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Title: Now and After Author: Anarcho Date: April 24, 2020 Language: en Topics: anarchy, libertarian socialism Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=1135 Notes: This is a write up of a talk I gave in Glasgow in 2018 entitled Now and After: What would Anarchy be like and how we create the new world by fighting the current one. It summarises anarchist ideas of what a free society would be like and how we get there. As with my previous write-ups, this reflects more what I intended to say rather than what was said. Hopefully it will be close enough. For more details of the ideas raised here, see Section I of An Anarchist FAQ.
We are all familiar with John Lennon’s musical take on Communism and its
refrain of “imagine all the people”. It has become a bit of a cliché,
but we should never forget that dreams are important. As Rudolf Rocker
put it in his memoirs of his activism in London:
“People may […] call us dreamers […] They fail to see that dreams are
also a part of the reality of life, that life without dreams would be
unbearable. No change in our way of life would be possible without
dreams and dreamers. The only people who are never disappointed are
those who never hope and never try to realise their hope.”
Tonight I am going to discuss these dreams and show that they are more
than that because they are rooted in a firm understanding of what is
wrong with society and how we can change it.
It is important to note that Anarchists do not abstractly compare now to
an ideal.
Rather, as Proudhon and Kropotkin stressed, we analyse tendencies within
current society. There are two kinds – some reinforce present
inequalities while others undermine these and point beyond them. We
build our hopes and dreams on the latter which fighting the former. In
addition, we analyse past social movements and revolutions in order to
learn from the past, rather than repeat it.
This means we build a theory and a movement based on combining analysis
and activity, one which rejects wishful thinking and unrealistic
assumptions, one which I must stress is not a prescription but rather
presents principles and suggestions which can and must be tailored to
specific situations and needs. Simply put, the notion that we can
produce detailed descriptions of a free society is false – blueprints
will never match the needs of a dynamic and evolving society nor the
struggles and activities required to create it.
So what is wrong with capitalism? This is no idle query for what is
wrong with capitalism shapes what we think should replace it. The main
issues with modern society are obvious: property, statism, personal and
institutional hierarchies (such as sexism, racism, homophobia,
sectarianism, etc.) and ecological destruction. These are all connected
and interwoven for anarchism is, as Kropotkin put it, “on one side,
criticism of hierarchical organisations and authoritarian conceptions in
general; and, on the other side, the analysis of tendencies that are
emerging in the progressive movements of humanity – in the past and
especially in modern times.” Thus, for example, the “capitalist
principle” and the “governmental principle” are “one and the same
principle” as Proudhon argued long ago.
Property, to use Proudhon’s words again, “is despotism” as it produces a
system in which workers sell their arms and liberty to the master class.
Property “is theft” for, as a result, workers are exploited within
production and wealth floods upwards into the hands of a few. For the
many it is grim – “the worker is subordinated, exploited: his permanent
condition is one of obedience and poverty” – and profit, rent and
interest are all little more than a tax on being alive.
Much the same can be said of the State as the few, whether elected or
not, rule and exploit the many in a centralised, top-down structure.
This inevitably produces a bureaucracy, which is the real power in the
State due to its permanency. Thus, in a so-called democratic State, the
sovereign people alienate their power into the hands of a few elected
politicians who are subject to pressures from capitalists and
bureaucrats. More, the State exists to defends property and its power.
This system impacts negatively on the ecology of our planet. Capitalism
is based on grow or die – we need not ponder too long the
unsustainability of infinite expansion within a finite eco-system. Yet
ecological problems are not limited to just capitalism for the
domination of ecology is, as Murray Bookchin argued, rooted in
domination within humanity. Ultimately, centralistion of power, whether
economic or political, reduces diversity and monocultures are not
ecologically viable – eco-systems need diversity. Simply put, as Élisée
Reclus argued, the current system drives ecological destruction:
“it matters little to the industrialist […] whether he blackens the
atmosphere with fumes […] or contaminates it with foul-smelling vapours
[…] Since nature is so often desecrated by speculators precisely because
of its beauty, it is not surprising that farmers and industrialists, in
their own exploitative endeavours, fail to consider whether they
contribute to defacing the land.”
