2361

In summary, then, anarchists have spent considerable time discussing

2362

the issue. Somewhat ironically, given that many think the issue of

2363

crime is the weakest point of the anarchist case, the outlines of a

2364

solution to this problem are well established in anarchist theory, both

2365

in terms of what not to do and in terms of combating both crime and its

2366

causes. Anarchy is based on people being free but freedom does not mean

2367

the "freedom" to violate the equal freedom of others. That is

2368

oppression, that is exploitation, that is the embryo of the state and

2369

capitalism.

2370

2371

We can recommend the section "Crime and Punishment" by Malatesta

2372

(Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas) as well as Kropotkin's essays

2373

"Law and Authority" and "Prisons and their moral influence on

2374

prisoners" (both within the Anarchism collection). Emma Goldman's

2375

"Prisons: A social crime and Failure" (Red Emma Speaks), de Cleyre's

2376

"Crime and Punishment" (The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader) and Colin

2377

Ward's "How Deviant Dare you get?" (Anarchy in Action) are also worth

2378

reading. A useful collection of writings on this issue are found in

2379

Under the Yoke of the State: Selected Anarchist Responses to Prisons

2380

and Crime (edited by the Dawn Collective).

2381

2382

I.5.9 What about Freedom of Speech under Anarchism?

2383

2384

Free speech in an anarchist society would be far greater than under

2385

capitalism. This is obvious, anarchists argue, because we "fight

2386

against oppression and tyranny for a future in which they will be

2387

neither masters nor slaves, neither rich nor poor, neither oppressors

2388

nor oppressed . . . the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of

2389

all, and that in this universal freedom is the guarantee of liberty,

2390

self-development, autonomy, and free speech for each and everyone."

2391

[Emma Goldman, A Documentary History of the American Years, p. 104] As

2392

such, libertarian socialism would be marked by extensive freedom of

2393

speech but also freedom of the press, of the media and so forth.

2394

2395

Some, however, express the idea that all forms of socialism would

2396

endanger freedom of speech, press, and so forth. The usual formulation

2397

of this argument is in relation to state socialism and goes as follows:

2398

if the state (or "society") owned all the means of communication, then

2399

only the views which the government supported would get access to the

2400

media.

2401

2402

This is an important point and it needs to be addressed. However,

2403

before doing so, we should point out that under capitalism the major

2404

media are effectively controlled by the wealthy. As we argued in

2405

[30]section D.3, the media are not the independent defenders of freedom

2406

that they like to portray themselves as. This is hardly surprising,

2407

since newspapers, television companies, and so forth are capitalist

2408

enterprises owned by the wealthy and with managing directors and

2409

editors who are also wealthy individuals with a vested interest in the

2410

status quo. Hence there are institutional factors which ensure that the

2411

"free press" reflects the interests of capitalist elites.

2412

2413

However, in democratic capitalist states there is little overt

2414

censorship. Radical and independent publishers can still print their

2415

papers and books without state intervention (although market forces

2416

ensure that this activity can be difficult and financially

2417

unrewarding). Under socialism, it is argued, because "society" owns the

2418

means of communication and production, this liberty will not exist.

2419

Instead, as can be seen from all examples of "actually existing

2420

socialism," such liberty is crushed in favour of the ruling elites'

2421

point of view.

2422

2423

As anarchism rejects the state, we can say that this danger does not

2424

exist under libertarian socialism. However, since social anarchists

2425

argue for the communalisation of production, could not restrictions on

2426

free speech still exist? We argue no, for three reasons.

2427

2428

Firstly, publishing houses, radio stations, and so on will be run by

2429

their workers directly. They will be supplied by other syndicates, with

2430

whom they will make agreements, and not by "central planning" officials

2431

(who would not exist). In other words, there is no bureaucracy of

2432

officials allocating (and so controlling) resources and so the means of

2433

communication. Hence, anarchist self-management will ensure that there

2434

is a wide range of opinions in different magazines and papers. There

2435

would be community papers, radio stations, etc., and obviously they

2436

would play an increased role in a free society. But they would not be

2437

the only media. Associations, political parties, industrial syndicates,

2438

and so on would have their own media and/or would have access to the

2439

resources run by communication workers syndicates, so ensuring that a

2440

wide range of opinions can be expressed.

2441

2442

Secondly, the "ultimate" power in a free society will be the

2443

individuals of which it is composed. This power will be expressed in

2444

communal and workplace assemblies that can recall delegates and revoke

2445

their decisions. It is doubtful that these assemblies would tolerate a

2446

set of would-be bureaucrats determining what they can or cannot read,

2447

see, or hear.

2448

2449

Thirdly, individuals in a free society would be interested in hearing

2450

different viewpoints and discussing them. This is the natural

2451

side-effect of critical thought (which self-management would

2452

encourage), and so they would have a vested interest in defending the

2453

widest possible access to different forms of media for different views.

2454

Having no vested interests to defend, a free society would hardly

2455

encourage or tolerate the censorship associated with the capitalist

2456

media ("I listen to criticism because I am greedy. I listen to

2457

criticism because I am selfish. I would not deny myself another's

2458

insights" [For Ourselves, The Right to be Greedy, Thesis 113]).

2459

2460

Therefore, anarchism will increase freedom of speech in many important

2461

ways, particularly in the workplace (where it is currently denied under

2462

capitalism). This will be a natural result of a society based on

2463

maximising freedom and the desire to enjoy life: "We claim the right of

2464

discussing . . . whatever subject interests us. If free speech and free

2465

press mean anything, they mean freedom of discussion." [Goldman, Op.

2466

Cit., p. 203]

2467

2468

We would also like to point out that during both the Spanish and

2469

Russian revolutions, freedom of speech was protected within anarchist

2470

areas. For example, the Makhnovists in the Ukraine "fully applied the

2471

revolutionary principles of freedom of speech, of thought, of the

2472

Press, and of political association. In all the cities and towns

2473

occupied . . . Complete freedom of speech, Press, assembly, and

2474

association of any kind and for everyone was immediately proclaimed."

2475

[Peter Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 153] This

2476

is confirmed by Michael Malet: "One of the most remarkable achievements

2477

of the Makhnovists was to preserve a freedom of speech more extensive

2478

than any of their opponents." [Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War,

2479

p. 175] In revolutionary Spain republicans, liberals, communists,

2480

Trotskyites and many different anarchist groups all had freedom to

2481

express their views. "On my first visit to Spain in September 1936,"

2482

Emma Goldman reported "nothing surprised me so much as the amount of

2483

political freedom I found everywhere. True, it did not extend to

2484

Fascists" but "everyone of the anti-Fascist front enjoyed political

2485

freedom which hardly existed in any of the so-called European

2486

democracies." As for the few restrictions that were in place, remember

2487

that there was a war on so it was "childish to expect the CNT-FAI to

2488

include Fascists and other forces engaged in their destruction in the

2489

extension of complete political freedom." [Vision on Fire, p.147 and p.

2490

228] The freedom of speech in anarchist areas is confirmed in a host of

2491

other eye-witnesses, including George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia (in

2492

fact, it was the rise of the pro-capitalist republicans and communists

2493

that introduced censorship). Both movements were fighting a

2494

life-and-death struggle against communist, fascist and pro-capitalist

2495

armies and so this defence of freedom of expression, given the

2496

circumstances, is particularly noteworthy.

