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<title>I.5 What could the social structure of anarchy look like?</title>

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<h1>I.5 What could the social structure of anarchy look like?</h1>

<p>
The social and political structure of anarchy is similar to 
that of its economic structure, i.e., it is based on a voluntary 
federation of decentralised, directly democratic community assemblies 
(communes). In these grassroots political units and their confederations, 
the concept of <b><i>"self-management"</i></b> becomes that of 
<b><i>"self-government"</i></b>, 
a form of municipal organisation in which people take back control 
of their living places from the bureaucratic state and the capitalist 
class whose interests it serves. Bakunin's comments are very applicable 
here:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"[A] truly popular organisation begins from below, from the association,
from the commune. Thus starting out with the organisation of the lowest
nucleus and proceeding upward, federalism becomes a political institution
of socialism, the free and spontaneous organisation of popular life."</i> 
[<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, pp. 273-4]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<i>"A new economic phase demands a new political phase,"</i> argued
Kropotkin, <i>"A revolution as profound as that dreamed of by the 
socialists cannot accept the mould of an out-dated political life. A 
new society based on equality of condition, on the collective possession 
of the instruments of work, cannot tolerate for a week . . . the 
representative system . . . if we want the social revolution, we 
must seek a form of political organisation that will correspond to 
the new method of economic organisation  . . . The future belongs
to the free groupings of interests and not to governmental
centralisation; it belongs to freedom and not to authority."</i> 
[<b>Words of a Rebel</b>, pp. 143-4]
</p><p>
Thus the social structure of an anarchist society will be the opposite
of the current system. Instead of being centralised and top-down as
in the state, it will be decentralised and organised from the bottom
up. As Kropotkin argued, <i>"socialism must become <b>more popular</b>, 
more communalistic, and less dependent upon indirect government through 
elected representatives. It must become more <b>self-governing.</b>"</i> 
[<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 185] In this, Kropotkin (like Bakunin) followed
Proudhon who argued that <i>"[u]nless democracy is a fraud, and the 
sovereignty of the People a joke, it must be admitted that each citizen 
in the sphere of his [or her] industry, each municipal, district or 
provincial council within its own territory, is the only natural and 
legitimate representative of the Sovereign, and that therefore each 
locality should act directly and by itself in administering the interests  
which it includes, and should exercise full sovereignty in relation to 
them."</i> [<b>General Idea of the Revolution</b>, p. 276] While anarchists
have various different conceptions of how this communal system would be 
constituted (as we will see), they is total agreement on these basic 
visions and principles.
</p><p>
The aim is <i>"to found an order of things wherein the principle of the 
sovereignty of the people, of man and of the citizen, would be implemented 
to the letter"</i> and <i>"where every member"</i> of a society <i>"retaining 
his independence and continuing to act as sovereign, would be self-governing"</i> 
and any social organisation <i>"would concern itself solely with collective 
matters; where as a consequence, there would be certain common matters but 
no centralisation."</i> This means that the <i>"federative, mutualist 
republican sentiment"</i> (as summarised these days by the expression 
self-management) will <i>"bring about the victory of Worker Democracy 
right around the world."</i> [Proudhon, <b>Anarchism</b>, vol. 1, Robert 
Graham (ed.), p. 74 and p. 77]
</p><p>
This empowerment of ordinary citizens through decentralisation and 
direct democracy will eliminate the alienation and apathy that are 
now rampant and (as always happens when 
people are free) unleash a flood of innovation in dealing with the 
social breakdown now afflicting our world. The gigantic 
metropolis with its hierarchical and impersonal administration, its 
atomised and isolated "residents," will be transformed into a network 
of humanly scaled participatory communities, 
each with its own unique character and forms of self-government, which 
will be co-operatively linked through federation with other communities, 
from the municipal through the bio-regional to the global level. 
</p><p>
This means that the social perspective of libertarian socialism is 
as distinctive as its economic vision. While mainstream socialism is
marked by support for centralised states, anarchists stay true to 
socialism as equality and argue that means decentralisation. Thus
socialism <i>"wears two distinct faces. When it is said that a man is
a Socialist, it is implies that he regards the monopoly of private 
property in the means of production as the cause of the existing
unequal distribution of wealth and its attendant ills . . . Socialists
are divided into the centralising and decentralising parties,
the party of the State and the party of the federatic commune."</i> 
[Charlotte M. Wilson, <b>Anarchist Essays</b>, p. 37] Only such a
federal, bottom-up, system can ensure people can manage their own
fates and ensure genuine freedom and equality through mass 
participation and self-management.
</p><p>
Of course, it can (and has) been argued that people are just not
interested in "politics." Further, some claim that this disinterest 
is why governments exist -- people delegate their responsibilities and 
power to others because they have better things to do. 
</p><p>
Such an argument, however, is flawed on empirical grounds. As we 
indicated in <a href="secB2.html#secb26">section B.2.6</a>, 
centralisation of power in both the French and
American revolutions occurred <b>because</b> the wealthy few thought 
that working class people were taking
<b>too much</b> interest in politics and social issues, not the reverse
(<i>"To attack the central power, to strip it of its prerogatives,
to decentralise, to dissolve authority, would have been to abandon
to the people the control of its affairs, to run the risk of a
truly popular revolution. That is why the bourgeoisie sought to
reinforce the central government even more. . ."</i> [Kropotkin,
<b>Words of a Rebel</b>, p. 143]). Simply put, the state is 
centralised to facilitate <b>minority rule</b> 
by excluding the mass of people from taking part in the decision 
making processes within society. This is to be expected as social 
structures do not evolve by chance -- rather they develop to meet 
specific needs and requirements. The specific need of the ruling 
class is to rule and that means marginalising the bulk of the 
population. Its requirement is for minority power and this is 
reflected in the structure of the state (see <a href="secH3.html#sech37">section H.3.7</a>). 
</p><p>
Even if we ignore the historical evidence on this issue, anarchists
do not draw this conclusion from the current apathy that surrounds 
us. In fact, we argue that this apathy is not the cause of 
government but its result. Government is an inherently hierarchical 
system in which ordinary people are deliberately marginalised. The 
powerlessness people feel due to the workings of the system ensure 
that they are apathetic about it, thus guaranteeing that wealthy 
and powerful elites govern society without hindrance from the 
oppressed and exploited majority. 
</p><p>
Moreover, government usually sticks its nose into areas that 
most people have no real interest in. Some things, as in the 
regulation of industry or workers' safety and rights, a free 
society could leave to those affected to make their own 
decisions (we doubt that workers would subject themselves to 
unsafe working conditions, for example). In others, such as 
the question of personal morality and acts, a free people 
would have no interest in (unless it harmed others, of course). 
This, again, would reduce the number of issues that would
be discussed in a free commune. Also, via 
decentralisation, a free people would be mainly 
discussing local issues, so reducing the complexity of many
questions and solutions. Wider issues would, of course, be
discussed but these would be on specific issues and so
more focused in their nature than those raised in the
legislative bodies of the state. So, a combination of 
centralisation and an irrational desire to discuss every 
and all questions also helps make "politics" seem boring 
and irrelevant.
</p><p>
As noted above, this result is not an accident and the 
marginalisation of "ordinary" people is actually celebrated 
in bourgeois "democratic" theory. As Noam Chomsky notes:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Twentieth century democratic theorists advise that 'The public 
must be put in its place,' so that the 'responsible men' may 
'live free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd,' 
'ignorant and meddlesome outsiders' whose 'function' is to be 
'interested spectators of action,' not participants, lending 
their weight periodically to one or another of the leadership 
class (elections), then returning to their private concerns. 
(Walter Lippman). The great mass of the population, 'ignorant
and mentally deficient,' must be kept in their place for the 
common good, fed with 'necessary illusion' and 'emotionally 
potent oversimplifications' (Wilson's Secretary of State 
Robert Lansing, Reinhold Niebuhr). Their 'conservative' 
counterparts are only more extreme in their adulation of the
Wise Men who are the rightful rulers -- in the service of the 
rich and powerful, a minor footnote regularly forgotten."</i> 
[<b>Year 501</b>, p. 18]
</blockquote></p><p>
This marginalisation of the public from political life ensures that 
the wealthy can be <i>"left alone"</i> to use their power as they see fit. 
In other words, such marginalisation is a necessary part of a fully 
functioning capitalist society and so libertarian 
social structures have to be discouraged. Or as Chomsky put it, the 
<i>"rabble must be instructed in the values of subordination and a
narrow quest for personal gain within the parameters set by the
institutions of the masters; meaningful democracy, with popular
association and action, is a threat to be overcome."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 18] This philosophy can be seen in the statement of a US Banker 
in Venezuela under the murderous Jimenez dictatorship:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"You have the freedom here to do whatever you want to do with your 
money, and to me, that is worth all the political freedom in the 
world."</i> [quoted by Chomsky, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 99]
</blockquote></p><p>
Deterring libertarian alternatives to statism is a common feature of our
current system. By marginalising and disempowering people, the ability of
individuals to manage their own social activities is undermined and
weakened. They develop a "fear of freedom" and embrace authoritarian 
institutions and "strong leaders", which in turn reinforces their 
marginalisation.
</p><p>
This consequence is hardly surprising. Anarchists maintain that the 
desire to participate and the ability to participate are in a symbiotic 
relationship: participation builds on itself. By creating the social 
structures that allow participation, participation will increase. As 
people increasingly take control of their lives, so their ability to 
do so also increases. The challenge of having to take responsibility 
for decisions that make a difference is at the same time an opportunity 
for personal development. To begin to feel power, having previously felt 
powerless, to win access to the resources required for effective 
participation and learn how to use them, is a liberating experience. 
Once people become active subjects, making things happen in one aspect 
of their lives, they are less likely to remain passive objects, allowing 
things to happen to them, in other aspects. 
</p><p>
All in all, "politics" is far too important an subject to leave to 
politicians, the wealthy and bureaucrats. After all, it is (or, at
least, it should be) what affects, your friends, community, and, 
ultimately, the planet you live on. Such issues cannot be left to 
anyone but you.
</p><p>
Hence a meaningful communal life based on self-empowered individuals is  
a distinct possibility (indeed, it has repeatedly appeared throughout
history). It is the hierarchical structures in statism and capitalism, 
marginalising and disempowering the majority, which is at the root of 
the current wide scale apathy in the face of increasing social and
ecological disruption. Libertarian socialists therefore call for a 
radically new form of political system to replace the centralised 
nation-state, a form that would be based around confederations of
self-governing communities: <i>"<b>Society 
is a society of societies; a league of leagues of leagues; a 
commonwealth of commonwealths of commonwealths; a republic of 
republics of republics.</b> Only there is freedom and order, only 
there is spirit, a spirit which is self-sufficiency and community, 
unity and independence."</i> [Gustav Landauer, <b>For Socialism</b>, 
pp. 125-126]
</p><p>
To create such a system would require dismantling the nation-state 
and reconstituting relations between communities on the basis of
self-determination and free and equal confederation from below. In the
following subsections we  will examine in more detail why this new system
is needed and what it might look like. As we have stressed repeatedly,
these are just suggestions of possible anarchist solutions to social
organisation. Most anarchists recognise that anarchist communities
will co-exist with non-anarchist ones after the destruction of the 
existing state. As we are anarchists we are discussing anarchist visions.
We will leave it up to non-anarchists to paint their own pictures of
a possible future.
</p>

<a name="seci51"><h2>I.5.1 What are participatory communities?</h2></a>

<p>
A key concept in anarchist thought is that of the participatory
community. Traditionally, these participatory communities are called 
<b>communes</b> in anarchist theory (<i>"The basic social and economic 
cell of the anarchist society is the free, independent commune"</i> 
[A. Grachev, quoted by Paul Avrich, <b>The Anarchists in the Russian 
Revolution</b>, p. 64]). 
</p><p>
The reason for the use of the term commune is due to anarchism's 
roots in France where it refers to the lowest level of administrative 
division in the Republic. In France, a commune can be a city of 2 
million inhabitants (hence the Paris Commune of 1871); a town of 
10,000; or just a 10-person hamlet. It appeared in the 12th century 
from Medieval Latin <b>communia</b>, which means a gathering of 
people sharing a common life (from Latin <b>communis</b>, things 
held in common). Proudhon used the term to describe the social 
units of a non-statist society and subsequent anarchists like 
Bakunin and Kropotkin followed his lead. As the term "commune", 
since the 1960s, often refers to "intentional communities" where 
people drop out of society and form their own counter-cultural
groups and living spaces we have, in order to avoid confusion, decided 
to use "participatory community" as well (anarchists have also used
other terms, including <i>"free municipality"</i>).
</p><p>
These community organisations are seen as the way people participate
in the decisions that affect them and their neighbourhoods, regions
and, ultimately, planet. These are the means for transforming our social 
environment from one disfigured by economic and political power and its
needs to one fit for human beings to life and flourish in. The 
creation of a network of participatory communities ("communes") 
based on self-government through direct, face-to-face democracy in 
grassroots neighbourhood assemblies is the means to that end. As we
argued in <a href="secI2.html#seci23">section I.2.3</a> 
such assemblies will be born in 
social struggle and so reflect the needs of the struggle 
and those within it so our comments here must be considered
as generalisations of the salient features of such communities
and <b>not</b> blue-prints. 
</p><p>
Within anarchist thought, there are two main conceptions of the free 
commune. One vision is based on workplace delegates, the other on 
neighbourhood assemblies. We will sketch each in turn.
</p><p>
The first type of participatory community (in which <i>"the federative 
Alliance of all working men's associations . . . will constitute the 
commune"</i>) is most associated with Bakunin. He argued that the 
<i>"future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom 
upwards, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly 
in their unions, then in communes, regions, nations and finally in a 
great federation, international and universal."</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: 
Selected Writings</b>, p. 170 and p. 206] This vision was stressed by 
later anarchist thinkers. For example, Spanish anarchist Issac Puente 
thought that in towns and cities <i>"the part of the free municipality 
is played by local federation . . . Ultimate sovereignty in the local 
federation of industrial unions lies with the general assembly of all 
local producers."</i> [<b>Libertarian Communism</b>, p. 27] The Russian 
anarchist G. P. Maximoff saw the <i>"communal confederation"</i> as 
being <i>"constituted by thousands of freely acting labour organisations."</i> 
[<b>The Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism</b>, p. 43]
</p><p>
This vision of the commune was created during many later revolutions 
(such as in Russia in 1905 and 1917 as well as Hungary in 1956). 
Being based on workplaces, this form of commune has the advantage 
of being based on groups of people who are naturally associated 
during most of the day (Bakunin considered workplace bodies as 
<i>"the natural organisation of the masses"</i> as they were 
<i>"based on the various types of work"</i> which <i>"define their 
actual day-to-day life"</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, p. 139]). This 
would facilitate the organisation of assemblies, discussion on social,
economic and political issues and the mandating and recalling of 
delegates. Moreover, it combines political and economic power in one 
organisation, so ensuring that the working class actually manages society.
</p><p>
Other anarchists counterpoise neighbourhood assemblies to 
workers' councils. These assemblies will be general meetings 
open to all citizens in every neighbourhood, town, and village, 
and will be the source of public 
policy for all levels of confederal co-ordination. Such "town 
meetings" will bring people directly into the political 
process and give them an equal voice in the decisions that affect 
their lives. Such anarchists point to the experience of the
French Revolution of 1789 and the <i>"sections"</i> of the Paris 
Commune as the key example of <i>"a people governing itself 
directly -- when possible -- without intermediaries, without 
masters."</i> It is argued, based on this experience, that <i>"the 
principles of anarchism . . . dated from 1789, and that they 
had their origin, not in theoretical speculations, but in the 
<b>deeds</b> of the Great French Revolution."</i> [Peter Kropotkin, 
<b>The Great French Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 210 and p. 204] 
Anarchists also point to the clubs created during the 1848 Revolution
in France and in the Paris Commune of 1871 not to mention the 
community assemblies created in Argentina during the revolt against
neo-liberalism at the start of the 21st century.
</p><p>
Critics of workers' councils point out that not all people work in 
traditional workplaces (many are parents who look after children, for 
example). By basing the commune around the workplace, such people are 
automatically excluded. Moreover, in most modern cities
many people do not live near where they work. It would
mean that local affairs could not be effectively discussed
in a system of workers' councils as many who take part in the debate 
are unaffected by the decisions reached. In addition, some anarchists 
argue that workplace based systems automatically generate 
"special interests" and so exclude community issues. 
Only community assemblies can <i>"transcend the traditional 
special interests of work, workplace, status, and property 
relations, and create a <b>general</b> interest based on 
shared community problems."</i> [Murray Bookchin, <b>From 
Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 254]
</p><p>
However, such communities assemblies can only be valid if
they can be organised rapidly in order to make decisions
and to mandate and recall delegates. In the capitalist city,
many people work far from where they live and so such
meetings have to be called for after work or at weekends (thus 
the key need is to reduce the working day/week and to communalise 
industry). For this reason, many anarchists
continue to support the workers' council vision of the
commune, complemented by community assemblies for those
who live in an area but do not work in a traditional
workplace (e.g. parents bringing up small children, the 
old, the sick and so on). It should be noted that this is 
something which the supporters of workers' councils 
<b>have</b> noticed and some argue for councils which 
are delegates from both the inhabitants <b>and</b> the 
enterprises of an area.
</p><p>
These positions are not hard and fast divisions, far from it.
Puente, for example, thought that in the countryside the
dominant commune would be <i>"all the residents of a village
or hamlet meeting in an assembly (council) with full
powers to administer local affairs."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 25]
Kropotkin supported the soviets of the Russian Revolution,
arguing that the <i>"idea of soviets . . . of councils of
workers and peasants . . . controlling the economic and
political life of the country is a great idea. All the
more so, since it necessarily follows that these councils
should be composed of all who take part in the production
of natural wealth by their own efforts."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, 
p. 254] 
</p><p>
Which method, workers' councils or community assemblies, will 
be used in a given community will depend on local conditions,
needs and aspirations and it is useless to draw hard and
fast rules. It is likely that some sort of combination of 
the two approaches will be used, with workers' councils being
complemented by community assemblies until such time as
a reduced working week and decentralisation of urban centres
make purely community assemblies the more realistic
option. It is likely that in a fully libertarian society,
community assemblies will be the dominant communal organisation
but in the period immediately after a revolution this may
not be immediately possible. Objective conditions, rather 
than predictions, will be the deciding factor. Under
capitalism, anarchists pursue both forms of organisation,
arguing for community <b>and</b> industrial unionism in the
class struggle (see sections 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj51">J.5.1</a> and 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj52">J.5.2</a>).
</p><p>
Regardless of the exact make up of the commune, it has certain
key features. It would be free a association, based upon the 
self-assumed obligation of those who join them. In free association, 
participation is essential simply because it is the <b>only</b> means 
by which individuals can collectively govern themselves (and unless 
they govern themselves, someone else will). <i>"As a unique individual,"</i> 
Stirner argued, <i>"you can assert yourself alone in association, because 
the association does not own you, because you are one who owns it or 
who turns it to your own advantage."</i> The rules governing the 
association are determined by the associated and can be changed by them 
(and so a vast improvement over "love it or leave") as are the policies 
the association follows. Thus, the association <i>"does not impose itself 
as a spiritual power superior to my spirit. I have no wish to become a 
slave to my maxims, but would rather subject them to my ongoing 
criticism."</i> [Max Stirner, <b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, 
p. 17]
</p><p>
Thus participatory communities are freely joined and self-managed 
by their members with no division between order givers and order 
takers as exists within the state. Rather the associated govern 
themselves and while the assembled people collectively decide the 
rules governing their association, and are bound by them as 
individuals, they are also superior to them in the sense that 
these rules can always be modified or repealed 
(see <a href="secA2.html#seca211">section A.2.11</a> 
for more details). As can be seen, a participatory 
commune is new form of social life, radically different from the 
state as it is decentralised, self-governing and based upon
individual autonomy and free agreement. Thus Kropotkin:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The representative system was organised by the bourgeoisie to
ensure their domination, and it will disappear with them. For
the new economic phase that is about to begin we must seek a
new form of political organisation, based on a principle quite
different from that of representation. The logic of events
imposes it."</i> [<b>Words of a Rebel</b>, p. 125]
</blockquote></p><p>
This <i>"new form of political organisation has to be worked out 
the moment that socialistic principles shall enter our life. 
And it is self-evident that this new form will have to be 
<b>more popular, more decentralised, and nearer to the folk-mote 
self-government</b> than representative government can  ever be."</i> 
Kropotkin, like all anarchists, considered the idea that socialism could 
be created by taking over the current state or creating a new 
one as doomed to failure. Instead, he recognised that socialism 
would only be built using new organisations that reflect the 
spirit of socialism (such as freedom, self-government and so 
on). He, like Proudhon and Bakunin before him, therefore 
argued that <i>"<b>[t]his was the form that the social revolution 
must take</b> -- the independent commune. . . [whose] inhabitants 
have decided that they <b>will</b> communalise the consumption of 
commodities, their exchange and their production."</i> [Kropotkin, 
<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 184 and p. 163]
</p><p>
In a nutshell, a participatory community is a free association, 
based upon the mass assembly of people who live in a common area, 
the means by which they make the decisions that affect them, 
their communities, bio-regions and the planet. Their essential 
task is to provide a forum for raising public issues and deciding 
upon them. Moreover, these assemblies will be a key way of generating 
a community (and community spirit) and building and enriching 
social relationships between individuals and, equally important, 
of developing and enriching individuals by the very process of 
participation in communal affairs. By discussing, thinking and 
listening to others, individuals develop their own abilities and
powers while at the same time managing their own affairs, so 
ensuring that no one else does (i.e. they govern themselves 
and are no longer governed from above by others). As Kropotkin 
argued, self-management has an educational effect on those who 
practice it:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The 'permanence' of the general assemblies of the sections
-- that is, the possibility of calling the general assembly
whenever it was wanted by the members of the section and of
discussing everything in the general assembly. . . will educate 
every citizen politically. . . The section in permanence
-- the forum always open -- is the only way . . . to
assure an honest and intelligent administration."</i> [<b>The
Great French Revolution</b>, vol. 1, pp. 210-1]
</blockquote></p><p>
As well as integrating the social life of a community and
encouraging the political and social development of its
members, these free communes will also be integrated into 
the local ecology. Humanity would life in harmony with nature 
as well as with itself -- as discussed in <a href="secE2.html">section E.2</a>,
these would be <b>eco</b>-communities part of their local 
eco-systems with a balanced mix of agriculture and industry
(as described by Kropotkin in his classic work <b>Fields, 
Factories and Workshops</b>). Thus a free commune would 
aim to integrate the individual into social and communal 
life, rural and urban life into a balanced whole and human 
life into the wider ecology. In this way the free commune 
would make human habitation fully ecological, ending the 
sharp and needless (and dehumanising and de-individualising) 
division of human life from the rest of the planet. The 
commune will be a key means of the expressing diversity 
within humanity and the planet as well as improving the 
quality of life in society:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The Commune . . . will be entirely devoted to improving the communal
life of the locality. Making their requests to the appropriate 
Syndicates, Builders', Public Health, Transport or Power, the
inhabitants of each Commune will be able to gain all reasonable
living amenities, town planning, parks, play-grounds, trees in
the street, clinics, museums and art galleries. Giving, like the
medieval city assembly, an opportunity for any interested person
to take part in, and influence, his town's affairs and appearance,
the Commune will be a very different body from the borough 
council . . .</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In ancient and medieval times cities and villages expressed the
different characters of different localities and their inhabitants.
In redstone, Portland or granite, in plaster or brick, in pitch of
roof, arrangements of related buildings or patterns of slate and 
thatch each locality added to the interests of travellers . . .
each expressed itself in castle, home or cathedral.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"How different is the dull, drab, or flashy ostentatious monotony
of modern England. Each town is the same. The same Woolworth's,
Odeon Cinemas, and multiple shops, the same 'council houses' or
'semi-detached villas' . . . North, South, East or West, what's
the difference, where is the change?</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"With the Commune the ugliness and monotony of present town and
country life will be swept away, and each locality and region,
each person will be able to express the joy of living, by living
together."</i> [Tom Brown, <b>Syndicalism</b>, p. 59]
</blockquote></p><p>
The size of the neighbourhood assemblies will vary, but it will probably
fluctuate around some ideal size, discoverable in practice, that will
provide a viable scale of face-to-face interaction and allow for both 
a variety of personal contacts. This suggests that any town or city 
would itself be a confederation of assemblies -- as was, of course, 
practised very effectively in Paris during the Great French Revolution. 
</p><p>
Such assemblies would meet regularly, at the very least monthly
(probably more often, particularly during periods which require
fast and frequent decision making, like a revolution) and deal with 
a variety of issues. In the words of the CNT's resolution on
libertarian communism:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"the foundation of this administration will be the commune. 
These communes are to be autonomous and will be federated at 
regional and national levels to achieve their general goals. 
The right to autonomy does not preclude the duty to implement 
agreements regarding collective benefits . . . [A] commune 
without any voluntary restrictions will undertake to adhere to 
whatever general norms may be agreed by majority vote after free 
debate . . . the commune is to be autonomous and confederated 
with the other communes . . . the commune will have the duty 
to concern itself with whatever may be of interest to the 
individual.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It will have to oversee organising, running and beautification of 
the settlement. It will see that its inhabitants are housed and 
that items and products be made available to them by the producers' 
unions or associations.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Similarly, it is to concern itself with hygiene, the keeping of
communal statistics and with collective requirements such as
education, health services and with the maintenance and improvement 
of local means of communication.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It will orchestrate relations with other communes and will 
take care to stimulate all artistic and cultural pursuits.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"So that this mission may be properly fulfilled, a communal
council is to be appointed . . . None of these posts will
carry any executive or bureaucratic powers . . . [its members]
will perform their role as producers coming together in session 
at the close of the day's work to discuss the detailed items 
which may not require the endorsement of communal assemblies.
</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Assemblies are to be summoned as often as required by 
communal interests, upon the request of the communal council
or according to the wishes of the inhabitants of each
commune . . . The inhabitants of a commune are to debate among 
themselves their internal problems."</i> [quoted by Jose Peirats, 
<b>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b>, vol. 1, pp. 106-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus the communal assembly discusses that which affects the
community and those within it. As these local community 
associations will be members of larger communal bodies,
the communal assembly will also discuss issues which affect
wider areas, as indicated, and mandate their delegates to
discuss them at confederation assemblies. This system, we 
must note, was applied with great success during numerous 
revolutions (see <a href="secJ5.html#secj54">section J.5.4</a>) and so
cannot be dismissed as wishful thinking.
</p><p>
However, of course, the actual framework of a free society will 
be worked out in practice. As Bakunin correctly argued, society 
<i>"can, and must, organise itself in a different fashion [than what 
came before], but not from top to bottom and according to an ideal 
plan"</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, p. 205] What does 
seem likely is that confederations of communes will be required. 
We turn to this in the <a href="secI5.html#seci52">next section</a>.
</p>