Therefore all our problems are, at root, driven by one thing: hierarchy
or what anarchists used to call “the principle of authority”. As
Proudhon memorably put it:
“To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled,
estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither
the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so…. To be governed is
to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered,
enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed,
authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is,
under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general
interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited,
monopolised, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the
slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed,
fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked,
imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold,
betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured.
That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
And this applies within work as outwith it, with the petty authority of
the boss just as degrading to the human spirit as that of the bureaucrat
or the politician.
So that is what is wrong, that is why we want to transform society. This
is what drives our dreams and hopes of the future society.
However, we libertarians reject the a priori “organisation of labour” so
beloved of a certain type of socialist. This is because labour must
organise itself for the simple reason that, to quote Kropotkin, the
“changes that will result from the social revolution will be so immense
and so profound […] that it will be impossible for one or even a number
of individuals to elaborate the [new] social forms [This] can only be
the collective work of the masses.” This means that “[t]o make a
revolution it is not [...] enough that there should be [...] [popular]
risings [...] It is necessary that after the risings there should be
something new in the institutions [of society], which would permit new
forms of life to be elaborated and established.”
This is what I will seek to indicate now, based on a few general
principles developed from our critique of capitalism and an analysis of
previous social movements and revolutions.
The first is free association which means, to quote Proudhon, that
“[t]here will no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the
political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth.
Whatever a man’s race or colour, he is really a native of the universe;
he has citizen’s rights everywhere” – in the community, in the
workplace, in the home, in the club, everywhere.
The next is the awareness of what is important. As Kropotkin stressed:
“Under the name of profits, rent, interest upon capital […] economists
have eagerly discussed the benefits which the owners of land or capital
[…] can derive […] from the under-paid work of the wage-labourer […] the
great question ‘What have we to produce, and how?’ necessarily remained
in the background… The main subject of social economy – that is, the
economy of energy required for the satisfaction of human needs is
consequently the last subject which one expects to find treated in a
concrete form in economical treatises.”
This perspective applies to all aspects of life – political (more
correctly, social), economic and individual (interpersonal
relationships). It would be based on socialisation to ensure the end of
master-servant relations, the abolition of the State, the abolition of
property and wage-labour and the abolition of “private” hierarchies
(most obviously, patriarchal marriage).
Or, more positively, association or self-management. Just as capitalism
is an economy but not all economies are capitalist, so the State is a
social organisation but not all social organisations are States.
I will start with the economic aspects of anarchy for no reason other
than that we need to start somewhere.
Economic liberty will come about by winning the class war, in other
words turning the Strike Committee into the Workplace Committee when
“the workers, organised by trades […] seize all branches of industry
[and] manage these industries for the benefit of society”, to use
Kropotkin’s words. This would be the means by which wage-slavery is
replaced by workers’ self-management – and this is key as Herbert Read
put it in Anarchy and Order:
“The essential principle of anarchism is that mankind has reached a
stage of development at which it is possible to abolish the old
relationship of master-man (capitalist-proletarian) and substitute a
relationship of egalitarian co-operation. This principle is based, not
only on ethical ground, but also on economic grounds.”
Simply put, as Bakunin recognised, “[o]nly associated labour […] is
adequate to the task of maintaining […] civilised society”.
This requires socialisation. Why? It is needed for self-management of
production, As Proudhon put it in 1840, in the same work he proclaimed
himself an anarchist, in a genuinely socialist workplace the “leaders
[…] must be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves, and must
fulfil the conditions of eligibility.” To achieve this, as he explained
six years later, all workers have to “straightway enjoy the rights and
prerogatives of associates and even managers […] In order that
association may be real, he who participates in it must do so […] an
active factor; he must have a deliberative voice in the council […]
everything regarding him, in short, should be regulated in accordance
with equality”. Only this could ensure that “an industrial democracy
must follow industrial feudalism”, to use his words from 1857.
