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Title: My Social Credo Author: Grigori Petrovitch Maximov Date: 1933 Language: en Topics: political philosophy, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-03 from https://libcom.org/library/my-social-credo-maximov
Gregori Petrovich Maximoff was born on November 10, 1893, in the Russian
village of Mitushino in the province of Smolensk. After completing his
elementary education he was sent by his father to the theological
semi-nary in Vladimir to study for the priesthood: Though he finished
the course there, he realized that he was not fitted for that vocation,
and went to St. Petersburg, where he entered the Agricultural Academy,
graduating as an agronomist in 1915.
At a very early age he became acquainted with the revolutionary
movement. He was tireless in his quest for new spiritual and social
values, and during his college years he studied the programs and methods
of all revolutionary parties in Russia, until he came across some
writings of Kropotkinand Stepniak, in which he found confirmation of
many of his own ideas that he had worked out by himself. And his
spiritual evolution was further advanced when, later on, he discovered
in a private library in the Russian interior two works of Bakunin that
impressed him deeply. Of all the libertarian thinkers it was Bakunin who
appealed most strongly to. Maximoff, who was to remain under his spell
for the rest of his life.
Maximoff took part in the secret propaganda among the students in St.
Petersburg and the peasants in the rural regions, and when finally the
long awaited revolution broke out, he established contacts with the
labour unions,serving in their shop councils and speaking at their
meetings. It was a period of boundless hope for him and his comrades
which, however, was shattered not long after the Bolsheviks seized
control of the Russian government. He joined the Red Army to fight
against the counter?revolution, but when the new masters of Russia used
the Army for police work and for the disarming of the people, Maximoff
refused to obey orders of that kind and was condemned to death. He owed
it to the solidarity and dynamic protests of the steel workers’ union
that his life was spared.
The last time that he was arrested was on March 8, 1921, at the time of
the Kronstadt rebellion, when he was thrown into the Taganka prison in
Moscow with a dozen comrades on no other charge than the holding of his
Anarchist opinions. Four months later he took part in a hunger strike
there which lasted ten and a half days and which had wide
reverberations. That strike was ended only after French and Spanish
comrades, then attending a congress of the Red Trade Union
International, raised their voices against the inhumanity of the
Bolshevik government, and demanded that the imprisoned men be freed.
The. Soviet regime acceded to this demand, on condition that the
prisoners, all native Russians, be exiled from their homeland.
That is why Maximoff went first to Germany, where I had the welcome
opportunity to meet him and to join the circle of his friends. He
remained in Berlin for about three years and then went to Paris: There
he stayed for six or seven months, whereupon he emigrated to the United
States.
Maximoff wrote a great deal about the human struggle through many years,
during which he was at various times an editor of and contributor to
libertarian newspapers and magazines in the Russian language. In Moscow
he served as co-editor of Golos Truda (Voice of Labour), and later of
its successor, Novy Golos Truda (New Voice of Labour). In Berlin he
became the editor of Rabotchi Put (Labour’s Path), a magazine published
by Russian Anarcho-Syndicalists. Settling later in Chicago, he was
appointed as editor of Golos Truzhenika (Voice of the Toiler), to which
he had contributed from Europe. After that periodical ceased to exist,
he assumed the editorship of Dielo Trouda Probuzhdenie (Labour’s
Cause-Awakening, a name growing out of the merger of two magazines),
issued in New York City, a post he held until his death. The roster of
Maximoff’s writings in the periodical field makes up a long and
substantial bibliography.
To his credit, too, is the writing of a book entitled The Guillotine at
Work,a richly documented history of twenty years of terror in Soviet
Russia, published in Chicago in 1940; a volume called Constructive
Anarchism, brought out likewise in that city in 1952; a pamphlet,
Bolshevism: Promises and Reality, an illuminating analysis of the
actions of the Russian Communist Party, issued in Glasgow in 1935 and
reprinted in 1937; and two pamphlets published in Russian in Germany
earlier — Instead of a Program, which dealt with the resolutions of two
conferences of Anarcho-Syndicalists in Russia,and Why and How the
Bolsheviks Deported the Anarchists from Russia,which related the
experiences of his comrades and himself in Moscow.