2497

2498

Freedom of speech, like freedom of association, applies to all groups

2499

(including, of course, religious ones). The only exception would be, as

2500

Goldman noted, for organisations which are actively fighting to enslave

2501

a free society. In other words, during a social revolution it is

2502

unlikely that freedom of speech and organisation would apply to those

2503

supporting the counter-revolutionary forces. As the threat of violence

2504

by these forces decreases, so the freedom of their supporters would

2505

increase.

2506

2507

It is in this context we must discuss what some could point to as an

2508

example of anarchists denying freedom of speech and association, namely

2509

the burning of churches during the Spanish Revolution. In fact, some

2510

would use this as evidence of anarchist intolerance of religion and to

2511

those who disagree with them. Anarchists reject such charges.

2512

2513

As is well known, after the successful defeat of the fascist-military

2514

coup in mid-July 1936, Catholic Churches were burned and members of the

2515

Catholic Church were killed. However, these acts were not acts against

2516

freedom of religion or speech. Rather they are popular acts against

2517

both the oppressive and reactionary role of the Catholic Church in

2518

Spanish society as well as its active support for fascism throughout

2519

the 1920s and 1930s, including Franco's coup. As historian Paul Preston

2520

summarises:

2521

2522

"religion was an issue which could be used to mobilise mass peasant

2523

support behind the interests of the oligarchy. Having lost the

2524

political hegemony in April 1931, the ruling classes clung all the

2525

more to the Church as one of the key redoubts of their social and

2526

economic dominance. Equally, the Church hierarchy, as a major

2527

landowner, had a somewhat similar view of the value of an alliance

2528

with the new political formation being created to defend

2529

oligarchical agrarian interests. Not surprisingly, throughout the

2530

Republic, the clergy used both pulpit and confessional to defend the

2531

existing socio-economic order and to make electoral propaganda for

2532

the successive political organisations of the Right." [The Coming of

2533

the Spanish Civil War, pp. 42-3]

2534

2535

The Catholic Church "was the bulwark of the country's conservative

2536

forces" and no more than 15 days after the announcement of the Republic

2537

in 1931, the Primate of Spain "issued a pastoral denouncing the new

2538

government's intention to establish freedom of worship and to separate

2539

Church and state. The cardinal urged Catholics to vote in future

2540

elections against an administration which in his view wanted to destroy

2541

religion." [Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain, p. 91 and p. 25] This

2542

opposition to the Republic and support for right-wing, near-fascist

2543

parties such as the CEDA, continued throughout the 1930s and climaxed

2544

with the Church's backing of Franco's coup.

2545

2546

Nor should it be forgotten that the "Catholic press applauded the Nazi

2547

destruction of the German Socialist and Communist movements. Nazism was

2548

much admired on the Spanish Right because of its emphasis on authority,

2549

the fatherland and hierarchy -- all three of which were central

2550

preoccupations of CEDA." It also "urged its readers to follow the

2551

example of Italy and Germany and organise against the dragon of

2552

revolution" while the Nazis "signed a concordat with the Vatican". The

2553

CEDA would "proceed to the establishment of an authoritarian regime of

2554

semi-fascist character along Austrian lines". So awareness of what had

2555

happened in Italy and Germany (with Church support) was keen in

2556

anarchist and other left-wing circles, particularly as the "Spanish

2557

Right had not hidden its sympathy for the achievements of Hitler and

2558

Mussolini. The CEDA had many of the trappings of a fascist

2559

organisation" and its leader "had declared his determination to

2560

establish a corporative state in Spain." [Op. Cit. p. 69, p. 72, p. 120

2561

and p. 121] As one Catholic writer, Francois Mauriac, put it

2562

"Christianity and fascism have become intermingled, and [many] cannot

2563

hate one without hating the other." [quoted Antony Beevor, Op. Cit., p.

2564

270]

2565

2566

Given all this, the attacks on the Catholic Church really comes as no

2567

surprise. If, after an attempted fascist coup, people burned down the

2568

offices of the fascist and pro-fascist parties few people would be

2569

surprised. Why should a pro-fascist church be considered immune to such

2570

popular anger? As George Orwell pointed out:

2571

2572

"No one can blame [someone] for being angry when churches are burned

2573

and priests murdered or driven into exile. But I think it is a pity

2574

that he has not looked more deeply into the reasons why these things

2575

happen." [Orwell in Spain, p. 314]

2576

2577

Unsurprisingly, then, those priests who had not supported the right,

2578

those who had treated the working class the same as the rich, were

2579

spared. In the Basque Country, where the church supported the Republic,

2580

not a single church was burnt. Nor were synagogues or Protestant church

2581

targeted. In Barcelona "the Quakers established canteens which were

2582

staffed by refugee women." [Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and

2583

the Civil War, 1931-1939, p. 446]

2584

2585

It should also be stressed that the repression in the fascist zone was

2586

much worse than that in the Republican one. Of a ecclesiastical

2587

community of 115,000, 6,845 were killed ("the vast majority during the

2588

summer of 1936"). This is in stark contrast to right-wing claims at the

2589

time. It should be mentioned that in the province of Seville, the

2590

fascist repression killed 8,000 during 1936 alone. In Cordoba, 10,000

2591

were killed during the war -- a tenth of the population. Once an area

2592

was captured by nationalist forces, after the initial killing of

2593

captured troops, union and party leaders, a "second and more intense

2594

wave of slaughter would begin" ("in fact anyone who was even suspected

2595

of having voted for the Popular Front was in danger"). This was

2596

organised by "local committees, usually consisting of leading

2597

right-wingers, such as the major landowner, the local Civil Guard

2598

commander, a Falangist and quite often the priest". This was "clearly

2599

not just a question of revenge, they were also motivated by the idea of

2600

establishing a reign of terror". This did not, of course, hinder "the

2601

unqualified backing of the Vatican and the Spanish Church for General

2602

Franco" while "the Catholic press abroad sprang to the support of the

2603

nationalist rising". Obviously killing (many, many more) left-wingers

2604

in the name of god is of no concern to the Catholic hierarchy nor did

2605

it stop "the Church's official support for Franco". [Beevor, Op. Cit.,

2606

p. 92, p. 101, p. 99, p. 104, p. 250, p. 269 and p. 270]

2607

2608

Under Franco, everyone had to "submit themselves to the authority of

2609

the Church as well as to their temporal masters. Franco had been

2610

extremely generous in restoring all the Church's privileges and wealth,

2611

as well as its power in education, but in return he expected the

2612

priesthood to act virtually as another arm of the state." In other

2613

words, "Nationalist Spain was little more than an open prison for all

2614

those who did not sympathise with the regime" and the "population was

2615

encouraged to accuse people as part of its patriotic duty. Concierges

2616

and caretakers became police spies . . . and priests noted those who

2617

did not turn up to mass." [Beevor, Op. Cit., p. 452, p. 453 and p. 454]

2618

All with the firm support of the Catholic Church.

