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version of Section I.
I.4 How could an anarchist economy function?
This is an important question facing all opponents of a given system -- what
will you replace it with? We can say, of course, that it is pointless
to make blueprints of how a future anarchist society will work as
the future will be created by everyone, not just the few anarchists
and libertarian socialists who write books and FAQs. This is very
true, we cannot predict what a free society will actually be like
or develop and we have no intention to do so here. However, this reply
(whatever its other merits) ignores a key point, people need to have
some idea of what anarchism aims for before they decide to spend their
lives trying to create it.
So, how would an anarchist system function? That depends on the
economic ideas people have. A mutualist economy will function differently
than a communist one, for example, but they will have similar features.
As Rudolf Rocker put it:
"Common to all Anarchists is the desire to free society of all
political and social coercive institutions which stand in the
way of the development of a free humanity. In this sense,
Mutualism, Collectivism, and Communism are not to be regarded
as closed systems permitting no further development, but merely
assumptions as to the means of safeguarding a free community. There
will even probably be in the society of the future different forms
of economic co-operation existing side-by-side, since any social
progress must be associated with that free experimentation and
practical testing-out for which in a society of free communities
there will be afforded every opportunity." [Anarcho-Syndicalism,
p. 16]
So, given the common aims of anarchists, its unsurprising that the
economic systems they suggest will have common features such as workers'
self-management, federation, free agreement and so on. For all anarchists,
the "economy" is seen as a "voluntary association that will organise
labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities"
and this "is to make what is useful. The individual is to make
what is beautiful." [Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under
Socialism, p. 1183] For example, the machine "will supersede
hand-work in the manufacture of plain goods. But at the same time,
hand-work very probably will extend its domain in the artistic finishing
of many things which are made entirely in the factory." [Peter
Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workplaces Tomorrow, p. 152]
Murray Bookchin, decades later, argued for the same idea: "the
machine will remove the toil from the productive process, leaving
its artistic completion to man." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism,
p. 134]
This "organisation of labour touches only such labours as others
can do for us. . . the rest remain egoistic, because no one can in
your stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out your projects
of painting, etc.; nobody can replace Raphael's labours. The latter
are labours of a unique person, which only he is competent to achieve."
[Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 268] Stirner goes on
to ask "for whom is time to be gained [by association]? For what
does man require more time than is necessary to refresh his wearied
powers of labour? Here Communism is slient." He then answers his
own question by arguing it is gained for the individual "[t]o take
comfort in himself as unique, after he has done his part as man!"
[Op. Cit., p. 269] Which is exactly what Kropotkin also argued:
"He [sic!] will discharge his task in the field, the factory, and
so on, which he owes to society as his contribution to the general
production. And he will employ the second half of his day, his week,
or his year, to satisfy his artistic or scientific needs, or his
hobbies." [Conquest of Bread, p. 111]
Thus, while authoritarian Communism ignores the unique individual
(and that was the only kind of Communism existing when Stirner wrote
his classic book) libertarian communists agree with Stirner
and are not silent. Like him, they consider the whole point of organising
labour as the means of providing the individual the time and resources
required to express their individuality. In other words, to pursue
"labours of a unique person." Thus all anarchists base their
arguments for a free society on how it will benefit actual individuals,
rather than abstracts or amorphous collectives (such as "society").
Hence chapter 9 of The Conquest of Bread, "The Need for
Luxury" and, for that matter, chapter 10, "Agreeable Work."
Or, to bring this ideal up to day, as Chomsky put it, "[t]he
task for a modern industrial society is to achieve what is now technically
realisable, namely, a society which is really based on free voluntary
participation of people who produce and create, live their lives freely
within institutions they control, and with limited hierarchical structures,
possibly none at all." [quoted by Albert and Hahnel in Looking
Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century,
p. 62]
In other words, anarchists desire to organise voluntary workers
associations which will try to ensure a minimisation of mindless labour
in order to maximise the time available for creative activity both
inside and outside "work." This is to be achieved by free co-operation
between equals, for while competition may be the "law of the jungle",
co-operation is the law of civilisation.
This co-operation is not based on "altruism," but
self-interest. As Proudhon argued, "[m]utuality, reciprocity exists
when all the workers in an industry instead of working for an entrepreneur
who pays them and keeps their products, work for one another and thus
collaborate in the making of a common product whose profits they share
amongst themselves. Extend the principle of reciprocity as uniting
the work of every group, to the Workers' Societies as units, and you
have created a form of civilisation which from all points of view
- political, economic and aesthetic - is radically different from
all earlier civilisations." [quoted by Martin Buber, Paths
in Utopia, pp. 29-30] In other words, solidarity and co-operation
allows us time to enjoy life and to gain the benefits of our labour
ourselves - Mutual Aid results in a better life than mutual struggle
and so "the association for struggle will be a much more
effective support for civilisation, progress, and evolution than is
the struggle for existence with its savage daily competitions."
[Luigi Geallani, The End of Anarchism, p. 26]
In the place of the rat race of capitalism, economic activity in
an anarchist society would be one of the means to humanise and individualise
ourselves and society, to move from surviving to living.
Productive activity should become a means of self-expression, of joy,
of art, rather than something we have to do to survive. Ultimately,
"work" should become more akin to play or a hobby than the
current alienated activity. The priorities of life should be towards
individual self-fulfilment and humanising society rather than "running
society as an adjunct to the market," to use Polanyi's expression,
and turning ourselves into commodities on the labour market. Thus
anarchists agree with John Stuart Mill when he wrote:
"I confess I am not charmed with an ideal of life held out by
those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of
struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and
treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of
social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything
but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial
progress." [Collected Works, vol. III, p. 754]
The aim of anarchism is far more than the end of poverty. Hence
Proudhon's comment that socialism's "underlying dogma" is that
the "objective of socialism is the emancipation of the proletariat
and the eradication of poverty." This emancipation would be achieved
by ending "wage slavery" via "democratically organised workers'
associations." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 57 and
p.62] Or, in Kropotkin's words, "well-being for all" -- physical,
mental and moral! Indeed, by concentrating on just poverty and ignoring
the emancipation of the proletariat, the real aims of socialism are
obscured. As Kropotkin argued:
"The 'right to well-being' means the possibility of living like
human beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a
society better than ours, whilst the 'right to work' only means
the right to be a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited
by the middle class of the future. The right to well-being is the
Social Revolution, the right to work means nothing but the
Treadmill of Commercialism. It is high time for the worker to
assert his right to the common inheritance, and to enter into
possession of it." [The Conquest of Bread, p. 44]
Combined with this desire for free co-operation is a desire to end
centralised systems. The opposition to centralisation is often framed
in a distinctly false manner. This can be seen when Alex Nove, a leading
market socialist, argues that "there are horizontal links (market),
there are vertical links (hierarchy). What other dimension is there?"
[Alex Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism, p. 226] In
other words, Nove states that to oppose central planning means to
embrace the market. This, however, is not true. Horizontal links need
not be market based any more than vertical links need be hierarchical.
But the core point in his argument is very true, an anarchist society
must be based essentially on horizontal links between individuals
and associations, freely co-operating together as they (not a central
body) sees fit. This co-operation will be source of any "vertical"
links in an anarchist economy. When a group of individuals or associations
meet together and discuss common interests and make common decisions
they will be bound by their own decisions. This is radically different
from a a central body giving out orders because those affected will
determine the content of these decisions. In other words, instead
of decisions being handed down from the top, they will be created
from the bottom up.
So, while refusing to define exactly how an anarchist system will
work, we will explore the implications of how the anarchist principles
and ideals outlined above could be put into practice. Bear in mind
that this is just a possible framework for a system which has few
historical examples to draw upon as evidence. This means that we can
only indicate the general outlines of what an anarchist society could
be like. Those seeking "recipes" and exactness should look
elsewhere. In all likelihood, the framework we present will be modified
and changed (even ignored) in light of the real experiences and problems
people will face when creating a new society.
Lastly we should point out that there may be a tendency for some
to compare this framework with the theory of capitalism (i.e.
perfectly functioning "free" markets or quasi-perfect ones)
as opposed to its reality. A perfectly working capitalist system only
exists in text books and in the heads of ideologues who take the theory
as reality. No system is perfect, particularly capitalism, and to
compare "perfect" capitalism with any system is a pointless
task. In addition, there will be those who seek to apply the "scientific"
principles of the neo-classical economics to our ideas. By so doing
they make what Proudhon called "the radical vice of political economy",
namely "affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition
-- namely, the division of society intto patricians and proletares."
[System of Economical Contradictions, p. 67] Thus any attempt
to apply the "laws" developed from theorising about capitalism
to anarchism will fail to capture the dynamics of a non-capitalist
system (given that neo-classical economics fails to understand the
dynamics of capitalism, what hope does it have of understanding non-capitalist
systems which reject the proprietary despotism and inequalities of
capitalism?).
John Crump stresses this point in his discussion of Japanese anarchism:
"When considering the feasibility of the social system
advocated by the pure anarchists, we need to be clear
about the criteria against which it should be measured.