Maximoff died in Chicago on March 16, 1950, while yet in the prime of
life, as the result of heart trouble, and was mourned by all who had the
good fortune to know him.
He was not only a lucid thinker but also a man of stainless character
and broad human understanding. And he was a whole person, in whom
clarity of thought and warmth of feeling were united in the happiest
way. For him, Anarchism was not merely a concern for things to come; but
the leit-motif of his own life; it played a part in all of his
activities. He also possessed understanding for other conceptions than
his own, so long as he was convinced that such beliefs were inspired by
good will and deep conviction. His tolerance was as great as his
comradely feeling for all who came into con-tact with him. He lived as
an Anarchist, not because he felt some sort of duty to do so, imposed
from outside, but because he could not do otherwise,for his innermost
being always caused him to act as he felt and thought.
---
Crompond, N.Y. July, 1952. (From the foreword by Rudolf Rocker to The
Political Philosophy of Michael Bakunin, compiled by Maximof.)
At the base of contemporary capitalist society lies the principle of
private property, owing to which society is divided into two fundamental
classes — the capitalists and the proletariat. The former and less
numerous class possesses all the capital,the tools and-means of
production, while the latter and more numerous class is deprived of all
these and possesses only its labour-power, both physical and
intellectual. Under the pressure of need, the working class sells this
power to the capitalists at a price below its real value; the
unremunerated part of labour power finds its way, in the form of surplus
value, into the pockets of the capitalists. As a result,the latter class
is in possession of fabulous wealth, while the proletariat and kindred
social groups are afflicted by dire poverty. This contrast stands out
most boldly in countries of highly developed capitalism. This
contemporary economic order is defended by the entire might of the
state, with its morality and its religions.
Capitalist production is commodity production; that is to say, its
products are made for the market. The market is the most important
feature of the system of distributing goods under capitalism. In such a
society, everything is based on purchase and sale. The people, selling
to the capitalists their physical and intellectual energy,are a kind of
commodity — a living commodity — and the results of their activities,
both in the material field and in the domains of science, art and
morals, are also marketable goods. Hence a small group of exploiters
enjoys the greater share of the fruits of modern science and technology,
the fruits — in other words — of the progress of mankind as a whole.
Owing to the economic inequality of the two parties, the principles of
free labour and voluntary contract, inherent in the hire of workers, are
advantageous only to the capitalists, and any attempt on the part of the
proletariat to equalise the conditions of the two parties to the
agreement results in persecution by the state, which is intent on
defending the privileges of capital.
Scientific and technological progress leads to an enormous mechanisation
of production, and this process, in turn, results in the concentration
of capital and the proletarianisation of the population. The
mechanisation of production makes the capitalists increasingly
independent of manpower, and enables them to exploit the socially weaker
elements among the people — children, women and the aged.Consequently,
in the wake of mechanisation there appears growing unemployment,which in
due course makes labour even more dependent on capital, thus enhancing
the exploitation and destitution of the workers. Present-day industrial
techniques make it possible to produce in a shorter time more than is
required to cover the needs of all humanity. Yet many millions are in no
position to satisfy their most elementary needs of food, clothing and
shelter, and are unable to put to use their powers and abilities, since
unemployment, formerly a recurrent condition, has become a permanent
phenomenon.
In such a situation, the people sink steadily into the abyss of lasting
poverty owing to their lack of purchasing power. Innumerable warehouses
are filled with unsold wares, while other goods are destroyed so as to
prevent a slump in market prices. Production comes to a standstill,
unemployment increases, the destitution and political oppression of the
people reach an unprecedented intensity, and bourgeois democracy turns
into open dictatorship, characterised by an irresponsible and
high-handed rule of the police. With a view to forestalling an
inevitable economic crisis, and at the same time in the hope of
garnering large fortunes, capitalists engage in an intensified search
for foreign markets. Competition with capitalists of other lands ensues,
and in the meantime the ruling classes of the various countries
endeavour to put distant markets under their monopolistic control with
the assistance of their respective states, so that the governments
readily offer their armies and navies for the furthering of capitalist
ambitions. This is the prelude to war, and in this very way the First
World War (1914–18) originated. For the same reason we are today (1933)
witnessing the armed pillage, accompanied by mass killing, of the
peace-loving populace of China. Capitalism is thus the main source of
war; as long as it exists no end to conflict can be seen.