This required free access – or socialisation. Rejecting capitalism and
State-socialism, this would – as he put it in 1846 – require “a solution
based on equality […] the organisation of labour, which involves the
negation of political economy and the end of property.” Thus “under
universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of
labour is social ownership”, in the words of a manifesto he issued
during the height of the 1848 Revolution.
Can self-management work? In terms of ending despotism in production,
the evidence is clear from an example of an actual revolution as Emma
Goldman recounted of her time in revolutionary Catalonia:
“I was especially impressed with the replies to my questions as to what
actually had the [Spanish] workers gained by the collectivisation […]
the answer always was, first, greater freedom. And only secondly, more
wages and less time of work. In two years in Russia [1920–21] I never
heard any workers express this idea of greater freedom.”
The workers and peasants of Spain created a war industry to help fight
Franco and kept the economy going in the extremely difficult
circumstances of a civil war at the height of the Great Depression. Yet
we do not need to look at revolutionary situations for the evidence is
also clear from experiments conducted under capitalism. Thus, as Alan S.
Blinder summarised in his book Paying for Productivity, there is a
“positive link between profit sharing and productivity” and the
“evidence is strongly suggestive that for employee ownership [...] to
have a strong impact on performance, it needs to be accompanied by
provisions for worker participation in decision making”. Moreover,
“narrow differences in wages and status […] increase productivity”.
This shows the power of economic liberty – for we should never forget,
to use the words of Guild Socialist G. D. H. Cole in his book
Self-Government in Industry, that “[p]overty is the symptom: slavery the
disease. The extremes of riches and destitution follow inevitably upon
the extremes of license and bondage. The many are not enslaved because
they are poor, they are poor because they are enslaved.” This means that
the “key to real efficiency is self-government; and any system that is
not based upon self-government is not only servile, but also
inefficient. Just as the labour of the wage-slave is better than the
labour of the chattel-slave, so […] will the labour of the free man [and
woman] be better than either.”
Which means that capitalism and its hierarchies and inequalities are
damned as not only being unjust and immoral but also a hinderance to
productivity – the very thing they are meant to foster.
So economic liberty means self-management in the workplace, industrial
democracy. But just as no man is an island, so no workplace is
self-sufficient. What would be the relations between associations?
Different libertarian socialist schools of thought have different ideas
on the subject.
All, however, have a common basis in self-management (use rights) – as
Noam Chomsky said, a “consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership
of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of
this system” – and all see the need for an agro-industrial federation
for regulation, co-operation and mutual support as well as free
agreement (“contracts”) between self-managed workplaces.
Mutualism is a market socialism based on competitive exchange of
products of labour (but not labour itself), Collectivism sees the
exchange of products as being based on labour-value pricing while
Communism (libertarian, of course!) favours distribution according to
need rather than deed (and would need an agreed basis to evaluate costs
and alternatives). Needless to say, any real revolution will see all
tried – and others (including non-anarchist ones).
Now we turn to the social structure. This is more straight-forward in
many ways as people have always lived in communities while complex
industrial economics are a more recent development. Yet here we follow
the same path as in the economic structure as we can easily see how
community revolt can be transformed into communal assemblies. As Bakunin
argued:
“The Commune will be organised by the standing federation of the
Barricades and by the creation of a Revolutionary Communal Council
composed of one or two delegates from each barricade […] vested with
plenary but accountable and removable mandates”
Thus the class struggle is the means by which community self-government
can be created – or, more correctly, recreated as this has existed long
before the State appeared. This is the only way in which people can
manage their common affairs. To use Kropotkin’s conclusions from his
study of the French Revolution of 1793:
“The ‘permanence’ of the general assemblies of the sections – that is,
the possibility of calling the general assembly whenever it was wanted
by the members of the section and of discussing everything in the
general assembly […] will educate every citizen politically […] The
section in permanence – the forum always open – is the only way […] to
assure an honest and intelligent administration.“
These community groupings and federations would be based on committees
of elected, mandated and recallable delegates and not representatives
(politicians) – as would, of course, be those of the
agricultural-industrial federation.