2619

2620

Rather than an attempt to repress religion as such, the attacks on the

2621

Catholic Church in republican areas it was a product of popular

2622

hostility to a corrupt institution, one which was deeply reactionary,

2623

pro-fascist and a major landowner in its own right. This means that an

2624

awareness of the nature and role of the Church "does not leave much

2625

doubt as to why practically all the churches in Catalonia and eastern

2626

Aragon were burnt at the outbreak of war." The anti-clerical movement

2627

was a "popular movement and a native Spanish movement. It has its roots

2628

not in Marx or Bakunin, but in the condition of the Spanish people

2629

themselves." [Orwell, Op. Cit., p. 300 and p. 315] While under Franco

2630

"the relentless purging of 'reds and atheists' was to continue for

2631

years" in the Republican areas "the worse of the violence was mainly a

2632

sudden and quickly spent reaction of suppressed fear, exacerbated by

2633

desires of revenge for the past." [Beevor, Op. Cit., p. 91]

2634

2635

So the burning of churches in Spain had very little to do with

2636

anarchist atheism and much, much more to do with the Catholic Church's

2637

social role in Spain, its reactionary position, its hatred of the

2638

unions and social protest and the fact it supported the fascist coup.

2639

It does not imply an opposition to freedom of speech by libertarian

2640

socialists but was rather an expression of popular opposition to a

2641

ruling class and pro-fascist organisation.

2642

2643

One last point to make on this issue. Given the actual role of the

2644

Church during this period and its wholehearted support for fascism in

2645

the 1920s onwards, it seems strange that the Catholic church has

2646

declared the murdered priests in Spain to be martyrs, part of a planned

2647

religious persecution. This is not true, if they were martyrs then they

2648

were martyrs to their pro-fascist politics and not their faith ("The

2649

political role of the Church was ignored when the religious victims

2650

were made into martyrs"). Significantly, the Catholic Church "said

2651

nothing when the nationalists shot sixteen of the Basque clergy,

2652

including the arch-priest of Mondragon" (the nationalists also killed

2653

some twenty Protestant ministers). In 2003 when John Paul II beatified

2654

a teacher killed in July 1936 he "still made no mention of the Basque

2655

priests killed by the nationalists." [Beevor, Op. Cit., p. 270, p. 92

2656

and p. 527] Clearly a priest being murdered by fascists backed by the

2657

Vatican is ineligible for sainthood.

2658

2659

Given the actual role of the Catholic Church during this period it is

2660

surprising the Catholic hierarchy would seek to bring attention to it.

2661

Perhaps it is confidant that the media will not mention these awkward

2662

facts, although this context explains the deaths and church-burning in

2663

1936. As we noted in [31]section A.2.18, it appears that killing

2664

working class people is not worthy of comment but assassinating members

2665

of the ruling elite (and its servants) is. So the fact that the burning

2666

of churches and killing of clergy is well known but the pro-fascist

2667

activities of the church (a product of both its reactionary politics

2668

and position in the ruling elite) which provoked it is not should come

2669

as no surprise.

2670

2671

In summary, then, a free society would have substantial freedom of

2672

speech along with other fundamental freedoms (including freedom of

2673

worship and of association). Such freedoms would be respected,

2674

supported and encouraged for all shades of political opinion, from the

2675

left through to the right. The only exception would be if an

2676

organisation were actively supporting those seeking to impose their

2677

rule on a free people and in such cases some restrictions may be

2678

decided upon (their nature would depend on the state of the struggle,

2679

with them decreasing as the danger decreased).

2680

2681

To those who claim that refusing freedom of speech to

2682

counter-revolutionaries equates to statism or implies a contradiction

2683

in libertarian ideas, anarchists would reply that such arguments are

2684

flawed. In terms of the former, it is equating state imposed censorship

2685

with the active disobedience of a free people. Rather than the

2686

government imposing a ban, members of a free society would simply

2687

discuss the issue at hand and, if considered appropriate, actively and

2688

collectively boycott those supporting attempts to enslave them. Without

2689

electricity, paper, distribution networks and so on, reactionaries

2690

would find it hard to publish or broadcast. As for the latter, there is

2691

no contradiction as it is hardly contradictory to support and encourage

2692

freedom while, at the same time, resisting attempts to enslave you! As

2693

such, this suggestion makes the same logical error Engels made in his

2694

diatribe against anarchism, namely considering it "authoritarian" to

2695

destroy authority (see [32]section H.4.7). Similarly, it is hardly

2696

authoritarian to resist those seeking to impose their authority on you

2697

or their supporters! This perspective seems to assume that the true

2698

"libertarian" approach is to let others impose their rule on you as

2699

stopping them is "authoritarian"! A truly strange way of understanding

2700

our ideas....

2701

2702

To conclude, based upon both theory and practice, we can say that

2703

anarchism will not endanger freedom of expression. Indeed, by breaking

2704

up the capitalist oligopoly which currently exists and introducing

2705

workers' self-management of the media, a far wider range of opinions

2706

will become available in a free society. Rather than reflect the

2707

interests of a wealthy elite, the media would reflect the interests of

2708

society as a whole and the individuals and groups within it.

2709

2710

I.5.10 What about political parties, interest groups and professional bodies?

2711

2712

Political parties and other interest groups will exist in an anarchist

2713

society as long as people feel the need to join them. They will not be

2714

banned in any way, and their members will have the same rights as

2715

everyone else. Individuals who are members of political parties or

2716

associations can take part in communal and other assemblies and try to

2717

convince others of the soundness of their ideas.

2718

2719

However, there is a key difference between such activity and politics

2720

under a capitalist democracy. This is because the elections to

2721

positions of responsibility in an anarchist society will not be based

2722

on party tickets nor will it involve the delegation of power. Emile

2723

Pouget's description of the difference between the syndicalist union

2724

and political elections drives this difference home:

2725

2726

"The constituent part of the trade union is the individual. Except

2727

that the union member is spared the depressing phenomenon manifest

2728

in democratic circles where, thanks to the veneration of universal

2729

suffrage, the trend is towards the crushing and diminution of the

2730

human personality. In a democratic setting, the elector can avail of

2731

his [or her] will only in order to perform an act of abdication: his

2732

role is to 'award' his 'vote' to the candidate whom he [or she]

2733

wishes to have as his [or her] 'representative.'

2734

2735

"Affiliation to the trade union has no such implication . . . In

2736

joining the union, the worker merely enters into a contract -- which

2737

he may at any time abjure -- with comrades who are his equals in

2738

will and potential . . . In the union, say, should it come to the

2739

appointment of a trade union council to take charge of

2740

administrative matters, such 'selection' is not to be compared with

2741

'election': the form of voting customarily employed in such

2742

circumstances is merely a means whereby the labour can be divided

2743

and is not accompanied by any delegation of authority. The strictly

2744

prescribed duties of the trade union council are merely

2745

administrative. The council performs the task entrusted to it,

2746

without ever overruling its principals, without supplanting them or

2747

acting in their place.

2748

2749

"The same might be said of all decisions reached in the union: all

2750

are restricted to a definite and specific act, whereas in democracy,

2751

election implies that the elected candidate has been issued by his

2752

[or her] elector with a carte blanche empowering him [or her] to

2753

decide and do as he [or she] pleases, in and on everything, without

2754

even the hindrance of the quite possibly contrary views of his [or

2755

her] principals, whose opposition, in any case, no matter how

2756

pronounced, is of no consequence until such time as the elected

2757

candidate's mandate has run its course.