Chaotic production and unorganised, uncontrolled competition for markets
have compelled the capitalists to form powerful monopolistic
associations, frequently on an international scale — trusts, cartels and
syndicates. From the beginning of the twentieth century these
associations have gained colossal influence over the economic and
political life of every country with a highly developed industry and
since that time the development of capitalism has taken the course of
merging industrial and financial capital. In other words, capitalism has
entered upon a new stage of its growth, a stage called the period of
imperialism. One of the main features of this phase is the steadily
growing supremacy of financial over industrial capital. At present this
supremacy has assumed the form of a dictatorship of banks and stock
exchanges; in other words, a dictatorship of the plutocracy. Imperialism
is the final stage of capitalism’s expansion; beyond which the ultimate
process of its decline and decay will inevitably take place.
The modern phenomenon of imperialism, then, is the stage of fully mature
capitalism, wherein finance occupies all the commanding positions and we
therefore live in a time when capitalism, having attained the goal of
its development, has started on the road of degradation and
disintegration. This process of decline dates from the time just after
the First World War, and it has-assumed the form of increasingly acute
and growing economic crises, which, during recent years, have sprung up
simultaneously in the countries of the victors and the vanquished. At
the time of writing (1933–34) the crisis has attacked nearly every
country in a veritable world crisis of the capitalist system. Its
prolonged nature and its universal scope can in no way be accounted for
by the theory of periodical capitalist crises. Much rather do these
features signify the beginning of a degenerative process within the
system itself, a process of dissolution which reacts painfully on the
vast toiling masses of humanity,and is bound, in the future, to do so in
a still more drastic way.
The 1929 crash of the New York stock exchange (an event of world wide
significance) inevitably plunged into bankruptcy innumerable small and
medium-sized industrial concerns. It ruined a multitude of financial and
commercial institutions, and brought about a triumphal ascendancy of
financial capital, which has overwhelmingly subordinated to its control
the industry, commerce and agriculture of our country;it brought in its
wake vast unemployment and a catastrophic impoverishment of the broad
masses of the people.
Thus the New York stock exchange crash meant, fundamentally, the
worldwide establishment of an absolute dictatorship of financial
capital, a dictatorship of a small group of potentates who are mutually
antagonistic on account of their monetary interests. Yet, despite its
inner contradictions and notwithstanding all the assertions of the
Marxian economists, capitalism in its modern imperialistic guise has
managed to eliminate unorganised market competition and to gauge
accurately the market’s capacities. More than this, it has proved
capable of establishing — to use a Bolshevik phrase — a “planned
economy”, based on a calculation of purchasing power, as well as upon a
“nationalisation of production.” However, the inner contradictions of
capitalism could not be removed in this way. On the contrary, they have
tended to grow and to become increasingly more acute. The “planned
economy” of imperialism, with its “nationalised” production, founded on
the principle of private property whose driving force is personal
interest and the thirst for unlimited gain at the expense of the toiling
masses, is itself becoming the source of the decline of the capitalist
system, Its calculations are based not upon the real needs of the
people, but upon their purchasing power. In accordance with the
fluctuations of this purchasing power the production of goods is
expanded or curtailed. But, keeping in mind the fact that financial
dictatorship implies the ruin of numberless small and medium sized
proprietors and enterprisers, and the creation of millions of unemployed
among workers who had formerly been serving those masters who are not
destitute, one can rightly expect that a heavy curtailment of production
must naturally take place. The making of goods is cut in proportion to
the reduced purchasing power, and accordingly the army of the unemployed
increases, while at the same time the impoverishment of the masses
steadily grows.