It would, for example, be unreasonable to demand that
it be assessed against such yardsticks of a capitalist
economy as annual rate of growth, balance of trade
and so forth . . . evaluating anarchist communism by
means of the criteria which have been devised to
measure capitalism's performance does not make sense
. . . capitalism would be . . . baffled if it were
demanded that it assess its operations against the
performance indicators to which pure anarchists
attached most importance, such as personal liberty,
communal solidarity and the individual's unconditional
right to free consumption. Faced with such demands,
capitalism would either admit that these were not
yardsticks against which it could sensibly measure
itself or it would have to resort to the type of
grotesque ideological subterfuges which it often
employs, such as identifying human liberty with the
market and therefore with wag slavery. . . The pure
anarchists' confidence in the alternative society
they advocated derived not from an expectation that
it would quantitatively outperform capitalism in
terms of GNP, productivity or similar capitalist
criteria. On the contrary, their enthusiasm for
anarchist communism flowed from their understanding
that it would be qualitatively different from
capitalism. Of course, this is not to say that the
pure anarchists were indifferent to questions of
production and distribution . . . they certainly
believed that anarchist communism would provide
economic well-being for all. But neither were they
prepared to give priority to narrowly conceived
economic expansion, to neglect individual liberty
and communal solidarity, as capitalism regularly
does." [Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in Interwar
Japan, pp. 191-3]
As Kropotkin argued, "academic political economy has been only
an enumeration of what happens under the . . . conditions [of capitalism]
-- without distinctly stating the conditions themselves. And then,
having described the facts [academic neo-classical economics
usually does not even do that, we must stress, but Kropotkin had in
mind the likes of Adam Smith and Ricardo, not modern neo-classical
economics] which arise in our societies under these conditions, they
represent to use these facts as rigid, inevitable economic
laws." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 179]
So, by changing the conditions we change the "economic laws"
of a society and so capitalist economics is not applicable to post
(or pre) capitalist society (nor are its justifications for existing
inequalities in wealth and power).
The basic point of economic activity is an anarchist society is to ensure
that we produce what we desire to consume and that our consumption
is under our own control and not vice versa. The second point may
seem strange; how can consumption control us -- we consume what we
desire and no one forces us to do so! It may come as a surprise that
the idea that we consume only what we desire is not quite true under
a capitalist economy. Capitalism, in order to survive, must
expand, must create more and more profits. This leads to irrational
side effects, for example, the advertising industry. While it goes
without saying that producers need to let consumers know what is available
for consumption, capitalism ensures advertising goes beyond this by
creating needs that did not exist.
Therefore, the point of economic activity in an anarchist society
is to produce as and when required and not, as under capitalism, to
organise production for the sake of production. Production, to use
Kropotkin's words, is to become "the mere servant of consumption;
it must mould itself on the wants of the consumer, not dictate to
him [or her] conditions." [Act For Yourselves, p. 57] However,
while the basic aim of economic activity in an anarchist society is,
obviously, producing wealth -- i.e. of satisfying individual needs
-- without enriching capitalists or other parasites in the process,
it is far more than that. Yes, an anarchist society will aim to create
society in which everyone will have a standard of living suitable
for a fully human life. Yes, it will aim to eliminate poverty, inequality,
individual want and social waste and squalor, but it aims for far
more than that. It aims to create free individuals who express their
individuality within and without "work." After all, what is
the most important thing that comes out of a workplace? Pro-capitalists
may say profits, others the finished commodity or good. In fact, the
most important thing that comes out of a workplace is the worker.
What happens to them in the workplace will have an impact on all aspects
of their life and so cannot be ignored.
Therefore, for anarchists, "[r]eal wealth consists of things
of utility and beauty, in things that help create strong, beautiful
bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in." Anarchism's "goal
is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the
individual . . . [and this] is only possible in a state of society
where man [and woman] is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions
of work, and the freedom to work. One whom making a table, the building
of a house, or the tilling of the soil is what the painting is to
the artist and the discovery to the scientist -- the result of inspiration,
of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force."
[Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks, p. 53 and p. 54]
To value "efficiency" above all else, as capitalism says
it does (it, in fact, values profits above all else and hinders
developments like workers' control which increase efficiency but harm
power and profits), is to deny our own humanity and individuality.
Without an appreciation for grace and beauty there is no pleasure
in creating things and no pleasure in having them. Our lives are made
drearier rather than richer by "progress." How can a person
take pride in their work when skill and care are considered luxuries
(if not harmful to "efficiency" and, under capitalism, the
profits and power of the capitalist and manager)? We are not machines.
We have a need for craftspersonship and anarchist recognises this
and takes it into account in its vision of a free society.
This means that, in an anarchist society, economic activity is the
process by which we produce what is both useful and beautiful
in a way that empowers the individual. As Oscar Wilde put it, individuals
will produce what is beautiful. Such production will be based upon
the "study of the needs of mankind, and the means of satisfying
them with the least possible waste of human energy." [Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread, p. 175] This means that anarchist economic
ideas are the same as what Political Economy should be, not what it
actually is, namely the "essential basis of all Political Economy,
the study of the most favourable conditions for giving society the
greatest amount of useful products with the least waste of human energy"
(and, we must add today, the least disruption of nature). [Op.
Cit., p. 144]
The anarchists charge capitalism with wasting human energy and time
due to its irrational nature and workings, energy that could be spent
creating what is beautiful (both in terms of individualities and products
of labour). Under capitalism we are "toiling to live, that we may
live to toil." [William Morris, Useful Work Versus Useless
Toil, p. 37]
In addition, we must stress that the aim of economic activity within
an anarchist society is not to create equality of outcome --
i.e. everyone getting exactly the same goods. As we noted in section
A.2.5, such a "vision" of "equality" attributed
to socialists by pro-capitalists indicates more the poverty of imagination
and ethics of the critics of socialism than a true account of socialist
ideas. Anarchists, like other socialists, support equality in order
to maximise freedom, including the freedom to choose between options
to satisfy ones needs.
To treat people equally, as equals, means to respect their desires
and interests, to acknowledge their right to equal liberty. To make
people consume the same as everyone else does not respect the equality
of all to develop ones abilities as one sees fit. Thus it means equality
of opportunity to satisfy desires and interests, not the imposition
of an abstract minimum (or maximum) on unique individuals. To treat
unique individuals equally means to acknowledge that uniqueness, not
to deny it.
Thus the real aim of economic activity within an anarchy
is to ensure "that every human being should have the material and
moral means to develop his humanity." [Michael Bakunin, The
Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 295] And you cannot develop
your humanity if you cannot express yourself freely. Needless to say,
to treat unique people "equally" (i.e. identically) is simply
evil. You cannot, say, have a 70 year old woman do the same work in
order to receive the same income as a 20 year old man. No, anarchists
do not subscribe to such "equality," which is a product of
the "ethics of mathematics" of capitalism and not of
anarchist ideas. Such a scheme is alien to a free society. The equality
anarchists desire is a social equality, based on control over the
decisions that affect you. The aim of anarchist economic activity,
therefore, is provide the goods required for "equal freedom for
all, an equality of conditions such as to allow everyone to do as
they wish." [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 49] Thus
anarchists "demand not natural but social equality of individuals
as the condition for justice and the foundations of morality."
[Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 249]
Under capitalism, instead of humans controlling production, production
controls them. Anarchists want to change this and desire to create
an economic network which will allow the maximisation of an individual's
free time in order for them to express and develop their individuality
(or to "create what is beautiful"). So instead of aiming just
to produce because the economy will collapse if we did not, anarchists
want to ensure that we produce what is useful in a manner which liberates
the individual and empowers them in all aspects of their lives. They
share this desire with (some of) the classical Liberals and agree
totally with Humbolt's statement that "the end of man . . . is
the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete
and consistent whole." [quoted by J.S. Mill in On Liberty and
Other Essays, p. 64]
This desire means that anarchists reject the capitalist definition
of "efficiency." Anarchists would agree with Albert and Hahnel
when they argue that "since people are conscious agents whose characteristics
and therefore preferences develop over time, to access long-term efficiency
we must access the impact of economic institutions on people's development."
[The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, p. 9] Capitalism,
as we have explained before, is highly inefficient in this light due
to the effects of hierarchy and the resulting marginalisation and
disempowerment of the majority of society. As Albert and Hahnel go
on to note, "self-management, solidarity, and variety are all legitimate
valuative criteria for judging economic institutions . . . Asking
whether particular institutions help people attain self-management,
variety, and solidarity is sensible." [Ibid.]
In other words, anarchists think that any economic activity in a
free society is to do useful things in such a way that gives those
doing it as much pleasure as possible. The point of such activity
is to express the individuality of those doing it, and for that to
happen they must control the work process itself. Only by self-management
can work become a means of empowering the individual and developing
his or her powers.
In a nutshell, to use William Morris' expression, useful work will
replace useless toil in an anarchist society.
Anarchists desire to see humanity liberate itself from "work." This
may come as a shock for many people and will do much to "prove"
that anarchism is essentially utopian. However, we think that such
an abolition is not only necessary, it is possible. This is because
"work" is one of the major dangers to freedom we face.
