Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (129 page)

The foundation of anarchist educational theory has been to encourage people to think and act for themselves, not to rely on the opinion of others simply because they happen to be in authority. Their aim is to form critical judgement and deploy the creative imagination, not pander to intellectual orthodoxy and social conformity. As Godwin observed, a person may advise others but he should not dictate: ‘He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his.’
²⁰
Public opinion would undoubtedly play an important part in an anarchist society in encouraging social cohesion and in dissuading ‘wrongdoers’, but its use would be much more deliberate and circumspect.

Like most critics of anarchism, Shaw, Russell and Orwell see no alternative to the rule of law. What such critics underestimate is not so much the goodness of man without the pressure of coercive institutions but the importance of social morality. Without legal and political coercion, new social customs and norms would emerge to hold society together. Anarchists assume that people can act morally and govern themselves, without compulsion, as they did before the creation of States, and that there is enough solidarity, love, reason, and good will in human beings to enable them to get on with each other in a fairly harmonious way when not interfered with.

History of course shows that human beings are equally capable of aggression as of peaceful living. Anarchists believe that without States and governments, which are primarily the cause of war and conflict, the more co-operative and gender aspects of humanity will have an opportunity to flourish. And the social anarchists would add, without private property and capital, a social morality which satisfies real desires and encourages respect for the freedom of others would grow with the experience of communal work and play.

It has been argued that anarchist thinking is based on a ‘romantic backward-looking vision of an idealized past society of artisans and peasants, and on a total rejection of the realities of twentieth-century social and economic organization’.
²¹
It is true that in the nineteenth century, many skilled artisans were undoubtedly attracted to Proudhon’s mutualism which seemed to provide an alternative to the factory system of modern industry. Anarchism also attracted the independent clockmakers of the Swiss Jura who developed it in a communist direction. In the Mexican and Spanish Revolutions, it was the most backward peasants who embraced anarchism with the greatest fervour.

But it is quite misleading to see anarchism merely as a peasant or artisan ideology. In the form of anarcho-syndicalism, it attracted the most advanced workers in France and Spain. In the last century, anarchism appealed to sons of aristocrats like Bakunin, Kropotkin and Tolstoy, of peasants like Proudhon, and of landowners like Malatesta. In this century, anarchism has found in advanced industrial countries its greatest support among ‘white collar’ workers, especially students, teachers, doctors, architects, artists and other intellectuals. The new anarchism is not merely a revolt of the underprivileged but of the affluent who do not find fulfilment as passive consumers and spectators.

While anarchism has no specific class base like Marxism, it has traditionally found its chief support amongst workers and peasants. Bakunin established an important anarchist tradition by stressing the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, whom Marx dismissed as reactionary ‘rural idiots’, and of the lumpenproletariat, whom Marx considered to be antisocial elements. The great revolutions of the twentieth century have all confirmed Bakunin’s rather than Marx’s prognosis; they have not occurred in advanced industrial societies, but in predominantly agricultural ones. Moreover, in advanced industrial societies, it is the lumpenproletariat — students, the unemployed, ethnic minorities, and women on the margins of capitalism — who have proved the most rebellious.

The accusation that anarchism is opposed to the dominant economic trend of the twentieth century has more substance. It is certainly hostile to the centralized large-scale industry and agriculture found in modern capitalist and socialist States. It is not committed to a policy of economic growth and mass production and consumption.

But while it was possible a quarter of a century ago to suggest that anarchism was out of step with existing economic trends, it would now seem that State communism and international capitalism are failing to achieve their
stated aims. The New Left and the growing Green movement have all taken up the classic anarchist demands of a decentralized economy with small-scale units and a harmonious balance between field and factory. Anarchism extolled the virtues of ‘Small is Beautiful’ before it became a popular slogan, and has long stressed the benefits of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. It has always put human beings before things, and seen no value in economic growth for its own sake. As the twenty-first century approaches, anarchists are no longer idealists swimming against the economic current. Indeed, their recommendations may well prove prerequisites to survival.

There are of course two main strains in anarchist economic thinking. Individualists and their contemporary counterparts, the anarcho-capitalists, rely entirely on the free market to supply public goods, and they retain the profit motive and the wage system. Social anarchists, including the collectivists, syndicalists and communists, seek to organize production for use through co-operatives, collectives, syndicates and communes.

Undoubtedly real difficulties exist with the economic position of the individualists. If occupiers became owners overnight as Benjamin Tucker recommended, it would mean in practice that those with good land or houses would merely become better off than those with bad. Tucker’s advocacy of ‘competition everywhere and always’ among occupying owners, subject to the only moral law of minding your own business might well encourage individual greed rather than fair play all round. His argument for labour as the sole measure of price further conflicts with the market model in which values are dependent on supply and demand.

The economic proposals of modern anarcho-capitalists suffer from similar shortcomings, only in a more extreme form. In their system of complete
laissez-faire
, those who have wealth and power would only increase their privileges, while the weak and poor would go to the wall. The economy might be ‘free’ in the sense of unrestrained, but most people would not be free from want and fear. Private protection agencies would merely serve the interests of their paymasters. Right-wing libertarians merely want freedom for themselves to protect their privileges and to exploit others. They talk about freedom but remain silent about equality.

On the other hand, social anarchists all try to realize a society which is both equal and free. They recognize that every person has an equal right to basic liberties and material goods. They would assure a basic minimum for every member of society. There are however differences of degree between collectivists and communists. The collectivists would retain the wage system, rewarding individuals according to the amount of work done. The communists would rely on each contributing according to his or her ability and receiving according to need. In both cases production and distribution
would be arranged through the basic economic unit of society, whether it be the syndicate, collective, council or commune.

In general, anarchists look to a decentralized economy which is managed at the local level by the producers and consumers themselves. Production and distribution would be organized through co-ordinating bodies at local, regional and national levels which would also seek to balance regional differences. And if this may appear Utopian to some, anarchists point to the way in which highly complex agreements between international airlines and railways can be reached through negotiation without a central authority imposing its will.

In practice, anarchists have adopted different methods, sometimes at the same time, to achieve their ultimate goal of a free and equal society. During the Spanish Revolution, for instance, most theorists had talked about the benefits of co-operatives and syndicates, but collectives emerged in the early days of the civil war which rapidly proceeded to a form of communism by pooling the land and establishing common storehouses. The collective, based on universal solidarity and mutual aid, encompassed all those who wished to join, whether producers or not. Money was abolished in some cases and any surplus produce exchanged directly with neighbouring collectives. Small private farmers who did not wish to join were allowed to continue alongside the collectives. At the same time, in highly industrialized Catalunya, the factories were run by workers’ committees who retained the wage system and in some cases even the managers as advisers. The whole resulted in a surprisingly diversified form of economic federalism.

What these collectives in Spain demonstrate is that farms and factories can be successfully organized through self-management and workers’ control. They also show that mere is no inevitable tension between liberty and efficiency. Many impartial observers in Catalunya noted how production in the factories increased and public services improved. This was not a result of better material incentives, for in many instances the value of real wages actually dropped. Even if collective decision-making took longer than issuing orders, in the long run the decisions were better implemented since they were property understood and those affected felt involved and committed.

The example of Spain further exposes the myth that anarchists are somehow against organization. They are certainly against hierarchical and centralized organization, but not tile kind of organization which is reached through negotiation and agreement. A few individualists might wish to remain aloof from all organization, and it is their prerogative if they so wish, but the great majority of anarchists find that they work best within voluntary associations which are small and functional.

In the economic sphere, the traditional arguments against anarchism
have therefore proved increasingly hollow, even within capitalist societies. Innumerable practical examples of industrial self-management and workers’ control have made a mockery of Engels’ nineteenth-century contention that it is impossible to organize a factory without authority. Orwell’s end-of-the-war comment that a planned, centralized society is necessary in order to make an aeroplane has been scotched by the success of private aerospace companies. In the post-scarcity world of advanced industrial societies, it can no longer be said that anarchism implies a low standard of living. ‘Unless there is some unpredictable change in human nature’, a deflated Orwell observed, ‘liberty and efficiency must pull in opposite directions.’
²²
It is not an unpredictable change which has occurred but merely a growing awareness that people are more efficient when they undertake their work voluntarily and participate freely in the process of decision-making.

Human beings of course cannot survive without work. Once compulsion has been abolished, anarchist critics ask, who will then do the dirty work? Indeed, why should one bother to work at all? There is of course no intrinsic good in work, and aristocrats for centuries have enjoyed without complaint their unemployment and leisure. Unlike Marxists and Protestants, most anarchists (with the notable exception of Tolstoy) do not have a strong work ethic and find more happiness in comfortable idleness than in hard labour. They would agree with Russell that work has largely been of two kinds: moving matter around on the earth’s crust and telling people to do so.
²³
In a free society, the latter type of work would of course no longer exist, but who would carry on the former which is necessary to our existence?

Shaw argued forcibly that it is unlikely for men trained under the present economic system to be trusted to pay for their food in a scheme of voluntary communism if they could take it with impunity. Only the dire threat of want forces people to labour and the strong hand of the law can make them pay for what they consume. Even the pressure of social disapproval could not prevent them from taking advantage of voluntary communism for ‘a man could snap his fingers at public opinion without starving for it’.
²⁴

It is not only ‘authoritarian’ socialists who have made this point. Some anarchists have insisted on compulsory work for all; others that those who refuse to work should be asked to leave the community since by refusing they are coercing others. Camillo Berneri proposed the compromise: ‘no compulsion to work, but no duty towards those who do not want to work’.
²⁵

Clearly material incentives are not the only way to get people to work. The threat of want or the promise of material gain do not exhaust human
motivation. Social anarchists stress that in a free society without compulsion, a morality based on mutual aid and solidarity would develop which would foster satisfaction in working for the good of the whole. In addition, there would be the moral incentive of social approval for those who work for others, and the sanction of disapproval for those who work only for themselves or not at all. Work which might usually be considered unpleasant can be enjoyable if it is felt to be socially useful and worthwhile. And where work cannot be made more agreeable and attractive, and machines cannot perform unpleasant tasks, there would doubtless be enough public-spirited people to share the work willingly.

But it is not only a question of moral versus material incentives. The nature of work itself would be changed in a free society. Anarchists promote useful work, not useless toil. They wish to end the division of labour so that people can make use of their mental and physical abilities. There would be much greater variety which would make life and work more interesting and exciting. If some people find labour-intensive work agreeable, then there is no reason why they should not engage in it.