Now, therefore, in order to make goods available to the impoverished
consumer, capitalism is forced to lower prices. Yet any price reduction,
without a concurrent decline in the businessman’s rate of profit, can
only be attained by means of lowering the cost of production, or the
cost price of the product. This, in turn, can be achieved, in the first
place, by wage cuts, i.e. a still greater impoverishment of a still
greater number of people, and secondly, by the rationalisation of
production through increased mechanisation of production processes and a
lesser dependence of the manufacturer on man-power. In consequence of
this, a rise in the number of unemployed is bound to occur once again,
with an ever-greater contraction of the people’s purchasing power. Thus
a further lowering of production results, with the recurrence of all the
consequences briefly described above. Hence the “planned economy” of
capitalism and its “rationalised production” process, aimed essentially
at one single target — private gain — lead logically to an increasingly
brutal dictatorship and to an intensifying concentration of financial
capital, as well as to an unnecessary curtailment of national production
and constantly rising unemployment and poverty. In short, capitalism,
which has given birth to a new social scourge, is unable to get rid of
its own evil offspring without killing itself in the process. The
logical development of this trend must unavoidably bring about the
following dilemma: either a complete disintegration of human society, or
the abolition of capitalism and the creation of anew, more progressive
social and political system. There can be no other alternative. The
modern form of social organisation has run its course and is proving, in
our times, an obstacle to human advance, as well as a source of social
decay; This out-worn system is therefore due to be relegated to the
museum of social evolutionary relics.
The days of capitalism are numbered. In its organism the process of
decomposition moves forward very rapidly indeed. All the cures, under
the guise of various reforms (towards which, incidentally, capitalism
puts up an obstinate resistance) can only prolong the agony, but are
useless as a means for full recovery. In the past,capitalism would have
saved itself from deadly crisis by seizing colonial markets and those of
agrarian nations. Nowadays, most of the colonies are themselves
competing in the world market with the metropolitan countries, while the
agrarian lands are proceeding in the direction of intensive
industrialisation; For the sake of their own security, but with an utter
disregard of the people’s interests, the capitalist countries keep on
erecting high tariff barriers between themselves, thus endeavouring to
escape from an inevitable fate. This, however, proves of as little avail
to the moribund system as medicine would be to a corpse.
Since political life is determined by economic forms, the degenerative
process which is turning bourgeois democracy into dictatorship is
self-explanatory. With an economic dictatorship of financial capital
there must arise a corresponding political dictatorship over the nation.
Accordingly, we are now witnessing parliaments degenerating either into
personal dictatorships (Italy, Poland, etc.) or into group
dictator-ships (U.S.A., France, Germany, etc.) the government becoming
an obedient and submissive tool in the hands of banks and stock
exchanges. Parliamentary democracy, at present, is no more than a
protective covering for disguised dictatorship. And dictatorship in any
shape is merely an outward symptom of the dissolution of the old social
form, an attempt on the part of the dying capitalism to stop the forward
march of progress, which, despite all obstacles, clears for us the road
of transition, an uphill and narrow road, to the more perfect forms of
organised social existence.
The greatest attempt in all history to effect a transition into a newer
social form,the Russian Revolution of 1917–21, has made it possible
actually to undertake the construction of state communism, and this
example offers an opportunity of defining and analysing the regime of
authoritarian communism.
One of its typical features lies in production being based upon
bureaucratic relationships. In other words, all instruments and means of
production and distribution,as well as the people’s labour and the human
individual himself, are entirely vested in the state, which in its turn
is the exclusive property of a scanty class of Bureaucracy. The rest of
the people are proletarianised and forced to give their labour power to
state trusts, thus creating by their toil the might of these trusts and
providing a higher economic position for the ruling class.
The bureaucratic production relationships cover the whole of social life
and place the working class in absolute dependence on the state, i.e. on
the bureaucracy. The entire population is subdivided by the state into
occupational groups and is subjected to the control of a class of
officials under whom it is compelled to labour. Moreover, the state
creates new grounds for economic inequality through the principle of a
differentiated scale of wages in accordance with the differences in
usefulness of various occupations; it grants privileges, and regards the
human person as nothing more than a source of labour power. The state,
moreover shuffles the mass of labour power at will over the length and
breadth of the land, paying no attention to any other circumstances than
its own interests, thus forcing men and women to toil under the strict
and rigorous conditions of military discipline.