If by freedom we mean self-government, then it is clear that being
subjected to hierarchy in the workplace subverts our abilities to
think and judge for ourselves. Like any skill, critical analysis and
independent thought have to be practised continually in order to remain
at their full potential. However, as well as hierarchy, the workplace
environment created by these power structures also helps to undermine
these abilities. This was recognised by Adam Smith:
"The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily
formed by their ordinary employments." That being so, "the
man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of
which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or nearly the
same, has no occasion to extend his understanding . . . and generally
becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature
to be . . . But in every improved and civilised society this is the
state into which the labouring poor, that is the great body of the
people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes pains to prevent
it." [Adam Smith, quoted by Noam Chomsky, Year 501, p.
18]
Smith's argument (usually ignored by those who claim to follow his
ideas) is backed up by extensive evidence. The different types of
authority structures and different technologies have different effects
on those who work within them. Carole Pateman (in Participation
and Democratic Theory) notes that the evidence suggests that "[o]nly
certain work situations were found to be conducive to the development
of the psychological characteristics [suitable for freedom, such as]
. . . the feelings of personal confidence and efficacy that underlay
the sense of political efficacy." [p. 51] She quotes one expert
(R. Blauner from his Freedom and Alienation) who argues that
within capitalist companies based upon highly rationalised work environment,
extensive division of labour and "no control over the pace or technique
of his [or her] work, no room to exercise skill or leadership"
[Op. Cit., p. 51] workers, according to a psychological study,
is "resigned to his lot . . . more dependent than independent .
. . he lacks confidence in himself . . . he is humble . . . the most
prevalent feeling states . . . seem to be fear and anxiety." [p.
52]
However, in workplaces where "the worker has a high degree of
personal control over his work . . . and a very large degree of freedom
from external control . . .[or has] collective responsibility of a
crew of employees . . .[who] had control over the pace and method
of getting the work done, and the work crews were largely internally
self-disciplining" [p. 52] a different social character is seen.
This was characterised by "a strong sense of individualism and
autonomy, and a solid acceptance of citizenship in the large society
. . .[and] a highly developed feeling of self-esteem and a sense of
self-worth and is therefore ready to participate in the social and
political institutions of the community." [p. 52] She notes that
R. Blauner states that the "nature of a man's work affects his
social character and personality" and that an "industrial environment
tends to breed a distinct social type." [cited by Pateman, Op.
Cit., p. 52]
As Bob Black argues:
"You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances
are you'll end up boring, stupid, and monotonous. Work is a much better
explanation for the creeping cretinisation all around us than even such
significant moronising mechanisms as television and education. People who
are regimented all their lives, handed to work from school and bracketed by
the family in the beginning and the nursing home in the end, are habituated
to hierarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so
atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded
phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the families
they start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than one, and into
politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain the vitality from
people at work, they'll likely submit to hierarchy and expertise in
everything. They're used to it." [The Abolition of Work]
For this reason anarchists desire, to use Bob Black's phrase, "the
abolition of work." "Work," in this context, does not mean
any form of productive activity. Far from it. "Work" (in the
sense of doing necessary things) will always be with us. There is
no getting away from it; crops need to be grown, schools built, homes
fixed, and so on. No, "work" in this context means any form
of labour in which the worker does not control his or her own activity.
In other words, wage labour in all its many forms. As Kropotkin
put it, "the right to work" simply "means the right to be
always a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the middle
class of the future" and he contrasted this to the "right to
well-being" which meant "the possibility of living like human
beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better
than ours." [The Conquest of Bread, p. 44]
A society based upon wage labour (i.e. a capitalist society) will
result in a society within which the typical worker uses few of their
abilities, exercise little or no control over their work because they
are governed by a boss during working hours. This has been proved
to lower the individual's self-esteem and feelings of self-worth,
as would be expected in any social relationship that denied self-government
to workers. Capitalism is marked by an extreme division of labour,
particularly between mental labour and physical labour. It reduces
the worker to a mere machine operator, following the orders of his
or her boss. Therefore, a libertarian that does not support economic
liberty (i.e. self-management) is no libertarian at all.
Capitalism bases its rationale for itself on consumption. However,
this results in a viewpoint which minimises the importance of the
time we spend in productive activity. Anarchists consider that it
is essential for individual's to use and develop their unique attributes
and capacities in all walks of life, to maximise their powers. Therefore,
the idea that "work" should be ignored in favour of consumption
is totally mad. Productive activity is an important way of developing
our inner-powers and express ourselves; in other words, be creative.
Capitalism's emphasis on consumption shows the poverty of that system.
As Alexander Berkman argues:
"We do not live by bread alone. True, existence is not possible without
opportunity to satisfy our physical needs. But the gratification of these
by no means constitutes all of life. Our present system of disinheriting
millions, made the belly the centre of the universe, so to speak. But in
a sensible society . . . [t]he feelings of human sympathy, of justice and
right would have a chance to develop, to be satisfied, to broaden and grow."
[ABC of Anarchism, p. 15]
Therefore, capitalism is based on a constant process of alienated
consumption, as workers try to find the happiness associated within
productive, creative, self-managed activity in a place it does not
exist -- on the shop shelves. This can partly explain the rise of
both mindless consumerism and of religions, as individuals try to
find meaning for their lives and happiness, a meaning and happiness
frustrated in wage labour and hierarchy.
Capitalism's impoverishment of the individual's spirit is hardly
surprising. As William Godwin argued, "[t]he spirit of oppression,
the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the immediate
growth of the established administration of property. They are alike
hostile to intellectual and moral improvement." [The Anarchist
Reader, p. 131] In other words, any system based in wage labour
or hierarchical relationships in the workplace will result in a deadening
of the individual and the creation of a "servile" character.
This crushing of individuality springs directly from what Godwin
called "the third degree of property" namely "a system.
. . by which one man enters into the faculty of disposing of the produce
of another man's industry" in other words, capitalism. [Op.
Cit., p. 129]
Anarchists desire to change this and create a society based upon
freedom in all aspects of life. Hence anarchists desire to abolish
work, simply because it restricts the liberty and distorts the individuality
of those who have to do it. To quote Emma Goldman:
"Anarchism aims to strip labour of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom
and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of
colour, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in
work both recreation and hope." [Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 61]
Anarchists do not think that by getting rid of work we will not
have to produce necessary goods and so on. Far from it, an anarchist
society "doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean
creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic
revolution . . . a collective adventure in generalised joy and freely
interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive." [Bob Black, Op.
Cit.]
This means that in an anarchist society every effort would be made
to reduce boring, unpleasant activity to a minimum and ensure that
whatever productive activity is required to be done is as pleasant
as possible and based upon voluntary labour. However, it is important
to remember Cornelius Castoriadis point that a "Socialist society
will be able to reduce the length of the working day, and will have
to do so, but this will not be the fundamental preoccupation. Its
first task will be to . . .transform the very nature of work. The
problem is not to leave more and more 'free' time to individuals -
which might well be empty time - so that they may fill it at will
with 'poetry' or the carving of wood. The problem is to make all time
a time of liberty and to allow concrete freedom to find expression
in creative activity." Essentially, "the problem is to put
poetry into work." [Workers' Councils and the Economics of
a Self-Managed Society, p. 14 and p. 15]
This is why anarchists desire to abolish "work" (i.e. wage
labour), to ensure that whatever "work" (i.e. economic activity)
is required to be done is under the direct control of those who do
it. In this way it can be liberated and so become a means of self-realisation
and not a form of self-negation. In other words, anarchists want to
abolish work because "[l]ife, the art of living, has become a dull
formula, flat and inert." [A. Berkman, Op. Cit., p. 27]
Anarchists want to bring the spontaneity and joy of life back into
productive activity and save humanity from the dead hand of capital.
All this does not imply that anarchists think that individuals will
not seek to "specialise" in one form of productive activity
rather than another. Far from it, people in a free society will pick
activities which interest them as the main focal point of their means
of self-expression. "It is evident," noted Kropotkin, "that
all men and women cannot equally enjoy the pursuit of scientific work.
The variety of inclinations is such that some will find more pleasure
in science, some others in art, and other again in some of the numberless
branches of the production of wealth." This "division of work"
is commonplace in humanity and can be seen under capitalism -- most
children and teenagers pick a specific line of work because they are
interested, or at least desire to do a specific kind of work. This
natural desire to do what interests you and what you are good at will
be encouraged in an anarchist society. As Kropotkin argued, anarchists
"fully recognise the necessity of specialisation of knowledge,
but we maintain that specialisation must follow general education,
and that general education must be given in science and handicraft
alike. To the division of society into brain workers and manual workers
we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities . . . we advocate
the education integrale [integral education], or complete education,
which means the disappearance of that pernicious division." He
was aware, however, that both individuals and society would benefit
from a diversity of activities and a strong general knowledge. In
his words, "[b]ut whatever the occupations preferred by everyone,
everyone will be the more useful in his [or her] branch is he [or
she] is in possession of a serious scientific knowledge. And, whosoever
he [or she] might be . . . he would be the gainer if he spent a part
of his life in the workshop or the farm (the workshop and the
farm), if he were in contact with humanity in its daily work, and
had the satisfaction of knowing that he himself discharges his duties
as an unprivileged producer of wealth." [Fields, Factories
and Workshops Tomorrow, p. 186, p. 172 and p. 186]
However, while specialisation would continue, the permanent division
of individuals into manual or brain workers would be eliminated. Individuals
will manage all aspects of the "work" required (for example,
engineers will also take part in self-managing their workplaces),
a variety of activities would be encouraged and the strict division
of labour of capitalism will be abolished.