Just as individuals need to work together within associations, so there
is a need to co-operate above the association level. Hence the need for
federations – which would exist in addition to free agreements
(“contracts”) between associations.
These federal councils would be of varying degrees of temporality –
ad-hoc, occasional and the more or less permanent. Which is suitable
would depend on the objective needs of each specific situation or
function. Again, regardless of their duration, these would be councils
of delegates rather than representatives for, as Proudhon argued during
the 1848 Revolution the “choice of talents, the imperative mandate, and
permanent revocability are the most immediate and incontestable
consequences of the electoral principle. It is the inevitable program of
all democracy.” This would allow the individuals in the base assemblies
to have the final say for, to quote Proudhon again, “the federative
system is the opposite of administrative and governmental hierarchy or
centralisation”.
So why federations? Simply to organise activities of joint interest and
need. As Proudhon argued, federation would be based on “the initiative
of communes and departments as to works that operate within their
jurisdiction” in addition to “the initiative of the workers companies as
to carrying the works out”. This is because “the direct, sovereign
initiative of localities, in arranging for public works that belong to
them, is a consequence of the democratic principle and the free
contract”.
Needless to say, myths notwithstanding, anarchists are not opposed to
large scale industry. Rather, we are in favour of appropriate
technological levels – where what is appropriate is based on human
criteria rather than profits or ideology. Federations, likewise, would
likewise operate on an appropriate level when deciding what to
co-ordinate. This means that federations would organise large-scale
investments (whether social or economic) as well as mutual support and
co-operation.
Which means we have a definition of an Anarchy – a free individuals
freely joining free associations within free federations.
This would be based upon and encourage, as Kropotkin stressed,
individualisation and not the self-defeating “individualism” of
capitalism. This is because the free individual “secures equality in all
personal relationships with his [or her] co-members” for “without
communism man will never be able to reach that full development of
individuality which is, perhaps, the most powerful desire of every
thinking being” – not least because it would “guarantee to all
well-being and even luxury by only asking man for a few hours of work
per day instead of the whole day”. It would also allow a “variety of
occupations and organising in such a way so that man is not only
absolutely free during his hours of leisure but also that he can vary
his work, and that from childhood education prepares him for this […] is
again to free the individual; it is to open the doors wide for his
complete development in every direction”.
In short, a world fit for humans to life in rather than, as now, one in
which the many survive.
Utopian, some may say. Yet anarchists are not utopians for we recognise
that no system is perfect. This is for the very sound reason that people
are not perfect and will never be (that is evolution for you!).
Therefore we are always aware of the danger that even the best
individuals and best organisation can become corrupted, can fail. That
is why we advocate free association, federalism, elections, mandates and
recall – hierarchy and bureaucracy can gestate anywhere.
Anarchists do not believe people are inherently good – for if we did,
how could we explain the rise of property and government? No, people
have the potential for being good and bad and which predominates depends
on the social environment. Which means that, yes, people can be bad –
yet this is not an argument against anarchy. Why? Well, if humanity is
bad, then why give flawed, bad people power over others? As Kropotkin
noted long ago:
“We maintain that both rulers and ruled are spoiled by authority; both
exploiters and exploited are spoiled by exploitation […] We admit the
imperfections of human nature, but we make no exception for the rulers.
They make it, although sometimes unconsciously, and because we make no
such exception, they say that we are dreamers, ‘unpractical men.’”