2758

2759

"So there cannot be any possible parallels, let alone confusion,

2760

between trade union activity and participation in the disappointing

2761

chores of politics." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 67-68]

2762

2763

In other words, when individuals are elected to administrative posts

2764

they are elected to carry out their mandate, not to carry out their

2765

party's programme. Of course, if the individuals in question had

2766

convinced their fellow workers and citizens that their programme was

2767

correct, then this mandate and the programme would be identical.

2768

However this is unlikely in practice. We would imagine that the

2769

decisions of collectives and communes would reflect the complex social

2770

interactions and diverse political opinions their members and of the

2771

various groupings within the association.

2772

2773

Anarchism will likely contain many different political groupings and

2774

ideas. The relative influence of these within collectives and communes

2775

would reflect the strength of their arguments and the relevance of

2776

their ideas, as would be expected in a free society. As Bakunin argued:

2777

"The abolition of this mutual influence would be death. And when we

2778

vindicate the freedom of the masses, we are by no means suggesting the

2779

abolition of any of the natural influences that individuals or groups

2780

of individuals exert on them. What we want is the abolition of

2781

influences which are artificial, privileged, legal, official." [quoted

2782

by Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 51] It is only when representative government

2783

replaces self-management that political debate results in "elected

2784

dictatorship" and centralisation of power into the hands of one party

2785

which claims to speak for the whole of society, as if the latter had

2786

one mind.

2787

2788

This freedom of political association has existed in every anarchist

2789

revolution. During the Russian Revolution, the Makhnovists organised

2790

soviets and regional congresses at every opportunity and these saw

2791

delegates elected who were members of different political parties. For

2792

example, members of the socialist Left-SR party were active in the

2793

Makhnovist movement and attended soviet congresses (for example, the

2794

resolution of the February 1919 congress "was written by the

2795

anarchists, left Socialist Revolutionaries, and the chairman." [Michael

2796

Palij, The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno, 1918-1921, p. 155]). The

2797

Makhnovist Revolutionary Military Soviet created at the Aleksandrovsk

2798

congress in late 1919 had three Communists elected to it while there

2799

were 18 delegates from workers at that congress, six being Mensheviks

2800

and the remaining 12 included Communists [Micheal Malet, Nestor Makhno

2801

in the Russian Civil War, p. 111 and p. 124] In the words of the

2802

Makhnovist reply to Bolshevik attempt to ban one of their congresses:

2803

2804

"The Revolutionary Military Council . . . holds itself above the

2805

pressure and influence of all parties and only recognises the people

2806

who elected it. Its duty is to accomplish what the people have

2807

instructed it to do, and to create no obstacles to any left

2808

socialist party in the propagation of ideas. Consequently, if one

2809

day the Bolshevik idea succeeds among the workers, the Revolutionary

2810

Military Council . . . will necessarily be replaced by another

2811

organisation, 'more revolutionary' and more Bolshevik." [quoted by

2812

Peter Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement, pp. 103-4]

2813

2814

As such, the Makhnovists supported the right of working-class

2815

self-determination, as expressed by one delegate to a conference in

2816

February 1919:

2817

2818

"No party has a right to usurp governmental power into its hands . .

2819

. We want life, all problems, to be decided locally, not by order

2820

from any authority above; and all peasants and workers should decide

2821

their own fate, while those elected should only carry out the

2822

toilers' wish." [quoted by Palij, Op. Cit., p. 154]

2823

2824

It should be mentioned that a myth has sprung up fostered by some

2825

Leninists that parties were banned from election to these bodies (for

2826

example, see Jason Yanowitzs terrible "On the Makhno Myth"

2827

[International Socialist Review, no. 53]). These claims flow from basic

2828

ignorance of how the soviets were organised during the revolution

2829

combined with a misunderstanding of this Makhnovist proclamation from

2830

January 1920:

2831

2832

"Only workers participating in work vital to the people's economy

2833

should be elected to these soviets. The representatives of political

2834

organisations have no place in the soviets of workers and peasants

2835

given that their participation in a soviet could turn it into a

2836

soviet of party political deputies, thereby leading the soviet order

2837

to perdition." [quoted by Alexandre Skirda, Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's

2838

Cossack, p. 164]

2839

2840

When the soviets were formed in Petrograd and other Russian cities in

2841

1917 the initiative had come (unlike in 1905) from political parties

2842

and these ensured that they had representatives from political parties

2843

within their executive committees (as distinct from elected delegates

2844

who happened to be members of a political party). This was how, for

2845

example, "high party leaders became voting delegates" in the soviets,

2846

by being "selected by the leadership of each political organisation,

2847

and not by the soviet assembly itself." [Samuel Farber, Before

2848

Stalinism, p. 31] Thus the Makhnovists were rejecting the means by

2849

which many soviet members were not directly elected by actual workers.

2850

2851

In addition, the Makhnovists were following the Russian

2852

Anarcho-Syndicalists who argued for "effective soviets organised on

2853

collective lines with the direct delegation of workers and peasants . .

2854

. and not political chatterboxes gaining entry through party lists and

2855

turning the soviets into talking-shops". [The Anarchists in the Russian

2856

Revolution, Paul Avrich (ed.), p. 118] This use of party lists meant

2857

that soviet delegates could be anyone. For example, the leading

2858

left-wing Menshevik Martov recounted that in early 1920 a chemical

2859

factory "put up Lenin against me as a candidate [to the Moscow soviet].

2860

I received seventy-six votes he - eight (in an open vote)." [quoted by

2861

Israel Getzler, Martov, p. 202] How would either of these two

2862

intellectuals actually know and reflect the concerns and interests of

2863

the workers they would be "delegates" of? If the soviets were meant to

2864

be the delegates of working people, then why should non-working class

2865

members of political parties be elected as mandated and recallable

2866

delegates to a soviet from a workplace they have never visited except,

2867

perhaps, to gather votes?

2868

2869

This applies, needless to say, to other areas of life. Anarchists do

2870

not think that social life can be reduced to political and economic

2871

associations alone. Individuals have many different interests and

2872

desires which they must express in order to have a truly free and

2873

fulfilling life. Therefore an anarchist society will see the

2874

development of numerous voluntary associations and groups to express

2875

these interests. For example, there would be consumer groups, musical

2876

groups, scientific associations, art associations, clubs, housing

2877

co-operatives and associations, craft and hobby guilds, fan clubs,

2878

animal rights associations, groups based around gender, sexuality,

2879

creed and colour and so forth. Associations will be created for all

2880

human interests and activities. As Kropotkin argued:

2881

2882

"He who wishes for a grand piano will enter the association of

2883

musical instrument makers. And by giving the association part of his

2884

half-days' leisure, he will soon possess the piano of his dreams. If

2885

he is fond of astronomical studies he will join the association of

2886

astronomers . . . and he will have the telescope he desires by

2887

taking his share of the associated work . . . In short, the five or

2888

seven hours a day which each will have at his disposal, after having

2889

consecrated several hours to the production of necessities, would

2890

amply suffice to satisfy all longings for luxury, however varied.