In other words, anarchists want to replace the division of labour
by the division of work. We must stress that we are not playing with
words here. John Crump presents a good summary of the ideas of the
Japanese anarchist Hatta Shuzo on this difference:
"[W]e must recognise the distinction which Hatta made between
the 'division of labour' . . . and the 'division of work' . . .
he did not see anything sinister in the division of work . . .
On the contrary, Hatta believed that the division of work
was a benign and unavoidable feature of any productive
process: 'it goes without saying that within society,
whatever the kind of production, there has to be a
division of work.'" [Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in
Interwar Japan, pp. 146-7]
As Kropotin argued:
"while a temporary division of functions remains the surest
guarantee of success in each separate undertaking, the permanent
division is doomed to disappear, and to be substituted by a variety
of pursuits -- intellectual, industrial, and agricultural --
corresponding to the different capacities of the individual, as
well as to the variety of capacities within every human aggregate."
[Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, p. 26]
As an aside, supporters of capitalism argue that integrated
labour must be more inefficient than divided labour as capitalist
firms have not introduced it. This is false for numerous reasons.
Firstly, we have to put out the inhuman logic of the assertion.
After all, few would argue in favour of slavery if it were, in fact,
more productive than wage labour but such is the logical conclusion
of this argument. If someone did argue that the only reason slavery
was not the dominant mode of labour simply because it was inefficient
we would consider them as less than human. Simply put, it is a sick
ideology which happily sacrifices individuals for the sake of slightly
more products. Sadly, that is what many defenders of capitalism do,
ultimately, argue for.
Secondly, capitalist firms are not neutral structures but rather
a system of hierarchies, with entrenched interests and needs. Managers
will only introduce a work technique that maintains their power (and
so their profits). As we argue in section
J.5.12, while workers' participation generally see a rise in efficiency
managers generally stop the project simply because it undercuts their
power by empowering workers who then can fight for a greater slice
of the value they produce. So the lack of integrated labour under
capitalism simply means that it does not empower management, not that
it is less efficient.
Thirdly, the attempts by managers and bosses to introduce "flexibility"
by eliminating trade unions suggests that integration is more
efficient. After all, one of the major complains directed towards
trade union contracts were that they explicitly documented what workers
could and could not do. For example, union members would refuse to
do work which was outside their agreed job descriptions. This is usually
classed as an example of the evil of regulations.
However, if we look at it from the viewpoint of contract, it exposes
the inefficiency and inflexibility of contract as a means of co-operation.
After all, what is this refusal actually mean? It means that the worker
refuses to do what is not specified in his or her contract! Their
job description indicates what they have been contracted to do and
anything else has not been agreed upon in advance. It specifies the
division of labour in a workplace by means of a contract between worker
and boss.
While being a wonderful example of a well-designed contract, managers
discovered that they could not operate their workplaces because of
them. Rather, they needed a general "do what you are told"
contract (which of course is hardly an example of contract reducing
authority) and such a contract integrates numerous work tasks
into one. The managers diatribe against union contracts suggests that
production needs some form of integrated labour to actually work (as
well as showing the hypocrisy of the labour contract under capitalism
as labour "flexibility" simply means labour "commodification"
-- a machine does not question what its used for, the ideal for labour
under capitalism is a similar unquestioning nature for labour). The
union job description indicates that not only is the contract not
applicable to the capitalist workplace but that production needs the
integration of labour while demanding a division of work. As Cornelius
Caastoriadis argued:
"Modern production has destroyed many traditional professional
qualifications. It has created automatic or semi-automatic
machines. It has thereby itself demolished its own traditional
framework for the industrial division of labour. It has given
birth to a universal worker who is capable, after a relatively
short apprenticeship, of using most machines. Once one gets
beyond its class aspects, the 'posting' of workers to
particular jobs in a big modern factory corresponds less and
less to a genuine division of labour and more and more
to a simple division of tasks. Workers are not allocated to
given areas of the productive process and then riveted to
them because their 'occupational skills' invariably
correspond to the 'skills required' by management. They
are placed there . . . just because a particular vacancy
happened to exist." [Political and Social Writings,
vol. 2, p. 117]
Of course, the other option is to get rid of capitalism by self-management.
If workers managed their own time and labour, they would have no reason
to say "that is not my job" as they have no contract with someone
who tells them what to do. Similarly, the process of labour integration
forced upon the worker would be freely accepted and a task freely
accepted always produces superior results than one imposed by coercion
(or its threat). This means that "[u]nder socialism, factories
would have no reason to accept the artificially rigid division of
labour now prevailing. There will be every reason to encourage a rotation
of workers between shops and departments and between production
and office areas." The "residues of capitalism's division of
labour gradually will have to be eliminated" as "socialist
society cannot survive unless it demolishes this division." [Ibid.]
Division of tasks (or work) will replace division of labour in a
free society. "The main subject of social economy," argued
Kropotkin, is "the economy of energy required for the satisfaction
of human needs." These needs obviously expressed both the
needs of the producers for empowering and interesting work and their
need for a healthy and balanced environment. Thus Kropotkin discussed
the "advantages" which could be "derive[d] from a combination
of industrial pursuits with intensive agriculture, and of brain work
with manual work." The "greatest sum total of well-being can
be obtained when a variety of agricultural, industrial and intellectual
pursuits are combined in each community; and that man [and woman]
shows his best when he is in a position to apply his usually-varied
capacities to several pursuits in the farm, the workshop, the factory,
the study or the studio, instead of being riveted for life to one
of these pursuits only." [Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow,
pp. 17-8]
By replacing the division of labour with the division of work, productive
activity can be transformed into an enjoyable task (or series of tasks).
By integrating labour, all the capacities of the producer can be expressed
so eliminating a major source of alienation and unhappiness in society.
One last point on the abolition of work. May 1st -- International
Workers' Day -- which, as we discussed in section
A.5.2, was created to commemorate the Chicago Anarchist Martyrs.
Anarchists then, as now, think that it should be celebrated by strike
action and mass demonstrations. In other words, for anarchists, International
Workers' Day should be a non-work day! That sums up the anarchist
position to work nicely -- that the celebration of workers' day should
be based on the rejection of work.
Basically by workers' self-management of production and community control
of the means of production. It is hardly in the interests of those
who do the actual "work" to have bad working conditions, boring,
repetitive labour, and so on. Therefore, a key aspect of the liberation
from work is to create a self-managed society, "a society in which
everyone has equal means to develop and that all are or can be at
the time intellectual and manual workers, and the only differences
remaining between men [and women] are those which stem from the natural
diversity of aptitudes, and that all jobs, all functions, give an
equal right to the enjoyment of social possibilities." [Errico
Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 40]
Essential to this task is decentralisation and the use of appropriate
technology. Decentralisation is important to ensure that those who
do work can determine how to liberate it. A decentralised system will
ensure that ordinary people can identify areas for technological innovation,
and so understand the need to get rid of certain kinds of work. Unless
ordinary people understand and control the introduction of technology,
then they will never be fully aware of the benefits of technology
and resist advances which may be in their best interests to introduce.
This is the full meaning of appropriate technology, namely the use
of technology which those most affected feel to be best in a given
situation. Such technology may or may not be technologically "advanced"
but it will be of the kind which ordinary people can understand and,
most importantly, control.
The potential for rational use of technology can be seen from capitalism.
Under capitalism, technology is used to increase profits, to expand
the economy, not to liberate all individuals from useless toil
(it does, of course, liberate a few from such "activity").
As Ted Trainer argues:
"Two figures drive the point home. In the long term, productivity (i.e.
output per hour of work) increases at about 2 percent per annum, meaning
that each 35 years we could cut the work week by half while producing as
much as we were at the beginning. A number of OECD . . . countries could
actually have cut from a five-day work week to around a one-day work
week in the last 25 years while maintaining their output at the same
level. In this economy we must therefore double the annual amount we
consume per person every 35 years just to prevent unemployment from
rising and to avoid reduction in outlets available to soak up
investable capital.
"Second, according to the US Bureau for Mines, the amount of capital per person
available for investment in the United States will increase at 3.6
percent per annum (i.e. will double in 20-year intervals). This
indicates that unless Americans double the volume of goods and services
they consume every 20 years, their economy will be in serious difficulties
"Hence the ceaseless and increasing pressure to find more business
opportunities" ["What is Development", p 57-90, Society
and Nature, Issue No. 7, p. 49]
And, remember, these figures include production in many areas of
the economy that would not exist in a free society - state and capitalist
bureaucracy, weapons production, and so on. In addition, it does not
take into account the labour of those who do not actually produce
anything useful and so the level of production for useful goods would
be higher than Trainer indicates. In addition, goods will be built
to last and so much production will become sensible and not governed
by an insane desire to maximise profits at the expense of everything
else.
