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<title>J.5 What alternative social organisations do anarchists create?</title>

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<h1>J.5 What alternative social organisations do anarchists create?</h1>

<p>
Anarchism is all about <b><i>"do it yourself"</i></b>: people helping each 
other out in order to secure a good society to live within and to protect, 
extend and enrich their personal freedom. As such anarchists are keenly aware 
of the importance of building alternatives to both capitalism and the state 
in the here and now. Only by creating practical alternatives can we show 
that anarchism is a viable possibility and train ourselves in the techniques 
and responsibilities of freedom:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"If we put into practice the principles of libertarian communism within
our organisations, the more advanced and prepared we will be on that
day when we come to adopt it completely."</i> [C.N.T. member, quoted by 
Graham Kelsey, <b>Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the 
State</b>,p. 79]
</blockquote></p><p>
This idea (to quote the IWW) of <i>"building a new world in the shell of 
the old"</i> is a long standing one in anarchism. Proudhon during the 1848 
revolution <i>"propose[d] that a provisional committee be set up"</i> 
in Paris and <i>"liaise with similar committees"</i> elsewhere in France. 
This would be <i>"a body representative of the proletariat . . ., a state 
within the state, in opposition to the bourgeois representatives."</i> 
He proclaimed to working class people that <i>"a new society be founded 
in the heart of the old society"</i> for <i>"the government can do nothing 
for you. But you can do everything for yourselves."</i> [<i>"Aux Pariotes"</i>, 
<b>La Reprsantant du Peuple</b>, No. 33] This was echoed by Bakunin (see 
<a href="secH2.html#sech28">section H.2.8</a>) while for revolutionary syndicalists 
the aim was <i>"to constitute within the bourgeois State a veritable socialist 
(economic and anarchic) State."</i> [Fernand Pelloutier, quoted by Jeremy 
Jennings, <b>Syndicalism in France</b>, p. 22] By so doing we help create 
the environment within which individuals can manage their own affairs and
develop their abilities to do so. In other words, we create <b><i>"schools of
anarchism"</i></b> which lay the foundations for a better society as well as
promoting and supporting social struggle against the current system.
Make no mistake, the alternatives we discuss in this section are not
an alternative to direct action and the need for social struggle - they
are an expression of social struggle and a form of direct action. They
are the framework by which social struggle can build and strengthen the
anarchist tendencies within capitalist society which will ultimately 
replace it.
</p><p>
Therefore it is wrong to think that libertarians are indifferent to making
life more bearable, even more enjoyable, under capitalism. A free society
will not just appear from nowhere, it will be created be individuals and
communities with a long history of social struggle and organisation. For 
as Wilheim Reich so correctly pointed out:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Quite obviously, a society that is to consist of 'free individuals,'
to constitute a 'free community' and to administer itself, i.e. to
'govern itself,' cannot be suddenly created by decrees. It has to 
<b>evolve</b> organically."</i> [<b>The Mass Psychology of Fascism</b>, p. 241]
</blockquote></p><p>
It is this organic evolution that anarchists promote when they create
libertarian alternatives within capitalist society. These alternatives 
(be they workplace or community unions, co-operatives, mutual banks,
and so on) are marked by certain common features such as being self-managed,
being based upon equality, decentralised and working with other groups
and associations within a confederal network based upon mutual aid and
solidarity. In other words, they are <b>anarchist</b> in both spirit and 
structure and so create a practical bridge between now and the future free 
society.
</p><p>
Anarchists consider the building of alternatives as a key aspect of their 
activity under capitalism. This is because they, like all forms of direct 
action, are <i><b>"schools of anarchy"</b></i> and also because
they make the transition to a free society easier. <i>"Through the
organisations set up for the defence of their interests,"</i> in Malatesta's
words, <i>"the workers develop an awareness of the oppression they suffer and 
the antagonism that divides them from the bosses and as a result begin to
aspire to a better life, become accustomed to collective struggle and
solidarity and win those improvements that are possible within the 
capitalist and state regime."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Revolution</b>, 
p. 95] By creating viable examples of <i><b>"anarchy in action"</i></b> we 
can show that our ideas are practical and convince people that they are
not utopian. Therefore this section of the FAQ will indicate the 
alternatives anarchists support and <b>why</b> we support them.
</p><p>
The approach anarchists take to this activity could be termed <b><i>"social
unionism"</i></b> -- the collective action of groups to change certain aspects
(and, ultimately, all aspects) of their lives. This takes many different 
forms in many different areas (some of which, not all, are discussed here) 
-- but they share the same basic aspects of collective direct action, 
self-organisation, self-management, solidarity and mutual aid. These are 
a means <i>"of raising the morale of the workers, accustom them to free 
initiative and solidarity in a struggle for the good of everyone and 
render them capable of imagining, desiring and putting into practice 
an anarchist life."</i> [Malatesta, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 28] Kropotkin 
summed up the anarchist perspective well when he argued that working class 
people had <i>"to form their own organisations for a direct struggle against 
capitalism"</i> and to <i>"take possession of the necessaries for production, 
and to control production."</i> [<b>Memiors of a Revolutionist</b>, p. 359]
As historian J. Romero Maura correctly summarised, the <i>"anarchist 
revolution, when it came, would be essentially brought about by the 
working class. Revolutionaries needed to gather great strength and 
must beware of underestimating the strength of reaction"</i> and so 
anarchists <i>"logically decided that revolutionaries had better organise 
along the lines of labour organisations."</i> [<i>"The Spanish case"</i>, 
pp. 60-83, <b>Anarchism Today</b>, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 66]
</p><p>
As will quickly become obvious in this discussion (as if it had not
been so before!) anarchists are firm supporters of <b><i>"self-help,"</i></b> 
an expression that has been sadly corrupted (like freedom) by the right 
in recent times. Like freedom, self-help should be saved from the clutches 
of the right who have no real claim to that expression. Indeed, anarchism 
was created from and based itself upon working class self-help -- for 
what other interpretation can be gathered from Proudhon's 1848 statement
that <i>"the proletariat must emancipate itself"</i>? [quoted by George 
Woodcock, <b>Pierre-Joseph Proudhon</b>, p. 125] So Anarchists have great 
faith in the abilities of working class people to work out for themselves 
what their problems are and act to solve them.
</p><p>
Anarchist support and promotion of alternatives is a <b>key</b> aspect
of this process of self-liberation, and so a key aspect of anarchism. 
While strikes, boycotts, and other forms of high profile direct action
may be more "sexy" than the long and hard task of creating and building
social alternatives, these are the nuts and bolts of creating a new
world as well as the infrastructure which supports the other activities. 
These alternatives involve both combative organisations (such as community 
and workplace unions) as well as more defensive and supportive ones (such 
as co-operatives and mutual banks). Both have their part to play in the 
class struggle, although the combative ones are the most important in 
creating the spirit of revolt and the possibility of creating an anarchist 
society.
</p><p>
We must also stress that anarchists look to organic tendencies
within social struggle as the basis of any alternatives we try to
create. As Kropotkin put it, anarchism is based <i>"on an analysis of 
<b>tendencies of an evolution that is already going on in society</b>, and 
on <b>induction</b> therefrom as to the future."</i> It is <i>"representative 
. . . of the creative, instructive power of the people themselves who aimed 
at developing institutions of common law in order to protect them from the 
power-seeking minority."</i> Anarchism bases itself on those tendencies 
that are created by the self-activity of working class people and while 
developing within capitalism are <b>in opposition</b> to it -- such 
tendencies are expressed in organisational form as unions and other forms 
of workplace struggle, co-operatives (both productive and credit), libertarian 
schools, and so on. For anarchism was <i>"born among the people -- in the 
struggles of real life and not in the philosopher's studio"</i> and owes 
its <i>"origin to the constructive, creative activity of the people . . . 
and to a protest -- a revolt against the external force which had thrust 
itself upon"</i> social institutions. [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 158, 
p. 147, p. 150 and p. 149] This <i>"creative activity"</i> is expressed 
in the organisations created in the class struggle by working people, some 
of which we discuss in this section of the FAQ. Therefore, the alternatives 
anarchists support should not be viewed in isolation of social struggle
and working class resistance to hierarchy -- the reverse in fact, as these
alternatives are almost always expressions of that struggle.
</p><p>
Lastly, we should note we do not list all the forms of organisation anarchists 
create. For example, we have ignored solidarity groups (for workers on strike
or in defence of struggles in other countries) and organisations which are 
created to campaign against or for certain issues or reforms. Anarchists are 
in favour of such organisations and work within them to spread anarchist ideas, 
tactics and organisational forms. However, these interest groups (while very 
useful) do not provide a framework for lasting change as do the ones we highlight 
below  (see <a href="secJ1.html#secj14">section J.1.4</a> 
for more details on anarchist opinions on such "single issue" campaigns). 
We have  also ignored what have been called <i>"intentional communities."</i> 
This is when a group of individuals squat or buy land and other resources within 
capitalism and create their own anarchist commune in it. Most anarchists 
reject this idea as capitalism and the state must be fought, not ignored. 
In addition, due to their small size, they are rarely viable experiments 
in communal living and nearly always fail after a short time (for a good 
summary of Kropotkin's attitude to such communities, which can be taken 
as typical, see Graham Purchase's <b>Evolution & Revolution</b> [pp. 122-125]). 
Dropping out will not stop capitalism and the state and while such 
communities may try to ignore the system, they will find that the system 
will not ignore them -- they will come under competitive and ecological 
pressures from capitalism whether they like it or not assuming they avoid
direct political interference.
</p><p>
So the alternatives we discuss here are attempts to create anarchist
alternatives within capitalism and which aim to <b>change</b> it (either by 
revolutionary or evolutionary means). They are based upon <b>challenging</b>
capitalism and the state, not ignoring them by dropping out. Only by a 
process of direct action and building alternatives which are relevant to
our daily lives can we revolutionise and change both ourselves and society.
</p>

<a name="secj51"><h2>J.5.1 What is community unionism?</h2></a>

<p>
Community unionism is our term for the process of creating participatory 
communities (called "communes" in classical anarchism) within the current
society in order to transform it. 
</p><p>
Basically, a community union is the creation of interested members of a 
community who decide to form an organisation to fight against injustice 
and improvements locally. It is a forum by which inhabitants can raise 
issues that affect themselves and others and provide a means of solving 
these problems. As such, it is a means of directly involving local people 
in the life of their own communities and collectively solving the problems 
facing them as both individuals and as part of a wider society. In this 
way, local people take part in deciding what effects them and their
community and create a self-managed "dual power" to the local and national
state. They also, by taking part in self-managed community assemblies,
develop their ability to participate and manage their own affairs, so
showing that the state is unnecessary and harmful to their interests.
Politics, therefore, is not separated into a specialised activity that 
only certain people do (i.e. politicians). Instead, it becomes communalised 
and part of everyday life and in the hands of all.
</p><p>
As would be imagined, like the participatory communities that would
exist in an anarchist society (see 
<a href="secI5.html">section I.5</a>), 
the community union would be based
upon a mass assembly of its members. Here would be discussed the
issues that effect the membership and how to solve them. Thus issues
like rent increases, school closures, rising cost of living, taxation,
cuts and state-imposed "reforms" to the nature and quality of public 
services, utilities and resources, repressive laws and so on could be 
debated and action taken to combat them. Like the communes of a future 
anarchy, these community unions would be confederated with other unions 
in different areas in order to co-ordinate joint activity and solve 
common problems. These confederations would be based upon self-management, 
mandated and recallable delegates and the creation of administrative action 
committees to see that the memberships decisions are carried out.
</p><p>
The community union could also raise funds for strikes and other 
social protests, organise pickets, boycotts and generally aid 
others in struggle. By organising their own forms of direct action 
(such as tax and rent strikes, environmental protests and so on) 
they can weaken the state while building an self-managed 
infrastructure of co-operatives to replace the useful functions 
the state or capitalist firms currently provide. So, in 
addition to organising resistance to the state and capitalist
firms, these community unions could play an important role in
creating an alternative economy within capitalism. For example,
such unions could have a mutual bank or credit union associated
with them which could allow funds to be gathered for the creation
of self-managed co-operatives and social services and centres. In
this way a communalised co-operative sector could develop, along
with a communal confederation of community unions and their 
co-operative banks. 
</p><p>
Such community unions have been formed in many different countries
in recent years to fight against numerous attacks on the working 
class. In the late 1980s and early 1990s groups were created 
in neighbourhoods across Britain to organise non-payment of the 
Conservative government's Community Charge (popularly known as the 
poll tax, this tax was independent on income and was based on the 
electoral register). Federations of these groups were created to 
co-ordinate the struggle and pull resources and, in the end, ensured 
that the government withdrew the hated tax and helped push Thatcher 
out of government. In Ireland, similar groups were formed to defeat 
the privatisation of the water industry by a similar non-payment 
campaign in the mid-1990s.
</p><p>
However, few of these groups have been taken as part of a wider strategy
to empower the local community but the few that have indicate the potential
of such a strategy. This potential can be seen from two examples of
libertarian community organising in Europe, one in Italy and another 
in Spain, while the neighbourhood assemblies in Argentina show that 
such popular self-government can and does develop spontaneously in
struggle.
</p><p>
In Southern Italy, anarchists organised a very successful 
<b>Municipal Federation of the Base</b> (FMB) in Spezzano Albanese. 
This organisation, in the words of one activist, is <i>"an alternative 
to the power of the town hall"</i> and provides a <i>"glimpse of what 
a future libertarian society could be."</i> Its aim is <i>"the 
bringing together of all interests within the district. In 
intervening at a municipal level, we become involved not only 
in the world of work but also the life of the community . . . the 
FMB make counter proposals [to Town Hall decisions], which aren't 
presented to the Council but proposed for discussion in the area 
to raise people's level of consciousness. Whether they like it or 
not the Town Hall is obliged to take account of these proposals."</i>
In addition, the FMB also supports co-operatives within it, so creating
a communalised, self-managed economic sector within capitalism. Such a
development helps to reduce the problems facing isolated co-operatives
in a capitalist economy -- see 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj511">section J.5.11</a> 
-- and was actively done
in order to <i>"seek to bring together all the currents, all the problems
and contradictions, to seek solutions"</i> to such problems facing co-operatives.
[<i>"Community Organising in Southern Italy"</i>, pp. 16-19, <b>Black Flag</b>, 
no. 210, p. 17 and p. 18]
</p><p>
Elsewhere in Europe, the long, hard work of the C.N.T. in Spain has also
resulted in mass village assemblies being created in the Puerto Real
area, near Cadiz. These community assemblies came about to support
an industrial struggle by shipyard workers. One C.N.T. member explains:
<i>"Every Thursday of every week, in the towns and villages in the area,
we had all-village assemblies where anyone connected with the particular 
issue [of the rationalisation of the shipyards], whether they were 
actually workers in the shipyard itself, or women or children or
grandparents, could go along . . . and actually vote and take part 
in the decision making process of what was going to take place."</i> 
With such popular input and support, the shipyard workers won their 
struggle. However, the assembly continued after the strike and
<i>"managed to link together twelve different organisations within the
local area that are all interested in fighting . . . various aspects"</i> 
of capitalism including health, taxation, economic, ecological and
cultural issues. Moreover, the struggle <i>"created a structure which
was very different from the kind of structure of political parties,
where the decisions are made at the top and they filter down. What
we managed to do in Puerto Real was make decisions at the base and 
take them upwards."</i> [<b>Anarcho-Syndicalism in Puerto Real: from 
shipyard resistance to direct democracy and community control</b>, p. 6]
</p><p>
More recently, the December 2001 revolt against neo-liberalism in Argentina
saw hundreds of neighbourhood assemblies created across the country. These 
quickly federated into <i>inter-barrial</i> assemblies to co-ordinate 
struggles. The assemblies occupied buildings, created communal
projects like popular kitchens, community centres, day-care centres and
built links with occupied workplaces. As one participant put it: <i>"The
initial vocabulary was simply: Let's do things for ourselves, and do them
right. Let's decide for ourselves. Let's decide democratically, and if we
do, then let's explicitly agree that we're all equals here, that there
are no bosses . . . We lead ourselves. We lead together. We lead and decide
amongst ourselves . . . no one invented it . . . It just happened. We met
one another on the corner and decided, enough! . . . Let's invent new
organisational forms and reinvent society."</i> Another notes that this
was people who <i>"begin to solve problems themselves, without turning to
the institutions that caused the problems in the first place."</i> The
neighbourhood assemblies ended a system in which <i>"we elected people to
make our decisions for us . . . now we will make our own decisions."</i>
While the <i>"anarchist movement has been talking about these ideas for
years"</i> the movement took them up <i>"from necessity."</i> [Marina 
Sitrin (ed.), <b>Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina</b>, 
p. 41 and pp. 38-9]
</p><p>
The idea of community organising has long existed within anarchism.
Kropotkin pointed to the directly democratic assemblies of Paris 
during the French Revolution> These were <i>"constituted as so many 
mediums of popular administration, it remained of the people, and 
this is what made the revolutionary power of these organisations."</i> 
This ensured that the local revolutionary councils <i>"which sprang 
from the popular movement was not separated from the people."</i> In
this popular self-organisation <i>"the masses, accustoming themselves 
to act without receiving orders from the national representatives, 
were practising what was described later on as Direct Self-Government."</i>
These assemblies federated to co-ordinate joint activity but it was
based on their permanence: <i>"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."</i> 
In short, <i>"the Commune of Paris was not to be a governed State, 
but a people governing itself directly -- when possible -- without 
intermediaries, without masters"</i> and so <i>"the principles of 
anarchism . . . had their origin, not in theoretic speculations, but 
in the <b>deeds</b> of the Great French Revolution."</i> This <i>"laid 
the foundations of a new, free, social organisation"</i>and Kropotkin 
predicted that <i>"the libertarians would no doubt do the same 
to-day."</i> [<b>Great French Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 201, p. 203, 
pp. 210-1, p. 210, p. 204 and p. 206]
</p><p>
In Chile during 1925 <i>"a grass roots movement of great significance 
emerged,"</i> the tenant leagues (<i>ligas do arrendatarios</i>). The 
movement pledged to pay half their rent beginning the 1st of February, 
1925, at huge public rallies (it should also be noted that <i>"Anarchist 
labour unionists had formed previous ligas do arrendatarios in 1907 and 
1914."</i>). The tenants leagues were organised by ward and federated 
into a city-wide council. It was a vast organisation, with 12,000 
tenants in just one ward of Santiago alone. The movement also
<i>"press[ed] for a law which would legally recognise the lower rents 
they had begun paying . . . the leagues voted to declare a general strike 
. . . should a rent law not be passed."</i> The government gave in, although
the landlords tried to get around it and, in response, on April 8th 
<i>"the anarchists in Santiago led a general strike in support of the 
universal rent reduction of 50 percent."</i> Official figures showed 
that rents <i>"fell sharply during 1915, due in part to the rent strikes"</i>
and for the anarchists <i>"the tenant league movement had been the first step
toward a new social order in Chile."</i> [Peter DeShazo, <b>Urban Workers and 
Labor Unions in Chile 1902-1927</b>, p. 223, p. 327, p. 223, p. 225 and 
p. 226] As one Anarchist newspaper put it:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"This movement since its first moments had been essentially revolutionary.
The tactics of direct action were preached by libertarians with highly
successful results, because they managed to instil in the working classes
the idea that if landlords would not accept the 50 percent lowering of
rents, they should pay nothing at all. In libertarian terms, this is the
same as taking possession of common property. It completes the first 
stage of what will become a social revolution."</i> [quoted by DeShazo,
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 226]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
A similar concern for community organising and struggle was expressed in 
Spain. While the collectives during the revolution are well known, the CNT 
had long organised in the community and around non-workplace issues. As well 
as neighbourhood based defence committees to organise and co-ordinate 
struggles and insurrections, the CNT organised various community based 
struggles. The most famous example of this must be the rent strikes during 
the early 1930s in Barcelona. In 1931, the CNT's Construction Union organised 
a <b>"Economic Defence Commission"</b> to organise against high rents and
lack of affordable housing. Its basic demand was for a 40% rent decrease 
but it also addressed unemployment and the cost of food. The campaign was 
launched by a mass meeting on May 1st, 1931. A series of meetings were 
held in the various working class neighbourhoods of Barcelona and in 
surrounding suburbs. This culminated in a mass meeting held at the Palace 
of Fine Arts on July 5th which raised a series of demands for the movement.
By July, 45,000 people were taking part in the rent strike and this rose
to over 100,000 by August. As well as refusing to pay rent, families were
placed back into their homes from which they had been evicted. The movement 
spread to a number of the outlying towns which set up their own Economic 
Defence Commissions. The local groups co-ordinated actions their actions 
out of CNT union halls or local libertarian community centres. The movement
faced increased state repression but in many parts of Barcelona landlords 
had been forced to come to terms with their tenants, agreeing to reduced 
rents rather than facing the prospect of having no income for an extended 
period or the landlord simply agreed to forget the unpaid rents from the 
period of the rent strike. [Nick Rider, <i>"The Practice of Direct Action: 
the Barcelona rent strike of 1931"</i>, <b>For Anarchism</b>, David Goodway 
(ed.), pp. 79-105] As Abel Paz summarised:
</p><p>
<blockquote><i>
"Unemployed workers did not receive or ask for state aid . . . The workers' 
first response to the economic crisis was the rent, gas, and electricity 
strike in mid-1933, which the CNT and FAI's Economic Defence Committee had 
been laying the foundations for since 1931. Likewise, house, street, and 
neighbourhood groups began to turn out en masse to stop evictions and other 
coercive acts ordered by the landlords (always with police support). The 
people were constantly mobilised. Women and youngsters were particularly 
active; it was they who challenged the police and stopped the endless 
evictions."</i> [<b>Durrutu in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 308]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
In Gijon, the CNT <i>"reinforced its populist image by . . . its direct 
consumer campaigns. Some of these were organised through the federation's 
Anti-Unemployment Committee, which sponsored numerous rallies and marches 
in favour of 'bread and work.' While they focused on the issue of jobs, 
they also addressed more general concerns about the cost of living for 
poor families. In a May 1933 rally, for example, demonstrators asked 
that families of unemployed workers not be evicted from their homes, 
even if they fell behind on the rent."</i> The <i>"organisers made the 
connections between home and work and tried to draw the entire family into 
the struggle."</i> However, the CNT's <i>"most concerted attempt to bring 
in the larger community was the formation of a new syndicate, in the spring 
of 1932, for the Defence of Public Interests (SDIP). In contrast to a 
conventional union, which comprised groups of workers, the SDIP was 
organised through neighbourhood committees. Its specific purpose was 
to enforce a generous renters' rights law of December 1931 that had 
not been vigorously implemented. Following anarchosyndicalist strategy, 
the SDIP utilised various forms of direct action, from rent strikes, 
to mass demonstrations, to the reversal of evictions."</i> This last 
action involved the local SDIP group going to a home, breaking the 
judge's official eviction seal and carrying the furniture back in 
from the street. They left their own sign: <i>"<b>opened by order</b> 
of the CNT."</i> The CNT's direct action strategies <i>"helped keep 
political discourse in the street, and encouraged people to pursue 
the same extra-legal channels of activism that they had developed 
under the monarchy."</i> [Pamela Beth Radcliff, <b>From mobilization 
to civil war</b>, pp. 287-288 and p. 289]
</p><p>
In these ways, grassroots movements from below were created, with
direct democracy and participation becoming an inherent part of a local
political culture of resistance, with people deciding things for 
themselves directly and without hierarchy. Such developments are the
embryonic structures of a world based around participation and
self-management, with a strong and dynamic community life. For, as
Martin Buber argued, <i>"[t]he more a human group lets itself be represented 
in the management of its common affairs . . . the less communal life there 
is in it and the more impoverished it becomes as a community."</i> [<b>Paths 
in Utopia</b>, p. 133]
</p><p>
Anarchist support and encouragement of community unionism, by creating
the means for communal self-management, helps to enrich the community
as well as creating the organisational forms required to resist the
state and capitalism. In this way we build the anti-state which will
(hopefully) replace the state. Moreover, the combination of community 
unionism with workplace assemblies (as in Puerto Real), provides a
mutual support network which can be very effective in helping winning
struggles. For example, in Glasgow, Scotland in 1916, a massive rent
strike was finally won when workers came out in strike in support of
the rent strikers who been arrested for non-payment. Such developments 
indicate that Isaac Puente was correct:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Libertarian Communism is a society organised without the state and 
without private ownership. And there is no need to invent anything or
conjure up some new organisation for the purpose. The centres about 
which life in the future will be organised are already with us in 
the society of today: the free union and the free municipality [or
Commune].</i>
</blockquote> 
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"<b>The union</b>: in it combine spontaneously the workers from factories 
and all places of collective exploitation.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"And <b>the free municipality</b>: an assembly . . . where, again in 
spontaneity, inhabitants . . .  combine together, and which points the 
way to the solution of problems in social life . . . </i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Both kinds of organisation, run on federal and democratic principles, 
will be sovereign in their decision making, without being beholden to 
any higher body, their only obligation being to federate one with 
another as dictated by the economic requirement for liaison and 
communications bodies organised in industrial federations.</i>
</blockquote> 
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"The <b>union and the free municipality</b> will assume the collective 
or common ownership of everything which is under private ownership 
at present [but collectively used] and will regulate production and 
consumption (in a word, the economy) in each locality.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
</blockquote>
<i>"The very bringing together of the two terms (communism and 
libertarian) is indicative in itself of the fusion of two ideas: 
one of them is collectivist, tending to bring about harmony in the 
whole through the contributions and co-operation of individuals, 
without undermining their independence in any way; while the other 
is individualist, seeking to reassure the individual that his 
independence will be respected."</i> [<b>Libertarian Communism</b>, 
pp. 6-7]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
The combination of community unionism, along with industrial unionism
(see <a href="secJ5.html#secj52">next section</a>), will be the key to
creating an anarchist society,
Community unionism, by creating the free commune within the state,
allows us to become accustomed to managing our own affairs and seeing
that an injury to one is an injury to all. In this way a social power
is created in opposition to the state. The town council may still be
in the hands of politicians, but neither they nor the central government
would be able to move without worrying about what the people's reaction 
might be, as expressed and organised in their community assemblies and 
federations.
</p>