In this way, the state commune transforms the workers into soulless
parts in the huge, centralised communist machine, parts who are obliged
to be directed for their whole lives to a single purpose — the maximum
fulfilment of certain production tasks decreed by the state, and who are
condemned to a minimum field of initiative, independent action and
personal choice. Such a state of affairs postulates social inequality
while, at the same time, it reinforces the class structure of society
and the predominance of the bureaucracy.
An unavoidable result of this kind of social organisation is a strong
police state,which subjugates to itself every manifestation of the
citizens’ lives. Strong by reason of its centralised power, the
communist state subjects everybody to police regimentation and, with the
help of espionage, keeps a vigilant eye upon each and all. Such a system
is bound to destroy all liberty and inevitably institutes state slavery;
one can look in vain for freedom of association, of assembly, of
knowledge and enlightenment and education, while the inviolability of
personal liberty and the privacy of the home are conspicuously absent.
The development of this system leads inevitably to an exacerbation of
its inner contradictions, and just as under private capitalism — to a
class struggle. It is, how-ever, a more difficult struggle, and one that
is likely to be suppressed with even fiercer cruelty than under
bourgeois capitalism. The Russian experiment, judged quite independently
of its builders, has fully demonstrated the unworkableness of such a
regime.
The Russian revolution, having set out with liberty and the liquidation
of bourgeois society as its starting point, has, owing to its recourse
to the aristocratic principle of dictatorship, brought us back via
“military communism” to the point of departure, to capitalism or — more
correctly — to state capitalism.
Under the bankrupt state capitalism of Russia and the discredited
socialist democracy of Germany, and also as a consequence of the
intensified decline of capitalist society throughout the world, the
fight of the workers is growing and expanding against the existing
regime and its tendency to replace the moribund bourgeois world by a
regime of state slavery. In this respect a particular importance must be
given to the revolutionary struggle of the Spanish proletariat, an event
of the great-est historical significance.
Meanwhile, continuous technical progress, leading as it does to the
consolidation of industrial concerns and the socialisation of their
production, creates the indispensable material circumstances for the
transition of capitalist economy both feasible and realistic a
successful social revolution, which is the supreme goal of the
inter-national anarchist movement of the working classes.
I believe that it behooves every honest man to urge the toiling masses
not to let the flames of revolution be extinguished. On the contrary,
their orbit should be widened, through a stimulated alertness and
independence and the creation of free labour institutions. These should
be of a type suitable to take into the workers’ own hands, on the
overthrow of capitalism, the organisation of a free life upon the just
principles of dignified work.
I fully agree with the slogan of the First International: “The
liberation of the workers must be the task of the workers themselves,”
and I believe in the class struggle as a powerful means to freedom. I
believe that the proletariat is capable of attaining its full liberty
only through revolutionary violence; that is, by direct action against
capitalism and the state, and therefore I am a revolutionary.
I believe that only a stateless form of society is compatible with human
progress, and that only under such a form of commonwealth will humanity
be able to attain full liberty, and therefore I am an anarchist.
I believe that anarchism, as a political form of society, is only
feasible in circumstances of the complete liberty of the constituent
members of the social body, as opposed to centralised rule over them.
This liberty can only be safeguarded through the principle of
federalisation; therefore I am a Federalist, or, more precisely, a
Confederalist.
I believe that for the utmost realisation and independence within a
federation,the latter must be formed of primary political organisations.
This kind of organisation implies the setting up of communes. Therefore,
I am a Communalist.
But either liberty or anarchism is unthinkable unless, within the
commune, the principle of the free individual is stringently observed.
Society has been established in order to satisfy the many and diverse
needs of the human being, and these individual needs are by no means to
be sacrificed to the community. Personality and its interests, and first
of all its freedom, are the fundamentals of the new world of a free and
creative society of workers. Therefore I am an Individualist.