2891

Thousands of associations would undertake to supply them." [The

2892

Conquest of Bread, p. 120]

2893

2894

We can imagine, therefore, an anarchist society being based around

2895

associations and interest groups on every subject which fires the

2896

imagination of individuals and for which individuals want to meet in

2897

order to express and further their interests. Housing associations, for

2898

example, would exist to allow inhabitants to manage their local areas,

2899

design and maintain their homes and local parks and gardens. Vegetarian

2900

groups would produce information on issues they consider important,

2901

trying to convince others of the errors of eating meat. Consumer groups

2902

would be in dialogue with syndicates about improving products and

2903

services, ensuring that syndicates produce what is required by

2904

consumers. Environment groups would exist to watch production and make

2905

sure that it is not creating damaging side effects and informing both

2906

syndicates and communes of their findings. Feminist, homosexual,

2907

bisexual and anti-racist groups would exist to put their ideas across,

2908

highlighting areas in which social hierarchies and prejudice still

2909

existed. All across society, people would be associating together to

2910

express themselves and convince others of their ideas on all kinds of

2911

issues.

2912

2913

This applies to professional groupings who would seek to ensure that

2914

those work tasks that require qualifications to do (medicine and such

2915

like) have recognised standards and certificates. In this way, others

2916

in society would know whether a fellow worker is a recognised expert in

2917

their field and has the appropriate qualifications to do the work

2918

required or give advice. While a free society would break down the line

2919

between intellectual and manual work, ensure the end of the division of

2920

labour, the fact remains that people will wish to be happy that the

2921

doctor or nurse they are visiting knows what they are doing. This is

2922

where professional groupings would come into play, organising training

2923

and certification based on mutually agreed standards and

2924

qualifications. This would not stop others seeking to practice such

2925

tasks, of course, but it will mean that few, if any, would frequent

2926

someone without the recognised professional standards.

2927

2928

Hence in a anarchist society, free association would take on a stronger

2929

and more positive role than under capitalism. In this way, social life

2930

would take on many dimensions, and the individual would have the choice

2931

of thousands of societies to join to meet his or her interests or

2932

create new ones with other like-minded people. Anarchists would be the

2933

last to deny that there is more to life than work!

2934

2935

I.5.11 How will an anarchist society defend itself against the power hungry?

2936

2937

A common objection to anarchism is that a libertarian society will be

2938

vulnerable to be taken over by thugs or those who seek power. A similar

2939

argument is that a group without a leadership structure becomes open to

2940

charismatic leaders so anarchy would just lead to tyranny.

2941

2942

For anarchists, such arguments are strange. Society already is run by

2943

thugs and/or the off-spring of thugs. Kings were originally just

2944

successful thugs who imposed their domination over a specific

2945

territorial area. The modern state has evolved from the structure

2946

created to impose this domination. Similarly with property, with most

2947

legal titles to land being traced back to its violent seizure by thugs

2948

who then passed it on to their children who then sold it or gave it to

2949

their offspring. The origins of the current system in violence can be

2950

seen by the continued use of violence by the state and capitalists to

2951

enforce and protect their domination over society. When push comes to

2952

shove, the dominant class will happily re-discover their thug past and

2953

employ extreme violence to maintain their privileges. The descent of

2954

large parts of Europe into Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, or

2955

Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973 indicates how far they will go. As

2956

Peter Arshinov argued (in a slightly different context):

2957

2958

"Statists fear free people. They claim that without authority people

2959

will lose the anchor of sociability, will dissipate themselves, and

2960

will return to savagery. This is obviously rubbish. It is taken

2961

seriously by idlers, lovers of authority and of the labour of

2962

others, or by blind thinkers of bourgeois society. The liberation of

2963

the people in reality leads to the degeneration and return to

2964

savagery, not of the people, but of those who, thanks to power and

2965

privilege, live from the labour of the people's arms and from the

2966

blood of the people's veins . . . The liberation of the people leads

2967

to the savagery of those who live from its enslavement." [The

2968

History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 85]

2969

2970

So anarchists are not impressed with the argument that anarchy would be

2971

unable to stop thugs seizing power. It ignores the fact that we live in

2972

a society where the power-hungry already rule. As an argument against

2973

anarchism it fails and is, in fact, an argument against hierarchical

2974

societies.

2975

2976

Moreover, it also ignores fact that people in an anarchist society

2977

would have gained their freedom by overthrowing every existing and

2978

would-be thug who had, or desired, power over others. They would have

2979

defended that freedom against those who desired to re-impose it. They

2980

would have organised themselves to manage their own affairs and,

2981

therefore, to abolish all hierarchical power. And we are to believe

2982

that these people, after struggling to become free, would quietly let a

2983

new set of thugs impose themselves? As Kropotkin argued:

2984

2985

"The only way in which a state of Anarchy can be obtained is for

2986

each man [or woman] who is oppressed to act as if he [or she] were

2987

at liberty, in defiance of all authority to the contrary . . . In

2988

practical fact, territorial extension is necessary to ensure

2989

permanency to any given individual revolution. In speaking of the

2990

Revolution, we signify the aggregate of so many successful

2991

individual and group revolts as will enable every person within the

2992

revolutionised territory to act in perfect freedom . . . without

2993

having to constantly dread the prevention or the vengeance of an

2994

opposing power upholding the former system . . . Under these

2995

circumstance it is obvious that any visible reprisal could and would

2996

be met by a resumption of the same revolutionary action on the part

2997

of the individuals or groups affected, and that the maintenance of a

2998

state of Anarchy in this manner would be far easier than the gaining

2999

of a state of Anarchy by the same methods and in the face of

3000

hitherto unshaken opposition . . . They have it in their power to

3001

apply a prompt check by boycotting such a person and refusing to

3002

help him with their labour or to willing supply him with any

3003

articles in their possession. They have it in their power to use

3004

force against him. They have these powers individually as well as

3005

collectively. Being either past rebels who have been inspired with

3006

the spirit of liberty, or else habituated to enjoy freedom from

3007

their infancy, they are hardly to rest passive in view of what they

3008

feel to be wrong." [Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves, pp. 87-8]

3009

3010

Thus a free society would use direct action to resist the would-be

3011

ruler just as it had used direct action to free itself from existing

3012

rulers. It would be organised in a way which would facilitate this

3013

direct action as it would be based on networks of solidarity and mutual

3014

aid. An injury to one is an injury to all and a would-be ruler would

3015

face a whole liberated society acting against him or her. Faced with

3016

the direct action of the population (which would express itself in

3017

non-co-operation, strikes, demonstrations, occupations, insurrections

3018

and so on) a would-be power seeker would find it difficult to impose

3019

themselves. Unlike those accustomed to rulership in existing society,

3020

an anarchist people would be a society of rebels and so difficult to

3021

dominate and conquer: "In the future society, Anarchy will be defence,

3022

the prevention of the re-establishment of any authority, any power, any

3023

State." [Carlo Cafiero, "Anarchy and Communism", pp. 179-86, The Raven,

3024

No. 6, p. 180]

3025

3026

Anarchists point to the example of the rise of Fascism in Italy, Spain

3027

and Germany. In areas with strong anarchist movements the fascists were

3028

resisted most strongly. While in Germany Hitler was met with little or

3029

no opposition, in Italy and Spain the fascists had to fight long and

3030

hard to gain power. The anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist organisations

3031

fought the fascists tooth and nail, with some success before betrayal

3032

by the Republicans and Marxists. From this historical experience

3033

anarchists argue that an anarchist society would quickly and easily

3034

defeat would-be thugs as people would be used to practising direct

3035

action and self-management and would have no desire to stop. A free

3036

people would quickly organise itself in self-managed militias for

3037

self-defence (just as they would during a social revolution to defend

3038

it -- [33]section J.7.6).