<a name="seci52"><h2>I.5.2 Why are confederations of participatory communities needed?</h2></a>

<p>
Since not all issues are local, the community 
assemblies will also elect mandated and recallable delegates to 
the larger-scale units of self-government in order to address 
issues affecting urban districts, the city or town as a whole, 
the county, the bio-region, and ultimately 
the entire planet. Thus the assemblies will confederate at 
several levels in order to develop and co-ordinate common 
policies to deal with common problems. In the words of the 
CNT's resolution on libertarian communism:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The inhabitants of a commune are to debate among themselves their 
internal problems . . . Federations are to deliberate over major 
problems affecting a country or province and all communes are to be 
represented at their reunions and assemblies, thereby enabling 
their delegates to convey the democratic viewpoint of their 
respective communes.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"If, say, roads have to be built to link villages of a county 
or any matter arises to do with transportation and exchange 
of produce between agricultural and industrial counties, then
naturally every commune which is implicated will have its right 
to have its say.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"On matters of a regional nature, it is the duty of the regional 
federation to implement agreements which will represent the 
sovereign will of all the region's inhabitants. So the starting 
point is the individual, moving on through the commune, to the 
federation and right on up finally to the confederation.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Similarly, discussion of all problems of a national nature
shall follow a like pattern . . . "</i> [quoted by Jose Peirats, 
<b>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 107]
</blockquote></p><p>
In other words, the commune <i>"cannot any longer acknowledge 
any superior: that, above it, there cannot be anything, save the 
interests of the Federation, freely embraced by itself in concert 
with other Communes."</i> [Kropotkin, <b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, 
p. 259] 
</p><p>
Federalism is applicable at all levels of society. As Kropotkin 
pointed out, anarchists <i>"understand that if no central government 
was needed to rule the independent communes, if national 
government is thrown overboard and national unity is obtained by 
free federation, then a central <b>municipal</b> government becomes 
equally useless and noxious. The same federative principle would 
do within the commune."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, pp. 163-164] Thus 
the whole of society would be a free federation, from the local 
community right up to the global level. And this free federation 
would be based squarely on the autonomy and self-government of 
local groups. With federalism, co-operation replaces coercion.
</p><p>
This need for co-operation does not imply a centralised body. 
To exercise your autonomy by joining self-managing organisations 
and, therefore, agreeing to abide by the decisions you help make 
is not a denial of that autonomy (unlike joining a hierarchical 
structure, where you forsake autonomy <b>within</b> the organisation). 
In a <b>centralised</b> system, we must stress, <b>power</b> rests at the 
top and the role of those below is simply to obey (it matters not 
if those with the power are elected or not, the principle is the 
same). In a <b>federal</b> system, power is <b>not</b> delegated into the 
hands of a few (obviously a "federal" government or state is a 
centralised system). Decisions in a federal system are made at 
the base of the organisation and flow upwards so ensuring that
power remains decentralised in the hands of all. Working together 
to solve common problems and organise common efforts to reach
common goals is not centralisation and those who confuse the 
two make a serious error -- they fail to understand the
different relations of authority each generates and confuse
obedience with co-operation.
</p><p>
As in the economic federation of syndicates, the lower levels will 
control the higher, thus eliminating the current pre-emptive powers 
of centralised government hierarchies. Delegates to higher-level 
co-ordinating councils or conferences will be instructed, at every 
level of confederation, by the assemblies they come from on how to 
deal with any issues. These instructions will be binding, committing 
delegates to a framework of policies within which they must act and 
providing for their recall and the nullification of their decisions 
if they fail to carry out their mandates. Delegates may be selected 
by election and/or sortition (i.e. random selection by lot, as for 
jury duty currently). As Murray Bookchin argued:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"A confederalist view involves a clear distinction between 
policy making and the co-ordination and execution of adopted 
policies. Policy making is exclusively the right of popular community 
assemblies based on the practices of participatory democracy. 
Administration and co-ordination are the responsibility of confederal 
councils, which become the means for interlinking villages, towns, 
neighbourhoods, and cities into confederal networks. Power flows from 
the bottom up instead of from the top down, and in confederations, 
the flow of power from the bottom up diminishes with the scope of 
the federal council ranging territorially from localities to
regions and from regions to ever-broader territorial areas."</i> 
[<b>From Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 253]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Thus the people will have the final word on policy, which is the 
essence of self-government, and each citizen will have his or her 
turn to participate in the co-ordination of public affairs. In 
other words, self-government will be the people themselves organised 
in their community assemblies and their confederal co-ordinating 
councils, with any delegates limited to implementing policy 
formulated by the people. Such policies will still be subject to 
approval by the neighbourhood and community assemblies through 
their right to recall their delegates and revoke their decisions. 
Needless to say, the higher the confederation the less often it 
would meet and the less it would have to consider in terms of 
issues to decide. On such a level, only the most general issues 
and decisions could be reached (in effect, only guidelines
which the member confederations would apply as they saw
fit).
</p><p>
In such a system there will, undoubtedly, be the need for certain
individuals to be allocated certain tasks to do. We stress the 
word "tasks" because their work is essentially administrative in 
nature, without power. For example, an individual or a group of 
individuals may be elected to look into alternative power supplies 
for a community and report back on what they discover. They cannot 
impose their decision <b>onto</b> the community as they do not 
have the power to do so. They simply present their findings 
to the body which had mandated them. These findings are <b>not</b> a 
law which the electors are required to follow, but a series of 
suggestions and information from which the assembled people chose 
what they think is best. Or, to use another example, someone may be 
elected to overlook the installation of a selected power supply 
but the decision on what power supply to use and which specific 
project to implement has been decided upon by the whole community. 
Similarly with any delegate elected to a confederal council.
</p><p>
The scales and levels of confederation can only be worked out in 
practice. In general, it would be safe to say that confederations 
would be needed on a wide scale, starting with towns and cities
and then moving onto regional and other levels. No village, town 
or city could be self-sufficient nor would desire to be -- 
communication and links with other places are part and parcel of 
life and anarchists have no desire to retreat back into an isolated
form of localism:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"No community can hope to achieve economic autarchy, nor
should it try to do so. Economically, the wide range of
resources that are needed to make many of our widely used
goods preclude self-enclosed insularity and parochialism.
Far from being a liability, this interdependence among
communities and regions can well be regarded as an asset
-- culturally as well as politically . . . Divested
of the cultural cross-fertilisation that is often a
product of economic intercourse, the municipality tends
to shrink into itself and disappear into its own civic
privatism. Shared needs and resources imply the existence
of sharing and, with sharing, communication, rejuvenation
by new ideas, and a wider social horizon that yields a
wider sensibility to new experiences."</i> [Bookchin,
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 237]
</blockquote></p><p>
Combined with this consideration, we must also raise the issue
of economies of scale. A given level of confederation may be
required to make certain social and economic services efficient
(we are thinking of economies of scale for such social needs 
as universities, hospitals, and cultural institutions). While
every commune may have a doctor, nursery, local communal stores 
and small-scale workplaces, not all can have a university, 
hospital, factories and so forth. These would be organised on
a wider level, so necessitating the appropriate confederation
to exist to manage them. Ties between bio-regions or larger 
territories based on the 
distribution of such things as geographically concentrated 
mineral deposits, climate dependent crops, and production 
facilities that are most efficient when concentrated in one 
area will unite communities confederally on the basis of common
material needs as well as values. 
</p><p>
This means that the scale and level of the confederations
created by the communes will be varied and extensive. It
would be hard to generalise about them, particularly as
different confederations will exist for different tasks
and interests. Moreover, any system of communes would start 
off based on the existing villages, towns and cities of 
capitalism. That is unavoidable and will, of course, help
determine the initial scale and level of confederations.
</p><p>
In urban areas, the town or city would have to be broken
down into confederations and these confederations would
constitute the town or city assembly of delegates. Given
a huge city like London, New York or Mexico City it would
be impossible to organise in any other way. Smaller towns
would probably be able to have simpler confederations. We
must stress that few, if any, anarchists consider it
desirable to have huge cities in a free society and one of
the major tasks of social transformation will be to break
the metropolis into smaller units, integrated with the
local environment. However, a social revolution will take
place in these vast metropolises and so we have to take 
them into account in our discussion.
</p><p>
In summary, the size and scale of confederations will depend 
on practical considerations, based on what people found were 
optimal sizes for their neighbourhood assemblies and the needs 
of co-operation between them, towns, cities, regions and so on. 
We cannot, and have no wish, to predict the development of a 
free society. Therefore the scale and levels of confederation 
will be decided by those actually creating an anarchist world
although it is almost certain that levels of confederation 
would be dependent on the number of delegates required. After a
certain number, the confederation assembly may became difficult
to manage, so implying that another level of confederation
is required. This would, undoubtedly, be the base for
determining the scale and level of confederation, ensuring
that any confederal assembly can actually manage its activities
and remain under the control of lower levels.
</p><p>
Finally, confederations are required to ensure solidarity can be
expressed in the unlikely situation of local oppression. After all,
history is full of local communities which have been oppressive to
minorities within them (most obviously, the American South) and so
confederation is required so that members of any such minority can
appeal for help and mutual aid to end its domination. Equally,
though, confederation is needed to ensure that local communes can
experiment and try out new ideas without having to wait until the
majority agree to it as would be required in a centralised system.
</p><p>
Thus confederations of communes are required to co-ordinate joint
activity and discuss common issues and interests. It is also 
required to protect individual, community and social freedom
as well as allowing social experimentation and protecting the 
distinctiveness, dignity, freedom and self-management of communities 
and so society as a whole. Thus <i>"socialism is federalist"</i> and 
<i>"true federalism, the political organisation of socialism, 
will be attained only when these popular grass-roots institutions 
[namely, <i>"communes, industrial and agricultural associations"</i>] 
are organised in progressive stages from the bottom up."</i> 
[Bakunin, <b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, p. 402]
</p>

<a name="seci53"><h2>I.5.3 Would confederations produce bureaucrats and politicians?</h2></a>

<p>
Of course, <b>any</b> organisation holds the danger that the few
who have been given tasks to perform could misuse their position
for personal benefit or, over time, evolve into a bureaucracy 
with power over the rest of society. As such, some critics of 
social anarchism suggest that a system of communes and confederations 
would simply be a breeding ground for politicians and bureaucrats.
This is obviously the case with the state and many generalise from
this experience for <b>all</b> forms of social organisation, including
the anarchist commune.
</p><p>
While recognising that this <b>is</b> a danger, anarchists are sure 
that such developments are unlikely in an anarchy. This is because,
based on our analysis and critique of the state, we have long argued 
for various institutional arrangements which reduce the 
danger of such things developing. These include electing delegates
rather than representatives, giving these delegates a binding mandate
and subjecting them to instant recall by their electors. They would 
<b>not</b>, in general, be paid and so, in other words, delegates are 
expected, as far as possible, to remain in their current communities 
and conduct their communal tasks after their usual work. For the few 
exceptions to this that may occur, delegates would receive the 
average pay of their commune, in mutualism and collectivism or,
in communism, no special access to communal resources. Moreover,
it seems likely that regular rotation of delegates would be utilised
and, perhaps, random selection as happens in jury duty today in many
countries. Lastly, communes could leave any confederation if its
structure was becoming obviously misshapen and bureaucratic.
</p><p>
By these methods, delegates to communal bodies would remain under the
control of their electors and not, as in the state, become their masters.
Moreover, anarchists have stressed that any communal body must be a 
working organisation. This will reduce bureaucratic tendencies as 
implementing tasks will be done by elected delegates rather than 
faceless (and usually unelected) bureaucrats.  This means, as Bakunin
put it in 1868, that <i>"the Communal Council"</i> (made up of delegates 
<i>"with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times"</i>) 
would create <i>"separate executive committees from among its membership 
for each branch of the Commune's revolutionary administration."</i>
[Bakunin, <b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, p. 155] Thus would no 
longer be a body of people, a government, separate from the delegates 
of the people. This, it should be noted, echoed Proudhon's comments 
from 1848:
<p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It is up to the National Assembly, through organisation of its 
committees, to exercise executive power, just the way it exercises 
legislative power . . . Besides universal suffrage and as a consequence 
of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the binding mandate. 
Politicians balk at it! Which means that in their eyes, the people, 
in electing representatives, do not appoint mandatories but rather 
abjure their sovereignty! That is assuredly not socialism: it is 
not even democracy."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 63]
</blockquote></p><p>
Due to mandating and recall, any delegate who starts to abuse their 
position or even vote in ways opposed to by the communal assembly 
would quickly be recalled and replaced. As such a person may be an 
elected delegate of the community but that does not mean that they 
have power or authority (i.e., they are <b>not</b> a representative
but rather a delegate). Essentially they are an agent of the local 
community who is controlled by, and accountable to, that community. 
Clearly, such people are unlike politicians. They do not, and cannot, 
make policy decisions on behalf of (i.e., govern) those who elected 
them -- they are not given power to make decisions for people. In 
addition, people in specific organisations or with specific tasks 
will be rotated frequently to prevent a professionalisation of 
politics and the problem of politicians being largely on their 
own once elected. And, of course, they will continue to work and 
live with those who elected them and receive no special privileges 
due to their election (in terms of more income, better housing, and 
so on). This means that such delegates would be extremely unlikely to 
turn into representatives or bureaucrats as they would be under the 
strict control of the organisations that elected them to such posts. 
As Kropotkin argued, the general assembly of the community <i>"in 
permanence - the forum always open -- is the only way . . . to assure 
an honest and intelligent administration"</i> as it is based upon 
<i>"<b>distrust of all executive powers.</b>"</i> [<b>The Great 
French Revolution</b>, Vol. 1, p. 211]
</p><p>
The current means of co-ordinating wide scale activity -- centralism
via the state -- is a threat to freedom as, to quote Proudhon, <i>"the
citizen divests himself of sovereignty, the town and the Department
and province above it, absorbed by central authority, are no longer 
anything but agencies under direct ministerial control."</i> <i>"The 
Consequences"</i> he continued, <i>"soon make themselves felt: the 
citizen and the town are deprived of all dignity, the state's 
depredations multiply, and the burden on the taxpayer increases in 
proportion. It is no longer the government that is made for the people; 
it is the people who are made for the government. Power invades everything, 
dominates everything, absorbs everything."</i> [<b>The Principle of 
Federation</b>, p. 59] In such a regime, the generation of a specific
caste of politicians and bureaucrats is inevitable.
</blockquote></p><p>
Moreover, <i>"[t]he principle of political centralism is openly
opposed to all laws of social progress and of natural evolution.
It lies in the nature of things that every cultural advance is
first achieved within a small group and only gradually finds
adoption by society as a whole. Therefore, political decentralisation
is the best guaranty for the unrestricted possibilities of new
experiments. For such an environment each community is given the
opportunity to carry through the things which it is capable of
accomplishing itself without imposing them on others. Practical
experimentation is the parent of ever development in society. So
long as each distinct is capable of effecting the changes within
its own sphere which its citizens deem necessary, the example of
each becomes a fructifying influence on the other parts of the
community since they will have the chance to weigh the advantages
accruing from them without being forced to adopt them if they are
not convinced of their usefulness. The result is that progressive
communities serve the others as models, a result justified by
the natural evolution of things."</i> [Rudolf Rocker, <b>Pioneers
of American Freedom</b>, pp. 16-7] The contrast with centralisation 
of the state could not be more clear. Rocker continued: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In a strongly centralised state, the situation is entirely 
reversed and the best system of representation can do nothing to 
change that. The representatives of a certain district may have 
the overwhelming majority of a certain district on his [or her] 
side, but in the legislative assembly of the central state, 
he [or she] will remain in the minority, for it lies in the
nature of things that in such a body not the intellectually most
active but the most backward districts represent the majority. Since
the individual district has indeed the right to give expression of
its opinion, but can effect no changes without the consent of 
the central government, the most progressive districts will be 
condemned to stagnate while the most backward districts will 
set the norm."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 17]
</blockquote></p><p>
Little wonder anarchists have always stressed what Kropotkin termed
<i>"local action"</i> and considered the libertarian social revolution 
as <i>"proceed[ing] by proclaiming independent Communes which Communes
will endeavour to accomplish the economic transformation within . . . 
their respective surroundings."</i> [Peter Kropotkin, <b>Act For
Yourselves</b>, p. 43] Thus the advanced communities will inspire 
the rest to follow them by showing them a practical example of 
what is possible. Only decentralisation and confederation can
promote the freedom and resulting social experimentation which 
will ensure social progress and make society a good place to live.
</p><p>
Moreover, confederation is required to maximise self-management
and reduce the possibility that delegates will become isolated
from the people who mandated them. As Rocker explained: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In a smaller community, it is far easier for individuals 
to observe the political scene and become acquainted with 
the issues which have to be resolved. This is quite 
impossible for a representative in a centralised government.
Neither the single citizen nor his [or her] representative
is completely or even approximately to supervise the huge 
clockwork of the central state machine. The deputy is forced
daily to make decisions about things of which he [or she] has 
no personal knowledge and for the appraisal of which he must
therefore depend on others [i.e. bureaucrats and lobbyists].
That such a system necessarily leads to serious errors and
mistakes is self-evident. And since the citizen for the same
reason is not able to inspect and criticise the conduct of
his representative, the class of professional politicians
is given added opportunity to fish in troubled waters."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 17-18]</blockquote>
</p><p>
These principles, it must be stressed, have worked well on a mass scale
For example, this is how anarcho-syndicalist unions operate and, as
was the case with the CNT in Spain in the 1930s, worked well with over
one million members. There were also successfully applied during the
Spanish Revolution and the federations of collectives produced by it.
</p><p>
So the way communes and confederations are organised protect society
and the individual against the dangers of centralisation, from the
turning of delegates into representatives and bureaucrats. As Bakunin 
stressed, there are two ways of organising society, <i>"as it is today, 
from high to low and from the centre to circumference by means of 
enforced unity and concentration"</i> and the way of the future, by 
federalism <i>"starting with the free individual, the free association 
and the autonomous commune, from low to high and from circumference 
to centre, by means of free federation."</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: 
Selected Writings</b>, p. 88] In other words, <i>"the organisation of 
society from the bottom up."</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, p. 131]
This suggests that a free society will have little to fear in way
of its delegates turning into politicians or bureaucrats as it includes
the necessary safeguards (election, mandates, recall, decentralisation,
federalism, etc.) which will reduce such developments to a small, and
so manageable, level (if not eliminate it totally).
</p>