I believe, however, that it is not enough to enjoy political liberty
alone. In order to be free, in the real sense of the word, one must also
be endowed with economic freedom. This kind of freedom, I am convinced,
is unattainable without the abolition of private property and the
organisation of communal production on the basis of”from each according
to their ability” and of communal consumption on the principle of “to
each according to their needs.” Therefore I am a Communist.
I believe that anarchism and communism are feasible on an international
scale only, and I do not believe in them in one country alone. Therefore
to my mind it is urgently necessary that the proletariat should be
organised in the form of international producers’ unions (or
associations). I consider that only by direct action,based upon
international proletarian solidarity, can the rule of the bourgeoisie
and the state be overcome, and that only by the international of
productive workers’ unions can the moribund capitalist world be
superseded. Therefore I am an Internationalist, for whom it is essential
to belong to a class and not to a nationality.Yet I nevertheless hold
nationality in high esteem as a form of collective manifestation of
personality.
The means by which capitalism can be overthrown and communism installed
and organised is the seizure of production by the producers’ labour
unions.Therefore I am a Syndicalist.
Men do not live in order to engage in reciprocal murder, but for the
sake of creation and enjoyment, of leading a full, abundant and happy
existence, based upon liberty, mutual respect and work by each for all
and all for each. Humanity therefore aspires undeniably to peace, which,
also, is beyond its reach as long as it lives in circumstances of
government and capitalism, which lead to perpetual warfare. I deem it my
duty to share these aspirations; I am for world peace. But I know that
mankind is able to attain peace only through victorious revolutionary
class war against the bourgeoisie. This also implies the annihilation of
the capitalist regime with all its institutions, which are shameful and
offensive in the eyes of freedom-loving human beings. One among such
institutions is the army, with its compulsory service. I am therefore
for the abolition of armies and of military budgets in all countries. I
am opposed to militarism, and consequently I am an Anti-Militarist.
The lessons of history have convinced me that all religions sanctify and
justify slavery, as well as the exploitation of the weak by the strong,
and place their Godson the side of those who represent physical might.
Religion is thus an obstacle to human progress. Besides, I have no need
for divine morality, and consider human ethics, derived from instincts
and folk customs, the best of all moral systems. Religion has outlived
its right to existence, and I fight against it as a survival of the
past. Consequently I am an Atheist.
I believe that the hour for the practical realisation of anarchism has
struck.Anarchism has ceased to be a Theory and has become a program,
and, accordingly, it has entered upon a Constructive period of its
development. I co-operate fervently in this development, and so I am a
Constructionist.
I am no maximalist in anarchism, since I hold — in view of all the
objective factors — that anarchism can hardly be fully realised at once.
On the other hand, I am no minimalist either, for I regard it as
inexpedient and unhistorical to break up the realisation of anarchism
and communism into a series of consecutive steps in imitation of the
socialists. Therefore I reject the “minimum program.” I wish to see
anarchism being brought to life today, but the degree to which anarchism
and communism would actually be made a reality, I relate directly to the
given historical moment.Therefore, within the province of anarchism, I
am a Realist.
My realistic belief in the substantiation of anarchism — now and not in
the remote and indefinite future — leads me to analyse the present
historical time as a whole, and to deduce from such analysis the
positive scope, nature and form in which anarchist communism can be
realised under the given historical circumstances. This assertion brings
me to postulate an inevitable Transition Period from capitalism to an
evolving anarchist communism. And in this way the realisation of
anarchism and communism in the given moment of history assumes, in my
view, the form of a transitional stage, which I designate a
Communalist-Syndicalist regime. The nature of that regime I define
below.
The future social revolution must take into account the circumstance
that the industry and agriculture inherited by it from capitalism would
not be uniform in the degrees of development of their various branches.
On the strength of this self-evident fact of insufficient maturity, it
might be impractical to communise many individual enterprises.
Furthermore, there are entire forms of production, for instance
agriculture, whose communisation might prove inadvisable.