3039

3040

As for self-management resulting in "charismatic" leaders, well the

3041

logic is astounding. As if hierarchical structures are not based on

3042

leadership structures and do not require a charismatic leader! Such an

3043

argument is inherently self-contradictory -- as well as ignoring the

3044

nature of modern society and its leadership structures. Rather than

3045

mass assemblies being dominated by leaders, it is the case that

3046

hierarchical structures are the natural breeding ground for dictators.

3047

All the great dictators the world have seen have come to the forefront

3048

in hierarchical organisations, not libertarian structured ones. Hitler,

3049

for example, did not come to power via self-management. Rather he used

3050

a highly centralised and hierarchically organised party to take control

3051

of a centralised, hierarchical state. The very disempowerment of the

3052

population in capitalist society results in them looking to leaders to

3053

act for them and so "charismatic" leaders are a natural result. An

3054

anarchist society, by empowering all, would make it more difficult, not

3055

less, for a would-be leader to gain power -- few people, if any, would

3056

be willing to sacrifice and negate themselves for the benefit of

3057

another.

3058

3059

Our discussion on the power hungry obviously relates to the more

3060

general the question of whether ethical behaviour be rewarded in an

3061

anarchist society. In other words, could an anarchist society be stable

3062

or would the unethical take over?

3063

3064

It is one of the most disturbing aspects of living in a world where the

3065

rush to acquire wealth is the single most important aspect of living is

3066

what happens to people who follow an ethical path in life. Under

3067

capitalism, the ethical generally do not succeed as well as those who

3068

stab their fellows in the back, those who cut corners, indulge in sharp

3069

business practises, drive competitors into the ground and live their

3070

lives with an eye on the bottom line but they do survive. Loyalty to a

3071

firm or a group, bending over backwards to provide a service, giving a

3072

helping hand to somebody in need, placing friendship above money, count

3073

for nothing when the bills come in. People who act ethically in a

3074

capitalist society are usually punished and penalised for their ethical

3075

and principled behaviour. Indeed, the capitalist market rewards

3076

unethical behaviour as it generally reduces costs and so gives those

3077

who do it a competitive edge.

3078

3079

It is different in a free society. Anarchism is based on equal access

3080

to power and wealth. Everybody in an anarchist society irrespective of

3081

what they do, or who they are or what type of work they perform is

3082

entitled to share in society's wealth. Whether a community survives or

3083

prospers depends on the combined efforts of the people in that

3084

community. Ethical behaviour would become the norm in an anarchist

3085

community; those people who act ethically would be rewarded by the

3086

standing they achieve in the community and by others being more than

3087

happy to work with and aid them. People who cut corners, try to

3088

exercise power over others, refuse to co-operate as equals or otherwise

3089

act in an unethical manner would lose their standing. Their neighbours

3090

and work mates would refuse to co-operate with them (or reduce

3091

co-operation to a minimum) and take other forms of non-violent direct

3092

action to point out that certain forms of activity was inappropriate.

3093

They would discuss the issue with the unethical person and try to

3094

convince them of the errors of their way. In a society where the

3095

necessities are guaranteed, people would tend to act ethically because

3096

ethical behaviour raises an individuals profile and standing within

3097

such a community. Capitalism and ethical behaviour are mutually

3098

exclusive concepts; anarchism encourages and rewards ethical behaviour.

3099

Needless to say, as we discussed in [34]section I.5.8, anarchists are

3100

aware that a free society would need to defend itself against whatever

3101

anti-social behaviour remains in a free and equal society and seeking

3102

to impose your will on others defines unethical and anti-social!

3103

3104

Therefore, as can be seen, anarchists argue that a free society would

3105

not have to fear would-be thugs, "charismatic" leaders or the

3106

unethical. An anarchist society would be based on the co-operation of

3107

free individuals. It is unlikely that they would tolerate bad behaviour

3108

and would use their own direct action as well as social and economic

3109

organisations to combat it. Moreover, the nature of free co-operation

3110

would reward ethical behaviour as those who practice it would have it

3111

reciprocated by their fellows. and, if worse came to worse, they would

3112

defend their liberty!

3113

3114

One last point. Some people seem to think that anarchism is about the

3115

powerful being appealed to not to oppress and dominate others. Far from

3116

it. Anarchism is about the oppressed and exploited refusing to let

3117

others dominate them. It is not an appeal to the "better side" of the

3118

boss or would-be boss; it is about the solidarity and direct action of

3119

those subject to a boss getting rid of the boss -- whether the boss

3120

agrees to it or not! Once this is clearly understood the idea that an

3121

anarchist society is vulnerable to the power-hungry is clearly nonsense

3122

-- anarchy is based on resisting power and so is, by its very nature,

3123

more resistant to would-be rulers than a hierarchical one.

3124

3125

So, to summarise, anarchists are well aware that an anarchist society

3126

will have to defend itself from both inside and outside attempts to

3127

re-impose capitalism and the state. Indeed, every revolutionary

3128

anarchist has argued that a revolution will have to defend itself (as

3129

proven in [35]section H.2.1, Marxist assertions otherwise have always

3130

been myths). This applies to both internal and external attempts to

3131

re-introduce authority.

3132

3133

I.5.12 Would an anarchist society provide health care and other public services?

3134

3135

It depends on the type of anarchist society you are talking about.

3136

Different anarchists propose different solutions.

3137

3138

In an individualist-mutualist society, for example, health care and

3139

other public services would be provided by individuals or co-operatives

3140

on a pay-for-use basis. It would be likely that individuals or

3141

co-operatives/associations would subscribe to various insurance

3142

providers or enter into direct contracts with health care providers.

3143

Thus the system would be similar to privatised health care but without

3144

the profit margins as competition, it is hoped, would drive prices down

3145

to cost.

3146

3147

Other anarchists reject such a system. They are favour of socialising

3148

health care and other public services. They argue that a privatised

3149

system would only be able to meet the requirements of those who can

3150

afford to pay for it and so would be unjust and unfair. In addition,

3151

such systems would have higher overheads (the need to pay share-holders

3152

and the high wages of upper management, most obviously, and not to

3153

mention paying for propaganda against "socialised" medicine) as well as

3154

charge more (privatised public utilities under capitalism have tended

3155

to charge consumers more, unsurprisingly as by their very nature they

3156

are natural monopolies).