The decentralisation of power will ensure that self-management becomes
universal. This will see the end of division of labour as mental and
physical work becomes unified and those who do the work also manage
it. This will allow "the free exercise of all the faculties
of man" both inside and outside "work." [Peter Kropotkin, The
Conquest of Bread, p. 148] The aim of such a development would
be to turn productive activity, as far as possible, into an enjoyable
experience. In the words of Murray Bookchin it is the quality
and nature of the work process that counts:
"If workers' councils and workers' management of production
do not transform the work into a joyful activity, free time
into a marvellous experience, and the workplace into a
community, then they remain merely formal structures, in
fact, class structures. They perpetuate the limitations
of the proletariat as a product of bourgeois social conditions.
Indeed, no movement that raises the demand for workers'
councils can be regarded as revolutionary unless it tries to
promote sweeping transformations in the environment of the
work place." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 146]
Work will become, primarily, the expression of a person's pleasure
in what they are doing and become like an art - an expression of their
creativity and individuality. Work as an art will become expressed
in the workplace as well as the work process, with workplaces transformed
and integrated into the local community and environment (see section
I.4.15 -- "What will the workplace
of tomorrow be like?"). This will obviously apply to work
conducted in the home as well, otherwise the "revolution, intoxicated
with the beautiful words, Liberty, Equality, Solidarity, would not
be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half [of] humanity
subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against
the other half." [Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread,
p. 128]
In other words, anarchists desire "to combine the best part (in
fact, the only good part) of work -- the production of use-values
-- with the best of play . . . its freedom and its fun, its voluntariness
and its intrinsic gratification" -- the transformation of what
economists call production into productive play. [Bob Black, Smokestack
Lightning]
In addition, a decentralised system will build up a sense of community
and trust between individuals and ensure the creation of an ethical
economy, one based on interactions between individuals and not commodities
caught in the flux of market forces. This ideal of a "moral
economy" can be seen in both social anarchists desire for
the end of the market system and the individualists insistence that
"cost be the limit of price." Anarchists recognise that the
"traditional local market . . . is essentially different from the
market as it developed in modern capitalism. Bartering on a local
market offered an opportunity to meet for the purpose of exchanging
commodities. Producers and customers became acquainted; they were
relatively small groups . . . The modern market is no longer a meeting
place but a mechanism characterised by abstract and impersonal demand.
One produces for this market, not for a known circle of customers;
its verdict is based on laws of supply and demand." [Man for
Himself, pp. 67-68]
Anarchists reject the capitalist notion that economic activity should
be based on maximising profit as the be all and end all of such work
(buying and selling on the "impersonal market"). As markets
only work through people, individuals, who buy and sell (but, in the
end, control them -- in the "free market" only the market is
free) this means that for the market to be "impersonal" as
it is in capitalism it implies that those involved have to be unconcerned
about personalities, including their own. Profit, not ethics, is what
counts. The "impersonal" market suggests individuals who act
in an impersonal, and so unethical, manner. The morality of what they
produce, why they produce it and how they produce it is irrelevant,
as long as profits are produced.
Instead, anarchists consider economic activity as an expression
of the human spirit, an expression of the innate human need to express
ourselves and to create. Capitalism distorts these needs and makes
economic activity a deadening experience by the division of labour
and hierarchy. Anarchists think that "industry is not an end in
itself, but should only be a means to ensure to man his material subsistence
and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual
culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the
realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less
disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two mutually
augment one another, and they are fed from the same source." [Rudolph
Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 11]
Anarchists think that a decentralised social system will allow "work"
to be abolished and economic activity humanised and made a means to
an end (namely producing useful things and liberated individuals).
This would be achieved by, as Rudolf Rocker puts it, the "alliance
of free groups of men and women based on co-operative labour and a
planned administration of things in the interest of the community."
[Op. Cit., p. 62]
However, as things are produced by people, it could be suggested
that a "planned administration of things" implies a "planned
administration of people" (although few who suggest this danger
apply it to capitalist firms which are like mini-centrally planned
states). This objection is false simply because anarchism aims "to
reconstruct the economic life of the peoples from the ground up and
build it up anew in the spirit of Socialism" and, moreover, "only
the producers themselves are fitted for this task, since they are
the only value-creating element in society out of which a new future
can arise." Such a reconstructed economic life would be based
on anarchist principles, that is "based on the principles of federalism,
a free combination from below upwards, putting the right of self-determination
of every member above everything else and recognising only the organic
agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions."
[Op. Cit., p. 61 and p. 53]
In other words, those who produce also administer and so govern
themselves in free association (and it should be pointed out that
any group of individuals in association will make "plans" and
"plan," the important question is who does the planning and
who does the work. Only in anarchy are both functions united into
the same people). Rocker emphasises this point when he writes that:
"Anarcho-syndicalists are convinced that a Socialist economic
order cannot be created by the decrees and statutes of a
government, but only by the solidaric collaboration of the
workers with hand and brain in each special branch of production;
that is, through the taking over of the management of all plants
by the producers themselves under such form that the separate
groups, plants, and branches of industry are independent members
of the general economic organism and systematically carry on
production and the distribution of the products in the interest
of the community on the basis of free mutual agreements."
[Op. Cit., p. 55]
In other words, the "planned administration of things" would
be done by the producers themselves, in independent groupings.
This would likely take the form (as we indicated in section
I.3) of confederations of syndicates who communicate information
between themselves and respond to changes in the production and distribution
of products by increasing or decreasing the required means of production
in a co-operative (i.e. "planned") fashion. No "central
planning" or "central planners" governing the economy,
just workers co-operating together as equals (as Kropotkin argued,
free socialism "must result from thousands of separate local actions,
all directed towards the same aim. It cannot be dictated by a central
body: it must result from the numberless local needs and wants."
[Act for Yourselves, p. 54]).
Therefore, an anarchist society would abolish work by ensuring that
those who do the work actually control it. They would do so in a network
of self-managed associations, a society "composed of a number of
societies banded together for everything that demands a common effort:
federations of producers for all kinds of production, of societies
for consumption . . . All these groups will unite their efforts through
mutual agreement . . . Personal initiative will be encouraged and
every tendency to uniformity and centralisation combated." [Peter
Kropotkin, quoted by Buber in Paths in Utopia, p. 42]
In response to consumption patterns, syndicates will have to expand
or reduce production and will have to attract volunteers to do the
necessary work. The very basis of free association will ensure the
abolition of work, as individuals will apply for "work" they
enjoy doing and so would be interested in reducing "work" they
did not want to do to a minimum. Such a decentralisation of power
would unleash a wealth of innovation and ensure that unpleasant work
be minimised and fairly shared (see section
I.4.13).
Now, any form of association requires agreement. Therefore, even
a society based on the communist-anarchist maxim "from each according
to their ability, to each according to their need" will need to
make agreements in order to ensure co-operative ventures succeed.
In other words, members of a co-operative commonwealth would have
to make and keep to their agreements between themselves. This means
that the members of a syndicate would agree joint starting and finishing
times, require notice if individuals want to change "jobs" and so
on within and between syndicates. Any joint effort requires some degree
of co-operation and agreement. Moreover, between syndicates, an agreement
would be reached (in all likelihood) that determined the minimum working
hours required by all members of society able to work. How that minimum
was actually organised would vary between workplace and commune, with
work times, flexi-time, job rotation and so on determined by each
syndicate (for example, one syndicate may work 8 hours a day for 2
days, another 4 hours a day for 4 days, one may use flexi-time, another
more rigid starting and stopping times).
As Kropotkin argued, an anarchist-communist society would be based
upon the following kind of "contract" between its members:
"We undertake to give you the use of our houses, stores, streets,
means of transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from
twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate four or
five hours a day to some work recognised as necessary to existence.
Choose yourself the producing group which you wish to join, or organise
a new group, provided that it will undertake to produce necessaries. And
as for the remainder of your time, combine together with whomsoever you
like, for recreation, art, or science, according to the bent of your
taste . . . Twelve or fifteen hundred hours of work a year . . . is
all we ask of you. For that amount of work we guarantee to you the
free use of all that these groups produce, or will produce." [The
Conquest of Bread, pp. 153-4]
With such work "necessary to existence" being recognised
by individuals and expressed by demand for labour from productive
syndicates. It is, of course, up to the individual to decide which
work he or she desires to perform from the positions available in
the various associations in existence. A union card would be the means
by which work hours would be recorded and access to the common wealth
of society ensured. And, of course, individuals and groups are free
to work alone and exchange the produce of their labour with others,
including the confederated syndicates, if they so desired. An anarchist
society will be as flexible as possible.
Therefore, we can imagine a social anarchist society being based
on two basic arrangements -- firstly, an agreed minimum working week
of, say, 20 hours, in a syndicate of your choice, plus any amount
of hours doing "work" which you feel like doing -- for example,
art, experimentation, DIY, playing music, composing, gardening and
so on. The aim of technological progress would be to reduce the basic
working week more and more until the very concept of necessary "work"
and free time enjoyments is abolished. In addition, in work considered
dangerous or unwanted, then volunteers could trade doing a few hours
of such activity for more free time (see section
I.4.13 for more on this).