So there will be anti-social individuals, individual conflict,
disagreements within a libertarian socialist society and we argue for
processes based on voluntary arbitration to resolve them. Moreover, we
see mutual aid and solidarity as the best defence against the
anti-social and power-seekers:
“Provided that you yourself do not abdicate your freedom, provided that
you yourself do not allow others to enslave you; and provided that to
the violent and anti-social passions of this or that person you oppose
your equally vigorous social passions, you have nothing to fear from
liberty”
Simply put, there will always be arseholes…. the difference would be
that there will be fewer of them and they would not, as now, be in
power! Which means that anarchists do not envision a perfect world, just
a better one… and, we can all agree, that would not be hard.
Which is why Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is so good. For those who
are unaware of this classic book, it is a “warts and all”
Science-Fiction work imagining of an anarchist society – in both its
good points and its possible problems and dangers. It shows an appealing
society but one in which co-operation has started to become conformity
and federation has started to become bureaucracy. Yet, crucially, it
also showed the role of minorities in challenging these developments.
As Kropotkin recognised in Mutual Aid, “there is, and always has been,
[…] the self-assertion of the individual […] in its much more important
although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always
prone to become crystallised, which the tribe, the village community,
the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words,
there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive
element.” As such, a free society would not see the role of rebels ended
– they would still exist, as Le Guin imagined, even in the best society
you can imagine.
Anarchists, then, are realistic and recognise that achieving Anarchy
does not negate the need for rebels for, as Kropotkin put it, “variety,
conflict even, is life, and that uniformity is death” – and this, I must
reiterate, applies to an Anarchy as much as today.
I have sketched what is wrong about what Now and indicated how that
informs an appealing and plausible After – how do we get from the one to
the other? The answer has been indicated but Kropotkin put it well in
Modern Science and Anarchy:
“what means can the State provide to abolish this [capitalist] monopoly
that the working class could not find in its own strength and groups?
[…] Could its governmental machine, developed for the creation and
upholding of these [capitalist] privileges, now be used to abolish them?
Would not the new function require new organs? And these new organs
would they not have to be created by the workers themselves, in their
unions, their federations, completely outside the State?”
In other words, it is a case of creating the new world while fighting
the current one.
Thus, to quote Kropotkin again, “the direct struggle of Labour against
Capital […] while serving far more powerfully than any indirect action
to secure some improvements in the life of the worker and opening up the
eyes of the workers to the evil done to society by capitalist
organisation and by the State that upholds it, […] also awakes in the
worker thoughts concerning the forms of consumption, production and
direct exchange between those concerned, without the intervention of the
capitalist and the State.” For example, “[a]ny strike trains the
participants for a common management of affairs” and the same can be
said of community struggles.
As well as breaking the mental chains produced by being born into and
having to survive within a hierarchical society, as well as getting us
used to managing our own fates, the class struggle also create the
structures of a free society. Thus, to use Bakunin’s words, “[t]he
organisation of the trade sections, their federation [….] by the
Chambers of Labour […] combining theory and practice […] also bear in
themselves the living germs of the new social order, which is to replace
the bourgeois world. They are creating not only the ideas but also the
facts of the future itself.”
That is how we get from here to there – we only become capable of living
in a free world by fighting to create it.
We can all agree that history shows the validity of Bakunin’s comment
that “[w]e are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and
injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.”
State socialism has failed – the only viable version of socialism is
libertarian or free socialism, anarchism. That capitalism has outlived
the nightmare of Stalinism does not mean it is that much better nor does
it mean we cannot do better – we can and we must.
Only anarchism recognises that, as Emma Goldman put it, that “[r]eal
wealth consists of things of utility and beauty, in things that help
create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.”
Such a society will not fall from the skies – we need to fight for it.
In so doing, we change both the world and ourselves – indeed, as Juan
García Oliver noted, “[w]ho hasn’t been changed by the revolution? It
wouldn’t be worth making it just to continue being the same.” Only
Anarchism can create the “the possibility of a society in which the
needs of life may be fully supplied for all, and in which the
opportunities for complete development of mind and body shall be the
heritage of all”, to use Voltairine de Cleyre’s words.
We suffer the Now, we can envision the After – it is up to us whether we
can turn our dreams into reality.