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Title: Transitional Anarchist Communism Author: The Weird Amorphous Blob Date: 6/4/21 Language: en Topics: Transition, anarcho-communism, praxis, anarchism, socialism, communism, Libertarian Communism, cooperatives, Worker Cooperatives
The anarchist movement, which I consider myself a part of, has a long
and quite interesting history. In all of this history, no significant
amount of anarchists until very recently have labelled themselves
capitalist or supported the private ownership of capital. From the most
individualist of individualist anarchists, Max Stirner, to collectivist
anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin, all of them despised capitalism.
Emma Goldman believed that anarchism would take the form of free
communism. Piotr Kropotkin founded communist anarchism. The Ukrainian
anarchists explicitly wrote on their flag, "death to those who stand in
the way of freedom to the working people". The Spanish anarchist
revolution collectivised massive swathes of Catalonia and put the
economy in the hands of the proletariat.[1] Proudhon who, along with
Bakunin, founded modern anarchism opposed private property as theft.
So-called "anarcho-capitalism" is a perversion of the libertarian
movement and only came about as an ideology because neoliberal ghouls
wanted to further the misunderstanding of leftist anarchism.
The core of the anarchist movement is the belief that, as Chomsky puts
it, "power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be
legitimate."[2] It is considered the default that coercive power
structures such as the state have to exist, anarchists question if that
is truly the case. The burden of proof is placed on the institutions
that claim to prevent crime and disorder.
While most anarchists push for revolutionary action, we do not want to
just have everyone killing each other. There can be a nonviolent
revolution, though the idea that we can achieve a libertarian communist
society without violence is a bit of a pipe dream. To the best of my
ability, the reasons anarchism is viewed as synonymous with chaos are
redefining a word to mean whatever is convenient.
state, which we are raised from age 4 to believe protects us.
and would result in a repeat of feudalism.
The state, as viewed by anarchists, is a central authority with a
monopoly on violence. If you attack the police you are punished, but the
police can attack you. In 2020, millions of people across borders began
to question the necessity of the police, but few went further than calls
for reform and redistribution of funding, which no doubt are an
improvement on the current situation.
If the state is truly necessary, it is weird that historically
non-statist societies such as the Çatalhöyük have little evidence of any
significant amount of crime. Instead of crime being inherent to the
human condition, a position I have found absolutely no evidence for, is
it possible that people only commit crime because they are forced into
it? One of the most accurate predictors for violent crime is poverty[3].
The vast majority of crimes committed are property crimes[4]. If we
improve the living conditions for the impoverished it is possible crime
would be almost nonexistent. Or, if you want to take anarchism to the
next logical step, you could abolish class structure in its entirety.
Footnotes:
1. The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish
Revolution
2. On Anarchy, Noam Chomsky
3. Is poverty the mother of crime? Empirical evidence of the impact of
socioeconomic factors on crime in India, Ashish Bharadwaj
4. Pew Research Center
The core of socialism is the workers owning the means of production and
the fruits of their collective labour. The modern example of socialism
is worker cooperatives, of which there are 3 types. Complete Autonomous
Worker Cooperatives are companies owned entirely by the employees with
no possibility for outside investment. Autonomous Worker Cooperatives
are owned majority by the workers of the company but outside investors
can buy non-controlling non-voting shares of the company. Majority
Cooperatives simply have majority ownership by the proletariat. Outside
investors can buy voting and non-voting shares.
Cooperatives are far more stable than the traditional firm[1]. A study
with an admittedly small sample size measures the survival rates of
worker cooperatives in Alberta from 2005-2006. It found that
cooperatives are over 30% less likely to dissolve than traditionally
owned and run corporations[1]. A similar study measuring the effects of
workplace democracy and found that dissolution of WMFs in Uruguay is 29%
lower. WMFs surpassed their capitalist counterparts in both recessive
and expansive economic situations. Because of their democratic elements,
cooperatives are far less likely to vote for layoffs, instead opting to
temporarily decrease wages[2][3]. Proletarian ownership and operation of
the economy has little to no downsides when it comes to productivity[4].
Worker cooperatives, however, are flawed. While worker coops are far
more likely to survive their first 5 years, the risk is shared
collectively more so than in traditional capitalist companies and as
such are less likely to form. For industries that require a significant
amount of startup capital, Employee Stock Ownership Firms (ESOP) seem to
be the best approach. The workers of a company own a portion of the
stock of their companies but not necessarily a majority. ESOP firms can
be operated democratically or in the traditional totalitarian operation
of firms. The solution seems to be, at least to me, to mandate worker
cooperatives in non-capital-intensive industries and democratic ESOP
firms in capital-intensive industries. This way the economy is in part
owned by the workers, in most industries almost entirely, and worker
management is universal. It avoids the negatives of cooperatives and the
negatives of capitalist corporations.
Footnotes:
1. Co-op Survival Rates in Alberta, Richard Stringham and Celia Lee
2. Are Worker-Managed Firms More Likely to Fail Than Conventional
Enterprises? Evidence from Uruguay, Gabriel Burdín
3. Wages, Employment, and Capital in Capitalist and Worker-Owned Firms,
John Pencavel and Luigi Pistaferri and Fabiano Schivardi
4. Employee ownership and firm performance: a meta-analysis, Ernest H.
O'Boyle and Pankaj C. Patel and Erik Gonzalez-Mulé
Ignoring Dengists, communists push for a form of socialism without
economic classes following the principle of "from each according to
[their] ability, to each according to [their] needs". To achieve
anarchy, communism must also be achieved.
Karl Marx pushed for immediate transition into lower-phase communism[1],
essentially socialism with some decommodification, to then be slowly
morphed into a fully decommodified society. Kropotkin believed that we
must immediately change into anarchist communism from capitalism because
we aren't good enough for capitalism[2]. I believe in the use of
transitional states to achieve free communism because from a pragmatic
perspective we need to convince people of far less if we take it step by
step,
The idea of proletarian ownership of the economy clicks in the minds of
most people once it is explained to them, it is just rational that
workers should own what they use to work instead of a parasite. However,
we have been brainwashed into believing that the state needs to exist.
From the age of 4, I was told that police protect us by my teachers. To
most, these ideas are so entrenched in them that we must take them just
left of where they are. A liberal to a social democrat, a social
democrat to a socialist, a socialist to a libertarian socialist, a
libertarian socialist to a libertarian communist. For communism, we can
only appeal to pre-historical societies that we know next to nothing
about. We can convince the liberal capitalists to become market
socialists relatively easily because cooperatives exist in the modern
era and we have research on them, communism currently doesn't. We should
push everyone as far-left and as anarchic as possible but we can't on
certain issues until we're close to seeing the result of our plan to
solve them isn't 100% reliable and we can't convince people through
purely theory.
Footnotes:
1. Critique of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx
2. Are We Good Enough?, Peter Kropotkin