Those types of production would be regarded as ripe for communisation in
which labour had already been socialised by capitalism, without the
socialisation of possessions having yet taken place. This category would
undoubtedly include almost all branches of the manufacturing and service
industries. But those branches in which, side by side with individual
labour, there would also be found individual possession, as is the case
in many forms of extractive industry and particularly in farming, would
not be considered ripe for communication. Here the path to be followed
in the transition to communism is directly opposite to the course to be
steered in the manufacturing and service industries. In the latter, the
transition would follow this road: from collective labour through
collective possession to communism,whereas in the extractive industries
the collectivisation of possession ought to be established first, and
once this had been done, the transition towards collective labour could
begin.
Socialisation of possession is a revolutionary act, involving violence
and its success depends on the use of force, whereas the socialisation
of labour is a process, which demands for its unfolding the presence of
both favourable circumstances and correct timing. Social revolutions,
therefore, can immediately introduce the collectivisation of possessions
in the whole country but cannot effect the collectivisation of Labour.
Yet collectivisation of labour is virtually the basis of communism,
which is impossible without it.
In consequence of this indisputable fact, society on the day after the
social revolution would have to reckon with two basic economic systems
which in principle are mutually hostile: a communist and an
individualist system — as well as an intermediate and transitional
system, the co-operatives. Society would have to establish a form of
relationship with the individualist economy that would favour the
latter’s speedy and painless dissolution in communism. The system of the
transitional period would therefore be characterised by Economic
Dualism, that is to say, a co-existence of communism and individualism,
the former, however, taking over the commanding positions. From this
standpoint my view of society in the transitional period is as follows.
he System of Communist Economy. All the branches of industry where
labour has already been socialised by capitalism would be syndicalised;
that is, they would pass into the hands of labour organisation, united
from below on productive industrial lines upon the principle of
Federalism, thus allowing full administrative autonomy to each link in
the organisational chain. Furthermore, syndicalised industry would be
built on the basis of Communist Industrial Relations.
All manufacturing industry would be subject to syndicalisation, with the
exception of the handicraft and domestic industries. Syndicalisation
would also apply to all service industries, including transportation,
post, telegraph, telephone, radio, public utilities, medical and public
health services, statistical, accountancy and distribution
organisations, public instruction, science, arts and the theatre; also,
to the branches of extractive industry to which capitalism has already
socialised labour, such as those connected with extraction of useful
minerals (coal, ore, metals), as well as forestry, fisheries, and the
farms where labour, through mechanisation, has already been socialised
in the course of the industrial process itself.
The organisational machinery of the communist economy is based upon
autonomous factories turned into industrial communes. In its fully
developed form this represents an economic Confederation, consisting of
the following links:
Culture.
The industrial or producers’ commune would be supplemented by the
organisation of the consumers’ commune, which would be complementary to
it, since production and consumption are inseparably bound together. The
consumers’ commune, which incidentally would carry out the broader
functions of accountancy and distribution as well would be composed of
consumers’ co-operatives, whose previously existing apparatus could be
utilised for the present purpose. The structure of a consumers’ commune
would be composed of:
and distribution;
Inasmuch as the products of economic activity would be the common
property of the National Commune, all members of it would be equals in
property rights over the common products. Consumption would therefore be
based upon the principle:To each according to their needs, the full
realisation of this principle to be dependent on the given commune’s
wealth and prosperity.
It follows then that the National Commune would be composed of
Syndicalised Production, built upon the basis of Communist Relations
between the Producers.
Outside the commune, there would remain numerous elements carrying on
the methods of individual economy, to wit: handicraftsmen, workers in
home industries,and a great proportion of the farmers.
Among artisans and home industry workers the principle of voluntary
co-operation must be applied; by offering full scope for
self-development, and for initiative,this would open the way for the use
of all the achievements of technical progress.These branches of
production, united on the pattern of syndicalised communal industries,
would be included in the proper unions, forming part of the National
Confederation of Labour. But their economic relations with the commune
would be regulated along the same lines as those of the individually
owned farms.
This principle of co-operation, furthermore, would apply to the
privately owned farms, that is to say, individual farms, operating on
plots of the socialised land, which plots would of course, cease to be
subject to purchase and sale and could not be transferred by
inheritance.
Just as the various forms of communal production would be under the
jurisdiction of the corresponding industrial unions, so the land, its
reclamation and redistribution and also domestic colonisation and
agronomy, etc., would be under the control of the Union of Farm
Communities, as a constituent element of the National Confederation of
Labour.
The farm economy of the transitional period would be represented by the
three following basic types: i. individual, ii. co-operative, and iii.
communist, the last being part and parcel of the National Commune. The
prevailing roles would of course be played by the individual type of
farming, in which productive relations based upon private ownership of
the product of labour would predominate.
The commune would abstain from entering into any economic relations with
the separate individual farms. In consequence, during the transitional
period, co-operative activities would assume the function of serving as
the only intermediary between the commune and the individualist farms of
the entire country. Co-operation would thus integrate, fully and on
every level, the millions of individual farms. The co-operative
machinery would take approximately the following shape:
The co-operative organs of the individual farms would enter into the
closest contact with the accounting and distributive organs of the
communes. The commune on its side would establish a Bank of Exchange and
Credit with numerous branch offices throughout the country. This would
transact all exchange and credit operations both at home and abroad.
Thus the individual farms would voluntarily pass on all their surplus
produce to their own co-operative associations, which would take upon
themselves the functions of purchase and sale. The co-operative
associations would transfer their produce to the Bank of the Commune and
its branches. They would be paid both by monetary tokens and by all the
commodities demanded by consumers. Thus, the market, speculation,
commercial capital, and commerce itself, would all be abolished.
The individualist farms, on a basis of equality with the commune, would
be able to avail themselves, free of charge, of the transport
facilities, roads, telephones, telegraph, radio, public instruction,
medical and public health services, and other public utilities of the
commune. However the commune would ask a certain annual contribution
from the individual farms, to be paid in kind. The form and amount of
this taxation would be laid down by the Convention of the National
Confederation of Labour, but its collection would be entrusted to the
Bank of the Commune and its branches.to be executed through commodity
exchange.
This, as I visualise it, would be the economic regime of the new society
on the day after the social revolution.
In the political sphere, the State would be replaced by a Confederation
of Free Communes with their Councils(soviets); that is, Communalism
would be substituted for Statism. The councils (soviets) of the Communes
together with the associations of such councils, up to and including the
Confederal Association of Councils, would not be endowed with any
prerogatives of power.
With the liberty of the individual as a starting point, the communalist
regime -through a free union of individuals into communes, of communes
into provinces and of provinces into nations offers the only right
solution of the national problem, namely, a natural national unity in
diversity, founded on liberty and equality.
As to the organisation of military defence for this society, one can
think only of a General Arming of the Workers as the basis for a
People’s Militia, reinforced by all the technical and organisational
attainments of military science. The people’s militia, organised on an
industrial basis, would be subordinated to the productive associations,
and in times of peace would be engaged in productive efforts of a useful
kind.
As to peace and public security, a citizen guard’s service would be
organised for this purpose, with the help of the House Committees. The
citizens themselves would in turn fulfil the general duty of defence;
that is to say, self-defence with no central organ from above.
The existing courts would be replaced by voluntary tribunals of
arbitration, and in cases of grave crimes, connected with manslaughter
or offences against liberty and equality, a special communal court of a
non-permanent nature would be set up,since courts as permanent
institutions would be abolished. Prisons would also be done away with.
Schools, hospitals, doctors and -above all — public welfare and liberty
might prove the safest means to get rid of criminals and crimes
altogether.
Thus, as the warp of the fabric of future anarchist society, there can
be laid down, in my opinion, the following three essential and basic
institutions:
production, to a fruitful communism of producers;
co-operation,towards a consumers communism;
in diversity,that is, a Confederation of Peoples based upon liberty and
equality.
However, I do not imagine the future society to be cast in just this
rather simplified and schematic mould. To my mind, indeed, it is likely
to take on a far more complex configuration, wherein the main texture
would be interwoven with such an infinite variety of interlinked groups,
that it would readily respond to the most diverse demands and needs of
the free human person.