3157

3158

Looking at health care, for example, the need for medical attention is

3159

not dependent on income and so a civilised society would recognise this

3160

fact. Under capitalism, profit-maximising medical insurance sets

3161

premiums according to the risks of the insured getting ill or injured,

3162

with the riskiest and most ill not being able to find insurance at any

3163

price. Private insurers shun entire industries as too dangerous for

3164

their profits due to the likelihood of accidents or illness. They

3165

review contracts regularly and drop sick people for the slightest

3166

reason (understandably, given that they make profits by minimising

3167

pay-outs for treatment). Hardly a vision to inspire a free society or

3168

one compatible with equality and mutual respect.

3169

3170

Therefore, most anarchists are in favour of a socialised and universal

3171

health-care system for both ethical and efficiency reasons (see

3172

[36]section I.4.10). Needless to say, an anarchist system of socialised

3173

health care would differ in many ways to the current systems of

3174

universal health-care provided by the state (which, while called

3175

socialised medicine by its enemies is better described as nationalised

3176

medicine -- although it should be stressed that this is better than the

3177

privatised system). Such a system of socialised health-care will be

3178

built from the bottom-up and based around the local commune. In a

3179

social anarchist society, "medical services . . . will be free of

3180

charge to all inhabitants of the commune. The doctors will not be like

3181

capitalists, trying to extract the greatest profit from their

3182

unfortunate patients. They will be employed by the commune and expected

3183

to treat all who need their services." Moreover, prevention will play

3184

an important part, as "medical treatment is only the curative side of

3185

the science of health care; it is not enough to treat the sick, it is

3186

also necessary to prevent disease. That is the true function of

3187

hygiene." [James Guillaume, "On Building the New Social Order", pp.

3188

356-79, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 371] The same would go for other

3189

public services and works.

3190

3191

While rejecting privatisation, anarchists also reject nationalisation

3192

in favour of socialisation and worker's self-management. In this we

3193

follow Proudhon, who argued that there was a series of industries and

3194

services which were "public works" which he thought best handled by

3195

communes and their federations. Thus "the control undertaking such

3196

works will belong to the municipalities, and to districts within their

3197

jurisdiction" while "the control of carrying them out will rest with

3198

the workmen's associations." This was due to both their nature and

3199

libertarian values as the "direct, sovereign initiative of localities,

3200

in arranging for public works that belong to them, is a consequence of

3201

the democratic principle and the free contract: their subordination to

3202

the State is . . . a return to feudalism." Workers' self-management of

3203

such public workers is, again, a matter of libertarian principles for

3204

"it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into

3205

democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of

3206

a relapse into feudalism." Railways should be given "to responsible

3207

companies, not of capitalists, but of WORKMEN." [General Idea of the

3208

Revolution, p. 276, p. 277 and p. 151]

3209

3210

This was applied during the Spanish Revolution. Gaston Leval discussed

3211

"Achievements in the Public Sector" in his classic account of the

3212

collectives. Syndicates organised water, gas and electricity utilities

3213

in Catalonia, while the trams and railways were run more efficiently

3214

and cheaper than under capitalist management. All across Spain, the

3215

workers in the health service re-organised their industry on

3216

libertarian lines and in association with the collectives, communes and

3217

the unions of the CNT. As Leval summarised:

3218

3219

"For the socialisation of medicine was not just an initiative of

3220

militant libertarian doctors. Wherever we were able to make s study

3221

of villages and small towns transformed by the Revolution, medicine

3222

and existing hospitals had been municipalised, expanded, placed

3223

under the aegis of the Collective. When there were none, they were

3224

improvised. The socialisation of medicine was becoming everyone's

3225

concern, for the benefit of all. It constituted one of the most

3226

remarkable achievements of the Spanish Revolution." [Collectives in

3227

the Spanish Revolution, p. 278]

3228

3229

So the Spanish Revolution indicates how an anarchist health service

3230

would operate. In rural areas local doctors would usually join the

3231

village collective and provided their services like any other worker.

3232

Where local doctors were not available, "arrangements were made by the

3233

collectives for treatment of their members by hospitals in nearby

3234

localities. In a few cases, collectives themselves build hospitals; in

3235

many they acquired equipment and other things needed by their local

3236

physicians." For example, the Monzon comercal (district) federation of

3237

collectives in Aragon established maintained a hospital in Binefar, the

3238

Casa de Salud Durruti. By April 1937 it had 40 beds, in sections which

3239

included general medicine, prophylaxis and gynaecology. It saw about 25

3240

outpatients a day and was open to anyone in the 32 villages of the

3241

comarca. [Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War,

3242

vol. 1, p. 331 and pp. 366-7]

3243

3244

In the Levante, the CNT built upon its existing Sociedad de Socorros

3245

Mutuos de Levante (a health service institution founded by the union as

3246

a kind of mutual benefit society which had numerous doctors and

3247

specialists). During the revolution, the Mutua had 50 doctors and was

3248

available to all affiliated workers and their families. The

3249

socialisation of the health care took on a slightly different form in

3250

Catalonia but on the same libertarian principles. Gaston Leval provided

3251

us with an excellent summary:

3252

3253

"The socialisation of health services was one of the greatest

3254

achievements of the revolution. To appreciate the efforts of our

3255

comrades it must be borne in mind that they rehabilitated the health

3256

service in all of Catalonia in so short a time after July 19th. The

3257

revolution could count on the co-operation of a number of dedicated

3258

doctors whose ambition was not to accumulate wealth but to serve the

3259

afflicted and the underprivileged.

3260

3261

"The Health Workers' Union was founded in September, 1936. In line

3262

with the tendency to unite all the different classifications,

3263

trades, and services serving a given industry, all health workers,

3264

from porters to doctors and administrators, were organised into one

3265

big union of health workers . . .

3266

3267

"Our comrades laid the foundations of a new health service . . . The

3268

new medical service embraced all of Catalonia. It constituted a

3269

great apparatus whose parts were distributed according to different

3270

needs, all in accord with an overall plan. Catalonia was divided

3271

into nine zones . . . In turn, all the surrounding villages and

3272

towns were served from these centres.

3273

3274

"Distributed throughout Catalonia were twenty-seven towns with a

3275

total of thirty-six health centres conducting services so thoroughly

3276

that every village, every hamlet, every isolated peasant in the

3277

mountains, every woman, every child, anywhere, received adequate,

3278

up-to-date medical care. In each of the nine zones there was a

3279

central syndicate and a Control Committee located in Barcelona.

3280

Every department was autonomous within its own sphere. But this

3281

autonomy was not synonymous with isolation. The Central Committee in

3282

Barcelona, chosen by all the sections, met once a week with one

3283

delegate from each section to deal with common problems and to

3284

implement the general plan . . .

3285

3286

"The people immediately benefited from the projects of the health

3287

syndicate. The syndicate managed all hospitals and clinics. Six

3288

hospitals were opened in Barcelona . . . Eight new sanatoriums were

3289

installed in converted luxurious homes ideally situated amidst

3290

mountains and pine forests. It was no easy task to convert these

3291

homes into efficient hospitals with all new facilities." [The

3292

Anarchist Collectives, Sam Dolgoff (ed.), pp. 99-100]

3293

3294

People were no longer required to pay for medical services. Each

3295

collective, if it could afford it, would pay a contribution to its

3296

health centre. Building and facilities were improved and modern

3297

equipment introduced. Like other self-managed industries, the health

3298

service was run at all levels by general assemblies of workers who

3299

elected delegates and hospital administration.