It can be said that this sort of agreement is a restriction of liberty
because it is "man-made" (as opposed to the "natural law"
of "supply and demand"). This is a common defence of the free
market by individualist anarchists against anarcho-communism, for
example. However, while in theory individualist-anarchists can claim
that in their vision of society, they don't care when, where, or how
a person earns a living, as long as they are not invasive about it
the fact is that any economy is based on interactions between individuals.
The law of "supply and demand" easily, and often, makes a mockery
of the ideas that individuals can work as long as they like - usually
they end up working as long as required by market forces (i.e. the
actions of other individuals, but turned into a force outwith their
control, see section I.1.3). This
means that individuals do not work as long as they like, but as long
as they have to in order to survive. Knowing that "market forces"
is the cause of long hours of work hardly makes them any nicer.
And it seems strange to the communist-anarchist that certain free
agreements made between equals can be considered authoritarian while
others are not. The individualist-anarchist argument that social co-operation
to reduce labour is "authoritarian" while agreements between
individuals on the market are not seems illogical to social anarchists.
They cannot see how it is better for individuals to be pressured into
working longer than they desire by "invisible hands" than to
come to an arrangement with others to manage their own affairs to
maximise their free time.
Therefore, free agreement between free and equal individuals is
considered the key to abolishing work, based upon decentralisation
of power and the use of appropriate technology.
Firstly, it should be noted that anarchists do not have any set idea about
the answer to this question. Most anarchists are communists, desiring
to see the end of money, but that does not mean they want to impose
communism onto people. Far from it, communism can only be truly libertarian
if it is organised from the bottom up. So, anarchists would agree
with Kropotkin that it is a case of not "determining in advance
what form of distribution the producers should accept in their different
groups -- whether the communist solution, or labour checks, or equal
salaries, or any other method" while considering a given solution
best in their opinion. [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets,
p. 166] Free experiment is a key aspect of anarchism.
While certain anarchists have certain preferences on the social
system they want to live in and so argue for that, they are aware
that objective circumstances and social desires will determine what
is introduced during a revolution (for example, while Kropotkin was
a communist-anarchist and considered it essential that a revolution
proceed towards communism as quickly as possible, he was aware that
it was unlikely it would be introduced immediately -- see section
I.2.2 for details).
However, we will outline some possible means of economic decision
making criteria as this question is an important one (it is the crux
of the "libertarian socialism is impossible" argument, for
example). Therefore, we will indicate what possible solutions exist
in different forms of anarchism.
In a mutualist or collectivist system, the answer is easy. Prices
will exist and be used as a means of making decisions. Mutualism will
be more market orientated than collectivism, with collectivism being
based on confederations of collectives to respond to changes in demand
(i.e. to determine investment decisions and ensure that supply is
kept in line with demand). Mutualism, with its system of market based
distribution around a network of co-operatives and mutual banks, does
not really need a further discussion as its basic operations are the
same as in any non-capitalist market system. Collectivism and communism
will have to be discussed in more detail. However, all systems are
based on workers' self-management and so the individuals directly
affected make the decisions concerning what to produce, when to do
it, and how to do it. In this way workers retain control of the product
of their labour. It is the social context of these decisions and what
criteria workers use to make their decisions that differ between anarchist
schools of thought.
Although collectivism promotes the greatest autonomy for worker
associations, it should not be confused with a market economy as advocated
by supporters of mutualism (particularly in its Individualist form).
The goods produced by the collectivised factories and workshops are
exchanged not according to highest price that can be wrung from consumers,
but according to their actual production costs. The determination
of these honest prices is to be by a "Bank of Exchange" in
each community (obviously an idea borrowed from Proudhon). These "Banks"
would represent the various producer confederations and consumer/citizen
groups in the community and would seek to negotiate these "honest"
prices (which would, in all likelihood, include "hidden" costs
like pollution). These agreements would be subject to ratification
by the assemblies of those involved.
As Guillaume puts it "the value of the commodities having been
established in advance by a contractual agreement between the regional
co-operative federations [i.e. confederations of syndicates] and the
various communes, who will also furnish statistics to the Banks of
Exchange. The Bank of Exchange will remit to the producers negotiable
vouchers representing the value of their products; these vouchers
will be accepted throughout the territory included in the federation
of communes." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 366] These vouchers
would be related to hours worked, for example, and when used as a
guide for investment decisions could be supplemented with cost-benefit
analysis of the kind possibly used in a communist-anarchist society
(see below).
Although this scheme bears a strong resemblance to Proudhonian "People's
Banks," it should be noted that the Banks of Exchange, along with
a "Communal Statistical Commission," are intended to have a
"planning" function as well to ensure that supply meets demand.
This does not imply a "command" economy, but simple book keeping
for "each Bank of Exchange makes sure in advance that these products
are in demand [in order to risk] nothing by immediately issuing payment
vouchers to the producers." [Op. Cit., p. 367] The workers
syndicates would still determine what orders to produce and each commune
would be free to choose its suppliers.
As will be discussed in more depth later (see section
I.4.8) information about consumption patterns will be recorded
and used by workers to inform their production and investment decisions.
In addition, we can imagine that production syndicates would encourage
communes as well as consumer groups and co-operatives to participate
in making these decisions. This would ensure that produced goods reflect
consumer needs. Moreover, as conditions permit, the exchange functions
of the communal "banks" would (in all likelihood) be gradually
replaced by the distribution of goods "in accordance with the needs
of the consumers." In other words, most supporters of collectivist
anarchism see it as a temporary measure before anarcho-communism could
develop.
Communist anarchism would be similar to collectivism, i.e. a system
of confederations of collectives, communes and distribution centres
("Communal stores"). However, in an anarcho-communist system,
prices are not used. How will economic decision making be done? One
possible solution is as follows:
"As to decisions involving choices of a general nature, such as what
forms of energy to use, which of two or more materials to employ to
produce a particular good, whether to build a new factory, there is
a . . . technique . . . that could be [used] . . . 'cost-benefit
analysis' . . . in socialism a points scheme for attributing relative
importance to the various relevant considerations could be used . . .
The points attributed to these considerations would be subjective,
in the sense that this would depend on a deliberate social decision
rather than some objective standard, but this is the case even under
capitalism when a monetary value has to be attributed to some such
'cost' or 'benefit' . . . In the sense that one of the aims of socialism
is precisely to rescue humankind from the capitalist fixation with
production time/money, cost-benefit analyses, as a means of taking into
account other factors, could therefore be said to be more appropriate for
use in socialism than under capitalism. Using points systems to attribute
relative importance in this way would not be to recreate some universal
unit of evaluation and calculation, but simply to employ a technique to
facilitate decision-making in particular concrete cases." [Adam Buick and
John Crump, State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management,
pp. 138-139]
This points system would be the means by which producers and consumers
would be able to determine whether the use of a particular good is
efficient or not. Unlike prices, this cost-benefit analysis system
would ensure that production and consumption reflects social and ecological
costs, awareness and priorities. Moreover, this analysis would be
a guide to decision making and not a replacement of human decision
making and evaluation. As Lewis Mumford argues:
"it is plan that in the decision as to whether to build a bridge
or a tunnel there is a human question that should outweigh the
question of cheapness or mechanical feasibility: namely the number
of lives that will be lost in the actual building or the advisability
of condemning a certain number of men [and women] to spend their
entire working days underground supervising tunnel traffic. As soon
as our thought ceases to be automatically conditioned by the mine,
such questions become important. Similarly the social choice
between silk and rayon is not one that can be made simply on
the different costs of production, or the difference in quality
between the fibres themselves: there also remains, to be integrated
in the decision, the question as to difference in working-pleasure
between tending silkworms and assisting in rayon production. What
the product contributes to the labourer is just as important as what
the worker contributes to the product. A well-managed society might
alter the process of motor car assemblage, at some loss of speed
and cheapness, in order to produce a more interesting routine for
the worker: similarly, it would either go to the expense of
equipping dry-process cement making plants with dust removers --
or replace the product itself with a less noxious substitute. When
none of these alternatives was available, it would drastically
reduce the demand itself to the lowest possible level." [The
Future of Technics and Civilisation, pp. 160-1]
Obviously, today, we would include ecological issues as well as
human ones. However Mumford's argument is correct. Any decision making
process which disregards the quality of work or the effect on the
human and natural environment is a deranged process. However, this
is how capitalism operates, with the market rewarding capitalists
and managers who introduce de-humanising and ecologically harmful
practices. Indeed, so biased against labour and the environment is
capitalism that economists and pro-capitalists argue that reducing
"efficiency" by such social concerns is actually harmful
to an economy, which is a total reversal of common sense and human
feelings (after all, surely the economy should satisfy human needs
and not sacrifice those needs to the economy?). The argument is that
consumption would suffer as resources (human and material) would be
diverted from more "efficient" productive activities and so
reduce, over all, our economic well-being. What this argument ignores
is that consumption does not exist in isolation from the rest of the
economy. What we what to consume is conditioned, in part, by the sort
of person we are and that is influenced by the kind of work we do,
the kinds of social relationships we have, whether we are happy with
our work and life, and so on. If our work is alienating and of low
quality, then so will our consumption decisions. If our work is subject
to hierarchical control and servile in nature then we cannot expect
our consumption decisions of totally rational -- indeed they may become
an attempt to find happiness via shopping, a self-defeating activity
as consumption cannot solve a problem created in production. Thus
rampant consumerism may be the result of capitalist "efficiency"
and so the objection against socially aware production is question
begging.
Of course, as well as absolute scarcity, prices under capitalism
also reflect relative scarcity (while in the long term, market prices
tend towards their production price plus a mark-up based on the degree
of monopoly in a market, in the short term prices can change as a
result of changes in supply and demand). How a communist society could
take into account such short term changes and communicate them through
out the economy is discussed in section I.4.5 ( "What
about 'supply and demand'?"). Needless to say, production
and investment decisions based upon such cost-benefit analysis would
take into account the current production situation and so the relative
scarcity of specific goods.
Therefore, a communist-anarchist society would be based around a
network of syndicates who communicate information between each other.
Instead of the "price" being communicated between workplaces
as in capitalism, actual physical data will be sent. This data is
a summary of the use values of the good (for example labour time and
energy used to produce it, pollution details, relative scarcity and
so forth). With this information a cost-benefit analysis will be conducted
to determine which good will be best to use in a given situation based
upon mutually agreed common values. The data for a given workplace
could be compared to the industry as a whole (as confederations of
syndicates would gather and produce such information -- see section
I.3.5) in order to determine whether a specific workplace will
efficiently produce the required goods (this system has the additional
advantage of indicating which workplaces require investment to bring
them in line, or improve upon, the industrial average in terms of
working conditions, hours worked and so on). In addition, common rules
of thumb would possibly be agreed, such as agreements not to use scarce
materials unless there is no alternative (either ones that use a lot
of labour, energy and time to produce or those whose demand is currently
exceeding supply capacity).
Similarly, when ordering goods, the syndicate, commune or individual
involved will have to inform the syndicate why it is required in order
to allow the syndicate to determine if they desire to produce the
good and to enable them to prioritise the orders they receive. In
this way, resource use can be guided by social considerations and
"unreasonable" requests ignored (for example, if an individual
"needs" a ship-builders syndicate to build a ship for his personal
use, the ship-builders may not "need" to build it and instead
builds ships for the transportation of freight). However, in almost
all cases of individual consumption, no such information will be needed
as communal stores would order consumer goods in bulk as they do now.
Hence the economy would be a vast network of co-operating individuals
and workplaces and the dispersed knowledge which exists within any
society can be put to good effect (better effect than under
capitalism because it does not hide social and ecological costs in
the way market prices do and co-operation will eliminate the business
cycle and its resulting social problems).
Therefore, production units in a social anarchist society, by virtue
of their autonomy within association, are aware of what is socially
useful for them to produce and, by virtue of their links with communes,
also aware of the social (human and ecological) cost of the resources
they need to produce it. They can combine this knowledge, reflecting
overall social priorities, with their local knowledge of the detailed
circumstances of their workplaces and communities to decide how they
can best use their productive capacity. In this way the division of
knowledge within society can be used by the syndicates effectively
as well as overcoming the restrictions within knowledge communication
imposed by the price mechanism.
Moreover, production units, by their association within confederations
(or Guilds) ensure that there is effective communication between them.
This results in a process of negotiated co-ordination between equals
(i.e. horizontal links and agreements) for major investment decisions,
thus bringing together supply and demand and allowing the plans of
the various units to be co-ordinated. By this process of co-operation,
production units can reduce duplicating effort and so reduce the waste
associated with over-investment (and so the irrationalities of booms
and slumps associated with the price mechanism, which does not provide
sufficient information to allow workplaces to efficiently co-ordinate
their plans - see section C.7.2).
Needless to say, this issue is related to the "socialist calculation"
issue we discussed in section I.1.2.
To clarify our ideas, we shall present an example.
Consider two production processes. Method A requires 70 tons of
steel and 60 tons of concrete while Method B requires 60 tons of steel
and 70 tons of concrete. Which method should be preferred? One of
the methods will be more economical in terms of leaving more resources
available for other uses than the other but in order to establish
which we need to compare the relevant quantities.
Supporters of capitalism argue that only prices can supply the necessary
information as they are heterogeneous quantities. Both steel and concrete
have a price (say $10 per ton for steel and $5 per ton for concrete).
The method to choose is clearly B as it has a lower price that A ($950
for B compared to $1000 for A). However, this does not actually tell
us whether B is the more economical method of production in terms
of minimising waste and resource use, it just tells us which costs
less in terms of money.
Why is this? Simply because, as we argued in section
I.1.2, prices do not totally reflect social, economic and ecological
costs. They are influenced by market power, for example, and produce
externalities, environmental and health costs which are not reflected
in the price. Indeed, passing on costs in the form of externalities
and inhuman working conditions actually are rewarded in the market
as it allows the company so doing to cut their prices. As far as market
power goes, this has a massive influence on prices, directly in terms
of prices charged and indirectly in terms of wages and conditions
of workers. Due to natural barriers to entry (see section
C.4), prices are maintained artificially high by the market power
of big business. For example, steel could, in fact cost $5 per ton
to produce but market power allows the company to charge $10 per ton,
Wage costs are, again, determined by the bargaining power of labour
and so do not reflect the real costs in terms of health, personality
and alienation the workers experience. They may be working in unhealthy
conditions simply to get by, with unemployment or job insecurity hindering
their attempts to improve their conditions or find a new job. Nor
are the social and individual costs of hierarchy and alienation factored
into the price, quite the reverse. It seems ironic that an economy
which it defenders claim meets human needs (as expressed by money,
of course) totally ignores individuals in the workplace, the place
they spend most of their waking hours in adult life.
So the relative costs of each production method have to be evaluated
but price does not, indeed cannot, provide an real indication of whether
a method is economical in the sense of actually minimising resource
use. Prices do reflect some of these costs, of course, but filtered
through the effects of market power, hierarchy and externalities they
become less and less accurate. Unless you take the term "economical"
to simply mean "has the least cost in price" rather than the
sensible "has the least cost in resource use, ecological impact
and human pain" you have to accept that the price mechanism is
not a great indicator of economic use.
What is the alternative? Obviously the exact details will be worked
out in practice by the members of a free society, but we can suggest
a few ideas based on our comments above.
When evaluating production methods we need to take into account
as many social and ecological costs as possible and these have to
be evaluated. Which costs will be taken into account, of course, be
decided by those involved, as will how important they are relative
to each other (i.e. how they are weighted). Moreover, it is likely
that they will factor in the desirability of the work performed to
indicate the potential waste in human time involved in production
(see section I.4.13 for a discussion
of how the desirability of productive activity could be indicated
in an anarchist society). The logic behind this is simple, a resource
which people like to produce will be a better use of the scare
resource of an individual's time than one people hate producing.
So, for example, steel may take 3 person hours to produce one ton,
produce 200 cubic metres of waste gas, 2000 kilo-joules of energy,
and has excellent working conditions. Concrete, on the other hand,
may take 4 person hours to produce one ton, produce 300 cubic metres
of waste gas, uses 1000 kilo-joules of energy and has dangerous working
conditions due to dust. What would be the best method? Assuming that
each factor is weighted the same, then obviously Method A is the better
method as it produces the least ecological impact and has the safest
working environment -- the higher energy cost is offset by the other,
more important, factors.
What factors to take into account and how to weigh them in the decision
making process will be evaluated constantly and reviewed so to ensure
that it reflects real costs and social concerns. Moreover, simply
accounting tools can be created (as a spreadsheet or computer programme)
that takes the decided factors as inputs and returns a cost benefit
analysis of the choices available.
Therefore, the claim that communism cannot evaluate different production
methods due to lack of prices is inaccurate. Indeed, a look at the
actual capitalist market -- marked as it is by differences in bargaining
and market power, externalities and wage labour -- soon shows that
the claims that prices accurately reflect costs is simply not accurate.
One final point on this subject. As social anarchists consider it
important to encourage all to participate in the decisions that affect
their lives, it would be the role of communal confederations to determine
the relative points value of given inputs and outputs. In this way,
all individuals in a community determine how their society
develops, so ensuring that economic activity is responsible to social
needs and takes into account the desires of everyone affected by production.
In this way the problems associated with the "Isolation Paradox"
(see section B.6) can be over come and so
consumption and production can be harmonised with the needs of individuals
as members of society and the environment they live in.
Anarchists do not ignore the facts of life, namely that at a given moment
there is so much a certain good produced and so much of is desired
to be consumed or used. Neither do we deny that different individuals
have different interests and tastes. However, this is not what is
usually meant by "supply and demand." Often in general economic
debate, this formula is given a certain mythical quality which ignores
the underlying realities which it reflects as well as some unwholesome
implications of the theory. So, before discussing "supply and demand"
in an anarchist society, it is worthwhile to make a few points about
the "law of supply and demand" in general.
Firstly, as E.P. Thompson argues, "supply and demand" promotes
"the notion that high prices were a (painful) remedy for dearth,
in drawing supplies to the afflicted region of scarcity. But what
draws supply are not high prices but sufficient money in their purses
to pay high prices. A characteristic phenomenon in times of dearth
is that it generates unemployment and empty pursues; in purchasing
necessities at inflated prices people cease to be able to buy inessentials
[causing unemployment] . . . Hence the number of those able to pay
the inflated prices declines in the afflicted regions, and food may
be exported to neighbouring, less afflicted, regions where employment
is holding up and consumers still have money with which to pay. In
this sequence, high prices can actually withdraw supply from the most
afflicted area." [Customs in Common, pp. 283-4]
Therefore "the law of supply and demand" may not be the "most
efficient" means of distribution in a society based on inequality.
This is clearly reflected in the "rationing" by purse which
this system is based on. While in the economics books, price is the
means by which scare resources are "rationed" in reality this
creates many errors. Adam Smith argued that high prices discourage
consumption, putting "everybody more or less, but particularly
the inferior ranks of people, upon thrift and good management."
[cited by Thompson, Op. Cit., p. 284] However, as Thompson
notes, "[h]owever persuasive the metaphor, there is an elision
of the real relationships assigned by price, which suggests. . .ideological
sleight-of-mind. Rationing by price does not allocate resources equally
among those in need; it reserves the supply to those who can pay the
price and excludes those who can't. . .The raising of prices during
dearth could 'ration' them [the poor] out of the market altogether."
[Op. Cit., p. 285]
In other words, the market cannot be isolated and abstracted from
the network of political, social and legal relations within which
it is situated. This means that all that "supply and demand"
tells us is that those with money can demand more, and be supplied
with more, than those without. Whether this is the "most efficient"
result for society cannot be determined (unless, of course, you assume
that rich people are more valuable than working class ones because
they are rich). This has an obvious effect on production, with "effective
demand" twisting economic activity. As Chomsky notes, "[t]hose
who have more money tend to consume more, for obvious reasons. So
consumption is skewed towards luxuries for the rich, rather than necessities
for the poor." George Barrett brings home of the evil of such
a "skewed" form of production:
"To-day the scramble is to compete for the greatest profits. If there is
more profit to be made in satisfying my lady's passing whim than there is
in feeding hungry children, then competition brings us in feverish haste
to supply the former, whilst cold charity or the poor law can supply the
latter, or leave it unsupplied, just as it feels disposed. That is how it
works out." [Objections to Anarchism]
Therefore, as far as "supply and demand" is concerned, anarchists
are well aware of the need to create and distribute necessary goods
to those who require them. This, however, cannot be achieved under
capitalism. In effect, supply and demand under capitalism results
in those with most money determining what is an "efficient"
allocation of resources for if financial profit is the sole consideration
for resource allocation, then the wealthy can outbid the poor and
ensure the highest returns. The less wealthy can do without.
However, the question remains of how, in an anarchist society, do
you know that valuable labour and materials might be better employed
elsewhere? How do workers judge which tools are most appropriate?
How do they decide among different materials if they all meet the
technical specifications? How important are some goods than others?
How important is cellophane compared to vacuum-cleaner bags?
It is answers like this that the supporters of the market claim
that their system answers. However, as indicated, it does answer them
in irrational and dehumanising ways under capitalism but the question
is: can anarchism answer them? Yes, although the manner in which this
is done varies between anarchist threads. In a mutualist economy,
based on independent and co-operative labour, differences in wealth
would be vastly reduced, so ensuring that irrational aspects of the
market that exist within capitalism would be minimised. The workings
of supply and demand would provide a more just result than under the
current system.
However, collectivist, syndicalist and communist anarchists reject
the market. This rejection often implies, to some, central planning.
As the market socialist David Schweickart puts it, "[i]f profit
considerations do not dictate resource usage and production techniques,
then central direction must do so. If profit is not the goal of a
productive organisation, then physical output (use values) must be."
[Against Capitalism, p. 86]
However, Schweickart is wrong. Horizontal links need not be market
based and co-operation between individuals and groups need not be
hierarchical. What is implied in this comment is that there is just
two ways to relate to others -- namely, by bribery or by authority.
In other words, either by prostitution (purely by cash) or by hierarchy
(the way of the state, the army or capitalist workplace). But people
relate to each other in other ways, such as friendship, love, solidarity,
mutual aid and so on. Thus you can help or associate with others without
having to be ordered to do so or by being paid cash to do so -- we
do so all the time. You can work together because by so doing you
benefit yourself and the other person. This is the real communist
way, that of mutual aid and free agreement.
So Schweickart is ignoring the vast majority of relations in any
society. For example, love/attraction is a horizontal link between
two autonomous individuals and profit considerations do not enter
into the relationship. Thus anarchists argue that Schweickart's argument
is flawed as it fails to recognise that resource usage and production
techniques can be organised in terms of human need and free agreement
between economic actors, without profits or central command. This
system does not mean that we all have to love each other (an impossible
wish). Rather, it means that we recognise that by voluntarily co-operating
as equals we ensure that we remain free individuals and that we can
gain the advantages of sharing resources and work (for example, a
reduced working day and week, self-managed work in safe and hygienic
working conditions and a free selection of the product of a whole
society). In other words, a self-interest which exceeds the narrow
and impoverished "egotism" of capitalist society. In the words
of John O'Neil:
"[F]or it is the institutions themselves that define what
counts as one's interests. In particular, the market
encourages egoism, not primarily because it encourages
an individual to be 'self-interested' -- it would be
unrealistic not to expect individuals to act for the
greater part in a 'self-interested' manner -- but rather
because it defines an individual's interests in a
particularly narrow fashion, most notably in terms of
possession of certain material goods. In consequence,
where market mechanism enter a particular sphere of
life, the pursuit of goods outside this narrow range
of market goods is institutionally defined as an act
of altruism." [The Market, p. 158]
Thus free agreement and horizontal links are not limited to market
transactions -- they develop for numerous reasons and anarchists recognise
this. As George Barret argues:
"Let us imagine now that the great revolt of the workers has taken
place, that their direct action has made them masters of the
situation. It is not easy to see that some man in a street that
grew hungry would soon draw a list of the loaves that were needed,
and take it to the bakery where the strikers were in possession?
Is there any difficulty in supposing that the necessary amount
would then be baked according to this list? By this time the
bakers would know what carts and delivery vans were needed to
send the bread out to the people, and if they let the carters
and vanmen know of this, would these not do their utmost to
supply the vehicles. . . If . . . [the bakers needed] more
benches [to make bread] . . . the carpenters would supply
them [and so on] . . . So the endless continuity goes on
-- a well-balanced interdependence of parts guaranteed, because
need is the motive force behind it all. . . In the same way
that each free individual has associated with his brothers
[and sisters] to produce bread, machinery, and all that is
necessary for life, driven by no other force than his desire
for the full enjoyment of life, so each institution is free
and self-contained, and co-operates and enters into agreements
with other because by so doing it extends its own possibilities.
There is no centralised State exploiting or dictating, but the
complete structure is supported because each part is dependent
on the whole . . . It will be a society responsive to the wants
of the people; it will supply their everyday needs as quickly
as it will respond to their highest aspirations. Its changing
forms will be the passing expressions of humanity." [The
Anarchist Revolution, pp. 17-19]
To make productive decisions we need to know what others need and
information in order to evaluate the alternative options available
to us to satisfy that need. Therefore, it is a question of distributing
information between producers and consumers, information which the
market often hides (or actively blocks) or distorts due to inequalities
in resources (i.e. need does not count in the market, "effective
demand" does and this skews the market in favour of the wealthy).
This information network has partly been discussed in the last
section where a method of comparison between different materials,
techniques and resources based upon use value was discussed. However,
the need to indicate the current fluctuations in production and consumption
needs to be indicated which complements that method.
In a non-Mutualist anarchist system it is assumed that confederations
of syndicates will wish to adjust their capacity if they are aware
of the need to do so. Hence, price changes in response to changes
in demand would not be necessary to provide the information that such
changes are required. This is because a "change in demand first
becomes apparent as a change in the quantity being sold at existing
prices [or being consumed in a moneyless system] and is therefore
reflected in changes in stocks or orders. Such changes are perfectly
good indicators or signals that an imbalance between demand and current
output has developed. If a change in demand for its products proved
to be permanent, a production unit would find its stocks being run
down and its order book lengthening, or its stocks increasing and
orders falling . . . Price changes in response to changes in demand
are therefore not necessary for the purpose of providing information
about the need to adjust capacity." [Pat Devine, Democracy
and Economic Planning, p. 242]
To indicate the relative changes in scarcity of a given good it
will be necessary to calculate a "scarcity index." This would
inform potential users of this good whether its demand is outstripping
its supply so that they may effectively adjust their decisions in
light of the decisions of others. This index could be, for example,
a percentage figure which indicates the relation of orders placed
for a commodity to the amount actually produced. For example, a good
which has a demand higher than its supply would have an index value
of 101% or higher. This value would inform potential users to start
looking for substitutes for it or to economise on its use. Such a
scarcity figure would exist for each collective as well as (possibly)
a generalised figure for the industry as a whole on a regional, "national,"
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