<a name="seci54"><h2>I.5.4 How will anything ever be decided by all 
these meetings?</h2></a>

<p>
Anarchists have little doubt that the confederal structure
will be an efficient means of decision making and will not
be bogged down in endless meetings. We have various reasons
for thinking this. After all, as Murray Bookchin once noted,
<i>"[h]istory does provide us with a number of working examples 
of forms that are largely libertarian. It also provides us with 
examples of confederations and leagues that made the co-ordination
of self-governing communities feasible without impinging on their
autonomy and freedom."</i> [<b>The Ecology of Freedom</b>, p. 436]
</p><p>
Firstly, we doubt that a free society will spend all its time 
in assemblies or organising confederal conferences. Certain 
questions are more important than others and few anarchists 
desire to spend all their time in meetings. The aim of a free 
society is to allow individuals to express their desires and 
wants freely -- they cannot do that if they are continually 
at meetings (or preparing for them). So while communal and 
confederal assemblies will play an important role in a free 
society, do not think that they will be occurring all the 
time or that anarchists desire to make meetings the focal 
point of individual life. Far from it! 
</p><p>
Thus communal assemblies may occur, say, once a week, or 
fortnightly or monthly in order to discuss truly important 
issues. There would be no real desire to meet continuously 
to discuss every issue under the sun and few people would
tolerate this occurring. This would mean that such meetings
would current regularly and when important issues needed to
be discussed, <b>not</b> continuously (although, if required, 
continuous assembly or daily meetings may have to be organised 
in emergency situations but this would be rare). Nor is it 
expected that everyone will attend every meeting for <i>"[w]hat 
is decisive, here, is the principle itself: the freedom of the 
individual to participate, not the compulsive need to do so."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 435] This suggests that meetings will be
attended by those with a specific interest in an issue being
discussed and so would be focused as a result.
</p><p>
Secondly, it is extremely doubtful that a free people would
desire waste vast amounts of time at such meetings. While
important and essential, communal and confederal meetings 
would be functional in the extreme and not forums for hot
air. It would be the case that those involved in such meetings
would quickly make their feelings known to time wasters and
those who like the sound of their own voices. Thus Cornelius
Castoriadis:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It might be claimed that the problem of numbers remains
and that people never would be able to express themselves
in a reasonable amount of time. This is not a valid
argument. There would rarely be an assembly over twenty
people where everyone would want to speak, for the very
good reason that when there is something to be decided
upon there are not an infinite number of options or an
infinite number of arguments. In unhampered rank-and-file
workers' gatherings (convened, for instance, to decide
on a strike) there have never been 'too many' speeches.
The two or three fundamental opinions having been 
voiced, and various arguments exchanged, a decision
is soon reached.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The length of speeches, moreover, often varies inversely
with the weight of their content. Russian leaders sometimes
talk on for four hours at Party Congresses without saying
anything . . . For an account of the laconicism of
revolutionary assemblies, see Trotsky's account of the
Petrograd soviet of 1905 -- or accounts of the meetings
of factory representatives in Budapest in 1956."</i> 
[<b>Political and Social Writings</b>, vol. 2, pp. 144-5]
</blockquote></p><p>
As we shall see below, this was definitely the case during
the Spanish Revolution as well.
</p><p>
Thirdly, as these assemblies and congresses are concerned 
purely with joint activity and co-ordination. Different 
associations and syndicates have a functional need for co-operation 
and so would meet more regularly and take action on practical 
activity which affects a specific section of a community or 
group of communities. Not every issue that a member of a 
community is interested in is necessarily best discussed at 
a meeting of all members of a community or at a confederal 
conference. As Herbert Read suggested, anarchism <i>"proposes 
to liquidate the bureaucracy first by federal devolution"</i>
and so <i>"hands over to the syndicates all . . . administrative 
functions"</i> related to such things as <i>"transport, and 
distribution, health and education."</i> [<b>Anarchy and Order</b>,
p. 101] Such issues will be mainly discussed in the syndicates
involved and so community discussion would be focused on important
issues and themes of general policy rather than the specific and 
detailed laws discussed and implemented by politicians who know
nothing about the issues or industries at hand.
</p><p>
By reducing conferences to functional bodies based on concrete 
issues, the problems of endless discussions can be reduced, if 
not totally eliminated. In addition, as functional groups would 
exist outside of these communal confederations (for example, 
industrial collectives would organise conferences about their 
industry with invited participants from consumer groups), 
there would be a limited agenda in most communal get-togethers.
</p><p>
In other words, communal assemblies and conferences will 
have specific, well defined agendas, and so there is little 
danger of "politics" (for want of a better word!) taking up 
everyone's time. Hence, far from discussing abstract laws and 
pointless motions on everything under the sun and on which 
no one actually knows much about, the issues discussed in
these conferences will be on specific issues which are 
important to those involved. In addition, the standard 
procedure may be to elect a sub-group to investigate an 
issue and report back at a later stage with recommendations. 
The conference can change, accept, or reject any proposals. 
As Kropotkin argued, anarchy would be based on <i>"free agreement,
by exchange of letters and proposals, and by congresses at 
which delegates met to discuss well specified points, and 
to come to an agreement about them, but not to make laws. 
After the congress was over, the delegates [would return] 
. . . not with a law, but with the draft of a contract to 
be accepted or rejected."</i> [<b>Conquest of Bread</b>, p. 131]
</p><p>
Is this system fantasy? Given that such a system has existed
and worked at various times, we can safely argue that it is
not. Obviously we cannot cover <b>every</b> example, so we point to 
just two -- revolutionary Paris and Spain.
</p><p>
As Murray Bookchin points out, Paris <i>"in the late eighteenth 
century was, by the standards of that time, one of the largest 
and economically most complex cities in Europe: its population 
approximated a million people . . . Yet in 1793, at the height 
of the French Revolution, the city was managed <b>institutionally</b> 
almost entirely by [48] citizen assemblies. . . and its affairs 
were co-ordinated by the <b>Commune</b> .. . and often, in fact, by 
the assemblies themselves, or sections as they were called, which 
established their own interconnections without recourse to the 
<b>Commune.</b>"</i> [<i>"Transition to the Ecological Society"</i>,
pp. 92-105, <b>Society and Nature</b>, no. 3, p. 96] 
</p><p>
Here is his account of how communal self-government worked in 
practice:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"What, then, were these little-know forty-eight sections of
Paris . . . How were they organised? And how did they function?
</p><p>
"Ideologically, the <b>sectionnaires</b> (as their members were called)
believed primarily in sovereignty of the people. This concept
of popular sovereignty, as Albert Soboul observes, was for them
'not an abstraction, but the concrete reality of the people
united in sectional assemblies and exercising all their rights.'
It was in their eyes an inalienable right, or, as the section
de la Cite declared in November 1792, 'every man who assumes
to have sovereignty will be regarded as a tyrant, usurper of 
public liberty and worthy of death.'
</p><p>
"Sovereignty, in effect, was to be enjoyed by <b>all</b> citizens,
not pre-empted by 'representatives' . . . The radical
democrats of 1793 thus assumed that every adult was, to one
degree or another, competent to participate in management
public affairs. Thus, each section . . . was structured
around a <b>face-to-face democracy</b>: basically a general
assembly of the people that formed the most important
deliberative body of a section, and served as the incarnation
of popular power in a given part of the city . . . each
elected six deputies to the Commune, presumably for the 
purpose merely of co-ordinating all the sections in the
city of Paris.
</p><p>
"Each section also had its own various administrative
committees, whose members were also recruited from the
general assembly."</i> [<b>The Third Revolution</b>, vol. 1,
p. 319]
</blockquote></p><p>
Little wonder Kropotkin argued that these "sections" showed 
<i>"the principles of anarchism . . . had their origin, not in 
theoretical speculations, but in the <b>deeds</b> of the Great 
French Revolution"</i> [<b>The Great French Revolution</b>, 
vol. 1, p. 204]
</p><p>
Communal self-government was also practised, and on a far
wider scale, in revolutionary Spain where workers and peasants 
formed communes and federations of communes (see 
<a href="secI8.html">section I.8</a> for fuller details). Gaston
Leval summarised the experience:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"There was, in the organisation set in motion by the Spanish 
Revolution and by the libertarian movement, which was its 
mainspring, a structuring from the bottom to the top, which 
corresponds to a real federation and true democracy . . . the 
controlling and co-ordinating Comites, clearly indispensable, do 
not go outside the organisation that has chosen them, they remain 
in their midst, always controllable by and accessible to the 
members. If any individuals contradict by their actions their 
mandates, it is possible to call them to order, to reprimand 
them, to replace them. It is only by and in such a system that 
the 'majority lays down the law.'</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The syndical assemblies were the expression and the practice 
of libertarian democracy, a democracy having nothing in common 
with the democracy of Athens where the citizens discussed and 
disputed for days on end on the Agora; where factions, clan 
rivalries, ambitions, personalities conflicted, where, in view 
of the social inequalities precious time was lost in 
interminable wrangles . . .</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Normally those periodic meetings would not last more than a 
few hours. They dealt with concrete, precise subjects concretely 
and precisely. And all who had something to say could express 
themselves. The Comite presented the new problems that had 
arisen since the previous assembly, the results obtained by 
the application of such and such a resolution . . . relations 
with other syndicates, production returns from the various 
workshops or factories. All this was the subject of reports 
and discussion. Then the assembly would nominate the commissions, 
the members of these commissions discussed between themselves 
what solutions to adopt, if there was disagreement, a majority 
report and a minority report would be prepared.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"This took place in <b>all</b> the syndicates <b>throughout Spain</b>, 
in <b>all</b> trades and <b>all</b> industries, in assemblies which, in 
Barcelona, from the very beginnings of our movement brought 
together hundreds or thousands of workers depending on the 
strength of the organisations. So much so that the awareness 
of the duties, responsibilities of each spread all the time 
to a determining and decisive degree . . . </i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The practice of this democracy also extended to the agricultural 
regions . . . the decision to nominate a local management Comite 
for the villages was taken by general meetings of the inhabitants 
of villages, how the delegates in the different essential tasks 
which demanded an indispensable co-ordination of activities were 
proposed and elected by the whole assembled population. But it is 
worth adding and underlining that in all the collectivised villages 
and all the partially collectivised villages, in the 400 Collectives 
in Aragon, in the 900 in the Levante region, in the 300 in the 
Castilian region, to mention only the large groupings . . . the 
population was called together weekly, fortnightly or monthly and 
kept fully informed of everything concerning the commonweal.
</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"This writer was present at a number of these assemblies in 
Aragon, where the reports on the various questions making up 
the agenda allowed the inhabitants to know, to so understand, 
and to feel so mentally integrated in society, to so participate 
in the management of public affairs, in the responsibilities, 
that the recriminations, the tensions which always occur when 
the power of decision is entrusted to a few individuals, be 
they democratically elected without the possibility of 
objecting, did not happen there. The assemblies were public, 
the objections, the proposals publicly discussed, everybody 
being free, as in the syndical assemblies, to participate 
in the discussions, to criticise, propose, etc. Democracy 
extended to the whole of social life."</i> [<b>Collectives in
the Spanish Revolution</b>, pp. 205-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
These collectives organised federations embracing thousands
of communes and workplaces, whole branches of industry, 
hundreds of thousands of people and whole regions of Spain. 
As such, it was a striking confirmation of Proudhon's argument
that under federalism <i>"the sovereignty of the contracting 
parties . . . serves as a positive guarantee of the liberty of 
. . . communes and individuals. So, no longer do we have the 
abstraction of people's sovereignty . . . but an effective 
sovereignty of the labouring masses."</i> The <i>"labouring
masses are actually, positively and effectively sovereign: how 
could they not be when the economic organism -- labour, capital, 
property and assets -- belongs to them entirely . . . ?"</i> 
[<b>Anarchism</b>, vol. 1, Robert Graham (ed.), p. 75]
</p><p>
In other words, it <b>is</b> possible. It <b>has</b> worked. 
With the massive improvements in communication technology it 
is even more viable than before. Whether or not we reach such 
a self-managed society depends on whether we desire to be 
free or not.

<p>
<a name="seci55"><h2>I.5.5 Aren't participatory communities and 
confederations just new states?</h2></a>

<p>
No. As we have seen in 
<a href="secB2.html">section B.2</a>, a state can be defined both by its
structure and its function. As far as structure is concerned, a state
involves the politico-military and economic domination of a certain
geographical territory by a ruling elite, based on the delegation of 
power into the hands of the few, resulting in hierarchy (centralised 
authority). As such, it would be a massive theoretical error to confuse
any form of social organisation with the specific form which is the state.
</p><p>
As we have discussed 
in <a href="secH3.html#sech37">section H.3.7</a>,
the state has evolved its specific characteristics as a result of its
function as an instrument of class rule. If a social organisation does not
have these characteristics then it is not a state. Thus, for anarchists, 
<i>"the essence of the state"</i> is <i>"centralised power <b>or to put 
it another way the coercive authority</b> of which the state enjoys 
the monopoly, in that organisation of violence know as 'government'; 
in the hierarchical despotism, juridical, police and military despotism 
that imposes laws on everyone."</i> [Luigi Fabbri, <i>"Anarchy and 
'Scientific' Communism"</i>, in <b>The Poverty of Statism</b>, pp. 13-49, 
Albert Meltzer (ed.), pp. 24-5] This is why Malatesta stressed that 
the state <i>"means the delegation of power, that is the abdication 
of initiative and sovereignty of all into the hands of a few."</i> 
[<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 41] If a social organisation is <b>not</b> 
centralised and top-down then it is not a state.
</p><p>
In a system of federated participatory communities there is no 
ruling elite, and thus no hierarchy, because power is retained 
by the lowest-level units of confederation through their use of 
direct democracy and mandated, rotating, and recallable delegates 
to confederal bodies. This eliminates the 
problem in "representative" democratic systems of the delegation 
of power leading to the elected officials becoming isolated from 
and beyond the control of the mass of people who elected them. 
An anarchist society would make decisions 
by <i>"means of congresses, composed of delegates, who discuss among 
themselves, and submit <b>proposals</b>, not <b>laws</b>, to their 
constituents"</i> [Kropotkin, <b>The Conquest of Bread</b>, p. 135] So it is 
based on <b>self</b>-government, <b>not</b> representative government 
(and its inevitable bureaucracy). As Proudhon put it, <i>"the federal 
system is the contrary of hierarchy or administrative and governmental 
centralisation"</i> and so <i>"a confederation is not exactly a state 
. . . What is called federal authority . . . is no longer a 
government; it is an agency created . . . for the joint execution 
of certain functions"</i>. [<b>The Principle of Federation</b>, pp. 40-1]
</p><p>
Perhaps it will be objected that communal decision making is just a form
of "statism" based on direct, as opposed to representative, democracy --
"statist" because the individual is still be subject to the rules of the
majority and so is not free. This objection, however, confuses statism
with free agreement (i.e. co-operation). Since participatory communities,
like productive syndicates, are voluntary associations, the decisions they 
make are based on self-assumed obligations (see 
<a href="secA2.html#seca211">section A.2.11</a>), and dissenters can leave the 
association if they so desire. Thus communes are no more "statist" than
the act of promising and keeping your word.
</p><p>
In addition, in a free society, dissent and direct action can be 
used by minorities to press their case (or defend their freedom) 
as well as debate. As Carole Pateman argues, <i>"[p]olitical 
disobedience is merely one possible expression of the active 
citizenship on which a self-managing democracy is based."</i> 
[<b>The Problem of Political Obligation</b>, p. 162] In this 
way, individual liberty can be protected in a communal system 
and society enriched by opposition, confrontation and dissent. 
Without self-management and minority dissent, society would 
become an ideological cemetery which would stifle ideas and 
individuals as these thrive on discussion (<i>"those who will 
be able to create in their mutual relations a movement and a 
life based on the principles of free understanding . . . will 
understand that <b>variety, conflict even, is life and that 
uniformity is death</b>"</i> [Kropotkin, <b>Anarchism</b>, 
p. 143]). So a society based on voluntary agreements and 
self-management would, out of interpersonal empathy and 
self-interest, create a society that encouraged individuality 
and respect for minorities.
</p><p>
Therefore, a commune's participatory nature is the opposite of 
statism. April Carter agrees, stating that <i>"commitment to direct 
democracy or anarchy in the socio-political sphere is incompatible 
with political authority"</i> and that the <i>"only authority that 
can exist in a direct democracy is the collective 'authority' vested 
in the body politic . . . it is doubtful if authority can be created 
by a group of equals who reach decisions be a process of mutual 
persuasion."</i> [<b>Authority and Democracy</b>, p. 69 and p. 380] 
Which echoes, we must note, Proudhon's comment that <i>"the true 
meaning of the word 'democracy'"</i> was the <i>"dismissal of 
government."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, p. 42] Bakunin
argued that when the <i>"whole people govern"</i> then <i>"there will
be no one to be governed. It means that there will be no government, 
no State."</i> [<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, p. 287] 
Malatesta, decades later, made the same point: <i>"government by 
everybody is no longer government in the authoritarian, historical 
and practical sense of the word."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, 
vol. 2, p. 38] And, of course, Kropotkin argued that by means of the 
directly democratic sections of the French Revolution the masses 
<i>"practic[ed] what was to be described later as Direct Self-Government"</i> 
and expressed <i>"the principles of anarchism."</i> [<b>The Great French 
Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 200 and p. 204]  
</p><p>
Anarchists argue that individuals and the institutions they create cannot 
be considered in isolation. Authoritarian institutions will create 
individuals who have a servile nature, who cannot govern themselves. 
We, therefore, consider it common sense that individuals, in 
order to be free, <b>must</b> have take part in determining the general 
agreements they make with their neighbours which give form to their 
communities. Otherwise, a free society could not exist and individuals 
would be subject to rules others make <b>for</b> them (following orders 
is hardly libertarian). Somewhat ironically, those who stress "individualism"
and denounce communes as new "states" advocate a social system which produces
extremely hierarchical social relationships based on the authority of the
property owner. In other words, abstract individualism produces authoritarian
(i.e., state-like) social relationships (see <a href="secF1.html">section F.1</a>).
Therefore, anarchists recognise the social nature of humanity and the fact 
any society based on an abstract individualism (like capitalism) will be 
marked by authority, injustice and inequality, <b>not</b> freedom. As 
Bookchin pointed out: <i>"To speak of 'The Individual' apart from its 
social roots is as meaningless as to speak of a society that contains no 
people or institutions."</i> [<b>Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of
the Left</b>, p. 154]
</p><p>
Society cannot be avoided and <i>"[u]nless everyone is to be psychologically
homogeneous and society's interests so uniform in character that dissent
is simply meaningless, there must be room for conflicting proposals, 
discussion, rational explication and majority decisions - in short,
democracy."</i> [Bookchin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 155] Those who reject 
democracy in the name of liberty (such as many supporters of capitalism 
claim to do) usually also see the need for laws and hierarchical authority 
(particularly in the workplace). This is unsurprising, as such authority 
is the only means left by which collective activity can be co-ordinated 
if self-management is rejected (which is 
ironic as the resulting institutions, such as a capitalist company, are 
far more statist than self-managed ones). 
</p><p>
So, far from being new states by which one section of a community (historically,
almost always a wealthy elite) imposes its ethical standards on 
another, the anarchist commune is just a public forum. In this forum, 
issues of community interest (for example, management of the commons, 
control of communalised economic activity, and so forth) are discussed 
and policy agreed upon. In addition, interests beyond a local area are 
also discussed and delegates for confederal conferences are mandated with 
the wishes of the community. Hence, administration of things replaces 
government of people, with the community of communities existing to ensure 
that the interests of all are managed by all and that liberty, justice and 
equality for all are more than just ideals. Moreover, a free society would 
be one without professional bodies of armed people (i.e., there would be no 
armed forces or police). It would not have the means of enforcing the 
decisions of conferences and communes which reflected the interests of a
few (would-be politicians or bureaucrats) rather than popular opinion.
</p><p>
Of course, it could be argued that popular opinion can be as oppressive as
any state, a possibility anarchists are aware of and take steps to combat.
Remember, the communities and confederations of a free society would be made
up of free people. They would <b>not</b> be too concerned with the personal 
behaviour of others unless it impacted on their own lives. As such, they 
would not be seeking to restrict the liberty of those who live with them. 
A community, therefore, is unlikely to make decisions like, for example, 
outlawing homosexuality or censoring the press. This is not to say that 
there is no danger of majorities abusing minorities. As we discuss in the
<a href="secI5.html#seci56">next section</a>, anarchists  suggest means 
of reducing it, even eliminating it.
Suffice to say, a free society would seek to encourage diversity and so
leave minorities free to live their own lives (assuming they are not
oppressing or exploiting others, of course).
</p><p>
For these reasons, a libertarian-socialist society would not have a state. 
Structurally, it would be based on egalitarian and decentralised institutions, 
the direct opposite of the hierarchical and centralised state. Functionally, 
it would be based on mass participation of all to ensure they manage their
own affairs rather than, as in a state, exclusion of the many to ensure the 
rule of an elite. The communes and confederations 
of a libertarian system are not just states with new names but rather the 
forums by which free people manage their own affairs rather than being ruled 
by a state and its politicians and bureaucrats.
</p><p>
This is why Proudhon argued that <i>"under the democratic 
constitution . . . the political and the economic are . . . one and the 
same system . . . based upon a single principle, mutuality . . . and 
form this vast humanitarian organism of which nothing previously could 
give the idea . . . [I]s this not the system of the old society 
turned upside down"</i>? [<b>Anarchism</b>, vol. 1, Robert Graham (ed.), 
pp. 74-5]
</p>

<a name="seci56"><h2>I.5.6 Won't there be a danger of a <i>"tyranny of 
the majority"</i> under libertarian socialism?</h2></a>

<p>
While the <i>"tyranny of the majority"</i> objection does contain an 
important point, it is often raised for self-serving reasons. This is 
because those who have historically raised the issue (for example, and
as discussed in <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>, 
creators of the 1789 American constitution like Hamilton and Madison) 
saw the minority to be protected as the rich. In other words, the 
objection is not opposed to majority tyranny as such (they have no 
objections when the majority support their right to their riches and
powers) but rather attempts of the majority to change their society to 
a fairer and freer one. Such concerns can easily be dismissed as an
ingenious argument in favour of rule by the few -- particularly as its
proponents (such as the propertarian right and other defenders of
capitalism) have no problem with the autocratic rule of property 
owners over their wage-slaves! 
</p><p>
However, as noted, the objection to majority rule <b>does</b> contain a 
valid point and one which anarchists have addressed -- namely, what about 
minority freedom within a self-managed society? So this is a danger, one
raised by people who are most definitely <b>not</b> seeking minority rule.
For example, someone who was sympathetic to anarchism, George Orwell,
suggested:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"the totalitarian tendency . . . is explicit in the anarchist . . . 
vision of Society. In a Society in which there is no law, and
in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public
opinion. But pubic opinion, because of the tremendous urge to 
conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any 
system of law. When human beings are governed by 'thou shalt not',
the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity:
when they are supposedly governed by 'love' or 'reason', he is 
under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly
the same way as everyone else."</i> [<b>Inside the Whale and Other 
Essays</b>, p. 132]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
There is, of course, this danger in <b>any</b> society, be its 
decision making structure direct (anarchy) or indirect (by some 
form of government). However, this does not really address the
issue to point out this obvious fact. Anarchists are at the 
forefront in expressing concern about it, recognising that the majority 
is often a threat to freedom by its fear of change (see, for example, 
Emma Goldman's classic essay <i>"Minorities versus Majorities"</i>). 
We are well aware that the mass, as long as the individuals within it do 
not free themselves, can be a dead-weight on others, resisting change and 
enforcing conformity. As Goldman argued, <i>"even more than constituted 
authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual 
the most."</i> [<b>Red Emma Speaks</b>, p. 116] Hence Malatesta's comment 
that anarchists <i>"have the special mission of being vigilant custodians
of freedom, against all aspirants to power and against the possible
tyranny of the majority."</i> [<b>Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas</b>, 
p. 161]
</p><p>
However, rather than draw elitist conclusions from this fact of life
under capitalism and urge forms of government and organisation which 
restrict popular participation (and promote rule, and tyranny, by the 
few) -- as classical liberals do -- libertarians argue that only a 
process of self-liberation through struggle and participation can 
break up the mass into free, self-managing individuals (as discussed 
in <a href="secH2.html#sech211">section H.2.11</a> attempts by Leninists 
to portray anarchists as elitists are both hypocritical and false). Moreover, 
we also argue that participation and self-management is the only way 
that majorities can come to see the point of minority ideas and for 
seeing the importance of protecting minority freedoms. This means 
that any attempt to restrict participation in the name of minority 
rights actually enforces the herd mentality, undermining minority 
and individual freedom rather than protecting it. As Carole Pateman 
argues: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"the evidence supports the arguments . . . that we do learn
to participate by participating and that feelings of political
efficacy are more likely to be developed in a participatory
environment. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that
experience of a participatory authority structure might also
be effective in diminishing tendencies towards non-democratic
attitudes in the individual."</i> [<b>Participation and Democratic
Theory</b>, p. 105]
</blockquote></p><p>
So while there is cause for concern (and anarchists are at the 
forefront in expressing it), the <i>"tyranny of the majority"</i> 
objection fails to take note of the vast difference between direct 
and representative forms of democracy.
</p><p>
In the current system, as we pointed out in 
<a href="secB5.html">section B.5</a>, voters are 
mere passive spectators of occasional, staged, and highly rehearsed 
debates among candidates pre-selected by the corporate elite, who 
pay for campaign expenses. The public is expected to 
choose simply on the basis of political ads and news sound bites. 
Once the choice is made, cumbersome and ineffective recall procedures 
insure that elected representatives can act more or less as they 
(or rather, their wealthy sponsors) please. The function, then, 
of the electorate in bourgeois "representative government" is 
ratification of "choices" that have been <b>already made for them</b>!
This is also the case in referendum, where the people <i>"are not
to <b>propose</b> the questions: the government is to do that.
Only to questions <b>proposed</b> by the government, the people 
may answer <b>Yes</b> or <b>No</b>, like a child in the catechism.
The people will not even have a chance to make amendments."</i>
[Proudhon, <b>General Idea of the Revolution</b>, p. 148]
</p><p>
By contrast, in a libertarian society decisions are made
following public discussion in community assemblies open to all. After
decisions have been reached, outvoted minorities -- even minorities of 
one -- still have ample opportunity to present reasoned and persuasive
counter-arguments to try to change the decision. This process of debate,
disagreement, challenge, and counter-challenge, which goes on even after
the defeated minority has temporarily acquiesced in the decision of the
majority, is virtually absent in the representative system, where <i>"tyranny
of the majority"</i> is truly a problem. In addition, minorities can secede
from an association if the decision reached by it are truly offensive to
them. 
</p><p>
And let us not forget that in all likelihood, issues of personal conduct 
or activity will not be discussed in the neighbourhood assemblies. Why? 
Because we are talking about a society in which most people consider 
themselves to be unique, free individuals, who would thus recognise and
act to protect the uniqueness and freedom of others. Unless people are
indoctrinated by religion or some other form of ideology, they can be
tolerant of others and their individuality. If this is not the case 
now, then it has more to do with the existence of authoritarian social 
relationships -- relationships that will be dismantled under 
libertarian socialism -- and the type of person they create rather
than some innate human flaw. 
</p><p>
Thus there will be vast areas of life in a libertarian socialist
community which are none of other people's business. Anarchists 
have always stressed the importance of personal space and "private" 
areas. Indeed, for Kropotkin, the failure of many "utopian" 
communities directly flowed from a lack of these and <i>"the 
desire to manage the community after the model of a
family, to make it 'the great family.' They lived all in the 
same house and were thus forced to continuously meet the same
'brethren and sisters.' It is already difficult often for two
real brothers to live together in the same house, and family
life is not always harmonious; so it was a fundamental error to
impose on all the 'great family' instead of trying, on the
contrary, to guarantee as much freedom and home life to each
individual."</i> In an anarchist society, continual agreement 
on all issues is not desired. The members of a free society <i>"need 
only agree as to some advantageous method of common work, and are
free otherwise to live in their own way."</i> [<b>Small Communal 
Experiments and Why they Fail</b>, pp. 8-9 and p. 22]
</p><p>
Which brings us to another key point. When anarchists talk of
democratising or communalising the household or any other
association, we do not mean that it should be stripped of its
private status and become open to regulation by general voting 
in a single, universal public
sphere. Rather, we mean that households and other relationships
should take in libertarian characteristics and be consistent
with the liberty of all its members. Thus a society based
on self-management does not imply the destruction of private
spheres of activity -- it implies the extension of anarchist
principles into all spheres of life, both private and public.
It does not mean the subordination of the private by the public,
or vice versa. 
</p><p>
As an example, we can point to inter-personal relationships. Anarchists 
are opposed to the patriarchy implicit (and, in the past, explicit) in 
marriage and suggest free love as an alternative. As discussed in 
<a href="secH4.html#sech42">section H.4.2 </a>, free love means that 
both people in a relationship have equal decision making power rather 
than, as in marriage, the woman becoming the property of the husband. 
Thus, self-management in this context does not mean the end of 
interpersonal relationships by the imposition of the commune onto all 
spheres of life but, obviously, the creation of interpersonal 
relationships based on equality and liberty. 
</p><p>
So it is highly unlikely that the <i>"tyranny of
the majority"</i> will exert itself where most rightly fear it --
in their homes, how they act with friends, their personal space,
how they act, and so on. As long as individual freedom and
rights are protected, it is of little concern what people get up
to (included the rights of children, who are also individuals
and <b>not</b> the property of their parents). Direct democracy in 
anarchist theory is purely concerned with common resources,  
their use and management. It is highly unlikely that a free society 
would debate issues of personal behaviour or morality and instead
would leave them to those directly affected by them -- as it should 
be, as we all need personal space and experimentation to find the 
way of life that best suits us. 
</p><p>
Today an authoritarian worldview, characterised by an inability to 
think beyond the categories of domination and submission, is imparted 
by conditioning in the family, schools, religious institutions, clubs,
fraternities, the army, etc., and produces a type of personality that 
is intolerant of any individual or group perceived as threatening to the
perpetuation of that worldview and its corresponding institutions and
values. Thus, as Bakunin argued, <i>"public opinion"</i> is potentially 
intolerant <i>"simply because hitherto this power has not been humanised 
itself; it has not been humanised because the social life of which it is 
ever the faithful expression is based . . . in the worship of divinity, not 
on respect for humanity; in authority, not on liberty; on privilege, not on
equality; in the exploitation, not on the brotherhood, of men; on iniquity
and falsehood, not on justice and truth. Consequently its real action,
always in contradiction of the humanitarian theories which it professes,
has constantly exercised a disastrous and depraving influence."</i> [<b>God 
and the State</b>, p. 43f] In other words, <i>"if society is ever to become 
free, it will be so through liberated individuals, whose free efforts make
society."</i> [Emma Goldman, <b>Anarchism and Other Essays</b>, p. 44] In 
an anarchist society a conscious effort will be made to dissolve the 
institutional and traditional sources of the authoritarian/submissive 
type of personality, and thus to free "public opinion" of its current 
potential for intolerance. 
</p><p>
This is not to suggest that such a society of free individuals will not
become stuck in routine and, over time, become oppressive to minorities
who question certain aspects of public opinion or how it works. Public
opinion and social organisations can evolve over generations in ways 
which no one expects. The best know, albeit fictional, example is in 
Ursula Le Guin's classic science-fiction book <b>The Dispossessed</b>
where the anarchist society of Anarres has developed something of a 
weak informal bureaucracy due to the routine of everyday life and the
unconscious pressures of public opinion. When the protagonist, Shevek, 
and his friends try to point this out and do something about (including 
Shevek leaving Anarres for the capitalist world of Urras), most on the 
planet are extremely hostile to this activity (precisely because it is 
going against the normal routine). Significantly, though, a large 
minority end up supporting their activities, activities which can 
occur precisely <b>because</b> the society is still fundamentally 
communist-anarchist and so the dissenters have a rich libertarian 
tradition and sensibility to base their direct action on as well 
having use-rights over the resources they need to propagate their 
ideas and practice their protest.
</p><p>
In the real world, the best example would be the <b>Mujeres Libres</b>
in the Spanish anarchist movement during the 1930s (see Martha A. Ackelsberg's 
classic <b>Free Women Of Spain: Anarchism And The Struggle For The 
Emancipation Of Women</b> for more on this important movement). This 
organisation arose in response to the fact that many male anarchists, 
while expressing a theoretical commitment to sexual equality, were 
as sexist as the system they were fighting against and so 
they subconsciously reflected the oppressive public opinion of 
what a woman's position should be. Unsurprisingly, many anarchist
women were (rightly) angry at this and their marginalised status 
within a libertarian movement that ostensibly sought to abolish 
all forms of domination and hierarchy. In response, and often in
the face of the hostility or indifference of their male comrades,
they organised themselves to change this situation, to combat and
transform public opinion both within and outwith the anarchist
movement. Their activities meet with some success before, like the
rest of the libertarian revolution, it was crushed by Franco's
victory in the civil war. 
</p><p>
We can, therefore, suggest that a free society is unlikely to see
public opinion becoming authoritarian. This is because, as the 
example of the <b>Mujeres Libres</b> shows, members of that society
would organise to combat such developments and use various means
to raise the problem to public awareness and to combat it. Once a 
free society has been gained, the task of anarchists would be to 
ensure it remained free and that would mean keeping a constant 
watch on possible sources of authority, including those associated
with organisations developing informal bureaucracies and public 
opinion. While a free society would place numerous safeguards 
against such developments, no system would be perfect and so the
actions of dissident minorities would be essential to point out
and protest as if such dangers appeared to be developing.
</p><p>
As such, it should be noted that anarchists recognise that 
the practice of self-assumed political obligation implied in 
free association also implies the right to practice dissent 
and disobedience as well. As Carole Pateman notes:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Even if it is impossible to be unjust to myself, I do not vote 
for myself alone, but along with everyone else. Questions about 
injustice are always appropriate in political life, for there is no 
guarantee that participatory voting will actually result in decisions 
in accord with the principles of political morality."</i> [<b>The 
Problem of Political Obligation</b>, p. 160] 
</blockquote>
</p><p>
If an individual or group of individuals feel that a specific decision 
threatens their freedom (which is the basic principle of political
morality in an anarchist society) they can (and must) act to defend 
that freedom:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The political practice of participatory voting rests in a collective 
self-consciousness about the meaning and implication of citizenship. 
The members of the political association understand that to vote 
is simultaneously to commit oneself, to commit one's fellow citizens,
and also to commit oneself to them in a mutual undertaking . . . a refusal
to vote on a particular occasion indicates that the refusers believe . . .
[that] the proposal . . . infringes the principle of political morality 
on which the political association is based . . . A refusal to vote [or the
use of direct action] could be seen as an appeal to the 'sense of justice'
of their fellow citizens."</i> [Pateman, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 161]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
As they no longer consent to the decisions made by their community they 
can appeal to the "sense of justice" of their fellow citizens by direct 
action and indicate that a given decision may have impacts which the 
majority were not aware. Hence direct action and dissent is a key aspect
of an anarchist society and help ensure against the tyranny of the majority.
Anarchism rejects the <i>"love it or leave it"</i> attitude that marks an
authoritarian organisation.
</p><p>
This vision of self-assumed obligation, with its basis in individual
liberty, indicates the basic flaw of Joseph Schumpeter's argument
against democracy as anything bar a political method of arriving
at decisions (in his case who will be the leaders of a society). 
Schumpeter proposed <i>"A Mental Experiment"</i> of imagining a country
which, using a democratic process, <i>"reached the decision to persecute
religious dissent"</i> (such as Jews and witches). He argued that we 
should not approve of these practices just because they have been decided 
upon by a majority or using a democratic method and, therefore, democracy 
cannot be an end in itself. [<b>Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy</b>, 
pp. 240-3]
</p><p>
However, such systematic persecution would conflict with the 
rules of procedure required if a country's or community's 
political method is to be called "democratic." This is 
because, in order to be democratic, the minority must be in a
position for its ideas to become the majority's via argument 
and that requires freedom of speech, discussion and association. 
A country or community in which the majority persecutes or 
represses a minority automatically ensures that the minority 
can never be in a position to become the majority (as the 
minority is barred by force from becoming so) or convince 
the majority of the errors of its way (even if it cannot 
become the majority physically, it can become so morally 
by convincing the majority to change its position). Schumpeter's 
example utterly violates democratic principles and so cannot be 
squared with the it (Rousseau's somewhat opaque distinction 
between <i>"the General Will"</i> and majority rule sought to
express this). Thus majority tyranny is an outrage against both 
democratic theory <b>and</b> individual liberty (unsurprisingly, 
as the former has its roots in the latter). 
</p><p>
This argument applies with even more force to a self-managed 
community too and so any system in which the majority tyrannises over 
a minority is, by definition, <b>not</b> self-managed as one part of the 
community is excluded from convincing the other (<i>"the enslavement of 
part of a nation denies the federal principal itself."</i> [Proudhon, 
<b>The Principle of Federation</b>, p. 42f]). Thus individual freedom 
and minority rights are essential to self-management.
As Proudhon argued, <i>"a new spirit has dawned on the world. Freedom 
has opposed itself to the State, and since the idea of freedom has 
become universal people have realised that it is not a concern of the 
individual merely, but rather that it must exist in the group also."</i>
[quoted by Martin Buber, <b>Paths in Utopia</b>, p. 28] Unsurprisingly, 
then, the <i>"freedom of the collectivity to crush the individual is 
not, however, true Liberty in the eyes of Anarchists. It is one of 
those shams, which the Revolution is to destroy."</i> [Charlotte M. 
Wilson, <b>Anarchist Essays</b>, p. 25]
</p><p>
It should be stressed, however, that most anarchists do not think that 
the way to guard against possible tyranny by the majority is to resort to
decision-making by consensus (where no action can be taken until every
person in the group agrees) or a property system (based in contracts).
Both consensus (see <a href="secA2.html#seca212">section A.2.12</a>) 
and contracts (see <a href="secA2.html#seca214">section A.2.14</a>) 
soon result in authoritarian social relationships developing in the name 
of "liberty." Rather, we seek new forms of free agreement to replace
contract and new forms of decision making which do not replace the 
possible tyranny of the majority with the real tyranny of a minority.
</p><p>
Then there is freedom of association. As 
Malatesta argued, <i>"for if it is unjust that the majority should
oppress the minority, the contrary would be quite as unjust; and if the
minority has a right to rebel, the majority has a right to defend itself
. . . it is true  that this solution is not completely satisfactory. The
individuals put out of the association would be deprived of many social
advantages, which an isolated person or group must do without, because
they can only be procured  by the co-operation of a great number of human
beings. But what would you have? These malcontents cannot fairly demand
that the wishes of many others should be sacrificed for their sakes."</i> 
[<b>A Talk about Anarchist-Communism</b>, p. 29] In other words, freedom
of association means the freedom <b>not</b> to associate and so communities 
can expel individuals or groups of individuals who constantly hinder 
community decisions -- assuming they do not leave voluntarily and seek
a community more in tune with their needs. This a very important freedom 
for both the majority and the minority, and must be defended. 
</p><p>
So while minorities have significant rights in a free society, so does
the majority. We can imagine that there will be ethical reasons why 
participants will not act in ways to oppose joint activity -- as they
took part in the decision making process they would be considered childish
if they reject the final decision because it did not go in their favour.
Moreover, they would also have to face the reaction of those who also
took part in the decision making process. It would be likely that those
who ignored such decisions (or actively hindered them) would soon face
non-violent direct action in the form of non-co-operation, shunning,
boycotting and so on. Anarchists think that such occurrences would be 
rare.
</p><p>
As an isolated life is impossible, the need for communal 
associations is essential. It is only by living together in a 
supportive community can individuality be encouraged and developed along
with individual freedom. However, anarchists are aware that not everyone
is a social animal and that there are times that people like to withdraw
into their own personal space. Thus our support for free association
and federalism along with solidarity, community and self-management.
Most anarchists have recognised that majority decision making, 
though not perfect, is the best way to reach decisions in a political 
system based on maximising individual and so social freedom. 
Self-management in grassroots confederal assemblies and workers' councils 
ensures that decision making is "horizontal" in nature (i.e. between 
<b>equals</b>) and not hierarchical (i.e. governmental, between 
order giver and order taker). In other words, anarchists support
self-management because it ensures liberty -- <b>not</b> because we
subscribe to the flawed assumption that the majority is always right.
</p>

<p>
<a name="seci57"><h2>I.5.7 What if I don't want to join a commune?</h2></a>

<p>
As would be expected, no one would be <b>forced</b> to join a commune nor 
take part in its assemblies. To suggest otherwise would be contrary to 
anarchist principles. Thus a commune would be a free society, in which 
individual liberty would be respected and encouraged.
</p><p>
However, what about individuals who live within the boundaries of a 
commune but decide not to join? For example, a local neighbourhood 
may include households that desire to associate and a few that do 
not (this is actually happened during the Spanish Revolution). What
happens to the minority of dissenters?
</p><p>
Obviously individuals can leave to find communities more in line 
with their own concepts of right and wrong if they cannot convince 
their neighbours of the validity of their ideas. And, equally 
obviously, not everyone will want to leave an area they like. So 
we must discuss what happens to those who decide to not to find a more 
suitable neighbourhood. Are the communal decisions binding on non-members? 
Obviously not. If an individual or family desire <b>not</b> to join 
a commune (for whatever reason), their freedoms must be respected. 
However, this also means that they cannot benefit from communal 
activity and resources (such a free parks, hospitals, and so 
forth) and have to pay for their use. As long as they 
do not exploit or oppress others, an anarchist community would 
respect their decision (as discussed in 
<a href="secG2.html#secg21">section G.2.1</a>, for example).
</p><p>
Many who oppose anarchist self-management in the name of freedom  
often do so because they desire to oppress and exploit others. In other
words, they oppose participatory communities because they (rightly) fear
that this would restrict their ability to grow rich 
off the labour of others (this type of opposition can be seen from history, 
when rich elites, in the name of liberty, have replaced democratic forms 
of social decision making with representative or authoritarian ones --
see <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>). 
</p><p>
It goes without 
saying that the minority, as in any society, will exist within the ethical 
norms of the surrounding society and they will be have to adhere to them 
in the same sense that they have to adhere to not murdering people (few 
sane people would say that forcing people not to commit murder is a 
restriction of their liberty). Therefore, while allowing the maximum of 
individual freedom of dissent, an anarchist community would still have 
to apply its ethical standards to those beyond that community. Individuals 
would not be allowed to murder, harm or enslave others and claim that 
they are allowed to do so because they are not part of the local 
community (see <a href="secI5.html#seci58">section I.5.8</a> on crime 
in an anarchist society). 
</p><p>
Similarly, individuals would not be allowed to develop private property 
(as opposed to possession) simply because they wanted to. This rejection
of private property would not be a restriction on liberty simply because 
stopping the development of authority hardly counts as an authoritarian 
act (for an analogy, supporters of capitalism do not think that banning 
theft is a restriction of liberty and because this view is -- currently -- 
accepted by the majority it is enforced on the minority). Regardless of 
what defenders of capitalism claim, "voluntary bilateral exchanges" affect 
third parties and can harm others indirectly. This can easily be seen from 
examples like concentrations of wealth which have effects across society 
or the ecological impacts of consumption and production. This means that 
an anarchist society would be aware that inequality, and so statism, could 
develop again and take precautions against it. As Malatesta put it, some 
<i>"seem almost to believe that after having brought down government and 
private property we would allow both to be quietly built up again, because 
of respect for the <b>freedom</b> of those who might feel the need to be 
rulers and property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting our ideas."</i> 
[<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 43] 
</p><p>
The suggestion that denying property ownership is a restriction in freedom
is wrong, as it is the would-be capitalist who is trying to ban freedom for 
others on their property. Members of a free society would simply refuse to 
recognise the claims of private property -- they would simply ignore the 
would-be capitalist's pretensions and "keep out" signs. Without a 
state, or hired thugs, to back up their claims, they would just end up 
looking silly. 
</p><p>
This means that Anarchists do not support the liberty of being a boss 
(anarchists will happily work <b>with</b> someone but not <b>for</b> 
someone). Of course, those who desire to create private property against 
the wishes of others expect those others to respect <b>their</b> wishes. So, 
when would-be propertarians happily fence off their "property" and 
exclude others from it, could not these others remember these words 
from Woody Guthrie's <b>This Land is Your Land</b>, and act accordingly?
</p><p>
<div align="center"> 
 	       <i><b>"As I went rumbling that dusty highway<br>
	        I saw a sign that said private property<br>
	        But on the other side it didn't say nothing<br>
	        This land was made for you and me"</b></i> 
</div>
</p><p>
While happy to exclude people from "their" property, such owners seem more
than happy to use the resources held in common by others. They are the 
ultimate "free riders," desiring the benefits of society but rejecting the 
responsibilities that go with it. In the end, such "individualists" usually
end up supporting the state (an institution they claim to hate) precisely
because it is the only means by which private property and their "freedom" 
to exercise authority can be defended.
</p><p>
This does not mean denying the freedom to live your life as you
see fit, using the resources you need to do so. It simply means not being
able to proclaim ownership over more than you could reasonably use. In 
other words, <i>"occupancy and use"</i> would be 
the limits of possession -- and so property would become <i>"that control 
of a thing by a person which will receive either social sanction, or else 
unanimous individual sanction, when the laws of social expediency shall 
have been fully discovered."</i> [Benjamin Tucker, <b>Instead of a Book</b>, 
p. 131] As we discuss in <a href="secI6.html#seci62">section I.6.2</a>, 
this perspective on use rights is shared by both individualist and social 
anarchists.
</p><p>
Therefore anarchists support the maximum of experiments while ensuring 
that the social conditions that allow this experimentation are protected
against concentrations of wealth and power. As Malatesta put it: <i>"Anarchism 
involves all and only those forms of life that respect liberty and recognise 
that every person has an equal right to enjoy the good things of nature and 
the products of their own activity."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Revolution</b>, p. 14] 
</p><p>
So, as a way to eliminate the problem of minorities seeking power and
property for themselves, an anarchist revolution places social wealth 
(starting with the land) in the hands of all and promises to protect 
only those uses of it which are considered just by society as a whole. 
In other words, by recognising that "property" is a product of society, 
an anarchist society will ensure than an individual's "property" is 
protected by his or her fellows when it is based purely upon actual
occupancy and use. Thus attempts to transform minority dissent into,
say, property rights would be fought by simply ignoring the "keep
out" signs of property owned, but not used, by an individual or
group. Therefore, individuals are free not to associate, but their 
claims of "ownership"  will be based around <b>use</b> rights, not 
property rights. Without a state to back up and protect property "rights," 
we see that all rights are, in the end, what society considers to be 
fair (the difference between law and social custom is discussed in 
<a href="secI7.html#seci73">section I.7.3</a>). What the state 
does is to impose "rights" which do not have such a basis (i.e. those 
that protect the property of the elite) or "rights" which have been 
corrupted by wealth and would have been changed because of this 
corruption had society been free to manage its own affairs.
</p><p>
In summary, individuals will be free not to join a participatory 
community, and hence free to place themselves outside its decisions 
and activities on most issues that do not apply to the fundamental 
ethical standards of a society. Hence individuals who desire to 
live outside of anarchist communities would be free to live as 
they see fit but would not be able to commit murder, rape, create 
private property or other activities that harmed individuals. It 
should be noted, moreover, that this does not mean that their 
possessions will be taken from them by "society" or that "society" 
will tell them what to do with them. Freedom, in a complex world, 
means that such individuals will not be in a position to turn 
their possessions into <b>property</b> and thus recreate capitalism 
(for the distinction between <i>"property"</i> and <i>"possessions,"</i> 
see <a href="secB3.html#secb31">section B.3.1</a>). This will not be 
done by "anarchist police" or by "banning" voluntary agreements, but 
purely by recognising that "property" is a social creation and by 
creating a social system that will encourage individuals to stand 
up for their rights and co-operate with each other to protect their
freedom against those seeking to reduce others to the conditions of
servants working their property for them.
</p>

<a name="seci58"><h2>I.5.8 What about crime?</h2></a>

<p>
For anarchists, "crime" can best be described as anti-social acts, or 
behaviour which harms someone else or which invades their personal space.
Anarchists, in other words, <i>"believe that to act criminally means to 
violate the liberty of others"</i> and so criminals in a free society 
would be <i>"those who would encroach on personal integrity, liberty and 
the well being of others."</i> [Malatesta, <b>At the Caf</b>, p. 100 and 
p. 132]
</p><p>
This definition of crime is similar, of course, to that used in capitalist
society but libertarians note that the state defines as "crime" many things
which a sane society would not (such as, say, consensual acts of adults in 
private or expropriation of private property). Similarly, a free society 
would consider as anti-social many acts which the state defends under 
capitalism (such as the appropriation of resources or exploitation of 
others labour). This is to be expected, as social customs evolve and 
reflect the socio-economic basis of a given society. Hence Malatesta:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Naturally the crimes we are talking about are anti-social acts, 
that is those which offend human feelings and which infringe the 
right of others to equality in freedom, and not the many actions
which the penal code punishes simply because they offend against
the privileges of the dominant classes."</i> [<b>Errico Malatesta: 
His Life and Ideas</b>, pp. 105-6]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Anarchists argue that the root cause for crime is not some perversity of
human nature or "original sin" but is due to the type of society by which
people are moulded. For example, anarchists point out that by eliminating
private property, crime could be reduced significantly, since most crime 
today is currently motivated by evils stemming from private property such 
as poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and alienation. Moreover, by 
adopting anarchist methods of non-authoritarian child rearing and education, 
most of the remaining crimes could also be eliminated, because they are 
largely due to the anti-social, perverse, and cruel "secondary drives" 
that develop because of authoritarian child-rearing practices 
(see <a href="secJ6.html">section J.6</a>). However, as long as the 
few <i>"violates the equal freedom of others . . . we must defend 
ourselves."</i> [Malatesta, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 106]
</p><p>
First, it cannot be said that governments are required to protect people from 
crime and criminals. Rather, as Alexander Berkman argued, <i>"[d]oes not 
government itself create and uphold conditions which make for crime? Does 
not the invasion and violence upon which all governments rest cultivate 
the spirit of intolerance and persecution, of hatred and more violence?"</i> 
Crime, then, <i>"is the result of economic conditions, of social inequality, 
of wrongs and evils of which government and monopoly are parents. Government 
and law can only punish the criminal. They neither cure nor prevent crime. 
The only real cure for crime is to abolish its causes, and the government 
can never do because it is there to preserve those very causes."</i> This
suggests that crimes <i>"resulting form government, from its oppression and
injustice, from inequality and poverty, will disappear under Anarchy. 
These constitute by far the greatest percentage of crime."</i> [<b>What is 
Anarchism?</b>, p. 151] Nor should we forget that today we are subject 
to rule by the anti-social, for the <i>"owners and rulers"</i> are 
<i>"criminals"</i> who are <i>"powerful and have organised their dominance 
on a stable basis"</i> (<i>"Who is more of a thief than the owners who get 
wealthy stealing the produce of the workers' labour?"</i>). [Malatesta,
<b>At the Caf</b>, p. 100 and p. 130]
</p><p>
"Crime", therefore, cannot be divorced from the society within which it
occurs. Society, in Emma Goldman's words, gets the criminals it deserves. 
For example, anarchists do not think it unusual nor unexpected that 
crime exploded under the pro-free market capitalist regimes of Thatcher 
and Reagan. Crime, the most obvious symptom of social crisis, took 
30 years to double in Britain (from 1 million incidents in 1950 to 
2.2 million in 1979). However, between 1979 and 1992 the crime rate 
more than doubled, exceeding the 5 million mark in 1992. These 13 
years were marked by a government firmly committed to the "free 
market" and "individual responsibility." It was entirely predictable 
that the social disruption, atomisation of individuals, and increased 
poverty caused by freeing capitalism from social controls would rip 
society apart  and increase criminal activity. Also unsurprisingly 
(from an anarchist viewpoint), under these pro-market governments 
we also saw a reduction in civil liberties, increased state 
centralisation, and the destruction of local government. As Malatesta 
put it, the classical liberalism which these governments represented 
could have had no other effect, for <i>"the government's powers of 
repression must perforce increase as free competition results in 
more discord and inequality."</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 47]
</p><p>
Hence the apparent paradox of governments with flowing rhetoric about 
"individual rights," the "free market" and "getting the state off our 
backs" increasing state power and reducing rights while holding office 
during a crime explosion is no paradox at all. <i>"The conjuncture of 
the rhetoric of individual freedom and a vast increase in state power,"</i> 
argues Carole Pateman, <i>"is not unexpected at a time when the 
influence of contract doctrine is extending into the last, most 
intimate nooks and crannies of social life. Taken to a conclusion,
contract undermines the conditions of its own existence. Hobbes showed
long ago that contract -- all the way down -- requires absolutism and the
sword to keep war at bay."</i> [<b>The Sexual Contract</b>, p. 232]
</p><p>
Capitalism, and the contract theory on which it is built, will inevitably
rip apart society. It is based upon a vision of humanity as isolated 
individuals with no connection other than that of money. Such 
a vision cannot help but institutionalise anti-social acts. As Kropotkin 
argued <i>"it is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based 
in mankind. It is the conscience -- be it only at the stage of an instinct 
-- of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force
that is borrowed by each man [and woman] from the practice of mutual aid;
of the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all; 
and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to 
consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his [or her] 
own."</i> [<b>Mutual Aid</b>, p. 16] The social atomisation required and 
created by capitalism destroys the basic bonds of society -- namely human 
solidarity -- and hierarchy crushes the individuality required to understand 
that we share a common humanity with others and so understand <b>why</b> 
we must be ethical and respect others rights. Significantly, as Richard 
Wilkinson and Kate Pickett note in <b>The Spirit Level: Why More Equal 
Societies Almost Always Do Better</b>, more unequal societies have more 
crime and bigger prison populations (equality, as well as reducing crime,
consistently deliver other advantages for people).
</p><p>
We are not saying, however, that anarchists reject the concept of individual 
responsibility. While recognising that rape, for example, is the result of
a social system which represses sexuality and is based on patriarchy (i.e.
rape has more to do with power than sex), anarchists do not "sit back" and
say "it's society's fault." Individuals have to take responsibility for
their own actions and recognise that consequences of those actions. Part
of the current problem with "law codes" is that individuals have been
deprived of the responsibility for developing their own ethical code, and 
so are less likely to develop "civilised" social standards (see 
<a href="secI7.html#seci73">section I.7.3</a>).
</p><p>
Therefore, while anarchists reject the ideas of law and a specialised
justice system, they are not blind to the fact that anti-social action 
may not totally disappear in a free society. Nor are they blind to the
fact that, regardless of our hopes about a free society reducing crime, 
we will not create it over-night (<i>"all the bad passions . . . will 
not disappear at a stroke. There will still be for a long time those who 
will feel tempted to impose their will on others with violence, who will 
wish to exploit favourable circumstances to create privileges for 
themselves"</i> [Malatesta, <b>At the Caf</b>, p. 131]). Therefore, 
some sort of justice system would still be necessary to deal with the 
remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between people. 
</p><p>
This does not, it must be stressed, signify some sort of contradiction
within anarchism. Anarchists have never advocated the kind of "freedom"
which assumes that people can do what they want. When people object to
anarchy, they often ask about those who would steal, 
murder, rape and so forth and seem to assume that such people would be
free to act as they like. This is, needless to say, an utter 
misunderstanding of both our ideas and freedom in general. Simply put,
if people impose themselves by force on others then <i>"they will be
the government"</i> and <i>"we will oppose them with force"</i> for 
<i>"if today we want to make a revolution against the government, it 
is not in order to submit ourselves supinely to new oppressors."</i> 
[Malatesta, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 99] This applies to 
defending a free society against organised counter-revolution and against 
those within it conducting anti-social ("criminal") activities. The 
principle is the same, it is just the scale which is different.
</p><p>
It should be remembered that just because the state monopolises or
organises a (public) service, it does not mean that the abolition
of the state means the abolition of what useful things it provided.
For example, many states own and run the train network but the 
abolition of the state does not mean that there will no longer be any
trains! In a free society management of the railways would be done 
by the rail workers themselves, in association with the community.
The same applies to anti-social behaviour and so we find Kropotkin,
for example, pointing to how <i>"voluntary associations"</i> would 
<i>"substitute themselves for the State in all its functions,"</i> 
including <i>"mutual protection"</i> and <i>"defence of the 
territory."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 284]
</p><p>
This applies to what is termed justice, namely the resolution of 
disputes and anti-social acts ("crime"). Anarchists
argue that <i>"people would not allow their wellbeing and their 
freedom to be attacked with impunity, and if the necessity arose, 
they would take measures to defend themselves against the anti-social 
activities of a few. But to do so, what purpose is served by people 
whose profession is the making of laws; while other people spend their 
lives seeking out and inventing law-breakers?"</i> [Malatesta, <b>Anarchy</b>, 
pp. 43-4] This means that in a free society the resolution of 
anti-social behaviour would rest in the hands of all, <b>not</b>
in a specialised body separate from and above the masses. As Proudhon 
put it, an anarchy would see the <i>"police, judiciary, administration, 
everywhere committed to the hands of the workers"</i> [<b>General Idea
of the Revolution</b>, p. 281] And so:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Let each household, each factory, each association, each municipality, 
each district, attend to its own police, and administer carefully its own 
affairs, and the nation will be policed and administered. What need have 
we to be watched and ruled, and to pay, year in and year out, . . . 
millions? Let us abolish prefects, commissioners, and policemen too."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 273]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Precisely how this will work will be determined by free people based 
on the circumstances they face. All we can do is sketch out likely 
possibilities and make suggestions.
</p><p>
In terms of resolving disputes between people, it is likely that some
form of arbitration system would develop. The parties involved could
agree to hand their case to a third party (for example, a communal 
jury or mutually agreed individual or individuals). There is
the possibility that the parties cannot agree (or if the victim 
were dead), then the issue could be raised at a communal assembly and 
a "court" appointed to look into the issue. These "courts" would be 
independent from the commune, their independence strengthened by 
popular election instead of executive appointment of judges, by 
protecting the jury system by random selection of citizens, 
and so <i>"all disputes . . . will be submitted to juries which will 
judge not only the facts but the law, the justice of the law [or
social custom], its applicability to the given circumstances, and 
the penalty or damage to be inflicted because of its infraction"</i>.
[Benjamin Tucker, <b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, p. 160] For
Tucker, the jury was a <i>"splendid institution, the principal safeguard 
against oppression."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, vol. 1, no. 16, p. 1] 
</p><p>
As Malatesta suggested, <i>"when differences were to arise between
men [sic!], would not arbitration voluntarily accepted, or pressure
of public opinion, be perhaps more likely to establish where the right
lies than through an irresponsible magistrate which has the right to
adjudicate on everything and everybody and is inevitably incompetent
and therefore unjust?"</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 45] It is in the
arbitration system and communal assemblies that what constitutes 
anti-social behaviour will be discussed and agreed. 
</p><p>
In terms of anti-social events when they happen, <i>"when there 
remains a residue of criminals, the collective directly concerned 
should think of placing them in a position where they can do no 
harm, without delegating to anyone the specific function of 
persecuting criminals"</i> [Malatesta, <b>At the Caf</b>, p. 101]
In the case of a "police force", this would not exist either as a 
public or private specialised body or company. If a local community 
did consider that public safety required a body of people who could 
be called upon for help, we imagine that a new system would be 
created. Such a system would <i>"not be entrusted to, as it is 
today, to a special, official body: all able-bodied inhabitants 
will be called upon to take turns in the security measures 
instituted by the commune."</i> [James Guillaume, <i>"On Building 
the New Social Order"</i>, pp. 356-79, <b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, 
p. 371] 
</p><p>
This system could be based around a voluntary militia, in which all 
members of the community could serve if they so desired. Those who 
served would not constitute a professional body; instead the service 
would be made up of local people who would join for short periods of 
time and be replaced if they abused their position. Hence the 
likelihood that a communal militia would become corrupted by power, 
like the current police force or a private security firm exercising 
a policing function, would be vastly reduced. Moreover, by accustoming 
a population to intervene in anti-social as part of the militia, 
they would be empowered to do so when not an active part of it, 
so reducing the need for its services even more. In this way
<i>"we will defend ourselves . . . without delegating to anyone 
the special function of the defence of society"</i> and this is
<i>"the only effective method"</i> of stopping and reducing 
anti-social activity. [Malatesta, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 132]
</p><p>
Such a body would not have a monopoly on protecting others, but
would simply be on call if required. It would no more 
be a monopoly of defence (i.e. a "police force") than the current 
fire service is a monopoly. Individuals are not banned from putting 
out fires today because the fire service exists, similarly individuals 
will be free to help stop anti-social crime by themselves, or in 
association with others, in an anarchist society. 
</p><p>
Of course there are anti-social acts which occur without witnesses and
so the "guilty" party cannot be readily identified. If such acts did
occur we can imagine an anarchist community taking two courses of
action. The injured party may look into the facts themselves or appoint 
an agent to do so or, more likely, an ad hoc group would be elected at 
a community assembly to investigate specific crimes of this sort (subject 
to control and recall by the community). Once the investigating body thought 
it had enough evidence it would inform the community as well as the affected 
parties and then organise a court. Of course, a free society will 
produce different solutions to such problems, solutions no-one has 
considered yet and so these suggestions are just that, suggestions.
</p><p>
As is often stated, prevention is better than cure. This is as true of 
crime as of disease and so crime is best fought by rooting out its 
<b>causes</b> as opposed to punishing those who act in response to 
these causes. As Emma Goldman argued, crime <i>"is naught but misdirected 
energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, 
social, moral conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; 
so long as most people are out of place doing things they hate to do, 
living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and 
all the laws on the statues can only increase, but never do away 
with, crime"</i> [<b>Red Emma Speaks</b>, p. 71] Erich Fromm, 
decades later, made the same point:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in 
individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness 
of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual 
frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the 
thwarting of the whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity
of the growth and expression of man's sensuous, emotional, and 
intellectual capacities. Life has an inner dynamism of its 
own; it tends to grow, to be expressed, to be lived . . . the 
drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually 
interdependent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. 
The more the drive towards life is thwarted, the stronger is 
the drive towards destruction; the more life is realised, the 
less is the strength of destructiveness. <b>Destructiveness is 
the outcome of unlived life.</b> Those individual and social 
conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion 
for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which 
particular hostile tendencies -- either against others or against 
oneself -- are nourished."</i> [<b>The Fear of Freedom</b>, p. 158]
</blockquote></p><p>
Therefore, by reorganising society so that it empowers everyone and
actively encourages the use of all our intellectual, emotional and
sensuous abilities, crime would soon cease to be the huge problem that 
it is now. As for the anti-social behaviour or clashes between individuals
that might still exist in such a society, it would be  dealt with in a
system based on respect for the individual and a recognition of the
social roots of the problem. Restraint would be kept to a minimum.
Anarchists think that public opinion and social pressure would be the 
main means of preventing anti-social acts in an anarchist society, with 
such actions as boycotting and ostracising used as powerful sanctions to
convince those attempting them of the errors of their way. Extensive 
non-co-operation by neighbours, friends and work mates would be the 
best means of stopping acts which harmed others. Thus Malatesta:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In order for crime to be treated rationally, in order to seek
for its causes and really do everything possible to eliminate it, it 
is necessary for this task to be entrusted to those who are exposed 
to and suffer the consequences of crime, in other words the whole 
public, and not those to whom the existence of crime is a source of 
power and earnings."</i> [<b>At the Caf</b>, p. 135]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
An anarchist system of justice, we should note, would have a lot to 
learn from aboriginal societies simply because they are examples of 
social order without the state. Indeed many of the ideas we consider 
as essential to justice today can be found in such societies. As 
Kropotkin argued, <i>"when we imagine that we have made great advances 
in introducing, for instance, the jury, all we have done is to return 
to the institutions of the so-called 'barbarians' after having changed 
it to the advantage of the ruling classes."</i> [<b>The State: Its 
Historic Role</b>, p. 18] Like aboriginal justice (as documented 
by Rupert Ross in <b>Returning
to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice</b>) anarchists contend 
that justice be achieved by the 
teaching and healing of all involved. Public condemnation of the 
wrongdoing would be a key aspect of this process, but the wrong doer 
would remain part of the community and so see the effects of their 
actions on others in terms of grief and pain caused. It would be 
likely that wrong doers would be expected to try to make amends 
for their act by community service or helping victims and their 
families.
</p><p>
So, from a practical viewpoint, almost all anarchists oppose prisons
on both practical grounds and ethical grounds. Prisons have numerous 
negative affects on society as well as often re-enforcing criminal 
(i.e. anti-social) behaviour. Anarchists use the all-to-accurate 
description of prisons as <i>"Universities of Crime"</i> wherein 
the first-time criminal learns new techniques and have adapt to the 
prevailing ethical standards within them. Hence, prisons would have 
the effect of increasing the criminal tendencies of those sent there 
and so prove to be counter-productive. In addition, prisons do not affect 
the social conditions which promote many forms of crime. Simply put, prison 
<i>"does not improve the prisoner . . . it does not prevent him from 
committing more crimes. It does not then achieve any of the ends it 
has set itself"</i> [Kropotkin, <b>Anarchism</b>, p. 228] Moreover,
they are a failure in terms of their impact on those subject to them:
<i>"We know what prisons mean -- they mean broken down body and spirit, 
degradation, consumption, insanity"</i>. [Voltairine de Cleyre, quoted 
by Paul Avrich, <b>An American Anarchist</b>, p. 146] The Makhnovists 
took the usual anarchist position on prisons:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Prisons are the symbol of the servitude of the people, they are always 
built only to subjugate the people, the workers and peasants . . . Free 
people have no use for prisons. Wherever prisons exist, the people are 
not free . . . In keeping with this attitude, [the Makhnovists] demolished 
prisons wherever they went."</i> [Peter Arshinov, <b>The History of the 
Makhnovist Movement</b>, p. 153] 
</blockquote></p><p>
With the exception of Benjamin Tucker, no major anarchist writer supported 
the institution. Few anarchists think that private prisons (like private 
policemen) are compatible with their notions of freedom. However, all 
anarchists are against the current "justice" system which seems to them 
to be organised around <b>revenge</b> and punishing effects and not fixing 
causes. 
</p><p>
However, there are psychopaths and other people in any society who are
too dangerous to be allowed to walk freely. Restraint in this case would
be the only option and such people may have to be isolated from others
for their own, and others, safety. Perhaps mental hospitals would be
used, or an area quarantined for their use created (perhaps an 
island, for example). However, such cases (we hope) would be rare and
<i>"should be cared for according to the most humane methods of
treating the mentally afflicted."</i> [Voltairine de Cleyre, <b>The
Voltairine de Cleyre Reader</b>, p. 160]
</p><p>
The one thing that needs to be avoided is the creation of a professional
and specialised "justice" system as this would be a key means by which
the state could reconstitute itself. As Malatesta explained, <i>"the 
major damage caused by crime is not so much the single and transitory 
instance of the violation of the rights of a few individuals, but the 
danger that it will serve as an opportunity and pretext for the 
constitution of an authority that, with the outward appearance of 
defending society will subdue and oppress it."</i> In other words,
it <i>"would truly be a great piece of foolishness to protect oneself 
from a few violent people, a few idlers and some degenerates, by opening 
a school for idleness and violence"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 101 and 
p. 132] The libertarian perspective on crime does not rest on an 
idealised vision of people. <i>"We do not believe"</i>, as Malatesta 
suggested, <i>"in the infallibility, nor even the general goodness of 
the masses"</i>, rather <i>"we believe even less in the infallibility 
and goodness of those who seize power and legislate"</i> and so we 
must <i>"avoid the creation of bodies specialising in police work"</i>. 
[<b>Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas</b>, p. 109 and p. 108]
As George Barrett argued:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"All that we can say is that . . . disputes are very much better 
settled without the interference of authority. If the two [parties]
were reasonable, they would probably mutually agree to allow their 
dispute to be settled by some mutual friend whose judgement they 
could trust. But if instead of taking this sane course they decide 
to set up a fixed authority, disaster will be the inevitable result. 
In the first place, this authority will have to be given power 
wherewith to enforce its judgement in such matters. What will 
then take place? The answer is quite simple. Feeling it is a 
superior force, it will naturally in each case take to itself 
the best of what is disputed, and allot the rest to its friends.</i> 
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"What a strange question is this. It supposes that two people who 
meet on terms of equality and disagree could not be reasonable or 
just. But, on the other hand, it supposes that a third party, 
starting with an unfair advantage, and backed up by violence, will 
be the incarnation of justice itself. Common-sense should certainly 
warn us against such a supposition, and if we are lacking in this 
commodity, then we may learn the lesson by turning to the facts 
of life. There we see everywhere Authority standing by, and in the 
name of justice and fair play using its organised violence in order 
to take the lion's share of the world's wealth for the governmental 
class."</i> [<b>Objections to Anarchism</b>, pp. 349-50]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
So instead of prisons and a legal code based on the concept of
punishment and revenge, anarchists support the use of pubic opinion 
and pressure to stop anti-social acts and the need to therapeutically
rehabilitate those who commit them. Rather than a parasitic 
legal system which creates and defends inequality and privilege, 
anarchists agree with Kropotkin: <i>"Liberty, equality, and practical 
human sympathy are the most effective barriers we can oppose to the 
anti-social instinct of certain among us"</i>. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 218]
<i>"We want justice, not rigid, but elastic"</i>, argued Tucker, <i>"we want 
justice, not stern, but tempered with mercy, with eyes sharp enough to detect 
causes, conditions, and circumstances; we want justice, not superficial, but 
profound."</i> The current system of rigid law imposed by the state and 
implemented by a judge was false and <i>"no such justice is wanted in 
any civilised community."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, Vol. 13, No. 5, p. 4]
</p><p>
In summary, then, anarchists have spent considerable time discussing the 
issue. Somewhat ironically, given that many think the issue of crime is the 
weakest point of the anarchist case, the outlines of a solution to this
problem are well established in anarchist theory, both in terms of what
<b>not</b> to do and in terms of combating both crime and its causes.
Anarchy is based on people being free but freedom does <b>not</b> mean the 
"freedom" to violate the equal freedom of others. That is oppression,
that is exploitation, that is the embryo of the state and capitalism.
</p><p>
We can recommend the section <i>"Crime and 
Punishment"</i> by Malatesta (<b>Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas</b>)
as well as Kropotkin's essays <i>"Law and Authority"</i> and <i>"Prisons 
and their moral influence on prisoners"</i> (both within the <b>Anarchism</b> 
collection). Emma Goldman's <i>"Prisons: A social crime and Failure"</i> 
(<b>Red Emma Speaks</b>), de Cleyre's <i>"Crime and Punishment"</i> 
(<b>The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader</b>) and Colin Ward's <i>"How 
Deviant Dare you get?"</i> (<b>Anarchy in Action</b>) are also worth
reading. A useful collection of writings on this issue are found in 
<b>Under the Yoke of the State: Selected Anarchist Responses to Prisons 
and Crime</b> (edited by the Dawn Collective).
</p>

<a name="seci59"><h2>I.5.9 What about Freedom of Speech under Anarchism?</h2></a>

<p>
Free speech in an anarchist society would be far greater than under
capitalism. This is obvious, anarchists argue, because we <i>"fight 
against oppression and tyranny for a future in which they will be 
neither masters nor slaves, neither rich nor poor, neither oppressors 
nor oppressed . . . the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of 
all, and that in this universal freedom is the guarantee of liberty, 
self-development, autonomy, and free speech for each and everyone."</i>
[Emma Goldman, <b>A Documentary History of the American Years</b>, p. 104]
As such, libertarian socialism would be marked by extensive freedom of 
speech but also freedom of the press, of the media and so forth. 
</p><p>
Some, however, express the idea that <b>all</b> forms of socialism would 
endanger freedom of speech, press, and so forth. The usual formulation of 
this argument is in relation to state socialism and goes as follows: if the
state (or "society") owned all the means of communication, then only the
views which the government supported would get access to the media. 
</p><p>
This is an important point and it needs to be addressed. However, before 
doing so, we should point out that under capitalism the major media are
effectively controlled by the wealthy. As we argued in 
<a href="secD3.html">section D.3</a>, the
media are <b>not</b> the independent defenders of freedom that they like to
portray themselves as. This is hardly surprising, since newspapers,
television companies, and so forth are capitalist enterprises owned by the
wealthy and with managing  directors and editors who are also wealthy
individuals with a vested interest  in the status quo. Hence there are
institutional factors which ensure that the "free press" reflects the
interests of capitalist elites.
</p><p>
However, in democratic capitalist states there is little overt censorship.
Radical and independent publishers can still print their papers and books
without state intervention (although market forces ensure that this
activity can be difficult and financially unrewarding). Under socialism,
it is argued, because "society" owns the means of communication and
production, this liberty will not exist. Instead, as can be seen from
all examples of "actually existing socialism," such liberty is crushed 
in favour of the ruling elites' point of view.
</p><p>
As anarchism rejects the state, we can say that this danger does not
exist under libertarian socialism. However, since social anarchists 
argue for the communalisation of production, could not restrictions 
on free speech still exist? We argue no, for three reasons. 
</p><p>
Firstly, publishing houses, radio stations, and so on will be run 
by their workers directly. They will be supplied by other syndicates, 
with whom they will make agreements, and <b>not</b> by "central planning" 
officials (who would not exist). In other words, there is no bureaucracy 
of officials allocating (and so controlling) resources and so the 
means of communication. Hence, anarchist self-management will ensure 
that there is a wide range of opinions in different magazines and 
papers. There would be community papers, radio stations, etc., and 
obviously they would play an increased role in a free society. But 
they would not be the only media. Associations, political parties, 
industrial syndicates, and so on would have their own media and/or 
would have access to the resources run by communication workers 
syndicates, so ensuring that a wide range of opinions can be expressed.
</p><p>
Secondly, the "ultimate" power in a free society will be the individuals
of which it is composed. This power will be expressed in communal and
workplace assemblies that can recall delegates and revoke their
decisions. It is doubtful that these assemblies would tolerate a set of
would-be bureaucrats determining what they can or cannot read, see, or
hear. 
</p><p>
Thirdly, individuals in a free society would be interested in hearing 
different viewpoints and discussing them. This is the natural
side-effect of critical thought (which self-management would encourage), 
and so they would have a vested interest in defending the widest possible
access to different forms of media for different views. Having no vested
interests to defend, a free society would hardly encourage or tolerate
the censorship associated with the capitalist media (<i>"I listen to criticism 
because I am <b>greedy.</b> I listen to criticism because I am <b>selfish.</b> I
would not deny myself another's insights"</i> [For Ourselves, <b>The Right to 
be Greedy</b>, Thesis 113]).
</p><p>
Therefore, anarchism will <b>increase</b> freedom of speech in many important 
ways, particularly in the workplace (where it is currently denied under 
capitalism). This will be a natural result of a society based on maximising
freedom and the desire to enjoy life: <i>"We claim the right of discussing . . . 
whatever subject interests us. If free speech and free press mean anything, 
they mean freedom of discussion."</i> [Goldman, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 203]
</p><p>
We would also like to point out that during both the Spanish and Russian 
revolutions, freedom of speech was protected within anarchist areas. For 
example, the Makhnovists in the Ukraine <i>"fully applied the revolutionary
principles of freedom of speech, of thought, of the Press, and of political
association. In all the cities and towns occupied . . . Complete freedom
of speech, Press, assembly, and association of any kind and for everyone
was immediately proclaimed."</i> [Peter Arshinov, <b>The History of the 
Makhnovist Movement</b>, p. 153] This is confirmed by Michael Malet: 
<i>"One of the most remarkable achievements of the Makhnovists 
was to preserve a freedom of speech more extensive than any of their 
opponents."</i> [<b>Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War</b>, p. 175]
In revolutionary Spain republicans, liberals, communists, Trotskyites and 
many different anarchist groups all had freedom to express their views. 
<i>"On my first visit to Spain in September 1936,"</i> Emma Goldman reported
<i>"nothing surprised me so much as the amount of political freedom I found
everywhere. True, it did not extend to Fascists"</i> but <i>"everyone of
the anti-Fascist front enjoyed political freedom which hardly existed
in any of the so-called European democracies."</i> As for the few 
restrictions that were in place, remember that there was a war on so
it was <i>"childish to expect the CNT-FAI to include Fascists and other 
forces engaged in their destruction in the extension of complete political 
freedom."</i> [<b>Vision on Fire</b>, p.147 and p. 228] The freedom of 
speech in anarchist areas is confirmed in a host of other eye-witnesses, 
including George Orwell in <b>Homage to Catalonia</b> (in fact, it was 
the rise of the pro-capitalist republicans and communists that introduced 
censorship). Both movements were fighting a life-and-death struggle against 
communist, fascist and pro-capitalist armies and so this defence of freedom of 
expression, given the circumstances, is particularly noteworthy. 
</p><p>
Freedom of speech, like freedom of association, applies to all groups 
(including, of course, religious ones). The only exception would be, as 
Goldman noted, for organisations which are actively fighting to enslave 
a free society. In other words, during a social revolution it is unlikely 
that freedom of speech and organisation would apply to those supporting 
the counter-revolutionary forces. As the threat of violence by these 
forces decreases, so the freedom of their supporters would increase.
</p><p>
It is in this context we must discuss what some could point to as an
example of anarchists denying freedom of speech and association,
namely the burning of churches during the Spanish Revolution. In fact,
some would use this as evidence of anarchist intolerance of religion 
and to those who disagree with them. Anarchists reject such charges.
</p><p>
As is well known, after the successful defeat of the fascist-military 
coup in mid-July 1936, Catholic Churches were burned and members of 
the Catholic Church were killed. However, these acts were <b>not</b> 
acts against freedom of religion or speech. Rather they are popular 
acts against both the oppressive and reactionary role of the Catholic 
Church in Spanish society as well as its active support for fascism 
throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including Franco's coup. As historian
Paul Preston summarises:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"religion was an issue which could be used to mobilise mass
peasant support behind the interests of the oligarchy. Having
lost the political hegemony in April 1931, the ruling classes
clung all the more to the Church as one of the key redoubts 
of their social and economic dominance. Equally, the Church 
hierarchy, as a major landowner, had a somewhat similar view
of the value of an alliance with the new political formation
being created to defend oligarchical agrarian interests. Not
surprisingly, throughout the Republic, the clergy used both
pulpit and confessional to defend the existing socio-economic
order and to make electoral propaganda for the successive
political organisations of the Right."</i> [<b>The Coming of 
the Spanish Civil War</b>, pp. 42-3]
</blockquote></p><p>
The Catholic Church <i>"was the bulwark of the country's 
conservative forces"</i> and no more than 15 days after the 
announcement of the Republic in 1931, the Primate of Spain 
<i>"issued a pastoral denouncing the new government's intention 
to establish freedom of worship and to separate Church and state. 
The cardinal urged Catholics to vote in future elections against 
an administration which in his view wanted to destroy religion."</i> 
[Antony Beevor, <b>The Battle for Spain</b>, p. 91 and p. 25]
This opposition to the Republic and support for right-wing,
near-fascist parties such as the CEDA, continued throughout 
the 1930s and climaxed with the Church's backing of Franco's coup.
</p><p>
Nor should it be forgotten that the <i>"Catholic press applauded 
the Nazi destruction of the German Socialist and Communist 
movements. Nazism was much admired on the Spanish Right because 
of its emphasis on authority, the fatherland and hierarchy -- all 
three of which were central preoccupations of CEDA."</i> It also
<i>"urged its readers to follow the example of Italy and Germany 
and organise against the dragon of revolution"</i> while the
Nazis <i>"signed a concordat with the Vatican"</i>. The CEDA 
would <i>"proceed to the establishment of an authoritarian
regime of semi-fascist character along Austrian lines"</i>. So
awareness of what had happened in Italy and Germany (with Church 
support) was keen in anarchist and other left-wing circles, 
particularly as the <i>"Spanish Right had not hidden its sympathy 
for the achievements of Hitler and Mussolini. The CEDA had many 
of the trappings of a fascist organisation"</i> and its leader 
<i>"had declared his determination to establish a corporative 
state in Spain."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b> p. 69, p. 72, p. 120 and 
p. 121] As one Catholic writer, Francois Mauriac, put it 
<i>"Christianity and fascism have become intermingled, and 
[many] cannot hate one without hating the other."</i> [quoted 
Antony Beevor, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 270]
</p><p>
Given all this, the attacks on the Catholic Church really comes as 
no surprise. If, after an attempted fascist coup, people burned down 
the offices of the fascist and pro-fascist parties few people would 
be surprised. Why should a pro-fascist church be considered immune 
to such popular anger? As George Orwell pointed out: 
</blockquote></p><p>
<i>"No one can blame [someone] for being angry when churches are 
burned and priests murdered or driven into exile. But I think it 
is a pity that he has not looked more deeply into the reasons why 
these things happen."</i> [<b>Orwell in Spain</b>, p. 314]
</blockquote></p><p>
Unsurprisingly, then, those priests who had not supported the right, 
those who had treated the working class the same as the rich, were
spared. In the Basque Country, where the church supported 
the Republic, not a single church was burnt. Nor were synagogues or 
Protestant church targeted. In Barcelona <i>"the Quakers established 
canteens which were staffed by refugee women."</i> [Gabriel Jackson, 
<b>The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939</b>, p. 446]
</p><p>
It should also be stressed that the repression in the fascist zone
was much worse than that in the Republican one. Of a ecclesiastical 
community of 115,000, 6,845 were killed (<i>"the vast majority 
during the summer of 1936"</i>). This is in stark contrast to 
right-wing claims at the time. It should be mentioned that in the 
province of Seville, the fascist repression killed 8,000 during 
1936 alone. In Cordoba, 10,000 were killed during the war -- a 
tenth of the population. Once an area was captured by nationalist 
forces, after the initial killing of captured troops, union and 
party leaders, a <i>"second and more intense wave of slaughter would
begin"</i> (<i>"in fact anyone who was even suspected of having
voted for the Popular Front was in danger"</i>). This was organised 
by <i>"local committees, usually consisting of leading right-wingers, 
such as the major landowner, the local Civil Guard commander, a 
Falangist and quite often the priest"</i>. This was <i>"clearly 
not just a question of revenge, they were also motivated by the 
idea of establishing a reign of terror"</i>. This did not, of course,
hinder <i>"the unqualified backing of the Vatican and the Spanish Church
for General Franco"</i> while <i>"the Catholic press abroad sprang to 
the support of the nationalist rising"</i>. Obviously killing (many, 
many more) left-wingers in the name of god is of no concern to the
Catholic hierarchy nor did it stop <i>"the Church's official support 
for Franco"</i>. [Beevor, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 92, p. 101, p. 99, 
p. 104, p. 250, p. 269 and p. 270]
</p><p>
Under Franco, everyone had to <i>"submit themselves to the authority
of the Church as well as to their temporal masters. Franco had
been extremely generous in restoring all the Church's privileges
and wealth, as well as its power in education, but in return he 
expected the priesthood to act virtually as another arm of the
state."</i> In other words, <i>"Nationalist Spain was little more 
than an open prison for all those who did not sympathise with the 
regime"</i> and the <i>"population was encouraged to accuse people 
as part of its patriotic duty. Concierges and caretakers became 
police spies . . . and priests noted those who did not turn up to 
mass."</i> [Beevor, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 452,  p. 453 and p. 454]
All with the firm support of the Catholic Church.
</p><p>
Rather than an attempt to repress religion as such, the attacks on
the Catholic Church in republican areas it was a product of popular 
hostility to a corrupt institution, one which 
was deeply reactionary, pro-fascist and a major landowner in
its own right. This means that an awareness of the nature and 
role of the Church <i>"does not leave much doubt as to why 
practically all the churches in Catalonia and eastern Aragon 
were burnt at the outbreak of war."</i> The anti-clerical 
movement was a <i>"popular movement and a native Spanish movement. 
It has its roots not in Marx or Bakunin, but in the condition of 
the Spanish people themselves."</i> [Orwell, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 300
and p. 315] While under Franco <i>"the relentless purging of 'reds 
and atheists' was to continue for years"</i> in the Republican areas 
<i>"the worse of the violence was mainly a sudden and quickly spent 
reaction of suppressed fear, exacerbated by desires of revenge for 
the past."</i> [Beevor, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 91]
</p><p>
So the burning of churches in Spain had very little to do with anarchist
atheism and much, much more to do with the Catholic Church's social 
role in Spain, its reactionary position, its hatred of the unions and
social protest and the fact it supported the fascist coup. It does not
imply an opposition to freedom of speech by libertarian socialists but
was rather an expression of popular opposition to a ruling class and
pro-fascist organisation.
</p><p>
One last point to make on this issue. Given the actual role of the Church
during this period and its wholehearted support for fascism in the 1920s
onwards, it seems strange that the Catholic church has declared the murdered 
priests in Spain to be martyrs, part of a planned religious persecution. This 
is not true, if they were martyrs then they were martyrs to their pro-fascist
politics and not their faith (<i>"The political role of the Church was 
ignored when the religious victims were made into martyrs"</i>). Significantly,
the Catholic Church <i>"said nothing when the nationalists shot sixteen of 
the Basque clergy, including the arch-priest of Mondragon"</i> (the nationalists 
also killed some twenty Protestant ministers). In 2003 when John Paul II 
beatified a teacher killed in July 1936 he <i>"still made no mention of the 
Basque priests killed by the nationalists."</i> [Beevor, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 270, p. 92 and p. 527] Clearly a priest being murdered by fascists
backed by the Vatican is ineligible for sainthood.
</p><p>
Given the actual role of the Catholic Church during this period
it is surprising the Catholic hierarchy would seek to bring attention to
it. Perhaps it is confidant that the media will not mention these awkward
facts, although this context explains the deaths and church-burning in 1936.
As we noted in 
<a href="secA2.html#seca218">section A.2.18</a>, it appears that killing
working class people is not worthy of comment but assassinating members 
of the ruling elite (and its servants) is. So the fact that the burning of 
churches and killing of clergy is well known but the pro-fascist activities 
of the church (a product of both its reactionary politics and position in
the ruling elite) which provoked it is not should come as no surprise.
</p><p>
In summary, then, a free society would have substantial freedom of speech
along with other fundamental freedoms (including freedom of worship 
and of association). Such freedoms would be respected, supported  
and encouraged for all shades of political opinion, from the left through 
to the right. The only exception would be if an organisation were <b>actively</b> 
supporting those seeking to impose their rule on a free people and in such 
cases some restrictions may be decided upon (their nature would depend on 
the state of the struggle, with them decreasing as the danger decreased).
</p><p>
To those who claim that refusing freedom of speech to counter-revolutionaries
equates to statism or implies a contradiction in libertarian ideas, anarchists 
would reply that such arguments are flawed. In terms of the former, it is 
equating state imposed censorship with the active disobedience of a free 
people. Rather than the government imposing a ban, members of a free 
society would simply discuss the issue at hand and, if considered appropriate, 
actively and collectively boycott those supporting attempts to enslave them. 
Without electricity, paper, distribution networks and so on, reactionaries 
would find it hard to publish or broadcast. As for the latter, there is no 
contradiction as it is hardly contradictory to support and encourage freedom 
while, at the same time, resisting attempts to enslave you! As such, this
suggestion makes the same logical error Engels made in his diatribe against 
anarchism, namely considering it "authoritarian" to destroy authority (see 
<a href="secH4.html#sech47">section H.4.7</a>). 
Similarly, it is hardly authoritarian to resist those seeking to impose their 
authority on you or their supporters! This perspective seems to assume that 
the true "libertarian" approach is to let others impose their rule on you as 
stopping them is "authoritarian"! A truly strange way of understanding our
ideas.... 
</p><p>
To conclude, based upon both theory and practice, we can say that 
anarchism will not endanger freedom of expression. Indeed, by breaking 
up the capitalist oligopoly which currently exists and introducing 
workers' self-management of the media, a far wider range of opinions 
will become available in a free society. Rather than reflect the 
interests of a wealthy elite, the media would reflect the interests 
of society as a whole and the individuals and groups within it.
</p>

<a name="seci510"><h2>I.5.10 What about political parties, interest groups and
professional bodies?</h2></a>

<p>
Political parties and other interest groups will exist in an anarchist 
society as long as people feel the need to join them. They will not be
banned in any way, and their members will have the same rights as 
everyone else. Individuals who are members of political parties or
associations can take part in communal and other assemblies and try to
convince others of the soundness of their ideas. 
</p><p>
However, there is a key difference between such activity and politics
under a capitalist democracy. This is because the elections to positions of
responsibility in an anarchist society will not be based on party tickets
nor will it involve the delegation of power. Emile Pouget's description 
of the difference between the syndicalist union and political elections 
drives this difference home:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The constituent part of the trade union is the individual. Except
that the union member is spared the depressing phenomenon manifest
in democratic circles where, thanks to the veneration of universal
suffrage, the trend is towards the crushing and diminution of the
human personality. In a democratic setting, the elector can avail
of his [or her] will only in order to perform an act of abdication:
his role is to 'award' his 'vote' to the candidate whom he [or she]
wishes to have as his [or her] 'representative.'</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote>
<i>"Affiliation to the trade union has no such implication . . . In joining
the union, the worker merely enters into a contract -- which he may at
any time abjure --  with comrades who are his equals in will and potential
. . . In the union, say, should it come to the appointment of a trade
union council to take charge of administrative matters, such 'selection'
is not to be compared with 'election': the form of voting customarily
employed in such circumstances is merely a means whereby the labour can
be divided and is not accompanied by any delegation of authority. The
strictly prescribed duties of the trade union council are merely
administrative. The council performs the task entrusted to it, without
ever overruling its principals, without supplanting them or acting
in their place.</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote>
<i>"The same might be said of all decisions reached in the union: all are
restricted to a definite and specific act, whereas in democracy, election
implies that the elected candidate has been issued by his [or her] elector 
with a carte blanche empowering him [or her] to decide and do as he [or
she] pleases, in and on everything, without even the hindrance of the
quite possibly contrary views of his [or her] principals, whose opposition,
in any case, no matter how pronounced, is of no consequence until such
time as the elected candidate's mandate has run its course.</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote>
<i>"So there cannot be any possible parallels, let alone confusion, between
trade union activity and participation in the disappointing chores of
politics."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 2, pp. 67-68]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
In other words, when individuals are elected to administrative posts they
are elected to carry out their mandate, <b>not</b> to carry out their party's
programme. Of course, if the individuals in question had convinced their
fellow workers and citizens that their programme was correct, then this
mandate and the programme would be identical. However this is unlikely in
practice. We would imagine that the decisions of collectives and communes
would reflect the complex social interactions and diverse political opinions 
their members and of the various groupings within the association.
</p><p>
Anarchism will likely contain many different political groupings and
ideas. The relative influence of these within collectives and communes
would reflect the strength of their arguments and the relevance of their
ideas, as would be expected in a free society. As Bakunin argued: <i>"The
abolition of this mutual influence would be death. And when we vindicate
the freedom of the masses, we are by no means suggesting the abolition of
any of the natural influences that individuals or groups of individuals
exert on them. What we want is the abolition of influences which are
artificial, privileged, legal, official."</i> [quoted by Malatesta,
<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 51] It is only when representative government replaces 
self-management that 
political debate results in "elected dictatorship" and centralisation of 
power into the hands of one party which claims to speak for the whole of 
society, as if the latter had one mind. 
</p><p>
This freedom of political association has existed in every anarchist 
revolution. During the Russian Revolution, the Makhnovists organised 
soviets and regional congresses at every opportunity and these saw 
delegates elected who were members of different political parties. 
For example, members of the socialist Left-SR party were 
active in the Makhnovist movement and attended soviet congresses
(for example, the resolution of the February 1919 congress <i>"was
written by the anarchists, left Socialist Revolutionaries, and the 
chairman."</i> [Michael Palij, <b>The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno, 
1918-1921</b>, p. 155]). The Makhnovist Revolutionary Military Soviet 
created at the Aleksandrovsk congress in late 1919 had three Communists 
elected to it while there were 18 delegates from workers at that congress, 
six being Mensheviks and the remaining 12 included Communists [Micheal
Malet, <b>Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War</b>, p. 111 and p. 124] 
In the words of the Makhnovist reply to Bolshevik attempt to ban one of
their congresses:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"The Revolutionary Military Council . . . holds itself above the 
pressure and influence of all parties and only recognises the people 
who elected it. Its duty is to accomplish what the people have 
instructed it to do, and to create no obstacles to any left socialist 
party in the propagation of ideas. Consequently, if one day the 
Bolshevik idea succeeds among the workers, the Revolutionary Military 
Council . . . will necessarily be replaced by another organisation, 
'more revolutionary' and more Bolshevik."</i> [quoted by Peter Arshinov, 
<b>The History of the Makhnovist Movement</b>, pp. 103-4]
</blockquote><p>
As such, the Makhnovists supported the right of working-class 
self-determination, as expressed by one delegate to a conference 
in February 1919:
<p><blockquote><i>
"No party has a right to usurp governmental power into its hands . . . 
We want life, all problems, to be decided locally, not by order from 
any authority above; and all peasants and workers should decide their 
own fate, while those elected should only carry out the toilers' 
wish."</i> [quoted by Palij, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 154]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
It should be mentioned that a myth has sprung up fostered by some Leninists
that parties were banned from election to these bodies (for example, see Jason 
Yanowitzs terrible <i>"On the Makhno Myth"</i> [<b>International Socialist 
Review</b>, no. 53]). These claims flow from basic ignorance of how the 
soviets were organised during the revolution combined with a misunderstanding 
of this Makhnovist proclamation from January 1920:
<blockquote>
<i>"Only workers participating in work vital to the people's economy should 
be elected to these soviets. The representatives of political organisations 
have no place in the soviets of workers  and peasants given that their 
participation in a soviet could turn it into a soviet of party political 
deputies, thereby leading the soviet order to perdition."</i> [quoted by 
Alexandre Skirda, <b>Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack</b>, p. 164]
</blockquote>
When the soviets were formed in Petrograd and other Russian cities in 1917
the initiative had come (unlike in 1905) from political parties and these
ensured that they had representatives from political 
parties within  their executive committees (as distinct from elected 
delegates who happened to be members of a political party). This was how,
for example, <i>"high party leaders became voting delegates"</i> in the
soviets, by being <i>"selected by the leadership of each political
organisation, and not by the soviet assembly itself."</i> [Samuel Farber,
<b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 31] Thus the Makhnovists were rejecting the 
means by which many soviet members were not directly elected by actual
workers.
</p><p>
In addition, the Makhnovists were following the Russian Anarcho-Syndicalists 
who argued for <i>"effective soviets organised on collective lines with the
direct delegation of workers and peasants . . . and not political chatterboxes
gaining entry through party lists and turning the soviets into talking-shops"</i>. 
[<b>The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution</b>, Paul Avrich (ed.), p. 118] 
This use of party lists meant that soviet delegates could be anyone. For example, 
the leading left-wing Menshevik Martov recounted that in early 1920 a chemical 
factory <i>"put up Lenin against me as a candidate [to the Moscow soviet]. I 
received seventy-six votes he - eight (in an open vote)."</i> [quoted by Israel 
Getzler, <b>Martov</b>, p. 202] How would either of these two intellectuals
actually know and reflect the concerns and interests of the workers they would 
be "delegates" of? If the soviets were meant to be the delegates of working 
people, then why should non-working class members of political parties be 
elected as mandated and recallable delegates to a soviet from a workplace
they have never visited except, perhaps, to gather votes?
</p><p>
This applies, needless to say, to other areas of life. Anarchists do 
not think that social life can be reduced to political and economic 
associations alone. Individuals have many different interests and 
desires which they must express in order to have a truly free and 
fulfilling life. Therefore an anarchist society will see the 
development of numerous voluntary associations and groups to 
express these interests. For example, there would be consumer 
groups, musical groups, scientific associations, art associations, 
clubs, housing co-operatives and associations, craft and hobby guilds, 
fan clubs, animal rights associations, groups based around gender, 
sexuality, creed and colour and so forth. Associations will be created 
for all human interests and activities. As Kropotkin argued:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"He who wishes for a grand piano will enter the association of musical
instrument makers. And by giving the association part of his half-days'
leisure, he will soon possess the piano of his dreams. If he is fond of
astronomical studies he will join the association of astronomers . . . 
and he will have the telescope he desires by taking his share of the
associated work . . . In short, the five or seven hours a day which each
will have at his disposal, after having consecrated several hours to the
production of necessities, would amply suffice to satisfy all longings for
luxury, however varied. Thousands of associations would undertake to 
supply them."</i> [<b>The Conquest of Bread</b>, p. 120]
</blockquote></p><p>
We can imagine, therefore, an anarchist society being based around
associations and interest groups on every subject which fires the
imagination of individuals and for which individuals want to meet in 
order to express and further their interests. Housing associations, 
for example, would exist to allow inhabitants to manage their local 
areas, design and maintain their homes and local parks and gardens.
Vegetarian groups would produce information on 
issues they consider important, trying to convince others of the 
errors of eating meat. Consumer groups would be in dialogue
with syndicates about improving products and services, ensuring that
syndicates produce what is required by consumers. Environment groups 
would exist to watch production and make sure that it is not creating 
damaging side effects and informing both syndicates and communes of
their findings. Feminist, homosexual, bisexual and anti-racist groups 
would exist to put their ideas across, highlighting areas in which social 
hierarchies and prejudice still existed. All across society, people 
would be associating together to express themselves and convince others 
of their ideas on all kinds of issues.
</p><p>
This applies to professional groupings who would seek to ensure that 
those work tasks that require qualifications to do (medicine and
such like) have recognised standards and certificates. In this way, 
others in society would know whether a fellow worker is a recognised 
expert in their field and has the appropriate qualifications to do the
work required or give advice. While a free society would break down the
line between intellectual and manual work, ensure the end of the division
of labour, the fact remains that people will wish to be happy that the
doctor or nurse they are visiting knows what they are doing. This is 
where professional groupings would come into play, organising training
and certification based on mutually agreed standards and qualifications.
This would not stop others seeking to practice such tasks, of course, but
it will mean that few, if any, would frequent someone without the 
recognised professional standards.
</p><p>
Hence in a anarchist society, free association would take on a stronger
and more positive role than under capitalism. In this way, social life
would  take on many dimensions, and the individual would have the choice of
thousands of societies to join to meet his or her interests or create new
ones with other like-minded people. Anarchists would be the last to deny
that there is more to life than work!
</p>

<a name="seci511"><h2>I.5.11 How will an anarchist society defend itself 
against the power hungry?</h2></a>

<p>
A common objection to anarchism is that a libertarian society will
be vulnerable to be taken over by thugs or those who seek power. A
similar argument is that a group without a leadership structure 
becomes open to charismatic leaders so anarchy would just lead to 
tyranny. 
</p><p>
For anarchists, such arguments are strange. Society already <b>is</b>
run by thugs and/or the off-spring of thugs. Kings were originally
just successful thugs who imposed their domination
over a specific territorial area. The modern state has evolved from
the structure created to impose this domination. Similarly with
property, with most legal titles to land being traced back to
its violent seizure by thugs who then passed it on to their
children who then sold it or gave it to their offspring. The
origins of the current system in violence can be seen by the
continued use of violence by the state and capitalists to enforce
and protect their domination over society. When push comes to
shove, the dominant class will happily re-discover their thug
past and employ extreme violence to maintain their privileges.
The descent of large parts of Europe into Fascism in the 1920s 
and 1930s, or Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973 indicates how far 
they will go. As Peter Arshinov argued (in a slightly different
context):
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Statists fear free people. They claim that without authority
people will lose the anchor of sociability, will dissipate
themselves, and will return to savagery. This is obviously
rubbish. It is taken seriously by idlers, lovers of authority
and of the labour of others, or by blind thinkers of bourgeois
society. The liberation of the people in reality leads to the
degeneration and return to savagery, not of the people, but
of those who, thanks to power and privilege, live from the
labour of the people's arms and from the blood of the people's
veins . . . The liberation of the people leads to the savagery
of those who live from its enslavement."</i> [<b>The History of the
Makhnovist Movement</b>, p. 85]
</blockquote></p><p>
So anarchists are not impressed with the argument that anarchy
would be unable to stop thugs seizing power. It ignores the
fact that we live in a society where the power-hungry already
rule. As an argument against anarchism it fails and is,
in fact, an argument against hierarchical societies.
</p><p>
Moreover, it also ignores fact that people in an anarchist society 
would have gained their freedom by overthrowing every existing and 
would-be thug who had, or desired, power over others. They would have
defended that freedom against those who desired to re-impose it. 
They would have organised themselves to manage their own affairs 
and, therefore, to abolish all hierarchical power. And we are to 
believe that these people, after struggling to become free, would 
quietly let a new set of thugs impose themselves? As Kropotkin 
argued:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The only way in which a state of Anarchy can be obtained
is for each man [or woman] who is oppressed to act as if
he [or she] were at liberty, in defiance of all authority
to the contrary . . . In practical fact, territorial
extension is necessary to ensure permanency to any given
individual revolution. In speaking of the Revolution, we
signify the aggregate of so many successful individual
and group revolts as will enable every person within the
revolutionised territory to act in perfect freedom . . .
without having to constantly dread the prevention or the
vengeance of an opposing power upholding the former system
. . . Under these circumstance it is obvious that any
visible reprisal could and would be met by a resumption of
the same revolutionary action on the part of the individuals
or groups affected, and that the <b>maintenance</b> of a state
of Anarchy in this manner would be far easier than the
gaining of a state of Anarchy by the same methods and in
the face of hitherto unshaken opposition . . . They have
it in their power to apply a prompt check by boycotting
such a person and refusing to help him with their labour
or to willing supply him with any articles in their
possession. They have it in their power to use force 
against him. They have these powers individually as well
as collectively. Being either past rebels who have been
inspired with the spirit of liberty, or else habituated to
enjoy freedom from their infancy, they are hardly to rest
passive in view of what they feel to be wrong."</i> [Kropotkin,
<b>Act for Yourselves</b>, pp. 87-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus a free society would use direct action to resist the
would-be ruler just as it had used direct action to free
itself from existing rulers. It would be
organised in a way which would facilitate this direct action
as it would be based on networks of solidarity and mutual aid.
An injury to one is an injury to all and a would-be ruler
would face a whole liberated society acting against him or
her. Faced with the direct action of the population (which
would express itself in non-co-operation, strikes, demonstrations,
occupations, insurrections and so on) a would-be power seeker
would find it difficult to impose themselves. Unlike those
accustomed to rulership in existing society, an anarchist
people would be a society of rebels and so difficult to 
dominate and conquer: <i>"In the future society, Anarchy will 
be defence, the prevention of the re-establishment of any 
authority, any power, any State."</i> [Carlo Cafiero, <i>"Anarchy 
and Communism"</i>, pp. 179-86, <b>The Raven</b>, No. 6, p. 180]
</p><p>
Anarchists point to the example of the rise of Fascism in Italy, 
Spain and Germany. In areas with strong 
anarchist movements the fascists were resisted most strongly. 
While in Germany Hitler was met with little or no opposition, 
in Italy and Spain the fascists had to fight long and hard to
gain power. The anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist organisations 
fought the fascists tooth and nail, with some success before 
betrayal by the Republicans and Marxists. From this historical 
experience anarchists argue that an anarchist society would 
quickly and easily defeat would-be thugs as people would be 
used to practising direct action and self-management and would 
have no desire to stop. A free people would 
quickly organise itself in self-managed militias for self-defence
(just as they would during a social revolution to defend it --
<a href="secJ7.html#secj76">section J.7.6</a>).
</p><p>
As for self-management resulting in "charismatic" leaders, well 
the logic is astounding. As if hierarchical structures are <b>not</b> 
based on leadership structures and do not require a charismatic 
leader! Such an argument is inherently self-contradictory -- as
well as ignoring the nature of modern society and its leadership
structures. Rather than mass assemblies being dominated by
leaders, it is the case that hierarchical structures are the
natural breeding ground for dictators. All the great dictators
the world have seen have come to the forefront in <b>hierarchical</b>
organisations, <b>not</b> libertarian structured ones. Hitler, for
example, did not come to power via self-management.
Rather he used a highly centralised and hierarchically organised
party to take control of a centralised, hierarchical state. The
very disempowerment of the population in capitalist society results 
in them looking to leaders to act for them and so <i>"charismatic"</i> 
leaders are a natural result. An anarchist society, by empowering 
all, would make it more difficult, not less, for a would-be 
leader to gain power -- few people, if any, would be willing 
to sacrifice and negate themselves for the benefit of another.
</p><p>
Our discussion on the power hungry obviously relates to the more general
the question of whether ethical behaviour be rewarded in an anarchist 
society. In other words, could an anarchist society be stable or would
the unethical take over?
</p><p>
It is one of the most disturbing aspects of living in a world where the 
rush to acquire wealth is the single most important aspect of living is 
what happens to people who follow an ethical path in life. Under 
capitalism, the ethical generally do not succeed as well as those who 
stab their fellows in the back, those who cut corners, indulge in sharp 
business practises, drive competitors into the ground and live their lives 
with an eye on the bottom line but they do survive. Loyalty to a firm or
a group, bending over backwards to provide a service, giving a helping 
hand to somebody in need, placing friendship above money, count for 
nothing when the bills come in. People who act ethically in a capitalist 
society are usually punished and penalised for their ethical and 
principled behaviour. Indeed, the capitalist market rewards unethical
behaviour as it generally reduces costs and so gives those who do it
a competitive edge.
</p><p>
It is different in a free society. Anarchism is based on 
equal access to power and wealth. Everybody in an anarchist 
society irrespective of what they do, or who they are or what type of work 
they perform is entitled to share in society's wealth. Whether a community 
survives or prospers depends on the combined efforts of the people in that 
community. Ethical behaviour would become the norm in an anarchist community; 
those people who act ethically would be rewarded by the standing they achieve 
in the community and by others being more than happy to work with and aid
them. People who cut corners, try to exercise power over others, refuse
to co-operate as equals or otherwise act in an unethical manner would 
lose their standing. Their neighbours and work
mates would refuse to co-operate with them (or reduce co-operation to 
a minimum) and take other forms of non-violent direct action to point
out that certain forms of activity was inappropriate. They would discuss
the issue with the unethical person and try to convince them of the errors
of their way. In a society where the necessities are guaranteed,
people would tend to act ethically because ethical behaviour raises an
individuals profile and standing within such a community. Capitalism and
ethical behaviour are mutually exclusive concepts; anarchism encourages and
rewards ethical behaviour. Needless to say, as we discussed in 
<a href="secI5.html#seci58">section I.5.8</a>, anarchists are aware
that a free society would need to defend itself against whatever 
anti-social behaviour remains in a free and equal society and seeking
to impose your will on others defines unethical and anti-social!
</p><p>
Therefore, as can be seen, anarchists argue that a free society would
not have to fear would-be thugs, "charismatic" leaders or the unethical.
An anarchist society would be based on the co-operation of free individuals.
It is unlikely that they would tolerate bad behaviour and would use
their own direct action as well as social and economic organisations to
combat it. Moreover, the nature of free co-operation would reward ethical
behaviour as those who practice it would have it reciprocated by their
fellows. and, if worse came to worse, they would defend their liberty!
</p><p>
One last point. Some people seem to think that anarchism is about 
the powerful being appealed to <b>not</b> to oppress and dominate others. 
Far from it. Anarchism is about the oppressed and exploited refusing 
to let others dominate them. It is <b>not</b> an appeal to the "better 
side" of the boss or would-be boss; it is about the solidarity and
direct action of those subject to a boss <b>getting rid of the boss</b> --
whether the boss agrees to it or not! Once this is clearly understood
the idea that an anarchist society is vulnerable to the power-hungry
is clearly nonsense -- anarchy is based on resisting power and so
is, by its very nature, more resistant to would-be rulers than
a hierarchical one.
</p><p>
So, to summarise, anarchists are well aware that an anarchist society 
will have to defend itself from both inside and outside attempts to 
re-impose capitalism and the state. Indeed, every revolutionary
anarchist has argued that a revolution will have to defend itself
(as proven in <a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>, Marxist
assertions otherwise have always been myths). This applies to both
internal and external attempts to re-introduce authority.
</p>

<a name="seci512"><h2>I.5.12 Would an anarchist society provide health care 
and other public services?</h2></a>

<p>
It depends on the type of anarchist society you are talking about.
Different anarchists propose different solutions.
</p><p>
In an individualist-mutualist society, for example, health care
and other public services would be provided by individuals or
co-operatives on a pay-for-use basis. It would be likely that
individuals or co-operatives/associations would subscribe to
various insurance providers or enter into direct contracts
with health care providers. Thus the system would be similar
to privatised health care but without the profit margins as
competition, it is hoped, would drive prices down to cost.
</p><p>
Other anarchists reject such a system. They are favour of
socialising health care and other public services. They argue
that a privatised system would only be able to meet the
requirements of those who can afford to pay for it and so 
would be unjust and unfair. In addition, such systems would
have higher overheads (the need to pay share-holders and 
the high wages of upper management, most obviously, and not
to mention paying for propaganda against "socialised" medicine) 
as well as charge more (privatised public utilities under capitalism 
have tended to charge consumers more, unsurprisingly as by their
very nature they are natural monopolies). 
</p><p>
Looking at health care, for example, the need for medical 
attention is not dependent on income and so a civilised 
society would recognise this fact. Under capitalism, 
profit-maximising medical insurance sets premiums according 
to the risks of the insured getting ill or injured, with the 
riskiest and most ill not being able to find insurance at any price. 
Private insurers shun entire industries as too dangerous for 
their profits due to the likelihood of accidents or illness. 
They review contracts regularly and drop sick people for 
the slightest reason (understandably, given that
they make profits by minimising pay-outs for treatment). 
Hardly a vision to inspire a free society or one compatible 
with equality and mutual respect.
</p><p>
Therefore, most anarchists are in favour of a socialised and
universal health-care system for both ethical and efficiency
reasons (see <a href="secI4.html#seci410">section I.4.10</a>). 
Needless to say, an anarchist system of 
socialised health care would differ in many ways to the current 
systems of universal health-care provided by the state (which,
while called socialised medicine by its enemies is better
described as nationalised medicine -- although it should be
stressed that this is better than the privatised system).
Such a system of socialised health-care will be built from
the bottom-up and based around the local commune. In a social
anarchist society, <i>"medical services . . . will be free of
charge to all inhabitants of the commune. The doctors will
not be like capitalists, trying to extract the greatest
profit from their unfortunate patients. They will be employed
by the commune and expected to treat all who need their
services."</i> Moreover, prevention will play an important
part, as <i>"medical treatment is only the <b>curative</b> side 
of the science of health care; it is not enough to treat the
sick, it is also necessary to prevent disease. That is the
true function of hygiene."</i> [James Guillaume, <i>"On Building 
the New Social Order"</i>, pp. 356-79, <b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, 
p. 371] The same would go for other public services and works.
</p><p>
While rejecting privatisation, anarchists also reject 
nationalisation in favour of socialisation and worker's 
self-management. In this we follow Proudhon, who argued that 
there was a series of industries and services which were 
<i>"public works"</i> which  he thought best handled by communes 
and their federations. Thus <i>"the control undertaking such 
works will belong to the municipalities, and to districts 
within their jurisdiction"</i> while <i>"the control of 
carrying them out will rest with the workmen's associations."</i> 
This was due to both their nature and libertarian values as 
the <i>"direct, sovereign initiative of localities, in 
arranging for public works that belong to them, is a 
consequence of the democratic principle and the free 
contract: their subordination to the State is . . . a return 
to feudalism."</i> Workers' self-management of such public 
workers is, again, a matter of libertarian principles for 
<i>"it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves 
into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all 
members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism."</i> Railways
should be given <i>"to responsible companies, not of 
capitalists, but of WORKMEN."</i> [<b>General Idea of the 
Revolution</b>, p. 276, p. 277 and p. 151]
</p><p>
This was applied during the Spanish Revolution. Gaston Leval 
discussed <i>"Achievements in the Public Sector"</i> in his 
classic account of the collectives. Syndicates organised water, 
gas and electricity 
utilities in Catalonia, while the trams and railways were run 
more efficiently and cheaper than under capitalist management.
All across Spain, the workers in the health service re-organised 
their industry on libertarian lines and in association with the 
collectives, communes and the unions of the CNT. As Leval 
summarised:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"For the socialisation of medicine was not just an initiative
of militant libertarian doctors. Wherever we were able to make s
study of villages and small towns transformed by the Revolution, 
medicine and existing hospitals had been municipalised, expanded, 
placed under the aegis of the Collective. When there were none, 
they were improvised. The socialisation of medicine was becoming
everyone's concern, for the benefit of all. It constituted one of
the most remarkable achievements of the Spanish Revolution."</i> 
[<b>Collectives in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 278]
</blockquote></p><p>
So the Spanish Revolution indicates how an anarchist health service
would operate. In rural areas local doctors would usually join the 
village collective and provided their services like any other
worker. Where local doctors were not available, <i>"arrangements
were made by the collectives for treatment of their members by
hospitals in nearby localities. In a few cases, collectives
themselves build hospitals; in many they acquired equipment
and other things needed by their local physicians."</i> For example,
the Monzon comercal (district) federation of collectives in Aragon 
established maintained a hospital in Binefar, the <b>Casa de Salud 
Durruti</b>. By April 1937 it had 40 beds, in sections which included 
general medicine, prophylaxis and gynaecology. It saw about 25 
outpatients a day and was open to anyone in the 32 villages of 
the comarca. [Robert Alexander, <b>The Anarchists in the Spanish 
Civil War</b>, vol. 1, p. 331 and pp. 366-7]
</p><p>
In the Levante, the CNT built upon its existing <b>Sociedad de 
Socorros Mutuos de Levante</b> (a health service institution founded 
by the union as a kind of mutual benefit society which had numerous 
doctors and specialists). During the revolution, the Mutua had 50 
doctors and was available to all affiliated workers and their 
families. The socialisation of the health care took on a slightly 
different form in Catalonia but on the same libertarian principles. 
Gaston Leval provided us with an excellent summary:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The socialisation of health services was one of the greatest
achievements of the revolution. To appreciate the efforts of
our comrades it must be borne in mind that they rehabilitated
the health service in all of Catalonia in so short a time
after July 19th. The revolution could count on the co-operation
of a number of dedicated doctors whose ambition was not to
accumulate wealth but to serve the afflicted and the
underprivileged.</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote><i>
"The Health Workers' Union was founded in September, 1936. In
line with the tendency to unite all the different classifications,
trades, and services serving a given industry, <b>all</b> health
workers, from porters to doctors and administrators, were
organised into one big union of health workers . . . </i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote><i>
"Our comrades laid the foundations of a new health service . . .
The new medical service embraced all of Catalonia. It constituted
a great apparatus whose parts were distributed according to
different needs, all in accord with an overall plan. Catalonia
was divided into nine zones . . . In turn, all the surrounding
villages and towns were served from these centres.</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote><i>
"Distributed throughout Catalonia were twenty-seven towns with
a total of thirty-six health centres conducting services so
thoroughly that every village, every hamlet, every isolated
peasant in the mountains, every woman, every child, anywhere,
received adequate, up-to-date medical care. In each of the
nine zones there was a central syndicate and a Control 
Committee located in Barcelona. Every department was 
autonomous within its own sphere. But this autonomy was not
synonymous with isolation. The Central Committee in Barcelona,
chosen by all the sections, met once a week with one delegate
from each section to deal with common problems and to 
implement the general plan . . .</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote><i>
"The people immediately benefited from the projects of the
health syndicate. The syndicate managed all hospitals and
clinics. Six hospitals were opened in Barcelona . . . Eight
new sanatoriums were installed in converted luxurious homes
ideally situated amidst mountains and pine forests. It was
no easy task to convert these homes into efficient hospitals
with all new facilities."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, 
Sam Dolgoff (ed.), pp. 99-100]
</blockquote></p><p>
People were no longer required to pay for medical services. Each 
collective, if it could afford it, would pay a contribution to 
its health centre. Building and facilities were improved and 
modern equipment introduced. Like other self-managed industries,
the health service was run at all levels by general assemblies 
of workers who elected delegates and hospital administration.
</p><p>
We can expect a similar process to occur in the future anarchist 
society. It would be based on self-management, of course, with 
close links to the local commune and federations of communes. 
Each hospital or health centre would be autonomous but linked in 
a federation with the others, allowing resources to be shared as 
and when required while allowing the health service to adjust to 
local needs and requirements as quickly as possible. Workers in 
the health industry will organise their workplaces, federate 
together to share resources and information, to formulate plans 
and improve the quality of service to the public in a system of
generalised self-management and socialisation. The communes and 
their federations, the syndicates and federations of syndicates
will provide resources and effectively own the health system,
ensuring access for all.
</p><p>
Similar systems would operate in other public services. For example,
in education we expect the members of communes to organise a
system of free schools. This can be seen from the Spanish revolution.
Indeed, the Spanish anarchists organised Modern Schools before the
outbreak of the revolution, with 50 to 100 schools in various parts
funded by local anarchist groups and CNT unions. During the revolution
everywhere across Spain, syndicates, collectives and federations
of collectives formed and founded schools. Indeed, education <i>"advanced
at an unprecedented pace. Most of the partly or wholly socialised
collectives and municipalities built at least one school. By 1938,
for example, every collective in the Levant Federation had its own
school."</i> [Gaston Leval, quoted by Sam Dolgoff, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 168] These schools aimed, to quote the CNT's resolution 
on Libertarian Communism, to <i>"help mould men with minds 
of their own -- and let it be clear that when we use the word 
'men' we use it in the generic sense -- to which end it will
be necessary for the teacher to cultivate every one of the child's
faculties so that the child may develop every one of its capacities
to the full."</i> [quoted by Jose Periats, <b>The CNT in the Spanish
Revolution</b>, p. 70] The principles of libertarian education, of
encouraging freedom instead of authority in the school, was
applied on vast scale (see 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj513">section J.5.13</a> for more details on
Modern Schools and libertarian education).
</p><p>
This educational revolution was not confined to collectives or
children. For example, the <b>Federacion Regional de Campesinos de 
Levante</b> formed institutes in each of its five provinces. The 
first was set up in October 1937 in an old convent with 100 
students. The Federation also set up two universities in 
Valencia and Madrid which taught a wide variety of agricultural
subjects and combined learning with practical experience in an
experimental form attached to each university. The Aragon 
collectives formed a similar specialised school in Binefar. The 
CNT was heavily involved in transforming education in Catalonia. 
In addition, the local federation of the CNT in Barcelona
established a school to train women workers to replace male
ones being taken into the army. The school was run by the
anarcha-feminist group the <b>Mujeres Libres</b>. [Robert Alexander, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 406, p. 670 and pp. 665-8 and p. 670]
</p><p>
Ultimately, the public services that exist in a social anarchist
society will be dependent on what members of that society desire.
If, for example, a commune or federation of communes desires a
system of communal health-care or schools then they will allocate
resources to implement it. They will allocate the task of creating
such a system to, say, a special commission based on volunteers
from the interested parties such as the relevant syndicates,
professional associations, consumer groups and so on. For example,
for communal education a commission or working group would include
delegates from the teachers union, from parent associations, from
student unions and so on. The running of such a system would be, 
like any other industry, by those who work in it. Functional
self-management would be the rule, with doctors managing their
work, nurses theirs and so on, while the general running of, say, 
a hospital would be based on a general assembly of all workers
there who would elect and mandate the administration
staff and decide the policy the hospital would follow. 
Other interested parties would have a say, including 
patients in the health system and students in the education 
system. As Malatesta argued <i>"the carrying out and the normal 
functioning of public services vital to our daily lives 
would be more reliable if carried out . . .  by the workers 
themselves who, by direct election or through agreements made 
with others, have chosen to do that kind of work and carry it 
out under the direct control of all the interested parties."</i> 
[<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 41]
</p><p>
Needless to say, any system of public services would not be imposed
on those who did not desire it. They would be organised for and
by members of the communes and so individuals who were
not part of one would have to pay to
gain access to communal resources. However, it is unlikely
that an anarchist society would be as barbaric as a capitalist
one and refuse entry to people who were ill and could not pay,
nor turn away emergencies because they did not have enough money. 
And just as other workers need not join a syndicate
or commune, so doctors, teachers and so on could practice their
trade outside the communal system as either individual artisans
or as part of a co-operative. However, given the availability
of free medical services it is doubtful they would grow rich
doing so. Medicine, teaching and so on would revert back to what
usually motivates people to initially take these up professions -- 
the desire to help others and make a positive impact in society. 
</p><p>
Thus, as would be expected, public services would be organised
by the public, organised in their syndicates and communes. They
would be based on workers' self-management of their daily work
and of the system as a whole. Non-workers who took part in the
system (patients, students, etc.) would not be ignored and would also 
play a role in providing essential feedback to assure quality 
control of services and to ensure that it is responsive
to users needs. The resources required to maintain and expand
the system would be provided by the communes, syndicates and
their federations. For the first time, public services would
truly be public and not a statist system imposed upon the public 
from above nor a system by which the few fleece the many by 
exploiting natural monopolies for their own interests. 
</p><p>
So Public Services in a free society will be organised by those who 
do the work and under the effective control of those who use them.
This vision of public services being run by workers'
associations would be raised as a valid libertarian reform under 
capitalism (not to mention raising the demand to turn firms into
co-operatives when they are bailed out during an economic crisis).
Equally, rather than nationalisation or privatisation, public 
utilities could be organised as a consumer co-operative (i.e., 
owned by those who use it) while the day-to-day running could be
in the hands of a producer co-operative.
</p>

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