3300

3301

We can expect a similar process to occur in the future anarchist

3302

society. It would be based on self-management, of course, with close

3303

links to the local commune and federations of communes. Each hospital

3304

or health centre would be autonomous but linked in a federation with

3305

the others, allowing resources to be shared as and when required while

3306

allowing the health service to adjust to local needs and requirements

3307

as quickly as possible. Workers in the health industry will organise

3308

their workplaces, federate together to share resources and information,

3309

to formulate plans and improve the quality of service to the public in

3310

a system of generalised self-management and socialisation. The communes

3311

and their federations, the syndicates and federations of syndicates

3312

will provide resources and effectively own the health system, ensuring

3313

access for all.

3314

3315

Similar systems would operate in other public services. For example, in

3316

education we expect the members of communes to organise a system of

3317

free schools. This can be seen from the Spanish revolution. Indeed, the

3318

Spanish anarchists organised Modern Schools before the outbreak of the

3319

revolution, with 50 to 100 schools in various parts funded by local

3320

anarchist groups and CNT unions. During the revolution everywhere

3321

across Spain, syndicates, collectives and federations of collectives

3322

formed and founded schools. Indeed, education "advanced at an

3323

unprecedented pace. Most of the partly or wholly socialised collectives

3324

and municipalities built at least one school. By 1938, for example,

3325

every collective in the Levant Federation had its own school." [Gaston

3326

Leval, quoted by Sam Dolgoff, Op. Cit., p. 168] These schools aimed, to

3327

quote the CNT's resolution on Libertarian Communism, to "help mould men

3328

with minds of their own -- and let it be clear that when we use the

3329

word 'men' we use it in the generic sense -- to which end it will be

3330

necessary for the teacher to cultivate every one of the child's

3331

faculties so that the child may develop every one of its capacities to

3332

the full." [quoted by Jose Periats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution,

3333

p. 70] The principles of libertarian education, of encouraging freedom

3334

instead of authority in the school, was applied on vast scale (see

3335

[37]section J.5.13 for more details on Modern Schools and libertarian

3336

education).

3337

3338

This educational revolution was not confined to collectives or

3339

children. For example, the Federacion Regional de Campesinos de Levante

3340

formed institutes in each of its five provinces. The first was set up

3341

in October 1937 in an old convent with 100 students. The Federation

3342

also set up two universities in Valencia and Madrid which taught a wide

3343

variety of agricultural subjects and combined learning with practical

3344

experience in an experimental form attached to each university. The

3345

Aragon collectives formed a similar specialised school in Binefar. The

3346

CNT was heavily involved in transforming education in Catalonia. In

3347

addition, the local federation of the CNT in Barcelona established a

3348

school to train women workers to replace male ones being taken into the

3349

army. The school was run by the anarcha-feminist group the Mujeres

3350

Libres. [Robert Alexander, Op. Cit., p. 406, p. 670 and pp. 665-8 and

3351

p. 670]

3352

3353

Ultimately, the public services that exist in a social anarchist

3354

society will be dependent on what members of that society desire. If,

3355

for example, a commune or federation of communes desires a system of

3356

communal health-care or schools then they will allocate resources to

3357

implement it. They will allocate the task of creating such a system to,

3358

say, a special commission based on volunteers from the interested

3359

parties such as the relevant syndicates, professional associations,

3360

consumer groups and so on. For example, for communal education a

3361

commission or working group would include delegates from the teachers

3362

union, from parent associations, from student unions and so on. The

3363

running of such a system would be, like any other industry, by those

3364

who work in it. Functional self-management would be the rule, with

3365

doctors managing their work, nurses theirs and so on, while the general

3366

running of, say, a hospital would be based on a general assembly of all

3367

workers there who would elect and mandate the administration staff and

3368

decide the policy the hospital would follow. Other interested parties

3369

would have a say, including patients in the health system and students

3370

in the education system. As Malatesta argued "the carrying out and the

3371

normal functioning of public services vital to our daily lives would be

3372

more reliable if carried out . . . by the workers themselves who, by

3373

direct election or through agreements made with others, have chosen to

3374

do that kind of work and carry it out under the direct control of all

3375

the interested parties." [Anarchy, p. 41]

3376

3377

Needless to say, any system of public services would not be imposed on

3378

those who did not desire it. They would be organised for and by members

3379

of the communes and so individuals who were not part of one would have

3380

to pay to gain access to communal resources. However, it is unlikely

3381

that an anarchist society would be as barbaric as a capitalist one and

3382

refuse entry to people who were ill and could not pay, nor turn away

3383

emergencies because they did not have enough money. And just as other

3384

workers need not join a syndicate or commune, so doctors, teachers and

3385

so on could practice their trade outside the communal system as either

3386

individual artisans or as part of a co-operative. However, given the

3387

availability of free medical services it is doubtful they would grow

3388

rich doing so. Medicine, teaching and so on would revert back to what

3389

usually motivates people to initially take these up professions -- the

3390

desire to help others and make a positive impact in society.

3391

3392

Thus, as would be expected, public services would be organised by the

3393

public, organised in their syndicates and communes. They would be based

3394

on workers' self-management of their daily work and of the system as a

3395

whole. Non-workers who took part in the system (patients, students,

3396

etc.) would not be ignored and would also play a role in providing

3397

essential feedback to assure quality control of services and to ensure

3398

that it is responsive to users needs. The resources required to

3399

maintain and expand the system would be provided by the communes,

3400

syndicates and their federations. For the first time, public services

3401

would truly be public and not a statist system imposed upon the public

3402

from above nor a system by which the few fleece the many by exploiting

3403

natural monopolies for their own interests.

3404

3405

So Public Services in a free society will be organised by those who do

3406

the work and under the effective control of those who use them. This

3407

vision of public services being run by workers' associations would be

3408

raised as a valid libertarian reform under capitalism (not to mention

3409

raising the demand to turn firms into co-operatives when they are

3410

bailed out during an economic crisis). Equally, rather than

3411

nationalisation or privatisation, public utilities could be organised

3412

as a consumer co-operative (i.e., owned by those who use it) while the

3413

day-to-day running could be in the hands of a producer co-operative.

3414

3415

References

3416

3417

1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html#secb26

3418

2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech37

3419

3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI2.html#seci23

3420

4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj51

3421

5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj52

3422

6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca211

3423

7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE2.html

3424

8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj54

3425

9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI5.html#seci52

3426

10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html

3427

11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html

3428

12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech37

3429

13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca211

3430

14. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secF1.html

3431

15. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI5.html#seci56

3432

16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html#secb25

3433

17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech211

3434

18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB5.html

3435

19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH4.html#sech42

3436

20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca212

3437

21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca214

3438

22. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG2.html#secg21

3439

23. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html#secb25

3440

24. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI5.html#seci58

3441

25. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI6.html#seci62

3442

26. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI7.html#seci73

3443

27. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB3.html#secb31

3444

28. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ6.html

3445

29. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI7.html#seci73

3446

30. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD3.html

3447

31. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca218

3448

32. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH4.html#sech47

3449

33. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ7.html#secj76

3450

34. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI5.html#seci58

3451

35. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21

3452

36. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI4.html#seci410

3453

37. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj513