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Title: Anarchism: Contracting Other Relationships Author: Geoffrey Ostergaard Date: October 1962 Language: en Topics: anarchism, state socialism, workers' control Source: Retrieved on 4th March 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-contracting-other-relationships Notes: From Anarchy #020
SINCE THE DAYS OF MARX and largely owing to the influence of Marx,
socialism has been conceived in terms of ownership. Until recently at
least, a socialist has been defined as one who believes in common,
usually State, ownership as opposed to private ownership. However, with
the experience of Russia and even this country to guide us, it is
becoming increasingly evident, as it has been evident to anarchists all
along, that a mere change of ownership effects no radical change in
social relations. When common ownership takes the form of State
ownership, all that happens is that the State becomes the universal
employer and the possibilities of tyranny are multiplied by the union of
economic and political power. The values underlying capitalism are not
changed; the worker remains essentially a thing, a commodity, a unit of
labour: he has only changed one set of masters, the capitalists, for
another set of masters, the political and managerial bureaucrats.
A change of ownership in the means of production may be a necessary
condition for the transformation of a capitalist into a co-operative
social order but it is not, as most socialists have assumed, a
sufficient condition. What matters to the worker is not who owns the
enterprise he works in but “the actual and realistic conditions of his
work, the relation of the workers to his work, to his fellow-workers and
to those directing the enterprise.” It is for this reason that
anarchists remain today the advocates of workers’ control of industry —
a condition in which all would participate on equal terms in determining
the organisation of their working lives; where work would become
meaningful and attractive; and where capital would not employ labour but
labour, capital.
Anarchism, it may be objected, is all very well in theory but fails, or
would fail, in practice. Anarchists, however, would not accept the
implied opposition between theory and practice: good theory leads to
good practice and good practice is based on good theory. I do not say
that it is easy to act anarchistically: the temptation to act in an
authoritarian manner — to impose solutions rather than to resolve
difficulties — is always very great; and it may be that in the short run
at least, authoritarian organisations are more efficient in their
results. But efficiency, exalted by capitalist and modern socialist
alike, is only one value and too high a price can be paid for it. More
important than efficiency is the dignity of the responsible individual
and solutions to what used to be called “the social problem” are not
worth applying unless they are consonant with individual dignity and
responsibility.
The task of the anarchist is not, however, to dream about the future
society; rather it is to act as anarchistically as he can within the
present society; to avoid as far as possible situations in which he is
commanded or is impelled to command; and to endeavour to foster
relations of mutual and voluntary co-operation between his fellow-men.
In the modern world, the State is the most important manifestation of
the principle of coercion. To achieve anarchy, therefore, the State must
be dispensed with; and it will be dispensed with to the extent that men
become capable of living without it. As the German anarchist, Gustav
Landauer, puts it: “The State is a condition, a certain relationship
between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting
other relationships, by behaving differently.”
In the last analysis, an anarchist is not a person who subscribes to a
certain body of doctrine or set of beliefs: he is a person who behaves,
or strives to behave, differently — in a way consistent with respect for
the individuality inherent in all men.