<a name="secj52"><h2>J.5.2 Why do anarchists support industrial unionism?</h2></a>

<p>
Simply because it is effective in resisting capitalist exploitation and
winning reforms, ending capitalist oppression and expresses our ideas on 
how industry will be organised in an anarchist society. For workers
<i>"have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once become 
thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing could withstand them; 
they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as
theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labour disturbances which
show themselves here and there."</i> [Max Stirner, <b>The Ego and Its 
Own</b>, p. 116] Industrial unionism is simply libertarian workplace 
organisation and is the best way of organising and exercising this power.
</p><p>
Before discussing why anarchists support industrial unionism, we must 
point out that the type of unionism anarchists support has very little 
in common with that associated with reformist unions like the TUC in 
Britain or the AFL-CIO in the USA (see 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj53">next section</a>). 
In such unions, as Alexander Berkman pointed out, the <i>"rank and file
have little say. They have delegated their power to leaders, and 
these have become the boss . . . Once you do that, the power you
have delegated will be used against you and your interests every
time."</i> [<b>What is Anarchism?</b>, p. 205] Reformist unions, even if
they do organise by industry rather than by trade or craft, are
top-heavy and bureaucratic. Thus they are organised in the same
manner as capitalist firms or the state -- and like both of these,
the officials at the top have different interests than those
at the bottom. Little wonder anarchists oppose such forms of 
unionism as being counter to the interests of their members. The
long history of union officials betraying their members is proof
enough of this.
</p><p>
Anarchists propose a different kind of workplace organisation,
one that is organised in a different manner than the mainstream 
unions. We will call this new kind of organisation 
<b><i>"industrial unionism"</i></b> (although perhaps industrial 
syndicalism, or just syndicalism, might be a better name for it). 
Some anarchists (particularly communist-anarchists) reject calling 
these workplace organisations "unions" and instead prefer such terms 
as workplace resistance groups, workplace assemblies and workers 
councils. No matter what they are called, all class struggle anarchists 
support the same organisational structure we are going to outline.
It is purely for convenience that we term this industrial unionism.
</p><p>
An industrial union is a union which organises all workers in a given 
workplace and so regardless of their actual trade everyone would be in 
the one union. On a building site, for example, brick-layers, plumbers, 
carpenters and so on would all be a member of the Building Workers Union. 
Each trade may have its own sections within the union (so that plumbers 
can discuss issues relating to their trade for example) but the core decision 
making focus would be an assembly of all workers employed in a workplace. As 
they all have the same employer, the same exploiter, it is logical for them 
to have the same union.
</p><p>
It is organised by the guiding principle that workers should directly control 
their own organisations and struggles. It is based upon workplace assemblies 
because workers have <i>"tremendous power"</i> as the <i>"creator of 
all wealth"</i> but <i>"the strength of the worker is not in the union
meeting-hall; it is in the shop and factory, in the mill and mine. It is
<b>there</b> that he [or she] must organise; there, on the job."</i> It
is there that workers <i>"decide the matters at issue and carry their
decisions out through the shop committees"</i> (whose members are 
<i>"under the direction and supervision of the workers"</i> and can be 
<i>"recalled at will"</i>). These committees are <i>"associated locally, 
regionally and nationally"</i> to produce <i>"a power tremendous in its 
scope and potentialities."</i> [Berkman, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 205-6]
This confederation is usually organised on two directions, between different 
workplaces in the same industry as well as between different workplaces 
in the same locality. 
</p><p>
So industrial unionism is different from ordinary trade unionism (usually 
called business unionism by anarchists and syndicalists as it treats the 
union's job purely as the seller of its members' labour power). It is based 
on unions managed directly by the rank and file membership rather than 
by elected officials and bureaucrats. The industrial union is not based 
on where the worker lives (as is the case with many trade unions). Instead, 
the union is based and run from the workplace. It is there that union
meetings are held, where workers are exploited and oppressed and where
their economic power lies. Industrial unionism is based on local branch 
autonomy, with each branch managing its own affairs. No union officials 
have the power to declare strikes "unofficial" as every strike is decided 
upon by the membership is automatically "official" simply because the 
branch decided it in a mass meeting.
</p><p>
Power in such an organisation would be decentralised into the hands of the 
membership, as expressed in local workplace assemblies. To co-ordinate 
strikes and other forms of action, these autonomous branches are part of 
a federal structure. The mass meeting in the workplace mandates delegates 
to express the wishes of the membership at "labour councils" and "industrial 
federations." The labour council (<i>"Brouse du Travail"</i>, in French) is the 
federation of all workplace branches of all industries in a geographical area 
(say, for example, in a city or region) and it has the tasks of, among other 
things, education, propaganda and the promotion of solidarity between the 
different workplaces in its area. Due to the fact it combines all workers 
into one organisation, regardless of industry or union, the labour council 
plays a key role in increasing <b>class</b> consciousness and solidarity. 
The industrial federation organises all workplaces in the same industry so
ensuring that workers in one part of the country or world are not producing
goods so that the bosses <i>"can supply the market and lose nothing by the
strike"</i>. So these federations are <i>"organised not by craft or trade 
but by industries, so that the whole industry -- and if necessary the whole 
working class -- could strike as one man."</i> If that were done <i>"would 
any strike be lost?"</i> [Berkman, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 82] In practice, 
of course, the activities of these dual federations would overlap: 
labour councils would support an industry wide strike or action while 
industrial unions would support action conducted by its member unions 
called by labour councils. 
</p><p>
However, industrial unionism should <b>not</b> be confused with a closed 
shop situation where workers are forced to join a union when they 
become a wage slave in a workplace. While anarchists do desire to 
see all workers unite in one organisation, it is vitally important 
that workers can leave a union and join another. The closed shop 
only empowers union bureaucrats and gives them even more power
to control (and/or ignore) their members. As anarchist unionism has
no bureaucrats, there is no need for the closed shop and its voluntary
nature is essential in order to ensure that a union be subject to 
"exit" as well as "voice" for it to be responsive to its members wishes.
As Albert Meltzer argued, the closed shop means that <i>"the [trade union] 
leadership becomes all-powerful since once it exerts its right to expel 
a member, that person is not only out of the union, but out of a job."</i> 
Anarcho-syndicalism, therefore, <i>"rejects the closed shop and relies on 
voluntary membership, and so avoids any leadership or bureaucracy."</i> 
[<b>Anarchism: Arguments for and against</b>, p. 56] Without voluntary 
membership even the most libertarian union may become bureaucratic and 
unresponsive to the needs of its members and the class struggle (also
see Tom Wetzel's excellent article <i>"The Origins of the Union Shop"</i>, 
[<b>Ideas & Action</b> no. 11]). Needless to say, if the union 
membership refuses to work with non-union members then that is a 
different situation. Then this is an issue of free association (as 
free association clearly implies the right <b>not</b> to associate). 
This issue rarely arises and most syndicalist unions operate in 
workplaces with other unions (the excepts arise, as happened frequently 
in Spanish labour history with the Marxist UGT, when the other union scabs 
when workers are on strike).
</p><p>
In industrial unionism, the membership, assembled in their place of 
work, are the ones to decide when to strike, when to pay strike pay, 
what tactics to use, what demands to make, what issues to fight over 
and whether an action is "official" or "unofficial". In this way the 
rank and file is in control of their union and, by confederating with 
other assemblies, they co-ordinate their forces with their fellow workers. 
As syndicalist activist Tom Brown made clear:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The basis of the Syndicate is the mass meeting of workers assembled
at their place of work . . . The meeting elects its factory committee
and delegates. The factory Syndicate is federated to all other
such committees in the locality . . . In the other direction, the
factory, let us say engineering factory, is affiliated to the District
Federation of Engineers. In turn the District Federation is affiliated
to the National Federation of Engineers . . . Then, each industrial
federation is affiliated to the National Federation of Labour . . .
how the members of such committees are elected is most important. 
They are, first of all, not representatives like Members of Parliament
who air their own views; they are delegates who carry the message of
the workers who elect them. They do not tell the workers what the
'official' policy is; the workers tell them.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Delegates are subject to instant recall by the persons who elected
them. None may sit for longer than two successive years, and four
years must elapse before his [or her] next nomination. Very few will
receive wages as delegates, and then only the district rate of wages 
for the industry . . . </i></blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"It will be seen that in the Syndicate the members control the
organisation -- not the bureaucrats controlling the members. In a
trade union the higher up the pyramid a man is the more power he
wields; in a Syndicate the higher he is the less power he has.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"The factory Syndicate has full autonomy over its own affairs."</i>
[<b>Syndicalism</b>, pp. 35-36]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Such federalism exists to co-ordinate struggle, to ensure that solidarity
becomes more than a word written on banners. We are sure that many radicals 
will argue that such decentralised, confederal organisations would 
produce confusion and disunity. However, anarchists maintain that the 
statist, centralised form of organisation of the trades unions would 
produce indifference instead of involvement, heartlessness instead of 
solidarity, uniformity instead of unity, and elites instead of equality. 
The centralised form of organisation has been tried and tried again -- it 
has always failed. This is why the industrial union rejects centralisation,
for it <i>"takes control too far away from the place of struggle to be 
effective on the workers' side."</i> [Brown, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 34] 
Centralisation leads to disempowerment, which in turn leads to indifference, 
<b>not</b> solidarity. Rudolf Rocker reminds us of the evil effects of 
centralism when he wrote:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of organisation, 
since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in social life for the
maintenance of political and social equilibrium. But for a movement whose
very existence depends on prompt action at any favourable moment and on the
independent thought and action of its supporters, centralism could but be a
curse by weakening its power of decision and systematically repressing all
immediate action. If, for example, as was the case in Germany, every local
strike had first to be approved by the Central, which was often hundreds of
miles away and was not usually in a position to pass a correct judgement
on the local conditions, one cannot wonder that the inertia of the apparatus
of organisation renders a quick attack quite impossible, and there thus
arises a state of affairs where the energetic and intellectually alert
groups no longer serve as patterns for the less active, but are condemned by
these to inactivity, inevitably bringing the whole movement to stagnation.
Organisation is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end
in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and
sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic of all
bureaucracies."</i> [<b>Anarcho-Syndicalism</b>, p. 61]
</blockquote></p><p>
Centralised unions ensure that it is the highest level of union officialdom
which decides when workers are allowed to strike. Instead of those affected
acting, <i>"the dispute must be reported to the district office of the 
union (and in some cases to an area office) then to head office, then back
again . . . The worker is not allowed any direct approach to, or control
of the problem."</i> [Brown, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 34] The end result is
that <i>"through the innate conservatism of officialdom"</i> officials
in centralised unions <i>"ordinarily use their great powers to prevent 
strikes or to drive their unions' members back to work after they have
struck in concert with other workers."</i> The notion that a centralised
organisation will be more radical <i>"has not developed in practice"</i>
and the key problem <i>"is due not to the autonomy of the unions, but to 
the lack of it."</i> [Earl C. Ford and William Z. Foster, <b>Syndicalism</b>,
p. 38] So the industrial union <i>"is based on the principles of Federalism, 
on free combination from below upwards, putting the right of self-determination 
. . . above everything else"</i> and so rejects centralism as an <i>"artifical 
organisation from above downwards which turns over the affairs of everybody
in a lump to a small minority"</i> and is <i>"always attended by barren 
official routine"</i> as well as <i>"lifeless discipline and bureaucratic
ossification."</i> [Rocker, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 60]
</p><p>
This implies that as well as being decentralised and organised from the 
bottom up, the industrial union differs from the normal trade union by 
having no full-time officials. All union business is conducted by elected 
fellow workers who do their union activities after work or, if it has to 
be done during work hours, they get the wages they lost while on union 
business. In this way no bureaucracy of well paid officials is created 
and all union militants remain in direct contact with their fellow workers. 
Given that it is <b>their</b> wages, working conditions and so on that are 
effected by their union activity they have a real interest in making the 
union an effective organisation and ensuring that it reflects the interests 
of the rank and file. In addition, all part-time union "officials" are 
elected, mandated and recallable delegates. If the fellow worker who is 
elected to the local labour council or other union committee is not 
reflecting the opinions of those who mandated him or her then the union 
assembly can countermand their decision, recall them and replace them with 
someone who <b>will</b> reflect these decisions. In short, <i>"the Syndicalist
stands firmly by these things -- mass meetings, delegates not bosses,
the right of recall . . . Syndicalism is organised from the bottom
upwards . . . all power comes from below and is controlled from below.
This is a revolutionary principle."</i> [Brown, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 85]
</p><p>
As can be seen, industrial unionism reflects anarchist ideas of
organisation -- it is organised from the bottom up, it is decentralised
and based upon federation and it is directly managed by its members
in mass assemblies. It is anarchism applied to industry and the needs
of the class struggle. By supporting such forms of organisations, 
anarchists are not only seeing <i>"anarchy in action"</i>, they are 
forming effective tools which can win the class war. By organising in 
this manner, workers are building the framework of a co-operative society
within capitalism:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"the syndicate . . . has for its purpose the defence of the interests 
of the producers within existing society and the preparing for and the 
practical carrying out of the reconstruction of social life . . .
It has, therefore, a double purpose: 1. As the fighting organisation of 
the workers against their employers to enforce the demands of the workers 
for the safeguarding of their standard of living; 2. As the school for 
the intellectual training of the workers to make them acquainted with 
the technical management of production and economic life in general, so
that when a revolutionary situation arises they will be capable of taking
the socio-economic organism into their own hands and remaking it according
to Socialist principles."</i> [Rocker, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 56-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
So <i>"[a]t the same time that syndicalism exerts this unrelenting 
pressure on capitalism, it tries to build the new social order within 
the old. The unions and the 'labour councils' are not merely means of 
struggle and instruments of social revolution; they are also the very 
structure around which to build a free society. The workers are to be 
educated in the job of destroying the old propertied order and in the 
task of  reconstructing a stateless, libertarian society. The two go 
together."</i> [Murray Bookchin, <b>The Spanish Anarchists</b>, p. 121] 
The industrial union is seen as prefiguring the future society, a 
society which (like the union) is decentralised and self-managed in 
all aspects.
</p><p>
Given the fact that workers wages have been stagnating (or, at
best, falling behind productivity increases) across the world as 
the trade unions have been weakened and marginalised (partly
because of their own tactics, structure and politics) it is clear that
there exists a great need for working people to organise to defend
themselves. The centralised, top-down trade unions we are accustomed
to have proved themselves incapable of effective struggle (and, indeed,
the number of times they have sabotaged such struggle are countless 
-- a result not of "bad" leaders but of the way these unions organise
and their role within capitalism). Hence anarchists support industrial
unionism as an effective alternative to the malaise of official trade 
unionism. How anarchists aim to encourage such new forms of workplace 
organisation and struggle will be discussed in the 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj54">section J.5.4</a>.
</p><p>
One last point. We noted that many anarchists, particularly 
communist-anarchists, consider unions, even anarchosyndicalist ones, as 
having a strong reformist tendency (as discussed in 
<a href="secJ3.html#secj39">section J.3.9</a>). 
However, all anarchists recognise the importance of autonomous class 
struggle and the need for organisations to help fight that struggle. 
Thus anarchist-communists, instead of trying to organise industrial 
unions, apply the ideas of industrial unionism to workplace struggles. 
They would agree with the need to organise all workers into a mass 
assembly and to have elected, recallable administration committees 
to carry out the strikers wishes. This means that while such
anarchists do not call their practical ideas "anarcho-syndicalism" 
nor the workplace assemblies they desire to create "unions," there are 
<b>extremely</b> similar in nature and so we can discuss both using the 
term "industrial unionism". The key difference is that many (if not most) 
anarcho-communists consider that permanent workplace organisations that 
aim to organise <b>all</b> workers would become reformist. Because of
this they also see the need for anarchist to organise <b>as anarchists</b>
in order to spread the anarchist message within them and keep their
revolutionary aspects at the forefront. 
</p><p>
Spontaneously created organisations of workers in 
struggle play an important role in both communist-anarchist 
and anarcho-syndicalist theory. Since both advocate that it 
is the workers, using their own organisations who will control 
their own struggles (and, eventually, their own revolution) in 
their own interests, not a vanguard party of elite political 
theorists, this is unsurprising. It matters little if the 
specific organisations are revolutionary industrial unions, 
factory committees, workers councils, or other labour formations. 
The important thing is that they are created and run by workers 
themselves. Meanwhile, anarchists are industrial guerrillas 
waging class war at the point of production in order to win 
improvements in the here and now and strengthen tendencies 
towards anarchism by showing that direct action and libertarian 
organisation is effective and can win partial expropriations of 
capitalist and state power. So while there are slight differences 
in terminology and practice, all anarchists would support the 
ideas of industrial organisation and struggle we have outlined above. 
</p>

<a name="secj53"><h2>J.5.3 What attitude do anarchists take to existing unions?</h2></a>

<p>
As noted in the <a href="secJ5.html#secj52">last section</a>, 
anarchists desire to create organisations 
in the workplace radically different from the existing unions.
The question now arises, what attitude do anarchists take to 
trade unions?
</p><p>
Before answering that question, we must stress that anarchists, no matter
how hostile to trade unions as bureaucratic, reformist institutions, 
<b>are</b> in favour of working class struggle. This means that when 
trade union members or other workers are on strike anarchists will 
support them (unless the strike is reactionary -- for example, no anarchist
would support a strike which is racist in nature). This is because 
anarchists consider it basic to their politics that you do not scab and 
you do not crawl. So, when reading anarchist criticisms of trade unions do 
not for an instant think we do not support industrial struggles -- we do, we 
are just very critical of the unions that are sometimes involved.
</p><p>
So, what do anarchists think of the trade unions?
</p><p>
For the most part, one could call the typical anarchist opinion toward 
them as one of "hostile support." It is hostile insofar as anarchists 
are well aware of how bureaucratic these unions are and how they 
continually betray their members. Given that they are usually little 
more than "business" organisations, trying to sell their members 
labour-power for the best deal possible, it is unsurprising that they 
are bureaucratic and that the interests of the bureaucracy are at odds 
with those of its membership. However, our attitude is "supportive" in 
that even the worse trade union represents an attempt at working class 
solidarity and self-help, even if the organisation is now far removed 
from the initial protests and ideas that set the union up. For a worker 
to join a trade union means recognising, to some degree, that he or she 
has different interests from their boss (<i>"If the interests of labour
and capital are the same, why the union?"</i> [Alexander Berkman, <b>What
is Anarchism?</b>, p. 76]). 
</p><p>
There is no way to explain the survival of unions other than the fact that 
there are different class interests and workers have understood that to 
promote their own interests they have to organise collectively. No 
amount of conservatism, bureaucracy or backwardness within the unions 
can obliterate this. The very existence of trade unions testifies 
to the existence of some level of basic class consciousness and 
the recognition that workers and capitalists do not have the 
same interests. Claims by trade union officials that the interests 
of workers and bosses are the same theoretically disarms both the 
union and its members and so weakens their struggles (after all,
if bosses and workers have similar interests then any conflict is bad
and the decisions of the boss must be in workers' interests!). That kind
of nonsense is best left to the apologists of capitalism (see
<a href="secF3.html#secf32">section F.3.2</a>).
</p><p>
It is no surprise, then, the <i>"extreme opposition to the existing political
and economic power"</i> to unions as they <i>"not only suspected every labour
organisation of aiming to improve the condition of its members within the
limits of the wage system, but they also looked upon the trade union as the
deeply enemy of wage-slavery -- and they were right. Every labour organisation
of sincere character must needs wage war upon the existing economic conditions,
since the continuation of the same is synonymous with the exploitation and
enslavement of labour."</i> [Max Baginski, <i>"Aim and Tactics of the 
Trade-Union Movement"</i>, pp. 297-306, <b>Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma 
Goldman's Mother Earth</b>, Peter Glassgold (ed.), pp. 302-3] Thus anarchist 
viewpoints on this issue reflect the contradictory nature of trade unions -- 
on the one hand they are products of workers' struggle, but on the other 
they are bureaucratic, unresponsive, centralised and their full-time 
officials have no real interest in fighting against wage labour as it would 
put them out of a job. Indeed, the very nature of trade unionism ensures that 
the interests of the union (i.e. the full-time officials) come into conflict 
with the people they claim to represent. 
</p><p>
This can best be seen from the disgraceful activities of the TGWU with 
respect to the Liverpool dockers in Britain. The union officials (and 
the TUC itself) refused to support their members after they had been 
sacked in 1995 for refusing to cross a picket line. The dockers 
organised their own struggle, contacting dockers' unions across the 
world and organised global solidarity actions. Moreover, a network 
of support groups sprung up across Britain to gather funds for their
struggle (and, we are proud to note, anarchists have played their role
in supporting the strikers). Many trade unionists could tell similar
stories of betrayal by "their" union.
</p><p>
This occurs because trade unions, in order to get recognition from 
a company, must be able to promise industrial peace. They need to
enforce the contracts they sign with the bosses, even if this goes
against the will of its members. Thus trade unions become a third
force in industry, somewhere between management and the workers and
pursuing its own interests. This need to enforce contracts soon ensures
that the union becomes top-down and centralised -- otherwise its
members would violate the unions agreements. They have to be able 
to control their members -- which usually means stopping them
fighting the boss -- if they are to have anything to bargain with 
at the negotiation table. This may sound odd, but the point is that 
the union official has to sell the employer labour discipline and 
freedom from unofficial strikes as part of its side of the bargain
otherwise the employer will ignore them. 
</p><p>
The nature of trade unionism, then, is to take power away from out of local 
members and centralise it into the hands of officials at the top of 
the organisation. Thus union officials sell out their members because 
of the role trade unions play within society, not because they are 
nasty individuals (although some are). They behave as they do because 
they have too much power and, being full-time and highly paid, are 
unaccountable, in any real way, to their members. Power -- and wealth -- 
corrupts, no matter who you are (see <i>Chapter XI</i> of 
Alexander Berkman's <b>What is Anarchism?</b> for an excellent 
introduction to anarchist viewpoints on trade unions).
</p><p>
While, in normal times, most workers will not really question the nature
of the trade union bureaucracy, this changes when workers face some threat.
Then they are brought face to face with the fact that the trade union
has interests separate from theirs. Hence we see trade unions agreeing to
wage cuts, redundancies and so on -- after all, the full-time trade union 
official's job is not on the line! But, of course, while such a policy
is in the short term interests of the officials, in the longer term it goes
against their interests -- who wants to join a union which rolls
over and presents no effective resistance to employers? Little wonder
Michael Moore had a chapter entitled <i>"Why are Union Leaders So F#!@ing
Stupid?"</i> in his book <b>Downsize This!</b> -- essential reading on 
how moronic trade union bureaucrats can actually be. Sadly trade union 
bureaucracy seems to afflict all who enter it with short-sightedness -- 
although the chickens do, finally, come home to roost, as the bureaucrats 
of the AFL, TUC and other trade unions are finding out in this era of 
global capital and falling membership. So while the activities of trade
union leaders may seem crazy and short-sighted, these activities are
forced upon them by their position and role within society -- which
explains why they are so commonplace and why even radical leaders end
up doing exactly the same thing in time.
</p><p>
However, few anarchists would call upon members of a trade union to tear-up 
their membership cards. While some anarchists have nothing but contempt (and 
rightly so) for trade unions (and so do not work within them -- but will 
support trade union members in struggle), the majority of anarchists take a 
more pragmatic viewpoint. If no alternative syndicalist union exists, 
anarchists will work within the existing unions (perhaps becoming 
shop-stewards -- few anarchists would agree to be elected to positions 
above this in any trade union, particularly if the post were full-time), 
spreading the anarchist message and trying to create a libertarian 
undercurrent which would hopefully blossom into a more anarchistic 
labour movement. So most anarchists "support" the trade unions only until 
we have created a viable libertarian alternative. Thus we will become 
trade union members while trying to spread anarchist ideas within and 
outwith them. This means that anarchists are flexible in terms of our 
activity in the unions. For example, many IWW members were "two-carders" 
which meant they were also in the local AFL branch in their place of 
work and turned to the IWW when the AFL hierarchy refused to back 
strikes or other forms of direct action. 
</p><p>
Anarchist activity within trade unions reflects our ideas on hierarchy and
its corrupting effects. We reject the response of left-wing social 
democrats, Stalinists and mainstream Trotskyists to the problem of trade
union betrayal, which is to try and elect 'better' officials. They 
see the problem primarily in terms of the individuals who hold the posts
so ignoring the fact that individuals are shaped by the environment they 
live in and the role they play in society. Thus even the most left-wing
and progressive individual will become a bureaucrat if they are placed
within a bureaucracy.
</p><p>
We must note that the problem of corruption does not spring from the 
high-wages officials are paid (although this is a factor), but from 
the power they have over their members (which partly expresses itself 
in high pay). Any claim that electing "radical" full-time officials who 
refuse to take the high wages associated with the position will be 
better is false. The hierarchical nature of the trade union structure 
has to be changed, not side-effects of it. As the left has no problem 
with hierarchy as such, this explains why they support this form of 
"reform." They do not actually want to undercut whatever dependency 
the members have on leadership, they want to replace the leaders 
with "better" ones (i.e. themselves or members of their party) and 
so endlessly call upon the trade union bureaucracy to act <b>for</b> 
its members. In this way, they hope, trade unionists will see the 
need to support a "better" leadership -- namely themselves. Anarchists, 
in stark contrast, think that the problem is not that the leadership of the 
trade unions is weak, right-wing or does not act but that the union's 
membership follows them. Thus anarchists aim at undercutting reliance on
leaders (be they left or right) by encouraging self-activity by the rank
and file and awareness that hierarchical leadership as such is bad, not 
individual leaders. Anarchists encourage rank and file self-activity, 
<b>not</b> endless calls for trade union bureaucrats to act for us (as 
is unfortunately far too common on the left).
</p><p>
Instead of "reform" from above (which is doomed to failure), anarchists work 
at the bottom and attempt to empower the rank and file of the trade unions. 
It is self-evident that the more power, initiative and control that lies on 
the shop floor, the less the bureaucracy has. Thus anarchists work within 
and outwith the trade unions in order to increase the power of workers where 
it actually lies: at the point of production. This is usually done by creating 
networks of activists who spread anarchist ideas to their fellow workers (see 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj54">next section</a>). Hence Malatesta:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"The anarchists within the unions should strive to ensure that they 
remain open to all workers of whatever opinion or party on the sole
condition that there is solidarity in the struggle against the bosses. They 
should oppose the corporatist spirit and any attempt to monopolise labour or 
organisation. They should prevent the Unions from becoming the tools of the 
politicians for electoral or other authoritarian ends; they should preach and 
practice direct action, decentralisation, autonomy and free initiative. They 
should strive to help members learn how to participate directly in the life 
of the organisation and to do without leaders and permanent officials.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"They must, in short, remain anarchists, remain always in close touch with
anarchists and remember that the workers' organisation is not the end but
just one of the means, however important, of preparing the way for the
achievement of anarchism."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Revolution</b>, pp. 26-7]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
As part of this activity anarchists promote the ideas of Industrial
Unionism we highlighted in the <a href="secJ5.html#secj52">last section</a> 
-- namely direct workers control of struggle via workplace assemblies 
and recallable committees -- during times of struggle. However, anarchists 
are aware that economic struggle (and trade unionism as such) <i>"cannot 
be an end in itself, since the struggle must also be waged at a political 
level to distinguish the role of the State."</i> [Malatesta, <b>Errico 
Malatesta: His Life and Ideas</b>, p, 115] Thus, as well as encouraging 
worker self-organisation and self-activity, anarchist groups also seek 
to politicise struggles and those involved in them. Only this process of 
self-activity and political discussion between equals <b>within</b> social 
struggles can ensure the process of working class self-liberation and the 
creation of new, more libertarian, forms of workplace organisation.
</p><p>
The result of such activity may be a new form of workplace organisation 
(either workplace assemblies or an anarcho-syndicalist union) or a reformed, 
more democratic version of the existing trade union (although few anarchists
believe that the current trade unions can be reformed). Either way,
the aim is to get as many members of the current labour movement to become
anarchists as possible or, at the very least, take a more libertarian and 
radical approach to their unions and workplace struggle. 
</p>

<a name="secj54"><h2>J.5.4 What are industrial networks?</h2></a>

<p>
Industrial networks are the means by which revolutionary industrial unions 
and other forms of libertarian workplace organisation can be created. 
The idea of Industrial Networks originated with the British section of the
anarcho-syndicalist <b>International Workers Association</b> in the late 
1980s. It was developed as a means of promoting libertarian ideas within 
the workplace, so creating the basis on which a workplace movement
based upon the ideas of industrial unionism 
(see <a href="secJ5.html#secj52">section J.5.2</a>) could grow 
and expand.
</p><p>
The idea is very simple. An Industrial Network is a federation of
militants in a given industry who support the ideas of anarchism and/or 
anarcho-syndicalism, namely direct action, solidarity and organisation 
from the bottom up (the difference between purely anarchist networks
and anarcho-syndicalist ones will be highlighted later). It would 
<i>"initially be a political grouping in the economic sphere, aiming 
to build a less reactive but positive organisation within the industry.
The long term aim . . . is, obviously, the creation of an anarcho-syndicalist
union."</i> [<b>Winning the Class War</b>, p. 18]
</p><p>
The Industrial Network would be an organisation of groups of libertarians 
within a workplace united on an industrial basis. They would pull their 
resources together to fund a regular bulletin and other forms of propaganda 
which they would distribute within their workplaces. These bulletins and 
leaflets would raise and discuss issues related to work, how to fight 
back and win as well as placing workplace issues in a social and 
political context. This propaganda would present anarchist ideas of 
workplace organisation and resistance as well as general anarchist ideas 
and analysis. In this way anarchist ideas and tactics would be able to 
get a wider hearing and anarchists can have an input <b>as anarchists</b> 
into workplace struggles.
</p><p>
Traditionally, many syndicalists and anarcho-syndicalists advocated the 
<b><i>One Big Union</i></b> strategy, the aim of which was to organise all 
workers into one organisation representing the whole working class. Today, 
however, most anarcho-syndicalists, like other revolutionary anarchists, 
advocate workers assemblies for decision making during struggles which are
open to all workers (union members or not) as they recognise that they 
face dual unionism (which means there are more than one union within 
a given workplace or country). This was the case, historically, in 
all countries with a large syndicalist union movement there were also 
socialist unions. Therefore most anarcho-syndicalists do not expect to 
ever get a majority of the working class into a revolutionary union before a
revolutionary situation develops. In addition, revolutionary unions do not
simply appear, they develop from previous struggles and require a lot of 
work and experience of which the Industrial Networks are but one aspect. 
The most significant revolutionary unions (such as the IWW, USI and CNT) 
were originally formed by unions and union militants with substantial 
experience of struggle behind them, some of whom were part of existing
trade union bodies. 
</p><p>
Thus industrial networks are intended to deal with the actual situation
that confronts us, and provide a strategy for moving from our present
reality toward out ultimate goals. The role of the anarchist group 
or syndicalist union would be to call workplace assemblies and their
federation into councils, argue for direct workers control of struggle by 
these mass assemblies, promote direct action and solidarity, put across 
anarchist ideas and politics and keep things on the boil, so to speak.
When one has only a handful of anarchists and syndicalists in a workplace 
or scattered across several workplaces there is a clear need for 
developing ways for these fellow workers to effectively act in 
union, rather than be isolated and relegated to more general 
agitation. A handful of anarchists cannot meaningfully call a 
general strike but we can agitate around specific industrial 
issues and organise our fellow workers to do something about 
them. Through such campaigns we demonstrate the advantages of 
rank-and-file unionism and direct action, show our fellow workers 
that our ideas are not mere abstract theory but can be implemented 
here and now, attract new members and supporters, and further develop 
our capacity to develop revolutionary unions in our workplaces. Thus 
the creation of Industrial Networks and the calling for workplace 
assemblies is a recognition of where we are now -- with anarchist ideas
very much in the minority. Calling for workers assemblies is not
an anarchist tactic per se, we must add, but a working class one developed
and used plenty of times by workers in struggle (indeed, it was how the
current trade unions were created). It also puts the onus on the reformists 
unions by appealing directly to their members as workers and exposing 
their bureaucrat organisations and reformist politics by creating an 
effective alternative to them.
</p><p>
A few anarchists reject the idea of Industrial Networks and instead support
the idea of <b><i>"rank and file"</i></b> groups which aim to put pressure 
on the current trade unions to become more militant and democratic. Some
even think that such groups can be used to reform the trade-unions 
into libertarian, revolutionary organisations -- called <i>"boring from 
within"</i> -- but most reject this as utopian, viewing the trade union 
bureaucracy as unreformable as the state's (and it is likely that rather 
than change the trade union, "boring from within" would change the 
syndicalists by watering down their ideas). Moreover, opponents of 
"rank and file" groups argue that they direct time and energy 
<b>away</b> from practical and constructive activity and instead 
waste them <i>"[b]y constantly arguing for changes to the union structure 
. . . the need for the leadership to be more accountable, etc., [and so] 
they not only [offer] false hope but [channel] energy and discontent away 
from the real problem -- the social democratic nature of reformist trade 
unions."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 11]
</p><p>
Supporters of the "rank and file" approach fear that the Industrial Networks
will isolate anarchists from the mass of trade union members by creating
tiny "pure" syndicalist groups. Such a claim is rejected by supporters of 
Industrial Networks who argue that rather than being isolated from the 
majority of trade unionists they would be in contact with them where 
it counts, in the workplace and in struggle rather than in trade union 
meetings which many workers do not even attend:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"We have no intention of isolating ourselves from the many workers who
make up the rest of the rank and file membership of the unions. We recognise 
that a large proportion of trade union members are only nominally so as the 
main activity of social democratic unions is outside the workplace . . . 
<b>We aim to unite and not divide workers.</b></i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"It has been argued that social democratic unions will not tolerate this
kind of activity, and that we would be all expelled and thus isolated.
So be it. We, however, don't think that this will happen until . . .
workplace militants had found a voice independent of the trade unions
and so they become less useful to us anyway. Our aim is not to 
support social democracy, but to show it up as irrelevant to the
working class."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 19]
</blockquote></p><p>
Whatever the merits and disadvantages of both approaches are, it seems 
likely that the activity of both will overlap in practice with Industrial 
Networks operating within trade union branches and "rank and file" groups 
providing alternative structures for struggle. 
</p><p>
As noted above, there is a slight difference between anarcho-syndicalist
supporters of Industrial Networks and communist-anarchist ones. This is to
do with how they see the function and aim of these networks. In the short
run, both agree that such networks should agitate in their industry and 
call mass assemblies to organise resistance to capitalist exploitation
and oppression. They disagree on who can join the network groups and what
their medium term aims should be. Anarcho-syndicalists aim for the Industrial
Networks to be the focal point for the building of permanent syndicalist
unions and so aim for the Industrial Networks to be open to all workers
who accept the general aims of the organisation. Anarcho-communists,
however, view Industrial Networks as a means of increasing anarchist
ideas within the working class and are not primarily concerned about
building syndicalist unions (while many anarcho-communists would
support such a development, some do not). In the long term, they both
aim for social revolution and workers' self-management of production.
</p><p>
These anarchists, therefore, see the need for workplace-based branches
of an anarchist group along with the need for networks of militant 
'rank and file' workers, but reject the idea of something that is one 
but pretends to be the other. They argue that, far from avoiding the 
problems of classical anarcho-syndicalism, such networks seem to emphasise
one of the worst problems -- namely that of how the organisation remains 
anarchist but is open to non-anarchists. However, the similarities between 
the two positions are greater than the differences and so can be summarised 
together, as we have done here.
</p>

<a name="secj55"><h2>J.5.5 What forms of co-operative credit do anarchists support?</h2></a>

<p>
Anarchists tend to support must forms of co-operation, including those
associated with credit and money. This co-operative banking takes
many forms, such as credit unions, LETS schemes and so on. In this 
section we discuss two main forms of co-operative credit, <i><b>mutualism</b></i>
and <i><b>LETS</i></b>.
</p><p>
Mutualism is the name for the ideas associated with Proudhon and his <b>Bank 
of the People</b>. Essentially, it is a confederation of credit unions in
which working class people pool their funds and savings so allowing credit 
to be supplied at cost (no interest), so increasing the options available to 
them. LETS stands for <b>Local Exchange Trading Schemes</b> and is a similar 
idea in many ways (see <b>Bringing the Economy Home from the Market</b> by 
Ross V.G. Dobson on LETS). From its start in Canada, LETS has spread across the 
world and there are now hundreds of schemes involving hundreds of thousands 
of people.
</p><p>
Both schemes revolve around creating an alternative form of currency and 
credit within capitalism in order to allow working class people to work 
outwith the capitalist money system by creating a new circulating 
medium. In this way, it is hoped, workers would be able to 
improve their living and working conditions by having a source of 
community-based (very low interest) credit and so be less dependent on
capitalists and the capitalist banking system. Supporters of mutualism
considered it as the ideal way of reforming capitalism away for by making
credit available to the ordinary worker at very cheap rates, the end of 
wage slavery could occur as workers would work for themselves by 
either purchasing the necessary tools required for their work or by 
buying the capitalists out.
</p><p>
Mutual credit, in short, is a form of credit co-operation, in which individuals 
pull their resources together in order to benefit themselves as individuals and 
as part of a community. It has the following key aspects:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
	-- <b>Co-operation</b>: No-one owns the network. It is controlled  
	   by its members democratically.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
	-- <b>Non-exploitative</b>: No interest is charged on account balances
	   or credit. At most administrative costs are charged, a result
	   of it being commonly owned and managed.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
	-- <b>Consent</b>: Nothing happens without it, there is no compulsion
	   to trade.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
	-- <b>Labour-Notes</b>: They use their own type of money 
	   as a means of aiding "honest exchange."
</blockquote>
</p><p>
It is hoped, by organising credit, working class people will be able to
work for themselves and slowly but surely replace capitalism with
a co-operative system based upon self-management. While LETS schemes
do not have such grand schemes, historically mutualism aimed at 
working within and transforming capitalism to socialism. At the very
least, LETS schemes reduce the power and influence of banks and finance
capital within society as mutualism ensures that working people have a 
viable alternative to such parasites.
</p><p>
These ideas have had a long history within the socialist movement, originating
in Britain in the early 19th century when Robert Owen and other Socialists 
raised the idea of labour notes and labour-exchanges as both a means of 
improving working class conditions within capitalism and of reforming 
capitalism into a society of confederated, self-governing communities. 
Such <i>"Equitable Labour Exchanges"</i> were <i>"founded at London and 
Birmingham in 1832"</i> with <i>"Labour notes and the exchange 
of small products."</i> [E. P. Thompson, <b>The Making of the English
Working Class</b>, p. 870] Apparently independently of these attempts 
in Britain at what would later be called mutualism, Proudhon arrived 
at the same ideas decades later in France: <i>"The People's Bank quite 
simply embodies the financial and economic aspects of the principle of 
modern democracy, that is, the sovereignty of the People, and of the 
republican motto, 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.'"</i> [<b>Selected Writings 
of P-J Proudhon</b>, p. 75] Similarly, in the USA (partly as a result of Joshua
Warren's activities, who got the idea from Robert Owen) there was extensive
discussion on labour notes, exchanges and free credit as a means of protecting 
workers from the evils of capitalism and ensuring their independence and
freedom from wage slavery. When Proudhon's works appeared in North America,
the basic arguments were well known and they were quickly adopted by radicals
there.
</p><p>
Therefore the idea that mutual banking using labour money as a means 
to improve working class living conditions, even, perhaps, to achieve
industrial democracy, self-management and the end of capitalism has a long
history in Socialist thought. Unfortunately this aspect of socialism became
less important with the rise of Marxism (which called these early socialists
<i>"utopian"</i>). Attempts at such credit unions and alternative exchange 
schemes were generally replaced with attempts to build working class political 
parties and so constructive socialistic experiments and collective working 
class self-help was replaced by working within the capitalist state. Fortunately, 
history has had the last laugh on Marxism with working class people yet again 
creating anew the ideas of mutualism (as can be seen by the growth of LETS and 
other schemes of community money).
</p>

<a name="secj56"><h2>J.5.6 Why are mutual credit schemes important?</h2></a>

<p>
Mutual credit schemes are important because they are a way to improve
working class life under capitalism and ensure that what money we do
have is used to benefit ourselves rather than the elite. By organising 
credit, we retain control over it and so rather than being used to invest
in capitalist schemes it can be used for socialist alternatives. 
</p><p>
For example, rather than allow the poorest to be at the mercy of loan
sharks a community, by organising credit, can ensure its members receive
cheap credit. Rather than give capitalist banks bundles of cash
to invest in capitalist firms seeking to extract profits from a locality,
it can be used to fund a co-operative instead. Rather than invest pension
schemes into the stock market and so help undermine workers pay and
living standards by increasing rentier power, it can be used to invest in
schemes to improve the community and its economy. In short, rather than
bolster capitalist power and so control, mutual credit aims to undermine
the power of capitalist banks and finance by placing as much money as
much possible in working class hands.
</p><p>
This point is important, as the banking system is often considered 
"neutral" (particularly in capitalist economics). However, as Malatesta 
correctly argued, it would be <i>"a mistake to believe . . . that the 
banks are, or are in the main, a means to facilitate exchange; they 
are a means to speculate on exchange and currencies, to invest capital 
and to make it produce interest, and to fulfil other typically capitalist 
operations."</i> [<b>Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas</b>, p. 100]
Within capitalism, money is still to a large degree a commodity which
is more than a convenient measure of work done in the production
of goods and services. It can and does go anywhere in the world where 
it can get the best return for its owners, and so it tends to drain 
out of those communities that need it most (why else would a large
company invest in a community unless the money it takes out of the
area handsomely exceeds that put it?). It is the means by which 
capitalists can buy the liberty of working people and get them to 
produce a surplus for them (wealth is, after all, <i>"a power 
invested in certain individuals by the institutions of society, to
compel others to labour for their benefit."</i> [William Godwin, 
<b>The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin</b>, p. 130]). From this 
consideration alone, working class control of credit and money 
is an important part of the class struggle as having access to 
alternative sources of credit can increase working class options 
and power. 
</p><p>
As we discussed in <a href="secB3.html#secb32">section B.3.2</a>, 
credit is also an important form of social control -- people 
who have to pay their mortgage or visa bill are more pliable, 
less likely to strike or make other forms of political trouble. 
Credit also expands the consumption of the masses in the face of stagnant 
or falling wages so blunting the impact of increasing exploitation.
Moreover, as an added bonus, there is a profit to be made as the 
<i>"rich need a place to earn interest on their surplus funds, and 
the rest of the population makes a juicy lending target."</i> 
[Doug Henwood, <b>Wall Street</b>, p. 65]
</p><p>
Little wonder that the state (and the capitalists who run it) is so 
concerned to keep control of money in its own hands  or the hands
of its agents. With an increase in mutual credit, interest rates 
would drop, wealth would stay more in working class communities,
and the social power of working people would increase (for people 
would be more likely to struggle for higher wages and better
conditions -- as the fear of debt repayments would be less). By the 
creation of community-based credit unions that do not put their money 
into "Capital Markets" or into capitalist Banks working class people
can control their own credit, their own retirement funds, and find
ways of using money as a means of undermining capitalist power and 
supporting social struggle and change. In this way working people 
are controlling more and more of the money supply and using it in
ways that will stop capital from using it to oppress and exploit 
them. 
</p><p>
An example of why this can be important can be seen from the existing 
workers' pension fund system which is invested in the stock market
in the hope that workers will receive an adequate pension in their old 
age. However, the only people actually winning are bankers and big 
companies. Unsurprisingly, the managers of these pension fund companies 
are investing in those firms with the highest returns, which are usually 
those who are downsizing or extracting most surplus value from their 
workforce (which in turn forces other companies to follow the same 
strategies to get access to the available funds in order to survive). 
Basically, if your money is used to downsize your fellow workers or 
increase the power of capital, then you are not only helping to 
make things harder for others like you, you are also helping 
making things worse for yourself. No person is an island, and 
increasing the clout of capital over the working class is going to affect 
you directly or indirectly. As such, the whole scheme is counter-productive
as it effectively means workers have to experience insecurity, fear of 
downsizing and stagnating wages during their working lives in order to 
have slightly more money when they retire (assuming that they are fortunate 
enough to retire when the stock market is doing well rather than during
one of its regular periods of financial instability, of course).
</p><p>
This highlights one of the tricks the capitalists are using against 
us, namely to get us to buy into the system through our fear of old age. 
Whether it is going into lifelong debt to buy a home or putting our 
money in the stock market, we are being encouraged to buy into the 
system which exploits us and so put its interests above our own. This 
makes us more easily controlled. We need to get away from living in fear 
and stop allowing ourselves to be deceived into behaving like "stakeholders" 
in a Plutocratic system where most shares really are held by an elite. As 
can be seen from the use of pension funds to buy out firms, increase the 
size of transnationals and downsize the workforce, such "stakeholding" 
amounts to sacrificing both the present </b>and</b> the future while others
benefit.
</p><p>
The real enemies are <b>not</b> working people who take part in such
pension schemes. It is the people in power, those who manage the 
pension schemes and companies, who are trying to squeeze every 
last penny out of working people to finance higher profits and stock
prices -- which the unemployment and impoverishment of workers on 
a world-wide scale aids. They control the governments of the world. 
They are making the "rules" of the current system. Hence the 
importance of limiting the money they have available, of creating 
community-based credit unions and mutual risk insurance co-operatives 
to increase our control over our money which can be used to empower 
ourselves, aid our struggles and create our own alternatives (see  
<a href="secB3.html#secb32">section B.3.2</a> for more 
anarchist views on mutual credit and its uses). Money, representing 
as it does the power of capital and the authority of the boss, is not 
"neutral" and control over it plays a role in the class struggle. We 
ignore such issues at our own peril. 
</p>

<a name="secj57"><h2>J.5.7 Do most anarchists think mutual credit is sufficient 
to abolish capitalism?</h2></a>

<p>
The short answer is no, they do not. While the Individualist and Mutualist 
Anarchists do think that mutual banking is the only sure way of abolishing 
capitalism, most anarchists do not see it as an end in itself. Few think that 
capitalism can be reformed away in the manner assumed by Proudhon or Tucker.
</p><p>
In terms of the latter, increased access to credit does not address the 
relations of production and market power which exist within the economy 
and so any move for financial transformation has to be part of a broader 
attack on all forms of capitalist social power in order to be both useful 
and effective. In short, assuming that Individualist Anarchists do manage
to organise a mutual banking scheme it cannot be assumed that as long as
firms use wage-labour that any spurt in economic activity will have a 
long term effect of eliminating exploitation. What is more likely is that
an economic crisis would develop as lowering unemployment results in a 
profits squeeze (as occurred in, say, the 1970s). Without a transformation
in the relations of production, the net effect would be the usual capitalist 
business cycle.
</p><p>
For the former, for mutualists like Proudhon, mutual credit <b>was</b> seen 
as a means of transforming the relations of production (as discussed in 
<a href="secG4.html#secg41">section G.4.1</a>, unlike Proudhon, Tucker
did not oppose wage-labour and just sought to make it non-exploitative).
For Proudhon, mutual credit was seen as the means by which co-operatives
could be created to end wage-labour. The organisation of labour would 
combine with the organisation of credit to end capitalism as workers
would fund co-operative firms and their higher efficiency would soon
drive capitalist firms out of business. Thus <i>"the Exchange Bank is the 
organisation of labour's greatest asset</i> as it allowed <i>"the new 
form of society to be defined and created among the workers."</i> [Proudhon, 
<b>Correspondance</b>, vol. 2, pp. 307-8] <i>"To organise credit and 
circulation is to increase production,"</i> Proudhon stressed, <i>"to 
determine the new shapes of industrial society."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
vol. 6, p. 372]  So, overtime, co-operative credit would produce co-operative 
production while associated labour would increase the funds available to 
associated credit. For Proudhon the <i>"organisation of credit and 
organisation of labour amount to  one and the same"</i> and by recognising 
this the workers <i>"would soon have wrested alienated capital back again, 
through their organisation and competition."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, 
vol. 1, pp. 59-60]
</p><p>
Bakunin, while he was <i>"convinced that the co-operative will be the 
preponderant form of social organisation in the future"</i> and could 
<i>"hardly oppose the creation of co-operatives associations"</i> now 
as <i>we find them necessary in many respects,"</i> argued that Proudhons 
hope for gradual change by means of mutual banking and the higher 
efficiency of workers co-operatives were unlikely to be realised. 
This was because such claims <i>"do not take into account the vast 
advantage that the bourgeoisie enjoys against the proletariat through 
its monopoly on wealth, science, and secular custom, as well as through 
the approval -- overt or covert but always active -- of States and through 
the whole organisation of modern society. The fight is too unequal for 
success reasonably to be expected."</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, p. 153
and p. 152] Thus capitalism <i>"does not fear the competition of workers' 
associations -- neither consumers', producers', nor mutual credit 
associations -- for the simple reason that workers' organisations, left 
to their own resources, will never be able to accumulate sufficiently 
strong aggregations of capital capable of waging an effective struggle 
against bourgeois capital."</i> [<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, 
p. 293] 
</p><p>
So, for most anarchists, it is only in combination with other forms of 
working class self-activity and self-management that mutualist institutions 
could play an important role in the class struggle. In other words, few
anarchists think that mutualist credit or co-operatives are enough in 
themselves to end capitalism. Revolutionary action is also required -- 
such as the expropriation of capital by workers associations.
</p><p>
This does not mean anarchists reject co-operation under capitalism. By 
creating a network of mutual banks to aid in creating co-operatives, union 
organising drives, supporting strikes (either directly by gifts/loans or 
funding consumer co-operatives which could supply food and other essentials 
free or at a reduced cost), mutualism can be used as a means of helping 
build libertarian alternatives within the capitalist system. Such 
alternatives, while making life better under the current system, also 
play a role in overcoming that system by aiding those in struggle. Thus 
Bakunin:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"let us co-operate in our common enterprise to make our lives a little
bit more supportable and less difficult. Let us, wherever possible,
establish producer-consumer co-operatives and mutual credit societies which,
though under the present economic conditions they cannot in any real or
adequate way free us, are nevertheless important inasmuch they train the
workers in the practices of managing the economy and plant the precious 
seeds for the organisation of the future."</i> [<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, 
p. 173]
</blockquote></p><p>
So while few anarchists think that mutualism would be enough in itself, 
it can play a role in the class struggle. As a compliment to direct 
action and workplace and community struggle and organisation, mutualism 
has an important role in working class self-liberation. For example, 
community unions (see <a href="secJ5.html#secj51">section J.5.1</a>) 
could create their own mutual banks and money which could be used to 
fund co-operatives and support social struggle. In this way a 
healthy communalised co-operative sector could develop within 
capitalism, overcoming the problems of isolation facing workplace 
co-operatives (see <a href="secJ5.html#secj511">section J.5.11</a>) as 
well as providing solidarity for those in struggle.
</p><p>
Mutual banking can be a way of building upon and strengthening 
the anarchistic social relations within capitalism. For even under 
capitalism and statism, there exists extensive mutual aid and, indeed, 
anarchistic and communistic ways of living. For example, communistic 
arrangements exist within families, between friends and lovers and 
within anarchist organisations. Mutual credit could be a means of 
creating a bridge between this alternative (gift) "economy" 
and capitalism. The mutualist alternative economy would help 
strength communities and bonds of trust between individuals, and 
this would increase the scope of the communistic sector as more 
and more people help each other without the medium of exchange. In 
other words, mutualism will help the gift economy that exists within 
capitalism to grow and develop.

<p>
<a name="secj58"><h2>J.5.8 What would a modern system of mutual banking look like?</h2></a>

<p>
One scenario for an updated system of mutual banking would be for a
community to begin issuing an alternative currency accepted as money 
by all individuals within it. Let us call this currency-issuing 
association a "mutual barter clearinghouse," or just "clearinghouse" 
for short. 
</p><p>
The clearinghouse would have a twofold mandate: first, to extend credit
at cost to members; second, to manage the circulation of credit-money 
within the system, charging only a small service fee (one percent or 
less) sufficient to cover its costs of operation, including labour costs 
involved in issuing credit and keeping track of transactions, insuring 
itself against losses from uncollectable debts, and so forth. Some 
current experiments in community money use labour time worked as their 
basis (thus notes would be marked one-hour) while others have notes 
tied to the value of the state currency (thus, say, a Scottish town 
would issue pounds assumed to be the same as a British pound note).
</p><p>
The clearinghouse would be organised and function as follows. People could
join the clearinghouse by pledging a certain amount of property (including
savings) as collateral. On the basis of this pledge, an account would be
opened for the new member and credited with a sum of mutual pounds
equivalent to some fraction of the assessed value of the property pledged.
The new member would agree to repay this amount plus the service fee into
their account by a certain date. The mutual pounds could then be transferred 
through the clearinghouse to the accounts of other members, who have agreed 
to receive mutual money in payment for all debts or work done. 
</p><p>
The opening of this sort of account is, of course, the same as taking out
a "loan" in the sense that a commercial bank "lends" by extending credit
to a borrower in return for a signed note pledging a certain amount of
property as security. The crucial difference is that the clearinghouse
does not purport to be "lending" a sum of money that it <b>already has,</b> as
is fraudulently claimed by commercial banks. Instead it honestly admits
that it is creating new money in the form of credit. New accounts can
also be opened simply by telling the clearinghouse that one wants an
account and then arranging with other people who already have balances to
transfer mutual money into one's account in exchange for goods or
services. 
</p><p>
Another form of mutual credit are LETS systems. In this a number of 
people get together to form an association. They create a unit of exchange
(which is equal in value to a unit of the national currency usually),
choose a name for it and offer each other goods and services priced in
these units. These offers and wants are listed in a directory which is
circulated periodically to members. Members decide who they wish to
trade with and how much trading they wish to do. When a transaction is
completed, this is acknowledged with a "cheque" made out by the buyer 
and given to the seller. These are passed on to the system accounts
administration which keeps a record of all transactions and periodically
sends members a statement of their accounts. The accounts administration
is elected by, and accountable to, the membership and information about
balances is available to all members.
</p><p>
Unlike the first system described, members do not have to present property
as collateral. Members of a LETS scheme can go into "debt" without it,
although "debt" is the wrong word as members are not so much going into
debt as committing themselves to do some work within the system in the
future and by so doing they are creating spending power. The willingness
of members to incur such a commitment could be described as a service to
the community as others are free to use the units so created to trade
themselves. Indeed, the number of units in existence exactly matches
the amount of real wealth being exchanged. The system only works if 
members are willing to spend. It runs on trust and builds up trust 
as the system is used. 
</p><p>
It is likely that a fully functioning mutual banking system would
incorporate aspects of both these systems. The need for collateral may be
used when members require very large loans while the LETS system of
negative credit as a commitment to future work would be the normal
function of the system. If the mutual bank agrees a maximum limit for
negative balances, it may agree to take collateral for transactions
that exceed this limit. However, it is obvious that any mutual banking
system will find the best means of working in the circumstances it
finds itself.
</p>

<a name="secj59"><h2>J.5.9 How does mutual credit work?</h2></a>

<p>  
Let us consider an example of how business would be transacted using 
mutual credit within capitalism. There are two possibilities, depending 
on whether the mutual credit is based upon whether the creditor can 
provide collateral or not. We will take the case with collateral first.
</p><p>
Suppose that A, an organic farmer, pledges as collateral a certain plot 
of land that she owns and on which she wishes to build a house. The land 
is valued at, say, 40,000 in the capitalist market and by pledging the land, 
A is able to open a credit account at the clearinghouse for, say, 30,000 
in mutual money. She does so knowing that there are many other members of 
the system who are carpenters, electricians, plumbers, hardware suppliers, 
and so on who are willing to accept mutual pounds in payment for their 
products or services.
</p><p>
It is easy to see why other subscriber-members, who have also obtained
mutual credit and are therefore in debt to the clearinghouse, would be 
willing to accept such notes in return for their goods and services. They 
need to collect mutual currency to repay their debts. Why would someone 
who is not in debt for mutual currency be willing to accept it as money? 
</p><p>
To see why, let us suppose that B, an underemployed carpenter, currently
has no account at the clearinghouse but that he knows about it and the 
people who operate and use it. After examining its list of members and 
becoming familiar with the policies of the new organisation, he is 
convinced that it does not extend credit frivolously to untrustworthy
recipients who are likely to default. He also knows that if he contracts
to do the carpentry on A's new house and agrees to be paid for his work in
mutual money, he will then be able to use it to buy groceries, clothes, 
and other goods and services from various people in the community who 
already belong to the system. 
</p><p>
Thus B will be willing, and perhaps even eager (especially if the economy
is in recession and regular money is tight) to work for A and receive
payment in mutual credit. For he knows that if he is paid, say, 8,000
in mutual money for his labour on A's house, this payment constitutes, in
effect, 20 percent of a mortgage on her land, the value of which is
represented by her mutual credit. B also understands that A has promised
to repay this mortgage by producing new value -- that is, by growing
organic fruits and vegetables and selling them to other members of the 
system -- and that it is this promise to produce new wealth which gives 
her mutual credit its value as a medium of exchange. 
</p><p>
To put this point slightly differently, A's mutual credit can be thought
of as a lien against goods or services which she will create in the future. 
As security of this guarantee, she agrees that if she is unable for some 
reason to fulfil her obligation, the land she has pledged will be sold to 
other members. In this way, a value sufficient to cancel her debt (and 
probably then some) will be returned to the system. This provision insures 
that the clearinghouse is able to balance its books and gives members 
confidence that mutual money is sound.
</p><p>
It should be noticed that since new wealth is continually being created,
the basis for new mutual credit is also being created at the same time. 
Thus, suppose that after A's new house has been built, her daughter, C,
along with a group of friends D, E, F, . . . , decide that they want to
start a co-operative restaurant but that C and her friends do not have 
enough collateral to obtain a start-up loan. A, however, is willing to 
co-sign a note for them, pledging her new house (valued at say, 80,000) 
as security. On this basis, C and her partners are able to obtain 60,000 
worth of mutual credit, which they then use to buy equipment, supplies, 
furniture, advertising, etc. to start their restaurant. 
</p><p>
This example illustrates one way in which people without property are able
to obtain credit in the new system. Another way -- for those who cannot
find (or perhaps do not wish to ask) someone with property to co-sign for
them -- is to make a down payment and then use the property which is to be
purchased on credit as security, as in the current method of obtaining a
home or other loan. With mutual credit, however, this form of financing
can be used to purchase anything, including the means of production and
other equipment required for workers to work for themselves instead of a
boss.
</p><p>
Which brings us to the case of an individual without means for providing
collateral -- say, for example Z, a plumber, who currently does not own 
the land she uses. In such a case, Z, who still desires work done, would
contact other members of the mutual bank with the skills she requires.
Those members with the appropriate skills and who agree to work with
her commit themselves to do the required tasks. In return, Z gives
them a check in mutual dollars which is credited to their account and
deducted from hers. She does not pay interest on this issue of credit
and the sum only represents her willingness to do some work for other
members of the bank at some future date.
</p><p>
The mutual bank does not have to worry about the negative balance, as
this does not create a loss within the group as the minuses which have
been incurred have already created wealth (pluses) within the system
and it stays there. It is likely, of course, that the mutual bank
would agree an upper limit on negative balances and require some form
of collateral for credit greater than this limit, but for most exchanges
this would be unlikely to be relevant.
</p><p>
It is important to remember that mutual money has no <b>intrinsic</b> value, 
since they cannot be redeemed (at the mutual bank) in gold or anything else. 
All they are promises of future labour. They are a mere medium for the
facilitation of exchange used to facilitate the increase production of goods
and services (as discussed in <a href="secG3.html#sech36">section G.3.6</a>,
it is this increase which ensures that mutual credit is not inflationary). 
This also ensures enough work for all and, ultimately, the end of exploitation
as working people can buy their own means of production and so end wage-labour
by self-employment and co-operation.
</p><p>
For more information on how mutual banking is seen to work see the collection
of Proudhon's works collected in <b>Proudhon's Solution to the Social Problem</b>.
William B. Greene's <b>Mutual Baking</b> and Benjamin Tucker's <b>Instead of a 
Book</b> should also be consulted.
</p>

<a name="secj510"><h2>J.5.10 Why do anarchists support co-operatives?</h2></a>

<p>
Support for co-operatives is a common feature in anarchist writings. In fact,
support for democratic workplaces is as old as use of the term anarchist to
describe our ideas. So why do anarchists support co-operatives? It is 
because they are the only way to guarantee freedom in production and so 
<i>"the co-operative system . . . carries within it the germ of the future 
economic order."</i> [Bakunin, <b>The Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, p. 385]
</p><p>
Anarchists support all kinds of co-operatives: housing, food, consumer, credit 
and workplace ones. All forms of co-operation are useful as they accustom
their members to work together for their common benefit as well as ensuring
extensive experience in managing their own affairs. As such, all forms of
co-operatives are (to some degree) useful examples of self-management and 
anarchy in action. Here we will concentrate on producer co-operatives as
only these can <b>replace</b> the capitalist mode of production. They 
are examples of a new mode of production, one based upon associated, 
not wage, labour. As long as wage-labour exists within industry and 
agriculture then capitalism remains and no amount of other kinds of
co-operatives will end it. If wage slavery exists, then so will 
exploitation and oppression and anarchy will remain but a hope.
</p><p>
Co-operatives are the <i>"germ of the future"</i> for two reasons. 
Firstly, co-operatives are based on one worker, one vote. In other words 
those who do the work manage the workplace within which they do it (i.e. 
they are based on workers' self-management). Thus co-operatives are an example 
of the "horizontal" directly democratic organisation that anarchists support 
and so are an example of <i>"anarchy in action"</i> (even if in an imperfect 
way) within capitalism. Secondly, they are an example of working class 
self-help and self-activity. Instead of relying on others to provide work, 
co-operatives show that production can be carried on without the existence 
of a class of masters employing a class of order takers.
</p><p>
Workplace co-operatives also present evidence of the viability of an anarchist
economy. It is well established that co-operatives are usually more 
productive and efficient than their capitalist equivalents. This indicates
that hierarchical workplaces are <b>not</b> required in order to produce
useful goods and indeed can be harmful. It also indicates that the capitalist 
market does not actually allocate resources efficiently nor has any tendency
to do so. 
</p><p>
So why should co-operatives be more efficient? Firstly, there 
are the positive effects of increased liberty. Co-operatives, by 
abolishing wage slavery, obviously increase the liberty of those who 
work in them. Members take an active part in the management of their working 
lives and so authoritarian social relations are replaced by libertarian ones. 
Unsurprisingly, this liberty also leads to an increase in productivity -- 
just as wage labour is more productive than slavery, so associated labour 
is more productive than wage slavery. As Kropotkin argued: <i>"the only 
guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the 
instruments of labour . . . man really produces most when he works in 
freedom, when he has a certain choice in his occupations, when he has no 
overseer to impede him, and lastly, when he sees his work bringing profit 
to him and to others who work like him, but bringing in little to idlers."</i> 
[<b>The Conquest of Bread</b>, p. 145]
</p><p>
There are also the positive advantages associated with participation
(i.e. self-management, liberty in other words). Within a self-managed, 
co-operative workplace, workers are directly involved in decision
making and so these decisions are enriched by the skills, experiences 
and ideas of all members of the workplace. In the words of Colin
Ward:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"You can be <b>in</b> authority, or you can be <b>an</b> 
authority, or you can <b>have</b> authority. The first 
derives from your rank in some chain of
command, the second derives special knowledge, and the third from
special wisdom. But knowledge and wisdom are not distributed in 
order of rank, and they are no one person's monopoly in any 
undertaking. The fantastic inefficiency of any hierarchical 
organisation -- any factory, office, university, warehouse or 
hospital -- is the outcome of two almost invariable characteristics.
One is that the knowledge and wisdom of the people at the bottom
of the pyramid finds no place in the decision-making leadership
hierarchy of the institution. Frequently it is devoted to making
the institution work in spite of the formal leadership structure,
or alternatively to sabotaging the ostensible function of the
institution, because it is none of their choosing. The other is
that they would rather not be there anyway: they are there
through economic necessity rather than through identification
with a common task which throws up its own shifting and
functional leadership.
</p><p>
"Perhaps the greatest crime of the industrial system is the way
it systematically thwarts the investing genius of the majority
of its workers."</i> [<b>Anarchy in Action</b>, p. 41]
</p><p></blockquote>
Also, as workers also own their place of work, they have an interest 
in developing the skills and abilities of their members and, obviously, 
this also means that there are few conflicts within the workplace. 
Unlike capitalist firms, there is no conflict between bosses and 
wage slaves over work loads, conditions or the division of value 
created between them. All these factors will increase the quality,
quantity and efficiency of work, increase efficient utilisation of
available resources and aids the introduction of new techniques and
technologies.
</p><p>
Secondly, the increased efficiency of co-operatives results from the benefits
associated with co-operation itself. Not only does co-operation increase
the pool of knowledge and abilities available within the workplace and
enriches that source by communication and interaction, it also ensures that 
the workforce are working together instead of competing and so wasting
time and energy. As Alfie Kohn notes (in relation to investigations of 
in-firm co-operation):
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Dean Tjosvold . . . conducted [studies] at utility companies,
manufacturing plants, engineering firms, and many other kinds of 
organisations. Over and over again, Tjosvold has found that 'co-operation 
makes a work force motivated' whereas 'serious competition undermines 
co-ordination' . . . Meanwhile, the management guru . . . T. Edwards 
Demming, has declared that the practice of having employees compete 
against each other is 'unfair [and] destructive. We cannot afford this 
nonsense any longer . . . [We need to] work together on company problems 
[but] annual rating of performance, incentive pay, [or] bonuses cannot 
live with team work . . . What takes the joy out of learning . . . [or 
out of] anything? Trying to be number one.'"</i> [<b>No Contest</b>, p. 240]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thirdly, there are the benefits associated with increased equality. Studies 
prove that business performance deteriorates when pay differentials become 
excessive. In a study of over 100 businesses (producing everything from 
kitchen appliances to truck axles), researchers found that the greater the 
wage gap between managers and workers, the lower their product's quality. 
[Douglas Cowherd and David Levine, <i>"Product Quality and Pay Equity,"</i>
<b>Administrative Science Quarterly</b>, No. 37, pp. 302-30] Businesses 
with the greatest inequality were plagued with a high employee turnover 
rate. Study author David Levine said: <i>"These organisations weren't able to 
sustain a workplace of people with shared goals."</i> [quoted by John Byrne, 
<i>"How high can CEO pay go?"</i> <b>Business Week</b>, April 22, 1996]
The negative effects of income inequality can also be seen on a national
level as well. Economists Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini conducted a
thorough statistical analysis of historical inequality and growth, and found
that nations with more equal incomes generally experience faster productive
growth. [<i>"Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?"</i>, <b>American Economic 
Review</b> no. 84, pp. 600-21] Numerous other studies have also confirmed 
their findings (the negative impacts on inequality on all aspects of life
are summarised by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in <b>The Spirit Level: 
Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better</b>). Real life yet again 
disproves the assumptions of capitalism: inequality harms us all, even the 
capitalist economy which produces it.
</p><p>
This is to be expected. Workers, seeing an increasing amount of the value
they create being monopolised by top managers and a wealthy elite and not
re-invested into the company to secure their employment prospects, will
hardly be inclined to put in that extra effort or care about the quality
of their work. Bosses who use the threat of unemployment to extract
more effort from their workforce are creating a false economy. While they
will postpone decreasing profits in the short term due to this adaptive 
strategy (and enrich themselves in the process) the pressures placed
upon the system will bring harsh long term effects -- both in terms of 
economic crisis (as income becomes so skewed as to create realisation 
problems and the limits of adaptation are reached in the face of 
international competition) and social breakdown.
</p><p>
As would be imagined, co-operative workplaces tend to be more egalitarian 
than capitalist ones. This is because in capitalist firms, the incomes of
top management must be justified (in practice) to a small number of
individuals (namely, those shareholders with sizeable stock in the firm), 
who are usually quite wealthy and so not only have little to lose in 
granting huge salaries but are also predisposed to see top managers as
being very much like themselves and so are entitled to comparable incomes
(and let us not forget that <i>"corporate boards, largely selected by the 
CEO, hire compensation experts, almost always chosen by the CEO, to determine 
how much the CEO is worth."</i> [Paul Krugman, <b>The Conscience of a Liberal</b>, 
p. 144]). In contrast, the incomes of management in worker controlled firms
have to be justified to a workforce whose members experience the relationship
between management incomes and their own directly and who, no doubt, are
predisposed to see their elected managers as being workers like themselves
and accountable to them. Such an egalitarian atmosphere will have a positive 
impact on production and efficiency as workers will see that the value
they create is not being accumulated by others but distributed according
to work actually done (and not control over power). In the Mondragon 
co-operatives, for example, the maximum pay differential is 9 to 1 
(increased from 3 to 1 after much debate in a response to outside pressures 
from capitalist firms hiring away workers) while (in the USA) the average 
CEO is paid well over 100 times the average worker (up from 41 times in 1960).
</p><p>
Therefore, we see that co-operatives prove the advantages of (and the
inter-relationship between) key anarchist principles such as liberty, 
equality, solidarity and self-management. Their application, whether all 
together or in part, has a positive impact on efficiency and work -- and, 
as we will discuss in 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj512">section J.5.12</a>, 
the capitalist market actively <b>blocks</b> the spread of these more
egalitarian and efficient productive techniques instead of encouraging 
them. Even by its own standards, capitalism stands condemned -- it does 
not encourage the efficient use of resources and actively places barriers 
in their development.
</p><p>
From all this it is clear to see why co-operatives are supported by anarchists.
We are <i>"convinced that the co-operative could, potentially, replace capitalism
and carries within it the seeds of economic emancipation . . . The workers
learn from this precious experience how to organise and themselves conduct
the economy without guardian angels, the state or their former employers."</i>
[Bakunin, <b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, p. 399] Co-operatives give us a useful 
insight into the possibilities of a free, socialist, economy. Even within the 
hierarchical capitalist economy, co-operatives show us that a better 
future is possible and that production can be organised in a co-operative 
fashion and that by so doing we can reap the individual and social 
benefits of working together as equals.
</p><p>
However, this does not mean that all aspects of the co-operative movement 
find favour with anarchists. As Bakunin pointed out, <i>"there are two kinds
of co-operative: bourgeois co-operation, which tends to create a privileged 
class, a sort of new collective bourgeoisie organised into a stockholding 
society: and truly Socialist co-operation, the co-operation of the future 
which for this very reason is virtually impossible of realisation at 
present."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 385] In other words, while co-operatives 
are the germ of the future, in the present they are often limited by the 
capitalist environment they find themselves, narrow their vision to
just surviving within the current system and so adapt to it.
</p><p>
For most anarchists, the experience of co-operatives has proven without
doubt that, however excellent in principle and useful in practice, if they
are kept within capitalism they cannot become the dominant mode of production
and free the masses (see <a href="secJ5.html#secj511">section J.5.11</a>). 
In order to fully develop, co-operatives must be part of a wider social 
movement which includes community and industrial unionism and the creation 
of a anarchistic social framework which can encourage <i>"truly Socialist 
co-operation"</i> and discourage <i>"bourgeois co-operation."</i> As Murray 
Bookchin correctly argued: <i>"Removed from a libertarian municipalist [or 
other anarchist] context and movement focused on achieving revolutionary 
municipalist goals as a <b>dual power</b> against corporations and the 
state, food [and other forms of] co-ops are little more than benign 
enterprises that capitalism and the state can easily tolerate with no fear 
of challenge."</i> [<b>Democracy and Nature</b>, no. 9, p. 175]
</p><p>
So while co-operatives are an important aspect of anarchist ideas and
practice, they are not the be all or end all of our activity. Without a
wider social movement which creates all (or at least most) of the future
society in the shell of the old, co-operatives will never arrest the growth
of capitalism or transcend the narrow horizons of the capitalist economy.
</p>

<a name="secj511"><h2>J.5.11 If workers really want self-management then why are there so few co-operatives?</h2></a>

<p>
Supporters of capitalism suggest that producer co-operatives would spring 
up spontaneously if workers really wanted them. To quote leading propertarian 
Robert Nozick, under capitalism <i>"it is open to any wealthy radical or group 
of workers to buy an existing factory or establish a new one, and to . . . 
institute worker-controlled, democratically-run firms."</i> If <i>"they are 
superior, by market standards, to their more orthodox competitors"</i> then 
<i>"there should be little difficulty in establishing successful factories 
of this sort."</i> Thus there is <i>"a means of realising the worker-control 
scheme that can be brought about by the voluntary actions of people in a free 
[sic!] society."</i> [<b>Anarchy, State, and Utopia</b>, pp. 250-2] So if 
such co-operatives were really economically viable and desired by workers, 
they would spread until eventually they undermined capitalism. Propertarians 
conclude that since this is not happening, it must be because workers' 
self-management is either economically inefficient or is not really 
attractive to workers, or both.
</p><p>
David Schweickart has decisively answered this argument by showing that 
the reason there are not more producer co-operatives is structural:  
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"A worker-managed firm lacks an expansionary dynamic. When a capitalist
enterprise is successful, the owner can increase her profits by
reproducing her organisation on a larger scale. She lacks neither the
means nor the motivation to expand. Not so with a worker-managed firm. 
Even if the workers have the means, they lack the incentive, because
enterprise growth would bring in new workers with whom the increased
proceeds would have to be shared.  Co-operatives, even when prosperous, 
do not spontaneously grow. But if this is so, then each new co-operative
venture (in a capitalist society) requires a new wealthy radical or a new
group of affluent radical workers willing to experiment. Because such
people doubtless are in short supply, it follows that the absence of a
large and growing co-operative movement proves nothing about the viability
of worker self-management, nor about the preferences of workers."</i> 
[<b>Against Capitalism</b>, p. 239]
</blockquote></p><p>
This means that in, say, a mutualist economy there would be more firms 
of a smaller size supplying a given market compared to capitalism. So
a free economy, with the appropriate institutional framework, need not 
worry about unemployment for while individual co-operatives may not
expand as fast as capitalist firms, more co-operatives would be set up
(see <a href="secI3.html#seci31">section I.3.1</a> for why the neo-classical
analysis of co-operatives which Nozick implicitly invokes is false). In
short, the environment within which a specific workplace operates is just 
as important as its efficiency.
</p><p>
This is important, as the empirical evidence is strong that self-management
<b>is</b> more efficient than wage-slavery. As economist Geoffrey M. Hodgson
summarises, support for <i>"the proposition that participatory and 
co-operatives firms enjoy greater productivity and longevity comes from 
a large amount of . . . case study and econometric evidence"</i> and <i>"the 
weight of testimony"</i> is <i>"in favour or [indicates] a positive correlation 
between participation and productivity."</i> [<i>"Organizational Form and 
Economic Evolution: A critique of the Williamsonian hypothesis"</i>, 
pp. 98-115, <b>Democracy and Efficiency in Economic Enterprises</b>, 
U. Pagano and R. E. Rowthorn (eds.), p. 100] This is ignored by the 
likes of Nozick in favour of thought-experiments rooted in the dubious 
assumptions of bourgeois economics. He implicitly assumed that because 
most firms are hierarchical today then they must be more efficient. In 
short, Nozick abused economic selection arguments by simply assuming, 
without evidence, that the dominant form of organisation is, <i>ipso facto</i>, 
more efficient. In reality, this is not the case. 
</p><p>
The question now becomes one of explaining why, if co-operation is more
efficient than wage-slavery, does economic liberty not displace capitalism? 
The awkward fact is that individual efficiency is not the key to
survival as such an argument <i>"ignores the important point that the 
selection of the 'fitter' in evolution is not simply relative to the 
less successful but is dependent upon the general circumstances and 
environment in which selection takes place."</i> Moreover, an
organism survives because it birth rate exceeds its death rate. If more 
capitalist firms secure funding from capitalist banks then, obviously, it 
is more likely for them to secure dominance in the economy simply because
there are more of them rather than because they are more efficient. As such,
large numbers do not imply greater efficiency as the <i>"rapid flow of new
entrants of hierarchical form"</i> may <i>"swamp the less hierarchical firms 
even if other selection processes are working in favour of the latter."</i> 
[Hodgson, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 100 and p. 103] Thus:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"The degree of fitness of any organism can only be meaningfully considered in 
relation to its environment . . . the market may help to select firms that are 
fit for the market, but these surviving firms needn't be the most 'efficient' 
in some absolute sense. In fact, the specification of 'the market' as a 
selection process is incomplete because the market is only one institution 
of many needed to specify an environment."</i> [Michael J. Everett and Alanson 
P. Minkler, <i>"Evolution and organisational choice in nineteenth-century 
Britain"</i>, pp. 51-62, <b>Cambridge Journal of Economics</b> vol. 17, No. 1, 
p. 53]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
As an obvious example there are the difficulties co-operatives can face in 
finding access to credit facilities required by them from capitalist banks 
and investors. As Tom Cahill notes, co-operatives in the nineteenth century 
<i>"had the specific problem of . . . <b>giving credit</b>"</i> while 
<i>"<b>competition with price cutting capitalist</b> firms . . . 
highlighting the inadequate reservoirs of the under-financed co-ops."</i> 
[<i>"Co-operatives and Anarchism: A contemporary Perspective"</i>, 
pp 235-58, <b>For Anarchism</b>, Paul Goodway (ed.), p. 239] This points 
to a general issue, namely that there are often difficulties for 
co-operatives in raising money: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Co-operatives in a capitalist environment are likely to have more
difficulty in raising capital. Quite apart from ideological hostility 
(which may be significant), external investors will be reluctant to put 
their money into concerns over which they will have little or no control 
-- which tends to be the case with a co-operative. Because co-operatives 
in a capitalist environment face special difficulties, and because they 
lack the inherent expansionary dynamic of a capitalist firm, it is hardy 
surprising that they are far from dominant."</i> [Schweickart, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p 240]
</blockquote></p><p>
</p><p>
In addition, the <i>"return on capital is limited"</i> in co-operatives. [Tom
Cahill, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 247] This means that investors are less-likely
to invest in co-operatives, and so co-operatives will tend to suffer from a 
lack of investment. So despite <i>"the potential efficiency of such 
[self-managed] workplaces"</i>, capitalism <i>"may be systematically biased 
against participatory workplaces"</i> and as <i>"a result the economy can be 
trapped in a socially suboptimal position."</i> Capital market issues, amongst 
others, help explain this as such firms <i>"face higher transaction costs for
raising equity and loans."</i> [David I. Levine and Laura D'Andrea Tyson, 
<i>"Participation, Productivity, and the Firm's Environment"</i>, pp. 183-237, 
<b>Paying for Productivity</b>, Alan S. Blinder (ed.), pp. 235-6 and p. 221]
</p><p>
Tom Cahill outlines the investment problem when he writes that the 
<i>"financial problem"</i> is a major reason why co-operatives failed
in the past, for <i>"basically the unusual structure and aims of
co-operatives have always caused problems for the dominant sources
of capital. In general, the finance environment has been hostile
to the emergence of the co-operative spirit."</i> He also notes that 
they were <i>"unable to devise structuring to <b>maintain a boundary</b> 
between those who work and those who own or control . . . It is understood 
that when outside investors were allowed to have power within the co-op 
structure, co-ops lost their distinctive qualities."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
pp. 238-239] So even <b>if</b> co-operative do attract investors, the 
cost of so doing may be to transform the co-operatives into capitalist 
firms. So while all investors experience risk, this <i>"is even more acute"</i> 
in co-operatives <i>"because investors must simultaneously cede control 
<b>and</b> risk their entire wealth. Under an unlimited liability rule, 
investors will rationally demand some control over the firm's operations 
to protect their wealth. Since [co-operatives] cannot cede control without 
violating one of the organisation's defining tenets, investors will demand 
an investment premium, a premium not required from equity investments."</i> 
[Everett and Minkler, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 52] Needless to say, such a 
premium is a strain on a co-operative and makes it harder to survive 
simply because it has higher costs for debt repayment. If such external 
investment is not forthcoming, then the co-operative is dependent on 
retained earnings and its members' savings which, unsurprisingly, are 
often insufficient.
</p><p> 
All of which suggests that Nozick's assertion that <i>"don't say that its 
against the class interest of investors to support the growth of some 
enterprise that if successful would end or diminish the investment system. 
Investors are not so altruistic. They act in personal and not their 
class interests"</i> is false. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 252-3] Nozick is correct, 
to a degree, but he forgets that class interest is a fusion of individual 
interests. Given a choice between returns from investments in capitalist 
firms because a management elite has similar interests in maximising unpaid
labour and workers in a co-operative which controls any surplus, the investor 
will select the former. Moreover, lack of control by investors plays its role
as they cannot simply replace the management in a co-operative -- that power
lies in the hands of the workforce. The higher premiums required by investors
to forsake such privileges place a burden on the co-operative, so reducing 
their likelihood of getting funds in the first place or surviving and, 
needless to say, increasing the risk that investors face. Thus the 
personal and class interest of investors merge, with the personal 
desire to make money ensuring that the class position of the individual 
is secured. This does not reflect the productivity or efficiency of the 
investment -- quite the reverse! -- it reflects the social function of 
wage labour in maximising profits and returns on capital 
(see <a href="secJ5.html#secj512">next section</a> 
for more on this). In other words, the personal interests of investors will 
generally support their class interests (unsurprisingly, as class interests 
are not independent of personal interests and will tend to reflect them!).
</p><p>
There are other structural problems as well. Co-operatives face the negative 
externalities generated by the capitalist economy they operate within. For 
one thing, since their pay levels are set by members' democratic vote, 
co-operatives tend to be more egalitarian in their income structure. This 
means that in a capitalist environment, co-operatives are in constant danger 
of having their most skilled members hired away by capitalist firms who can,
due to their resources, out-bid the co-operative. While this may result
in exploitation of the worker, the capitalist firm has the resources to pay
higher wages and so it makes sense for them to leave (<i>"As to the employer 
who pays an engineer twenty times more than a labourer, it is simply due to 
personal interest; if the engineer can economise $4000 a year on the cost of 
production; the employer pays him $800 . . . He parts with an extra $40 when 
he expects to gain $400 by it; and this is the essence of the Capitalist 
system."</i> [Kropotkin, <b>The Conquest of Bread</b>, p. 165]). However, in 
a co-operative system there would not be the inequalities of economic wealth 
(created by capitalist firms and finance structures) which allows such 
poaching to happen.
</p><p>
There are cultural issues as well. As Jon Elster points out, it is a 
<i>"truism, but an important one, that workers' preferences are to a large
extent shaped by their economic environment. Specifically, there is a 
tendency to adaptive preference formation, by which the actual mode of
economic organisation comes to be perceived as superior to all others."</i>
[<i>"From Here to There"</i>, pp. 93-111, <b>Socialism</b>, Paul, Miller 
Jr., Paul, and Greenberg (eds.), p. 110] In other words, people 
view "what is" as given and feel no urge to change to "what could be." 
In the context of creating alternatives within capitalism, this can 
have serious effects on the spread of alternatives and indicates the 
importance of anarchists encouraging the spirit of revolt to break 
down this mental apathy.
</p><p>
This acceptance of "what is" can be seen, to some degree, by some
companies which meet the formal conditions for co-operatives, for
example ESOP owned firms in the USA, but lack effective workers' control. 
ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) enable a firm's workforce
to gain the majority of a company's shares but the unequal distribution 
of shares amongst employees prevents the great majority of workers from
having any effective control or influence on decisions. Unlike real
co-operatives (based on "one worker, one vote") these firms are based
on "one share, one vote" and so have more in common with capitalist
firms than co-operatives.
</p><p>
Finally, there is the question of history, of path dependency. Path 
dependency is the term used to describe when the set of decisions 
one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions 
made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be 
relevant. This is often associated with the economics of technological 
change in a society which depends quantitatively and/or qualitatively 
on its own past (the most noted example this is the QWERTY keyboard, 
which would not be in use today except that it happened to be chosen 
in the nineteenth century). Evolutionary systems are path dependent, 
with historical events pushing development in specific directions. Thus,
if there were barriers against or encouragement for certain forms of
organisational structure in the past then the legacy of this will 
continue to dominate due to the weight of history rather than 
automatically being replaced by new, more efficient, forms.
</p><p>
This can be seen from co-operatives, as <i>"labour managed firms were 
originally at a substantial disadvantage compared to their capitalist 
counterparts"</i> as the law <i>"imposed additional risks and costs"</i> 
on them while <i>"early financial instruments were ill-suited to the 
establishment and continuation of worker co-operatives. The subsequent 
coevolution of firms and supporting institutions involved a path-dependent 
process where labour-managed firms were at a continual disadvantage, even 
after many of the earlier impediments were removed."</i> [Hodgson, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 103] <i>"Historically,"</i> argue Everett and Minkler 
<i>"both company and co-operative law were incompatible with democratic 
decision-making by workers."</i> The law ensured that the <i>"burden was 
more costly"</i> to labour-managed firms and these <i> "obstacles led to 
an environment dominated by investor-controlled firms (capitalist firms) 
in which informal constraints (behaviours and routines) emerged to 
reinforce the existing institutions. A path-dependent process 
incorporating these informal constraints continued to exclude [their] 
widespread formation."</i> When the formal constraints which prevented 
the formation of co-operatives were finally removed, the <i>"informal 
constraints"</i> produced as a result of these <i>"continued to prevent 
the widespread formation"</i> of co-operatives. So the lack of co-operatives 
<i>"can thus be explained quite independently of any of the usual efficiency 
criteria."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 58 and p. 60] Nor should we forget 
that the early industrial system was influenced by the state, particularly 
by rewarding war related contracts to hierarchical firms modelled on the 
military and that the state rewarded contracts to run various state services
and industries to capitalist firms rather than, as Proudhon urged, to 
workers associations.
</p><p>
However, <i>"there are several good reasons why more efficient firms need not 
always be selected in a competitive and 'evolutionary' process."</i> [Hodgson,
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 99] So it is not efficiency as such which explains the 
domination of capitalist firms for <i>"empirical studies suggest that 
co-operatives are at least as productive as their capitalist counterparts,"</i> 
with many having <i>"an excellent record, superior to conventionally organised 
firms over a long period."</i> [Jon Elster, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 96] So all 
things being equal, co-operatives are more efficient than their capitalist 
counterparts -- but when co-operatives compete in a capitalist economy, 
all things are <b>not</b> equal. As David Schweickart argues: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Even if worker-managed firms are preferred by the vast majority, and 
even if they are more productive, a market initially dominated by capitalist 
firms may not select for them. The common-sense neo-classical dictum that only 
those things that best accord with people's desires will survive the struggle 
of free competition has never been the whole truth with respect to anything; 
with respect to workplace organisation it is barely a half-truth."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 240]
</blockquote></p><p>
It is illuminating, though, to consider why Nozick ignored the substantial 
empirical evidence that participation <b>is</b> more efficient than 
hierarchy and, as a result, why <i>"market criteria"</i> does not result 
in the more productive and efficient co-operative production displacing 
the authoritarian workplace. Far better, it must be supposed, to just 
assume that the dominant form of workplace is more "efficient" and  
implicitly invoke a quasi-Darwinian individualistic selection mechanism 
in an ahistorical and institution-less framework. So people like Nozick 
who suggest that because worker co-operatives are few in number that 
this means they are forced out by competition because they are 
inefficient miss the point. A key reason for this lack of co-operative 
firms, argues Hodgson, <i>"is that competitive selection depends on the 
economic context, and while the institutional context of a capitalist 
system may be more conducive for the capitalist firm, a different 
context may favour the co-operative firm."</i> [<b>Economics and Utopia</b>, 
p. 288] 
</p><p>
As discussed in 
<a href="secI3.html#seci35">section I.3.5</a>, Proudhon was well aware 
that for mutualism to prosper and survive an appropriate institutional 
framework was required (the <i>"agro-industrial federation"</i> and mutual 
banking). So an organisation's survival also depends on the co-evolution of 
supporting informal constraints. If a co-operative is isolated within a 
capitalist economy, without co-operative institutions around it, it comes 
as no great surprise to discover that they find it difficult to survive 
never mind displace its (usually larger and well-established) capitalist 
competitors.
</p><p>
Yet in spite of these structural problems and the impact of previous state
interventions, co-operatives do exist under capitalism but just because 
they can survive in such a harsh environment it does not automatically mean 
that they shall <b>replace</b> that economy. Co-operatives face pressures 
to adjust to the dominant mode of production. The presence of wage 
labour and investment capital in the wider economy will tempt successful 
co-operatives to hire workers or issue shares to attract new investment. In 
so doing, however, they may end up losing their identities as co-operatives 
by diluting ownership (and so re-introducing exploitation by having to pay 
non-workers interest) or by making the co-operative someone's boss (which 
creates <i>"a new class of workers who exploit and profit from the labour 
of their employees. And all this fosters a bourgeois mentality."</i> 
[Bakunin, <b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, p. 399]).
</p><p>
Hence the pressures of working in a capitalist market may result in 
co-operatives pursuing activities which may result in short term gain or
survival, but are sure to result in harm in the long run. Far from
co-operatives slowly expanding within and changing a capitalist environment 
it is more likely that capitalist logic will expand into and change the
co-operatives that work in it (this can be seen from the Mondragon 
co-operatives, where there has been a slight rise in the size of wage 
labour being used and the fact that the credit union has, since 1992, 
invested in non-co-operative firms). These externalities imposed upon 
isolated co-operatives within capitalism (which would not arise within a 
fully co-operative context) block local moves towards anarchism. The idea 
that co-operation will simply win out in competition within well developed
capitalist economic systems is just wishful thinking. Just because a 
system is more liberatory, just and efficient does not mean it will 
survive or prosper in an authoritarian economic and social environment.
</p><p>
So both theory and history suggests that isolated co-operatives will more likely 
adapt to capitalist realities than remain completely true to their co-operative 
promise. For most anarchists, therefore, co-operatives can reach their full 
potential only as part of a social movement aiming to change society. Only as 
part of a wider movement of community and workplace unionism, with mutualist 
banks to provide long terms financial support and commitment, can co-operatives 
be communalised into a network of solidarity and support that will reduce the 
problems of isolation and adaptation. Hence Bakunin:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"We want co-operation too . . . But at the same time, we know that it 
prosper, developing itself fully and freely, embracing all human industry, 
only when it is based on equality, when all capital and every instrument
of labour, including the soil, belong to the people by right of collective
property . . . Once this is acknowledged we hardly oppose the creation of 
co-operative associations; we find them necessary in many respects . . . 
they accustom the workers to organise, pursue, and manage their interests 
themselves, without interference either by bourgeois capital or by bourgeois 
control . . . [they must be] founded on the principle of solidarity and
collectivity rather than on bourgeois exclusivity, then society will
pass from its present situation to one of equality and justice without
too many great upheavals."</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, p. 153]
</blockquote></p><p>
Until then, co-operatives will exist within capitalism but not replace it
by market forces -- only a <b>social</b> movement and collective action can
fully secure their full development. This means that while anarchists 
support, create and encourage co-operatives within capitalism, we 
understand <i>"the impossibility of putting into practice the 
co-operative system under the existing conditions of the predominance 
of bourgeois capital in the process of production and distribution 
of wealth."</i> Because of this, most anarchists stress the need 
for more combative organisations such as industrial and community 
unions and other bodies <i>"formed,"</i> to use Bakunin's words, <i>"for 
the organisation of toilers against the privileged world"</i> in order to 
help bring about a free society. [<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, 
p. 385]
</p><p>
Finally, we must note an irony with Nozick's argument, namely the notion 
that capitalism (his <i>"free society"</i>) allows a <i>"voluntary"</i>
path to economic liberty. The irony is two-fold. First, the creation of 
capitalism was the result of state action (see 
<a href="secF8.html">section F.8</a>). While working class people are
expected to play by the rules decreed by capitalism, capitalists have
never felt the urge to do so. It is this state coercion which helped 
create the path-dependency which stops <i>"the market"</i> selecting 
more efficient and productive ways of production. Secondly, Nozick's 
own theory of (property) rights denies that stolen wealth can be 
legitimately transferred. In other words, expecting workers to meekly
accept previous coercion by seeking investors to fund their attempts
at economic liberty, as Nozick did, is implicitly accepting that
theft is property. While such intellectual incoherence is to be expected 
from defenders of capitalism, it does mean that propertarians really
have no ground to oppose working class people following the advice of
libertarians and expropriating their workplaces. In other words, 
transforming the environment and breaking the path-dependency which 
stops economic liberty from flowering to its full potential.
</p>

<a name="secj512"><h2>J.5.12 If self-management were more efficient then 
surely the market would force capitalists to introduce it?</h2></a>

<p>
Some supporters of capitalism argue that if self-management really were 
more efficient than hierarchy, then capitalists would be forced to 
introduce it by the market. As propertarian Robert Nozick argued,
if workers' control meant that <i>"the productivity of the workers in a
factory <b>rises</b> . . . then the individual owners pursuing profits
will reorganise the productive process. If the productivity of workers 
<b>remains the same</b> . . . then in the process of competing for 
labourers firms will alter their internal work organisation."</i> This 
meant that <i>"individual owners pursuing profits . . . will reorganise 
the productive process."</i> [<b>Anarchy, State, and Utopia</b>, p. 248]
As this has not happened then self-management cannot be more efficient. 
</p><p>
While such a notion seems plausible in theory, in practice it is flawed
as <i>"there is a vast quantity of empirical evidence demonstrating that 
participatory workplaces tend to be places of higher morale and greater 
productivity than authoritarian workplaces."</i> [David Schweickart , 
<b>Against Capitalism</b>, p. 228] So Nozick's thought experiment is 
contradicted by reality. Capitalism places innumerable barriers to the 
spread of worker empowering structures within production, in spite (perhaps, 
as we will see, <b>because</b>) of their (well-documented) higher efficiency 
and productivity. This can be seen from the fact that while the increased 
efficiency associated with workers' participation and self-management 
has attracted the attention of many capitalist firms, the few experiments 
conducted have failed to spread even though they were extremely successful.
This is due to the nature of capitalist production and the social 
relationships it produces.
</p><p>
As we noted in <a href="secD10.html">section D.10</a>, 
capitalist firms (particularly in the west) 
made a point of introducing technologies and management structures that 
aimed to deskill and disempower workers. In this way, it was hoped 
to make the worker increasingly subject to "market discipline" (i.e. easier 
to train, so increasing the pool of workers available to replace any specific 
worker and so reducing workers power by increasing management's power to fire 
them). Of course, what actually happens is that after a short period of 
time while management gained the upper hand, the workforce found newer 
and more effective ways to fight back and assert their productive power 
again. While for a short time the technological change worked, over
the longer period the balance of forces changed, so forcing management to
continually try to empower themselves at the expense of the workforce.
</p><p>
It is unsurprising that such attempts to reduce workers to order-takers 
fail. Workers' experiences and help are required to ensure production
actually happens at all. When workers carry out their orders strictly and
faithfully (i.e. when they "work to rule") production stops. So most 
capitalists are aware of the need to get workers to "co-operate" 
within the workplace to some degree. A few capitalist companies have
gone further. Seeing the advantages of fully exploiting (and we do mean 
exploiting) the experience, skills, abilities and thoughts of their employers 
which the traditional authoritarian capitalist workplace denies them, some
have introduced various schemes to "enrich" and "enlarge" work, increase 
"co-operation" between workers and their bosses, to encourage workers to 
"participate" in their own exploitation by introducing <i>"a modicum of 
influence, a strictly limited area of decision-making power, a voice -- 
at best secondary -- in the control of conditions of the workplace."</i>
[Sam Dolgoff, <b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 81] The management 
and owners still have the power and still reap unpaid labour from the 
productive activity of the workforce. 
</p><p>
David Noble provides a good summary of the problems associated with
experiments in workers' self-management within capitalist firms:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Participation in such programs can indeed be a liberating and 
exhilarating experience, awakening people to their own untapped 
potential and also to the real possibilities of collective worker 
control of production. As one manager described the former pilots 
[workers in a General Electric program]: 'These people will never 
be the same again. They have seen that things can be different.' 
But the excitement and enthusiasm engendered by such programs, as 
well as the heightened sense of commitment to a common purpose, can 
easily be used against the interests of the work force. First, that 
purpose is not really 'common' but is still determined by management 
alone, which continues to decide what will be produced, when, and 
where. Participation in production does not include participation 
in decisions on investment, which remains the prerogative of 
ownership. Thus participation is, in reality, just a variation of
business as usual -- taking orders -- but one which encourages
obedience in the name of co-operation.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Second, participation programs can contribute to the creation
of an elite, and reduced, work force, with special privileges
and more 'co-operative' attitudes toward management -- thus at
once undermining the adversary stance of unions and reducing
membership . . .</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Third, such programs enable management to learn from workers
-- who are now encouraged by their co-operative spirit to
share what they know -- and, then, in Taylorist tradition,
to use this knowledge against the workers. As one former pilot
reflected, 'They learned from the guys on the floor, got their
knowledge about how to optimise the technology and then, once
they had it, they eliminated the Pilot Program, put that 
knowledge into the machines, and got people without any
knowledge to run them -- on the Company's terms and without
adequate compensation. They kept all the gains for themselves.'
. . .</i></blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Fourth, such programs could provide management with a way to 
circumvent union rules and grievance procedures or eliminate 
unions altogether."</i> [<b>Forces of Production</b>, pp. 318-9]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Capitalist introduced and supported "workers' control" is very 
like the situation when a worker receives stock in the company 
they work for. If it goes a little way toward redressing 
the gap between the value produced by that person's labour and 
the wage they receive for it, that in itself cannot be a totally 
bad thing (although this does not address the issue of workplace 
hierarchy and its social relations). The real downside of this 
is the "carrot on a stick" enticement to work harder -- if you 
work extra hard for the company, your stock will be worth more. 
Obviously, though, the bosses get rich off you, so the more you 
work, the richer they get, the more you are getting ripped off. It 
is a choice that anarchists feel many workers cannot afford to make -- 
they need or at least want the money -- but we believe that it
does not work as workers simply end up working harder, for less. 
After all, stocks do not represent all profits (large amounts of which 
end up in the hands of top management) nor are they divided just among 
those who labour. Moreover, workers may be less inclined to take direct 
action, for fear that they will damage the value of "their" company's 
stock, and so they may find themselves putting up with longer, more 
intense work in worse conditions.
</p><p>
Be that as it may, the results of such capitalist experiments in 
"workers' control" are interesting and show <b>why</b> self-management
will not spread by market forces. According to one expert: <i>"There is 
scarcely a study in the entire literature which fails to demonstrate that 
satisfaction in work is enhanced or . . .productivity increases occur from 
a genuine increase in worker's decision-making power. Findings of such 
consistency . . . are rare in social research."</i> [Paul B. Lumberg, 
quoted by Herbert Gintis, <i>"The nature of Labour Exchange and the Theory 
of Capitalist Production"</i>, <b>Radical Political Economy</b>, vol. 1, 
Samuel Bowles and Richard Edwards (eds.), p. 252] In spite of these 
findings, a <i>"shift toward participatory relationships is scarcely 
apparent in capitalist production"</i> and this is <i>"not compatible 
with the neo-classical assertion as to the efficiency of the internal 
organisation of capitalist production."</i> [Gintz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 252] Economist William Lazonick indicates the reason when he writes that 
<i>"[m]any attempts at job enrichment and job enlargement in the first half 
of the 1970s resulted in the supply of more and better effort by workers. Yet 
many 'successful' experiments were cut short when the workers whose work 
had been enriched and enlarged began questioning traditional management 
prerogatives inherent in the existing hierarchical structure of the 
enterprise."</i> [<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 282]
</p><p>
This is an important result, as it indicates that the ruling sections within 
capitalist firms have a vested interest in <b>not</b> introducing such schemes, 
even though they are more efficient methods of production. As can easily be 
imagined, managers have a clear incentive to resist participatory schemes 
(as David Schweickart notes, such resistance, <i>"often bordering on sabotage, 
is well known and widely documented"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 229]). As an 
example of this David Noble discusses a scheme ran by General Electric in 
the late 1960s:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"After considerable conflict, GE introduced a quality of work life
program . . . which gave workers much more control over the machines
and the production process and eliminated foremen. Before long, by
all indicators, the program was succeeding -- machine use, output
and product quality went up; scrap rate, machine downtime, worker
absenteeism and turnover when down, and conflict on the floor
dropped off considerably. Yet, little more than a year into the
program -- following a union demand that it be extended throughout
the shop and into other GE locations -- top management abolished
the program out of fear of losing control over the workforce. 
Clearly, the company was willing to sacrifice gains in technical
and economic efficiency in order to regain and insure management
control."</i> [<b>Progress Without People</b>, p. 65f]
</p><p></blockquote>
Simply put, managers and capitalists can see that workers' control 
experiments expose the awkward fact that they are not needed, that 
their role is not related to organising production but exploiting 
workers. They have no urge to introduce reforms which will ultimately 
make themselves redundant. Moreover, most enjoy the power that comes 
with their position and have no desire to see it ended. This also 
places a large barrier in the way of workers' control. Interestingly, 
this same mentality explains why capitalists often support fascist
regimes: <i>"The anarchist Luigi Fabbri termed fascism a <b>preventative 
counter-revolution</b>; but in his essay he makes the important point 
that the employers, particularly in agriculture, were not so much moved 
by fear of a general revolution as by the erosion of their own authority 
and property rights which had already taken place locally: 'The bosses 
felt they were no longer bosses.'"</i> [Adrian Lyttelton, <i>"Italian 
Fascism"</i>, pp. 81-114, <b>Fascism: a Reader's Guide</b>, p. 91]
</p><p>
However, it could be claimed that owners of stock, being concerned by 
the bottom-line of profits, could <b>force</b> management to introduce 
participation. By this method, competitive market forces would ultimately 
prevail as individual owners, pursuing profits, reorganise production and 
participation spreads across the economy. Indeed, there are a few firms 
that <b>have</b> introduced such schemes but there has been no tendency 
for them to spread. This contradicts "free market" capitalist economic 
theory which states that those firms which introduce more efficient 
techniques will prosper and competitive market forces will ensure that 
other firms will introduce the technique. 
</p><p>
This has not happened for three reasons. 
</p><p>
Firstly, the fact is that within "free market" capitalism <b>keeping</b> 
(indeed strengthening) skills and power in the hands of the workers 
makes it harder for a capitalist firm to maximise profits (i.e. unpaid 
labour). It strengthens the power of workers, who can use that power to 
gain increased wages (i.e. reduce the amount of surplus value they produce 
for their bosses). Workers' control also leads to a usurpation of capitalist 
prerogatives -- including their share of revenues and their ability to 
extract more unpaid labour during the working day. While in the short 
run workers' control may lead to higher productivity (and so may be toyed 
with), in the long run, it leads to difficulties for capitalists to maximise 
their profits:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"given that profits depend on the integrity of the labour exchange, 
a strongly centralised structure of control not only serves the 
interests of the employer, but dictates a minute division of labour 
irrespective of considerations of productivity. For this reason, 
the evidence for the superior productivity of 'workers control' 
represents the most dramatic of anomalies to the neo-classical
theory of the firm: worker control increases the effective amount 
of work elicited from each worker and improves the co-ordination of
work activities, while increasing the solidarity and delegitimising
the hierarchical structure of ultimate authority at its root; hence
it threatens to increase the power of workers in the struggle over 
the share of total value."</i> [Gintz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 264]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
A workplace which had extensive workers participation would 
hardly see the workers agreeing to reduce their skill levels, 
take a pay cut or increase their pace of work simply to enhance 
the profits of capitalists. Simply put, profit maximisation is not 
equivalent to efficiency. Getting workers to work longer, more 
intensely or in more unpleasant conditions can increase profits 
but it does not yield more output for the <b>same</b> inputs. Workers' 
control would curtail capitalist means of enhancing profits by 
changing the quality and quantity of work. It is <b>this</b> 
requirement which also aids in understanding why capitalists will 
not support workers' control -- even though it is more efficient, 
it reduces capitalist power in production. Moreover, demands to 
change the nature of workers' inputs into the production process 
in order to maximise profits for capitalists would provoke a 
struggle over the intensity of work, working hours, and over the 
share of value added going to workers, management and owners and so 
destroy the benefits of participation. 
</p><p>
Thus power within the workplace plays a key role in explaining 
why workers' control does not spread -- it reduces the ability
of bosses to extract more unpaid labour from workers.
</p><p>
The second reason is related to the first. It too is based on 
the power structure within the company but the power is related to 
control over the surplus produced by the workers rather than the 
ability to control how much surplus is produced in the first place
(i.e. power over workers). Hierarchical management is the way to 
ensure that profits are channelled into the hands of a few. By 
centralising power, the surplus value produced by workers can be 
distributed in a way which benefits those at the top (i.e. management 
and capitalists). This explains the strange paradox of workers' 
control experiments being successful but being cancelled by management. 
This is easily explained once the hierarchical nature of capitalist
production (i.e. of wage labour) is acknowledged. Workers' control, 
by placing (some) power in the hands of workers, undermines the 
authority of management and, ultimately, their power to control the 
surplus produced by workers and allocate it as they see fit. Thus, 
while workers' control does reduce costs, increase efficiency and 
productivity (i.e. maximise the difference between prices and costs) 
it (potentially) reduces the power of management and owners to 
allocate that surplus as they see fit. Indeed, it can be argued that 
hierarchical control of production exists solely to provide for the 
accumulation of capital in a few hands, <b>not</b> for efficiency or 
productivity (see Stephan A. Margin, <i>"What do Bosses do? The 
Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production"</i>, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 178-248). 
</p><p>
As David Noble argues, power is the key to understanding capitalism,
<b>not</b> the drive for profits as such:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"In opting for control [over the increased efficiency of workers'
control] . . . management . . . knowingly and, it must be assumed,
willingly, sacrificed profitable production. . . . [This] illustrates 
not only the ultimate management priority of power over both production 
and profit within the firm, but also the larger contradiction between
the preservation of private power and prerogatives, on the one
hand, and the social goals of efficient, quality, and useful
production, on the other . . . </i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"It is a common confusion, especially on the part of those trained
in or unduly influenced by formal economics (liberal and Marxist
alike), that capitalism is a system of profit-motivated, efficient
production. This is not true, nor has it ever been. If the drive
to maximise profits, through private ownership and control over
the process of production, has served historically as the primary 
means of capitalist development, it has never been the end of that 
development. The goal has always been domination (and the power
and privileges that go with it) and the preservation of 
domination. There is little historical evidence to support the
view that, in the final analysis, capitalists play by the rules
of the economic game imagined by theorists. There is ample
evidence to suggest, on the other hand, that when the goals
of profit-making and efficient production fail to coincide 
with the requirements of continued dominance, capital will
resort to more ancient means: legal, political, and, if need
be, military. Always, behind all the careful accounting, lies
the threat of force. This system of domination has been
legitimated in the past by the ideological invention that
private ownership of the means of production and the pursuit
of profit via production are always ultimately beneficial to
society. Capitalism delivers the goods, it is argued, better,
more cheaply, and in larger quantity, and in so doing, fosters
economic growth . . . The story of the Pilot Program -- and
it is but one among thousands like it in U.S. industry --
raises troublesome questions about the adequacy of this 
mythology as a description of reality."</i> [<b>Forces of 
Production</b>, pp. 321-2]
</blockquote></p><p>
Hierarchical organisation (domination) is essential to 
ensure that profits are controlled by a few and can, therefore, 
be allocated by them in such a way to ensure their power and
privileges. By undermining such authority, workers' control 
also undermines that power to maximise profits in a certain
direction even though it increases "profits" (the difference
between prices and costs) in the abstract. As workers' control 
starts to extend (or management sees its potential to spread) 
into wider areas such as investment decisions, how to allocate 
the surplus (i.e. profits) between wages, investment, dividends, 
management pay and so on, then they will seek to end the project
in order to ensure their power over both the workers and the
surplus they, the workers, produce (this is, of course, related 
to the issue of lack of control by investors in co-operatives 
raised in the <a href="secJ5.html#secj511">last section</a>).
</p><p>
As such, the opposition by managers to workers' control will be
reflected by those who actually own the company who obviously 
would not support a regime which will not ensure the maximum return 
on their investment. This would be endangered by workers' control, 
even though it is more efficient and productive, as control over 
the surplus rests with the workers and not a management elite 
with similar interests and aims as the owners -- an egalitarian 
workplace would produce an egalitarian distribution of surplus, 
in other words (as proven by the experience of workers' co-operatives). 
In the words of one participant of the GE workers' control project: 
<i>"If we're all one, for manufacturing reasons, we must share in 
the fruits equitably, just like a co-op business."</i> [quoted by 
Noble, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 295] Such a possibility is one few owners 
would agree to. 
</p><p>
Thirdly, to survive within the "free" market means to concentrate on 
the short term. Long terms benefits, although greater, are irrelevant. 
A free market requires profits <b>now</b> and so a firm is under 
considerable pressure to maximise short-term profits by market forces. 
Participation requires trust, investment in people and technology and 
a willingness to share the increased value added that result from workers'
participation with the workers who made it possible. All these factors 
would eat into short term profits in order to return richer rewards in the 
future. Encouraging participation thus tends to increase long term
gains at the expense of short-term ones (to ensure that workers do 
not consider participation as a con, they must experience <b>real</b>
benefits in terms of power, conditions and wage rises). For firms within 
a free market environment, they are under pressure from share-holders 
and their financiers for high returns as soon as possible. If a company 
does not produce high dividends then it will see its stock fall as 
shareholders move to those companies that do. Thus the market <b>forces</b> 
companies to act in such ways as to maximise short term profits. 
</p><p>
If faced with a competitor which is not making such investments (and
which is investing directly into deskilling technology or intensifying
work loads which lowers their costs) and so wins them market share, or
a downturn in the business cycle which shrinks their profit margins 
and makes it difficult for the firm to meet its commitments to its 
financiers and workers, a company that intends to invest in people 
and trust will usually be rendered unable to do so. Faced with the 
option of empowering people in work or deskilling them and/or using 
the fear of unemployment to get workers to work harder and follow 
orders, capitalist firms have consistently chosen (and probably 
preferred) the latter option (as occurred in the 1970s).
</p><p>
Thus, workers' control is unlikely to spread through capitalism because
it entails a level of working class consciousness and power that is
incompatible with capitalist control: <i>"If the hierarchical division 
of labour is necessary for the extraction of surplus value, then worker 
preferences for jobs threatening capitalist control will not be implemented."</i> 
[Gintis, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 253] The reason why it is more efficient, 
ironically, ensures that a capitalist economy will not select it. The 
"free market" will discourage empowerment and democratic workplaces, at 
best reducing "co-operation" and "participation" to marginal issues (and 
management will still have the power of veto).
</p><p>
The failure of moves towards democratic workplaces within capitalism are 
an example of that system in conflict with itself -- pursuing its objectives
by methods which constantly defeat those same objectives. As Paul Carden
argued, the <i>"capitalist system can only maintain itself by trying to
reduce workers into mere order-takers . . . At the same time the system
can only function as long as this reduction is never achieved . . . [for]
the system would soon grind to a halt . . . [However] capitalism constantly
has to <b>limit</b> this <b>participation</b> (if it didn't the workers 
would soon start deciding themselves and would show in practice now 
superfluous the ruling class really is)."</i> [<b>Modern Capitalism and
Revolution</b>, pp. 45-46] Thus "workers' control" within a capitalist 
firm is a contradictory thing -- too little power and it is meaningless, 
too much and workplace authority structures and capitalist share of, and 
control over, value added can be harmed. Attempts to make oppressed, 
exploited and alienated workers work if they were neither oppressed, 
exploited nor alienated will always fail.
</p><p>
For a firm to establish committed and participatory relations internally,
it must have external supports -- particularly with providers of
finance (which is why co-operatives benefit from credit unions and
co-operating together). The price mechanism proves self-defeating to
create such supports and that is why we see "participation" more fully
developed within Japanese and German firms (although it is still along
way from fully democratic workplaces), who have strong, long term
relationships with local banks and the state which provides them with
the support required for such activities. As William Lazonick notes,
Japanese industry had benefited from the state ensuring <i>"access to
inexpensive long-term finance, the sine qua non of innovating 
investment strategies"</i> along with a host of other supports, such as
protecting Japanese industry within their home markets so they
could <i>"develop and utilise their productive resources to the point 
where they could attain competitive advantage in international
competition."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 305] The German state provides its
industry with much of the same support.
</p><p>
Therefore, "participation" within capitalist firms will have little or
no tendency to spread due to the actions of market forces. In spite of 
such schemes almost always being more efficient, capitalism will not
select them because they empower workers and make it hard for capitalists
to generate and control their profits. Hence capitalism, by itself, will 
have no tendency to produce more libertarian organisational forms within 
industry. Those firms that do introduce such schemes will be the exception 
rather than the rule (and the schemes themselves will be marginal in most 
respects and subject to veto from above). For such schemes to spread, 
collective action is required (such as state intervention to create the 
right environment and support network or -- from an anarchist point of 
view -- union and community direct action). 
</p><p>
Such schemes, as noted above, are just forms of self-exploitation, 
getting workers to help their robbers and so <b>not</b> a development 
anarchists seek to encourage. We have discussed this here just to be 
clear that, firstly, such forms of structural reforms are <b>not</b> 
self-management, as managers and owners still have the real power, 
and, secondly, even if such forms are somewhat liberatory and more
efficient, market forces will not select them precisely <b>because</b>
the latter is dependent on the former. Thirdly, they would still be 
organised for exploitation as workers would not be controlling all 
the goods they produced. As with an existing capitalist firm, part 
of their product would be used to pay interest, rent and profit.
For anarchists <i>"self-management is not a new form of mediation between
workers and their bosses . . . [it] refers to the very process by which
the workers themselves <b>overthrow</b> their managers and take on their
own management and the management of production in their own workplace."</i>
[Dolgoff, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 81] Hence our support for co-operatives, unions
and other self-managed structures created and organised from below by 
and for working class people by their own collective action.
</p>

<a name="secj513"><h2>J.5.13 What are Modern Schools?</h2></a>

<p>
Modern schools are alternative schools, self-managed by students, teachers
and parents which reject the authoritarian schooling methods of the
modern "education" system. Such schools have been a feature of the anarchist
movement since the turn of the 20th century while interest in libertarian
forms of education has existed in anarchist theory from the beginning.
All the major anarchist thinkers, from Godwin through Proudhon, Bakunin 
and Kropotkin to modern activists like Colin Ward, have stressed the 
importance of libertarian (or rational) education, education that 
develops all aspects of the student (mental and physical -- and so termed
integral education) as well as encouraging critical thought and mental 
freedom. The aim of such education is ensure that the <i>"industrial worker, 
the man [sic!] of action and the intellectual would all be rolled into one."</i> 
[Proudhon, quoted by Steward Edward, <b>The Paris Commune</b>, p. 274]
</p><p>
Anyone involved in radical politics, constantly and consistently challenges 
the role of the state's institutions and their representatives within our 
lives. The role of bosses, the police, social workers, the secret service, 
managers, doctors and priests are all seen as part of a hierarchy 
which exists to keep us, the working class, subdued. It is relatively 
rare, though, for the left-wing to call into question the role of teachers. 
Most left wing activists and a large number of libertarians believe that 
education is always good. 
</p><p>
Those involved in libertarian education believe the contrary. They
believe that national education systems exist only to produce citizens
who will be blindly obedient to the dictates of the state, citizens who
will uphold the authority of government even when it runs counter to
personal interest and reason, wage slaves who will obey the orders of
their boss most of the time and consider being able to change bosses
as freedom. They agree with William Godwin (one of the earliest critics
of national education systems) when he wrote that <i>"the project of a 
national education ought to be discouraged on account of its obvious 
alliance with national government . . . Government will not fail to 
employ it to strengthen its hand and perpetuate its institutions . . . 
Their views as instigator of a system will not fail to be analogous to 
their views in their political capacity."</i> [quoted by Colin Ward, 
<b>Anarchy in Action</b>, p. 81]
</p><p>
With the growth of industrialism in the 19th century state schools triumphed, 
not through a desire to reform but as an economic necessity.  Industry 
did not want free thinking individuals, it wanted workers, instruments 
of labour, and it wanted them punctual, obedient, passive and willing 
to accept their disadvantaged position. According to Nigel Thrift, many 
employers and social reformers became convinced that the earliest 
generations of workers were almost impossible to discipline (i.e. to get 
accustomed to wage labour and workplace authority). They looked to children, 
hoping that <i>"the elementary school could be used to break the labouring 
classes into those habits of work discipline now necessary for factory 
production . . . Putting little children to work at school for very 
long hours at very dull subjects was seen as a positive virtue, for 
it made them habituated, not to say naturalised, to labour and fatigue."</i> 
[quoted by Juliet B. Schor, <b>The Overworked American</b>, p. 61]
</p><p>
Thus supporters of Modern Schools recognise that the role of education 
is an important one in maintaining hierarchical society -- for government
and other forms of hierarchy (such as wage labour) must always depend on 
the opinion of the governed. Francisco Ferrer (the most famous libertarian
educator) argued that:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Rulers have always taken care to control the education of the people. They
know their power is based almost entirely on the school and they insist on
retaining their monopoly. The school is an instrument of domination in the
hands of the ruling class."</i> [quoted by Clifford Harper, <b>Anarchy: A 
Graphic Guide</b>, p. 100]
</blockquote></p><p>
Little wonder, then, that Emma Goldman argued that <i>"modern methods of 
education"</i> have <i>"little regard for personal liberty and originality of 
thought. Uniformity and imitation is [its] motto."</i> The school 
<i>"is for the child what the prison is for the convict and the barracks 
for the solder -- a place where everything is being used to break the 
will of the child, and then to pound, knead, and shape it into a being 
utterly foreign to itself."</i> Hence the importance of Modern Schools. It 
is a means of spreading libertarian education within a hierarchical society 
and undercut one of the key supports for that society -- the education system. 
Instead of hierarchical education, Modern schools exist to <i>"develop the
individual through knowledge and the free play of characteristic traits, so 
that [the child] may become a social being, because he had learned to know 
himself, to know his relation to his fellow[s]."</i> [<b>Red Emma Speaks</b>, 
pp. 141-2, p. 140 and p. 145] It would be an education for freedom, not for 
subservience:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Should the notion of freedom but awaken in man, free men dream only 
of freeing themselves now and for all time: but instead, all we do is
churn out learned men who adapt in the most refined manner to every 
circumstance and fall to the level of slavish, submissive souls. For the
most part, what are our fine gentlemen brimful of intellect and culture?
Sneering slavers and slaves themselves."</i> [Max Stirner, <b>No Gods, No 
Masters</b>, vol. 1, p. 12]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
The Modern School Movement (also known as the Free School Movement)
over the past century has been an attempt to represent part of this
concern about the dangers of state and church schools and the need 
for libertarian education. The idea of libertarian education is that 
knowledge and learning should be linked to real life processes as well 
as personal usefulness and should not be the preserve of a special 
institution. Thus Modern Schools are an attempt to establish an 
environment for self development in an overly structured and 
rationalised world. An oasis from authoritarian control and as 
a means of passing on the knowledge to be free: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The underlying principle of the Modern School is this: education is
a process of drawing out, not driving in; it aims at the possibility
that the child should be left free to develop spontaneously, directing
his own efforts and choosing the branches of knowledge which he desires 
to study . . . the teacher . . . should be a sensitive instrument responding 
to the needs of the child . . . a channel through which the child may attain 
so much of the ordered knowledge of the world as he shows himself ready to 
receive and assimilate."</i> [Goldman, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 146]
</blockquote></p><p>
The Modern School bases itself on libertarian education techniques.
Libertarian education, very broadly, seeks to produce children who 
will demand greater personal control and choice, who think for
themselves and question all forms of authority:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"We don't hesitate to say we want people who will continue to develop.
People constantly capable of destroying and renewing their surroundings 
and themselves: whose intellectual independence is their supreme power, 
which they will yield to none; always disposed for better things, eager 
for the triumph of new ideas, anxious to crowd many lives into the life 
they have. It must be the aim of the school to show the children that 
there will be tyranny as long as one person depends on another."</i> 
[Ferrer, quoted by Harper, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 100]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus the Modern School insists that the child is the centre of gravity 
in the education process -- and that education is just that, <b>not</b>
indoctrination:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"I want to form a school of emancipation, concerned with banning from the
mind whatever divides people, the false concepts of property, country and
family so as to attain the liberty and well-being which all desire. I will
teach only simple truth. I will not ram dogma into their heads. I will not
conceal one iota of fact. I will teach not what to think but how to think."</i>
[Ferrer, quoted by Harper, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 99-100]
</blockquote></p><p>
The Modern School has no rewards or punishments, exams or mark -- the 
everyday tortures of conventional schooling. And because practical 
knowledge is more useful than theory, lessons were often held in factories, 
museums or the countryside. The school was also used by parents, and 
Ferrer planned a Popular University.
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Higher education, for the privileged few, should be for the general 
public, as every human has a right to know; and science, which is 
produced by observers and workers of all countries and ages, ought 
not be restricted to class."</i> [Ferrer, quoted by Harper, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 100]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus Modern Schools are based on encouraging self-education in a
co-operative, egalitarian and libertarian atmosphere in which the
pupil (regardless of age) can develop themselves and their interests
to the fullest of their abilities. In this way Modern Schools seek
to create anarchists by a process of education which respects the
individual and gets them to develop their own abilities in a 
conducive setting. 
</p><p>
Modern Schools have been a constant aspect of the anarchist movement
since the late 1890s. The movement was started in France by Louise
Michel and Sebastien Faure, where Francisco Ferrer became acquainted
with them. He founded his Modern School in Barcelona in 1901, and
by 1905 there were 50 similar schools in Spain (many of them funded
by anarchist groups and trade unions and, from 1919 onward, by the 
C.N.T. -- in all cases the autonomy of the schools was respected). In 
1909, Ferrer was falsely accused by the Spanish government of leading an 
insurrection and executed in spite of world-wide protest and overwhelming 
proof of his innocence. His execution, however, gained him and his 
educational ideas international recognition and inspired a Modern School 
progressive education movement across the globe.
</p><p>
However, for most anarchists, Modern Schools are not enough in 
themselves to produce a libertarian society. They agree with Bakunin:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"For individuals to be moralised and become fully human . . .
three things are necessary: a hygienic birth, all-round education,
accompanied by an upbringing based on respect for labour, reason,
equality, and freedom and a social environment wherein each human
individual will enjoy full freedom and really by, <b>de jure</b> 
and <b>de facto</b>, the equal of every other.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"Does this environment exist? No. Then it must be established. . . 
[otherwise] in the existing social environment . . . on leaving
[libertarian] schools they [the student] would enter a society
governed by totally opposite principles, and, because society is 
always stronger than individuals, it would prevail over them . . .
[and] demoralise them."</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, p, 174]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Because of this, Modern Schools must be part of a mass working class
revolutionary movement which aims to build as many aspects of the new 
world as possible in the old one before, ultimately, replacing it. 
Otherwise they are just useful as social experiments and their impact 
on society marginal. Thus, for anarchists, this process of education is 
<b>part of</b> the class struggle, not in place of it and so <i>"the 
workers [must] do everything possible to obtain all the education they 
can in the material circumstances in which they currently find themselves 
. . . [while] concentrat[ing] their efforts on the great question of their 
economic emancipation, the mother of all other emancipations."</i> [Bakunin, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 175]
</p><p>
Before finishing, we must stress that hierarchical education (like the media), 
cannot remove the effects of actual life and activity in shaping/changing
people and their ideas, opinions and attitudes. While education is an 
essential part of maintaining the status quo and accustoming people to 
accept hierarchy, the state and wage slavery, it cannot stop individuals
from learning from their experiences, ignoring their sense of right and
wrong, recognising the injustices of the current system and the ideas that
it is based upon. This means that even the best state (or private) education 
system will still produce rebels -- for the <b>experience</b> of wage slavery and
state oppression (and, most importantly, <b>struggle</b>) is shattering to the 
<b>ideology</b> spoon-fed children during their "education" and reinforced by
the media. 
</p><p>
For more information on Modern Schools see Paul Avrich's <b>The Modern
School Movement: Anarchism and education in the United States</b>, 
Emma Goldman's essays <i>"Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School"</i> (in
<b>Anarchism and Other Essays</b>) and <i>"The Social Importance of the
Modern School"</i> (in <b>Red Emma Speaks</b>) as well as A.S Neil's 
<b>Summerhill</b>. For a good introduction to anarchist viewpoints on 
education see <i>"Kropotkin and technical education: an anarchist voice"</i> 
by Michael Smith (in <b>For Anarchism</b>, David Goodway (ed.),) and Michael 
Bakunin's <i>"All-Round Education"</i> (in <b>The Basic Bakunin</b>). For 
an excellent summary of the advantages and benefits of co-operative 
learning, see Alfie Kohn's <b>No Contest</b>.
</p>

<a name="secj514"><h2>J.5.14 What is Libertarian Municipalism?</h2></a>

<p>
As we noted in <a href="secJ2.html">section J.2</a>, most anarchists
reject participating in electoral politics. A notable exception was 
Murray Bookchin who not only proposed voting but also a non-parliamentary 
electoral strategy for anarchists. He repeated this proposal in many of 
his later works, such as <b>From Urbanisation to Cities</b>, and has made 
it -- at least in the USA -- one of the many alternatives anarchists are 
involved in. 
</p><p>
According to Bookchin, <i>"the proletariat, as do all oppressed sectors of
society, comes to life when it sheds its industrial habits in the free 
and spontaneous activity of <b>communising,</b> or taking part in the 
political life of the community."</i> In other words, Bookchin thought that
democratisation of local communities may be as strategically important, 
or perhaps more important, to anarchists than workplace struggles. Since 
local politics is humanly scaled, Bookchin argued that it can be
participatory rather than parliamentary. Or, as he put it, the 
<i>"anarchic ideal of decentralised, stateless, collectively managed, and 
directly democratic communities -- of confederated municipalities or 
'communes' -- speaks almost intuitively, and in the best works of 
Proudhon and Kropotkin, consciously, to the transforming role of 
libertarian municipalism as the framework of a liberatory society."</i>
<i>"Theses on Libertarian Municipalism"</i>, pp. 9-22, <b>The Anarchist 
Papers</b>, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.),p. 10] He also pointed out 
that, historically, the city has been the principle countervailing force 
to imperial and national states, haunting them as a potential challenge 
to centralised power and continuing to do so today, as can be seen in 
the conflicts between national government and municipalities in many 
countries.
</p><p>
Despite the libertarian potential of urban politics, "urbanisation"
-- the growth of the modern megalopolis as a vast wasteland of suburbs,
shopping malls, industrial parks, and slums that foster political apathy
and isolation in realms of alienated production and private consumption --
is antithetical to the continued existence of those aspects of the city
that might serve as the framework for a libertarian municipalism: <i>"When
urbanisation will have effaced city life so completely that the city no
longer has its own identity, culture, and spaces for consociation, the
bases for democracy -- in whatever way the word in defined -- will have
disappeared and the question of revolutionary forms will be a shadow game
of abstractions."</i> Despite this danger Bookchin argued that a 
libertarian politics of local government is still possible, provided 
anarchists get our act together: <i>"The Commune still lies buried in 
the city council; the sections still lie buried in the neighbourhood; 
the town meeting still lies buried in the township; confederal forms of 
municipal association still lie buried in regional networks of towns and 
cities."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 16 and p. 21]
</p><p>
What would anarchists do electorally at the local level? Bookchin
proposed that libertarians stand in local elections in order to change 
city and town charters to make them participatory: <i>"An organic politics 
based on such radical participatory forms of civic association does not 
exclude the right of anarchists to alter city and town charters such that 
they validate the existence of directly democratic institutions. And if 
this kind of activity brings anarchists into city councils, there is no 
reason why such a politics should be construed as parliamentary, particularly 
if it is confined to the civic level and is consciously posed against the 
state."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 21]
</p><p>
In short, Libertarian Muncipalism <i>"depends upon libertarian leftists 
running candidates at the local level, calling for the division of 
municipalities into wards, where popular assemblies can be created that 
bring people into full and direct participation in political life . . . 
municipalities would [then] confederate into a dual power to oppose the 
nation-state and ultimately dispense with it and with the economic forces 
that underpin statism as such."</i> [<b>Democracy and Nature</b> no. 9, 
p. 158] This would be part of a social wide transformation, whose 
<i>"[m]inimal steps . . . include initiating Left Green municipalist 
movements that propose neighbourhood and town assemblies -- even if they 
have only moral functions at first -- and electing town and city councillors 
that advance the cause of these assemblies and other popular institutions. 
These minimal steps can lead step-by-step to the formation of confederal 
bodies . . . Civic banks to fund municipal enterprises and land purchases; 
the fostering of new ecologically-orientated enterprises that are owned 
by the community."</i> Thus Bookchin saw Libertarian Muncipalism as a 
process by which the state can be undermined by using elections as 
the means of creating popular assemblies. Part of this would be the 
<i>"municipalisation of property"</i> which would <i>"bring the economy 
<b>as a whole</b> into the orbit of the public sphere, where economic 
policy could be formulated by the <b>entire</b> community."</i> 
[<b>From Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 266 and p. 235] 
</p><p>
In evaluating Bookchin's proposal, several points come to mind. 
</p><p>
Firstly, it is clear that Libertarian Muncipalism's arguments in
favour of community assemblies is important and cannot be ignored.
Bookchin was right to note that, in the past, many anarchists placed
far too much stress on workplace struggles and workers' councils
as the framework of a free society. Many of the really important
issues that affect us cannot be reduced to workplace organisations,
which by their very nature disenfranchise those who do not work
in industry (such as housewives, the old, and so on). And, of
course, there is far more to life than work and so any future
society organised purely around workplace organisations is
reproducing capitalism's insane glorification of economic activity,
at least to some degree. So, in this sense, Libertarian Muncipalism 
has a very valid point -- a free society will be created and
maintained within the community as well as in the workplace. However,
this perspective was hardly alien to such anarchist thinkers as 
Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin who all placed communes at the
centre of their vision of a free society.
</p><p>
Secondly, Bookchin and other Libertarian Muncipalists are correct 
to argue that anarchists should work in their local communities. Many 
anarchists are doing just that and are being very successful as well. 
However, most anarchists reject the idea of a <i>"confederal muncipalist 
movement run[ning] candidates for municipal councils with demands for the 
institution of public assemblies"</i> as viable means of <i>"struggle 
toward creating new civic institutions out of old ones (or replacing the
old ones altogether)."</i> [Bookchin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 229 and p. 267]
</p><p>
The most serious objection to this has to do with whether politics in most 
cities has already become too centralised, bureaucratic, inhumanly scaled, and
dominated by capitalist interests to have any possibility of being taken
over by anarchists running on platforms of participatory democratisation. 
Merely to pose the question seems enough to answer it. There is no such
possibility in the vast majority of cities, and hence it would be a waste
of time and energy for anarchists to support libertarian municipalist
candidates in local elections -- time and energy that could be more
profitably spent in direct action. If the central governments are too
bureaucratic and unresponsive to be used by Libertarian Municipalists,
the same can be said of local ones too -- particularly as the local state
has become increasingly controlled by the central authorities (in the
UK, for example, the Conservative government of the 1980s successfully 
centralised power away from local councils to undercut their ability to
resist the imposition of its neo-liberal policies).
</p><p>
The counter-argument to this is that even if there is no chance of such
candidates being elected, their standing for elections would serve a
valuable educational function. The answer to this is: perhaps, but would
it be more valuable than direct action? Would its educational value,
if any, outweigh the disadvantages of electioneering discussed in 
<a href="secJ2.html">section J.2</a>? 
Given the ability of major media to marginalise alternative candidates, we
doubt that such campaigns would have enough educational value to outweigh
these disadvantages. Moreover, being an anarchist does not make one immune
to the corrupting effects of electioneering. History is littered with 
radical, politically aware movements using elections and ending up 
becoming part of the system they aimed to transform. Most anarchists 
doubt that Libertarian Muncipalism will be any different -- after all, 
it is the circumstances the parties find themselves in which are decisive, 
not the theory they hold. Why would libertarians be immune to this but
not Marxists or Greens?
</p><p>
Lastly, most anarchists question the whole process on which Libertarian
Muncipalism bases itself on. The idea of communes is a key one of anarchism 
and so strategies to create them in the here and now are important. However, 
to think that using alienated, representative institutions to abolish
these institutions is wrong. As Italian activists who organised a 
neighbourhood assembly by non-electoral means argue <i>"[t]o accept power
and to say that the others were acting in bad faith and that we would
be better, would <b>force</b> non-anarchists towards direct democracy. We
reject this logic and believe that organisations must come from the
grassroots."</i> [<i>"Community Organising in Southern Italy"</i>, pp. 16-19, 
<b>Black Flag</b> no. 210, p. 18]
</p><p>
Thus Libertarian Municipalism reverses the process by which community
assemblies will be created. Instead of anarchists using elections to
build such bodies, they must work in their communities directly to
create them (see <a href="secJ5.html#secj51">section J.5.1</a> for
more details). Using the catalyst of specific issues of local interest,
anarchists could propose the creation of a community assembly to discuss
the issues in question and organise action to solve them. Rather than
stand in local elections, anarchists should encourage people to create 
these institutions themselves and empower themselves by collective 
self-activity. As Kropotkin argued, <i>"Laws can only <b>follow</b> the 
accomplished facts; and even if they do honestly follow them -- which is 
usually <b>not</b> the case -- a law remains a dead letter so long as there 
are not on the spot the living forces required for making the <b>tendencies</b> 
expressed in the law an accomplished <b>fact</b>."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, 
p. 171] Most anarchists, therefore, think it is far more important to create 
the <i>"living forces"</i> within our communities directly than waste energy 
in electioneering and the passing of laws creating or "legalising" community 
assemblies. In other words, community assemblies can only be created from 
the bottom up, by non-electoral means, a process which Libertarian Muncipalism 
confuses with electioneering. 
</p><p>
So, while Libertarian Muncipalism <b>does</b> raise many important issues
and correctly stresses the importance of community activity and
self-management, its emphasis on electoral activity undercuts its
liberatory promise. For most anarchists, community assemblies can
only be created from below, by direct action, and (because of its
electoral strategy) a Libertarian Municipalist movement will end up 
being transformed into a copy of the system it aims to abolish.
</p>

<a name="secj515"><h2>J.5.15 What attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state?</h2></a>

<p>
The period of neo-liberalism since the 1980s has seen a rollback of the 
state within society by the right-wing in the name of "freedom," "individual  
responsibility" and "efficiency." The position of anarchists to this process 
is mixed. On the one hand, we are all in favour of reducing the size of the 
state and increasing individual responsibility and freedom but, on the other, 
we are well aware that this rollback is part of an attack on the working class 
and tends to increase the power of the capitalists over us as the state's 
(direct) influence is reduced. Thus anarchists appear to be on the horns of a 
dilemma -- or, at least, apparently.
</p><p>
So what attitude <b>do</b> anarchists take to the welfare state and attacks on 
it? 
</p><p>
First we must note that this attack on "welfare" is somewhat selective.
While using the rhetoric of "self-reliance" and "individualism," the
practitioners of these "tough love" programmes have made sure that the
major corporations continue to get state hand-outs and aid while attacking 
social welfare. In other words, the current attack on the welfare state 
is an attempt to impose market discipline on the working class while 
increasing state protection for the ruling class. Therefore, most 
anarchists have no problem defending social welfare programmes as these 
can be considered as only fair considering the aid the capitalist class
has always received from the state (both direct subsidies and protection
and indirect support via laws that protect property and so on). And,
for all their talk of increasing individual choice, the right-wing
remain silent about the lack of choice and individual freedom during
working hours within capitalism.
</p><p>
Secondly, most of the right-wing inspired attacks on the welfare state
are inaccurate. For example, Noam Chomsky notes that the <i>"correlation 
between welfare payments and family life is real, though it is the 
reverse of what is claimed [by the right]. As support for the poor has 
declined, unwed birth-rates, which had risen steadily from the 1940s through 
the mid-1970s, markedly increased. 'Over the last three decades, the rate of
poverty among children almost perfectly correlates with the birth-rates among
teenage mothers a decade later,' Mike Males points out: 'That is, child
poverty seems to lead to teenage childbearing, not the other way around.'"</i>
[<i>"Rollback III"</i>, <b>Z Magazine</b>, April, 1995] The same charge of
inaccurate scare-mongering can be laid at the claims about the evil effects 
of welfare which the rich and large corporations wish to save others (but 
not themselves) from. Such altruism is truly heart warming. For those in 
the United States or familiar with it, the same can be said of the hysterical 
attacks on "socialised medicine" and health-care reform funded by insurance 
companies and parroted by right-wing ideologues and politicians.
</p><p>
Thirdly, anarchists are just as opposed to capitalism as they are the state.
This means that privatising state functions is no more libertarian than 
nationalising them. In fact, less so as such a process <b>reduces</b> the
limited public say state control implies in favour of more private tyranny
and wage-labour. As such, attempts to erode the welfare state without other,
pro-working class, social reforms violates the anti-capitalist part of anarchism.
Similarly, the introduction of a state supported welfare system rather than
a for-profit capitalist run system (as in America) would hardly be considered
any more a violation of libertarian principles as the reverse happening. In 
terms of reducing human suffering, though, most anarchists would oppose the
latter and be in favour of the former while aiming to create a third 
(self-managed) alternative.
</p><p>
Fourthly, we must note that while most anarchists <b>are</b> in favour of 
collective self-help and welfare, we are opposed to the state. Part of the 
alternatives anarchists try and create are self-managed and community 
welfare projects (see 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj516">next section</a>). Moreover, in the 
past, anarchists and syndicalists were at the forefront in opposing state
welfare schemes. This was because they were introduced <b>not</b> by 
socialists but by liberals and other supporters of capitalism to undercut 
support for radical alternatives and to aid long term economic development by 
creating the educated and healthy population required to use advanced technology
and fight wars. Thus we find that:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Liberal social welfare legislation . . . were seen by many [British
syndicalists] not as genuine welfare reforms, but as mechanisms of 
social control. Syndicalists took a leading part in resisting such 
legislation on the grounds that it would increase capitalist discipline 
over labour, thereby undermining working class independence and 
self-reliance."</i> [Bob Holton, <b>British Syndicalism: 1900-1914</b>, 
p. 137]
</blockquote></p><p>
Anarchists view the welfare state much as some feminists do. While they
note, to quote Carole Pateman, the <i>"patriarchal structure of the 
welfare state"</i> they are also aware that it has <i>"also brought 
challenges to patriarchal power and helped provide a basis for women's 
autonomous citizenship."</i> She goes on to note that <i>"for women to 
look at the welfare state is merely to exchange dependence on individual 
men for dependence on the state. The power and capriciousness of husbands 
is replaced by the arbitrariness, bureaucracy and power of the state, the 
very state that has upheld patriarchal power."</i> This <i>"will not in 
itself do anything to challenge patriarchal power relations."</i> [<b>The 
Disorder of Women</b>, p. 195 and p. 200]
</p><p>
Thus while the welfare state does give working people more options than
having to take <b>any</b> job or put up with <b>any</b> conditions, this 
relative independence from the market and individual capitalists has came 
at the price of dependence on the state -- the very institution that 
protects and supports capitalism in the first place. And has we have
became painfully aware in recent years, it is the ruling class who has 
most influence in the state -- and so, when it comes to deciding what
state budgets to cut, social welfare ones are first in line. Given that
such programmes are controlled by the state, <b>not</b> working class
people, such an outcome is hardly surprising. Not only this, we also
find that state control reproduces the same hierarchical structures
that the capitalist firm creates. 
</p><p>
Unsurprisingly, anarchists have no great love of such state welfare schemes 
and desire their replacement by self-managed alternatives. For example, 
taking municipal housing, Colin Ward writes:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The municipal tenant is trapped in a syndrome of dependence and resentment,
which is an accurate reflection of his housing situation. People care about
what is theirs, what they can modify, alter, adapt to changing needs and
improve themselves. They must have a direct responsibility for it . . . The 
tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those obviously sensible 
ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still 
stuck in the groves of nineteenth-century paternalism."</i> [<b>Anarchy in 
Action</b>, p. 73]
</blockquote></p><p>
Looking at state supported education, Ward argues that the <i>"universal 
education system turns out to be yet another way in which the poor subsidise 
the rich."</i> Which is the least of its problems, for <i>"it is in the 
<b>nature</b> of public authorities to run coercive and hierarchical 
institutions whose ultimate function is to perpetuate social inequality 
and to brainwash the young into the acceptance of their particular slot 
in the organised system."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 83 and p. 81] The role 
of state education as a means of systematically indoctrinating the working 
class is reflected in William Lazonick words:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The Education Act of 1870 . . . [gave the] state . . . the facilities 
. . . to make education compulsory for all children from the age of five 
to the age of ten. It had also erected a powerful system of ideological
control over the next generation of workers . . . [It] was to function
as a prime ideological mechanism in the attempt by the capitalist class
through the medium of the state, to continually <b>reproduce</b> a labour
force which would passively accept [the] subjection [of labour to the 
domination of capital]. At the same time it had set up a public institution 
which could potentially be used by the working class for just the contrary 
purpose."</i> [<i>"The Subjection of Labour to Capital: The rise of the 
Capitalist System"</i>, <b>Radical Political Economy</b> Vol. 2, p. 363]
</blockquote></p><p>
Lazonick, as did Pateman, indicates the contradictory nature of welfare
provisions within capitalism. On the one hand, they are introduced to help 
control the working class (and to improve long term economic development).
On the other hand, these provisions can be used by working class people as 
weapons against capitalism and give themselves more options than "work or 
starve" (the fact that the attacks on welfare in the UK during the 1990s 
-- called, ironically enough, <b>welfare to work</b> -- involves losing 
benefits if you refuse a job is not a surprising development). Thus we 
find that welfare acts as a kind of floor under wages. In the US, the 
two have followed a common trajectory (rising together and falling 
together). And it is <b>this</b>, the potential benefits welfare can have 
for working people, that is the <b>real</b> cause for the current capitalist 
attacks upon it. As Noam Chomsky summarises:
</p><p>
<blockquote>
<i>"State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic 
societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. 
Rather the opposite: because it offers (weak) protection to some aspects 
of that vision. Governments have a fatal flaw: unlike the private tyrannies,
the institutions of state power and authority offer to the public an
opportunity to play some role, however limited, in managing their own
affairs."</i> [<b>Chomsky on Anarchism</b>, p. 193]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Because of this contradictory nature of welfare, we find anarchists like
Noam Chomsky arguing that (using an expression popularised by South American 
rural workers unions) <i>"we should 'expand the floor of the cage.' We know 
we're in a cage. We know we're trapped. We're going to expand the floor, 
meaning we will extend to the limits what the cage will allow. And we intend 
to destroy the cage. But not by attacking the cage when we're vulnerable, 
so they'll murder us . . . You have to protect the cage when it's under 
attack from even worse predators from outside, like private power. And 
you have to expand the floor of the cage, recognising that it's a cage. 
These are all preliminaries to dismantling it. Unless people are willing 
to tolerate that level of complexity, they're going to be of no use to 
people who are suffering and who need help, or, for that matter, to 
themselves."</i> [<b>Expanding the Floor of the Cage</b>]
</p><p>
Thus, even though we know the welfare state is a cage and part of an 
instrument of class power, we have to defend it from a worse possibility 
-- namely, the state as "pure" defender of capitalism with working people 
with few or no rights. At least the welfare state does have a contradictory 
nature, the tensions of which can be used to increase our options. And 
one of these options is its abolition <b>from below</b>! 
</p><p>
For example, with regards to municipal housing, anarchists will be 
the first to agree that it is paternalistic, bureaucratic and hardly
a wonderful living experience. However, in stark contrast with the
right who desire to privatise such estates, anarchists think that 
<i>"tenants control"</i> is the best solution as it gives us the 
benefits of individual ownership <b>along with</b> community (and so
without the negative points of property, such as social atomisation).
The demand for <i>"tenant control"</i> must come from below, by the 
<i>"collective resistance"</i> of the tenants themselves, perhaps as 
a result of struggles against <i>"continuous rent increases"</i> leading 
to <i>"the demand . . . for a change in the status of the tenant."</i>
Such a <i>"tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those
sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal 
affairs is still stuck in the grooves of nineteenth century paternalism."</i> 
[Ward, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 73]
</p><p>
And it is here that we find the ultimate irony of the right-wing, "free
market" attempts to abolish the welfare state -- neo-liberalism wants to
end welfare <b>from above,</b> by means of the state (which is the instigator
of this individualistic "reform"). It does not seek the end of dependency
by self-liberation, but the shifting of dependency from state to charity
and the market. In contrast, anarchists desire to abolish welfare from
<b>below</b>. This the libertarian attitude to those government policies which 
actually do help people. While anarchists would <i>"hesitate to condemn those 
measures taken by governments which obviously benefited the people, unless we 
saw the immediate possibility of people carrying them out for themselves. This
would not inhibit us from declaring at the same time that what initiatives
governments take would be more successfully taken by the people themselves
if they put their minds to the same problems . . . to build up a hospital
service or a transport system, for instance, from local needs into a national
organisation, by agreement and consent at all levels is surely more
economical as well as efficient than one which is conceived at top level
[by the state] . . . where Treasury, political and other pressures, not
necessarily connected with what we would describe as <b>needs</b>, 
influence the shaping of policies."</i> So <i>"as long as we have capitalism
and government the job of anarchists is to fight both, and at the same 
time encourage people to take what steps they can to run their own 
lives."</i> [<i>"Anarchists and Voting"</i>, pp. 176-87, <b>The Raven</b>, 
No. 14, p. 179]
</p><p>
Ultimately, unlike the state socialist/liberal left, anarchists reject the 
idea that the cause of socialism, of a free society, can be helped by using 
the state. Like the right, the left see political action in terms of the 
state. All its favourite policies have been statist -- state intervention 
in the economy, nationalisation, state welfare, state education and so on. 
Whatever the problem, the left see the solution as lying in the extension 
of the power of the state. They continually push people in relying on 
<b>others</b> to solve their problems for them. Moreover, such state-based 
"aid" does not get to the core of the problem. All it does is fight the 
symptoms of capitalism and statism without attacking their root causes -- 
the system itself. 
</p><p>
Invariably, this support for the state is a move away from working class 
people, from trusting and empowering them to sort out their own problems. 
Indeed, the left seem to forget that the state exists to defend the 
collective interests of the ruling class and so could hardly be considered 
a neutral body. And, worst of all, they have presented the right with the 
opportunity of stating that freedom from the state means the same thing as 
the freedom of the market (so ignoring the awkward fact that capitalism is 
based upon domination -- wage labour -- and needs many repressive measures 
in order to exist and survive). Anarchists are of the opinion that changing 
the boss for the state (or vice versa) is only a step sideways, <b>not</b> 
forward! After all, it is <b>not</b> working people who control how the 
welfare state is run, it is politicians, "experts", bureaucrats and 
managers who do so (<i>"Welfare is administered by a top-heavy 
governmental machine which ensures that when economies in public 
expenditure are imposed by its political masters, they are made in 
reducing the service to the public, not by reducing the cost of 
administration."</i> [Ward, <b>Op. Cit.</b> p. 10]). Little wonder we 
have seen elements of the welfare state used as a weapon in the class 
war <b>against</b> those in struggle (for example, in Britain during the 
miners strike in 1980s the Conservative Government made it illegal to claim 
benefits while on strike, so reducing the funds available to workers in 
struggle and helping bosses force strikers back to work faster).
</p><p>
Anarchists consider it far better to encourage those who suffer 
injustice to organise themselves and in that way they can change what 
<b>they</b> think is actually wrong, as opposed to what politicians and 
"experts" claim is wrong. If sometimes part of this struggle involves 
protecting aspects of the welfare state (<i>"expanding the floor of the 
cage"</i>) so be it -- but we will never stop there and will use such 
struggles as a stepping stone in abolishing the welfare state <b>from below</b> 
by creating self-managed, working class, alternatives. As part of this 
process anarchists also seek to <b>transform</b> those aspects of the welfare 
state they may be trying to "protect". They do not defend an institution 
which <b>is</b> paternalistic, bureaucratic and unresponsive. For example, if 
we are involved in trying to stop a local state-run hospital or school 
from closing, anarchists would try to raise the issue of self-management 
and local community control into the struggle in the hope of going beyond 
the status quo.
</p></p>
In this, we follow the suggestion made by Proudhon that rather than <i>"fatten 
certain contractors,"</i> libertarians should be aiming to create <i>"a new 
kind of property"</i> by <i>"granting the privilege of running"</i> public 
utilities, industries and services, <i>"under fixed conditions, to responsible 
companies, not of capitalists, but of workmen."</i> Municipalities would take 
the initiative in setting up public works but actual control would rest with 
workers' co-operatives 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> [<b>General Idea of the Revolution</b>, 
p. 151 and p. 276-7] Thus, for example, rather than nationalise or privatise
railways, they should be handed over workers' co-operatives to run. The same
with welfare services and such like: <i>"the abolition of the State is the 
last term of a series, which consists of an incessant diminution, by political 
and administrative simplification the number of public functionaries and to put 
into the care of responsible workers societies the works and services confided 
to the state."</i> [Proudhon, <b>Carnets</b>, vol. 3, p. 293]
</p><p>
Not only does this mean that we can get accustomed to managing our own 
affairs collectively, it also means that we can ensure that whatever
"safety-nets" we have do what we want and not what capital wants. In 
the end, what we create and run by ourselves will be more responsive 
to our needs, and the needs of the class struggle, than reformist 
aspects of the capitalist state. This much, we think, is obvious. And 
it is ironic to see elements of the "radical" and "revolutionary" left 
argue against this working class self-help (and so ignore the <b>long</b> 
tradition of such activity in working class movements) and instead 
select for the agent of their protection a state run by and for capitalists!
</p><p>
There are two traditions of welfare within society, one of <i>"fraternal 
and autonomous associations springing from below, the other that of 
authoritarian institutions directed from above."</i> [Ward, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 123] While sometimes anarchists are forced to defend the latter 
against the greater evil of "free market" capitalism, we never forget 
the importance of creating and strengthening the former. As Chomsky
suggests, libertarians have to <i>"defend some state institutions from 
the attack against them [by private power], while trying at the same 
time to pry them open to meaningful public participation -- and ultimately, 
to dismantle them in a much more free society, if the appropriate circumstances 
can be achieved."</i> [<b>Chomsky on Anarchism</b>, p. 194] A point we will 
discuss more in 
<a href="secJ5.html#secj516">the next section</a> when we highlight the 
historical examples of self-managed communal welfare and self-help 
organisations.
</p>

<a name="secj516"><h2>J.5.16 Are there any historical examples of collective self-help?</h2></a>

<p>
Yes, in all societies we see working class people joining together to practice
mutual aid and solidarity. This takes many forms, such as trade and
industrial unions, credit unions and friendly societies, co-operatives
and so on, but the natural response of working class people to the 
injustices of capitalism was to practice collective "self-help" in order
to improve their lives and protect their friends, communities and fellow
workers. 
</p><p>
There are, as Colin Ward stresses, <i>"in fact several quite separate 
traditions of social welfare: the product of totally different attitudes 
to social needs . . . One of these traditions is that of a service given
grudgingly and punitively by authority, another is the expression of social 
responsibility, or of mutual aid and self-help. One is embodied in 
<b>institutions</b>, the other in <b>associations</b>."</i> [<b>Anarchy 
in Action</b>, p. 112] Anarchists, needless to say, favour the latter.
Unfortunately, this <i>"great tradition of working class self-help and
mutual aid was written off, not just as irrelevant, but as an actual
impediment, by the political and professional architects of the welfare
state . . . The contribution that the recipients had to make to all
this theoretical bounty was ignored as a mere embarrassment -- apart,
of course, for paying for it . . . The socialist ideal was rewritten
as a world in which everyone was entitled to everything, but where
nobody except the providers had any actual say about anything. We 
have been learning for years, in the anti-welfare backlash, what a
vulnerable utopia that was."</i> This self-managed  working class 
self-help was the <i>"welfare road we failed to take."</i> [Ward, 
<b>Social Policy: an anarchist response</b>, p. 11-2 and p. 9]
</p><p>
Anarchists would argue that self-help is the natural side 
effect of freedom. There is no possibility of radical social change 
unless people are free to decide for themselves what their problems 
are, where their interests lie and are free to organise for themselves 
what they want to do about them. Self-help is a natural expression of 
people taking control of their own lives and acting for themselves. 
Anyone who urges state action on behalf of people is no socialist 
and any one arguing against self-help as "bourgeois" is no 
anti-capitalist. It is somewhat ironic that it is the right who
have monopolised the rhetoric of "self-help" and turned it into
yet another ideological weapon against working class direct action
and self-liberation (although, saying that, the right generally
likes individualised self-help -- given a strike, squatting or any 
other form of <b>collective</b> self-help movement they will be 
the first to denounce it):
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The political Left has, over the years, committed an enormous 
psychological error in allowing this kind of language ["self-help",
"mutual aid", "standing on your own two feet" and so on] to be
appropriated by the political Right. If you look at the exhibitions
of trade union banners from the last century, you will see slogans
like Self Help embroidered all over them. It was those clever
Fabians and academic Marxists who ridiculed out of existence the
values by which ordinary citizens govern their own lives in favour
of bureaucratic paternalising, leaving those values around to be
picked up by their political opponents."</i> [Ward, <b>Talking
Houses</b>, p. 58]
</blockquote></p><p>
We cannot be expected to provide an extensive list of working class
collective self-help and social welfare activity here, all we can
do is present an overview of collective welfare in action (for a 
discussion of working class self-help and co-operation through the 
centuries we can suggest no better source than Kropotkin's <b>Mutual Aid</b>).
In the case of Britain, we find that the <i>"newly created working class 
built up from nothing a vast network of social and economic initiatives 
based on self-help and mutual aid. The list is endless: friendly societies, 
building societies, sick clubs, coffin clubs, clothing clubs, up to enormous 
federated enterprises like the trade union movement and the Co-operative 
movement."</i> [Ward, <b>Social Policy</b>, pp. 10-1] The historian 
E.P. Thompson confirmed this picture of a wide network of working 
class self-help organisations. <i>"Small tradesmen, artisans, 
labourers"</i> he summarised, <i>"all sought to insure themselves
against sickness, unemployment, or funeral expenses through membership
of . . . friendly societies."</i> These were <i>"authentic evidence of 
independent working-class culture and institutions . . . out of 
which . . . trade unions grew, and in which trade union officers were
trained."</i> Friendly societies <i>"did not 'proceed from' an idea: both
the ideas and institutions arose from a certain common experience . . . 
In the simple cellular structure of the friendly society, with its 
workaday ethos of mutual aid, we see many features which were reproduced 
in more sophisticated and complex form in trade unions, co-operatives, 
Hampden clubs, Political Unions, and Chartist lodges . . . Every kind 
of witness in the first half of the nineteenth century -- clergymen, 
factory inspectors, Radical publicists -- remarked upon the extent of 
mutual aid in the poorest districts. In times of emergency, unemployment, 
strikes, sickness, childbirth, then it was the poor who 'helped every one
his neighbour.'"</i> [<b>The Making of the English Working Class</b>, 
p. 458, pp. 460-1 and p. 462] Sam Dolgoff gave an excellent summary
of similar self-help activities by the American working class:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Long before the labour movement got corrupted and the state stepped
in, the workers organised a network of co-operative institutions of
all kinds: schools, summer camps for children and adults, homes for
the aged, health and cultural centres, credit associations, fire,
life, and health insurance, technical education, housing, etc."</i>
[<b>The American Labour Movement: A New Beginning</b>, p. 74]
</blockquote></p><p>
Dolgoff, like all anarchists, urged workers to <i>"finance the establishment 
of independent co-operative societies of all types, which will respond 
adequately to their needs"</i> and that such a movement <i>"could constitute 
a realistic alternative to the horrendous abuses of the 'establishment' 
at a fraction of the cost."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 74 and pp. 74-75]
In this way a network of self-managed, communal, welfare associations
and co-operatives could be built -- paid for, run by and run for working 
class people. Such a system <i>"would not . . . become a plaything of
central government financial policy."</i> [Ward, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 16]
Such a network could be initially build upon, and be an aspect of, the 
struggles of both workers in and claimants, patients, tenants, and other 
users of the current welfare state. So a <i>"multiplicity of mutual 
aid organisations among claimants, patients, victims, represents the most 
potent lever for change in transforming the welfare state into a genuine 
welfare society, in turning community care into a caring community."</i>
[Ward, <b>Anarchy in Action</b>, p. 125]
</p><p>
The creation of such a co-operative, community-based, welfare system
will not occur over night, nor will it be easy. But it <b>is</b> possible,
as history shows. It will, of course, have its problems, but as
Colin Ward notes, <i>"the standard argument against a localist and 
decentralised point of view, is that of universalism: an equal service 
to all citizens, which it is thought that central control achieves. 
The short answer to this is that it doesn't!"</i> [Colin Ward, <b>Social
Policy</b>, p. 16] He notes that richer areas generally get a better 
service from the welfare state than poorer ones, thus violating the 
claims of equal service. A centralised system (be it state or private) 
will most likely allocate resources which reflect the interests and (lack 
of) knowledge of bureaucrats and experts, <b>not</b> on where they are 
best used or the needs of the users. 
</p><p>
Anarchists are sure that a <b>confederal</b> network of mutual aid 
organisations and co-operatives, based upon local input and control, 
can overcome problems of localism far better than a centralised one 
-- which, due to its lack of local input and participation will more 
likely <b>encourage</b> parochialism and indifference than a wider vision
and solidarity. If you have no real say in what affects you, why 
should you be concerned with what affects others? This is 
unsurprising, for what else is global action other than the product 
of thousands of local actions? Solidarity within our class is the flower 
that grows from the soil of our local self-activity, direct action and 
self-organisation. Unless we act and organise locally, any wider organisation
and action will be hollow. Thus <b>local</b> organisation and empowerment is
essential to create and maintain wider organisations and mutual aid.
</p><p>
To take another example of the benefits of a self-managed welfare system,
we find that it <i>"was a continual complaint of the authorities"</i> in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century <i>"that friendly societies allowed
members to withdraw funds when on strike."</i> [Thompson, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 461f] The same complaints were voiced in Britain about the welfare 
state allowing strikers to claim benefit will on strike. The Conservative
Government of the 1980s changed that by passing a law barring those in
industrial dispute to claim benefits -- and so removing a potential support
for those in struggle. Such a restriction would have been far harder (if
not impossible) to impose on a network of self-managed mutual aid 
co-operatives. Such institutions would have not become the plaything 
of central government financial policy as the welfare state and the 
taxes working class people have to pay have become. 
</p><p>
All this means that anarchists reject the phoney choice between 
private and state capitalism we are usually offered. We reject both 
privatisation <b>and</b> nationalisation, both right and left wings (of
capitalism). Neither state nor private health care are user-controlled
-- one is subject to the requirements of politics and the other places
profits before people. As we have discussed the welfare state in the
<a href="secJ5.html#secj515">last section</a>, it is worthwhile to 
quickly discuss privatised welfare and 
why anarchists reject this option even more than state welfare.
</p><p>
Firstly, all forms of private healthcare/welfare have to pay dividends to 
capitalists, fund advertising, reduce costs to maximise profits by 
standardising the "caring" process - i.e. McDonaldisation - and so on, 
all of which inflates prices and produces substandard service across the 
industry as a whole. According to Alfie Kohn, <i>"[m]ore hospitals and
clinics are being run by for-profit corporations; many institutions,
forced to battle for 'customers,' seem to value a skilled director of
marketing more highly than a skilled caregiver. As in any other economic
sector, the race for profits translates into pressure to reduce costs,
and the easiest way to do it here is to cut back on services to
unprofitable patients, that is, those who are more sick than rich . . .
The result: hospital costs are actually <b>higher</b> in areas where there
is more competition for patients."</i> [<b>No Contest</b>, p. 240] In the 
UK, attempts to introduce "market forces" into the National Health Service 
has also lead to increased costs as well as inflating the size and cost of
its bureaucracy.
</p><p>
Looking at Chile, hyped by those who desire to privatise Social Security,
we find similar disappointing results (well, disappointing for the 
working class at least, as we will see). Seemingly, Chile's private system 
has achieved impressive average returns on investment. However, once 
commissions are factored in, the real return for individual workers 
is considerably lower. For example, although the average rate of return 
on funds from 1982 through 1986 was 15.9 percent, the real return after 
commissions was a mere 0.3 percent! Between 1991 and 1995, the 
pre-commission return was 12.9 percent, but with commissions it 
fell to 2.1 percent. According to Doug Henwood, the <i>"competing mutual 
funds have vast sales forces, and the portfolio managers all have their
vast fees. All in all, administrative costs . . . are almost 30% of
revenues, compared to well under 1% for the U.S. Social Security system."</i>
[<b>Wall Street</b>, p. 305] In addition, the private pension fund market 
is dominated by a handful of companies. 
</p><p>
Even if commission costs were lowered (by regulation), the 
impressive returns on capital seen between 1982 and 1995 (when the 
real annual return on investment averaged 12.7 percent) are likely 
not to be sustained. These average returns coincided with boom years 
in Chile, complemented by government's high borrowing costs. Because 
of the debt crisis of the 1980s, Latin governments were paying 
double-digit real interest rates on their bonds -- the main investment 
vehicle of social security funds. In effect, government was subsidising 
the "private" system by paying astronomical rates on government bonds.
Another failing of the system is that only a little over half of 
Chilean workers make regular social security contributions. While many 
believe that a private system would reduce evasion because workers have a 
greater incentive to contribute to their own personal retirement accounts, 
43.4 percent of those affiliated with the new system in June of 1995 did 
not contribute regularly. [Stephen J. Kay, <i>"The Chile Con: Privatizing 
Social Security in South America,"</i> <b>The American Prospect</b> no. 33, 
pp. 48-52] All in all, privatisation seems to be beneficial only to middle-men 
and capitalists, if Chile is anything to go by. As Henwood argues, while
the <i>"infusion of money"</i> resulting from privatising social security 
<i>"has done wonders for the Chilean stock market"</i> <i>"projections are 
that as many as half of future retirees will draw a poverty-level pension."</i> 
[Henwood, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 304-5] 
</p><p>
Suffice to say, all you really need to know about privatisation of 
pensions and healthcare in Chile is that the military dictatorship which 
imposed it excluded the military from its dubious benefits. Such altruism 
is truly touching.
</p><p>
So, anarchists reject private welfare as a con (and an even bigger one 
than state welfare). As Colin Ward suggests, it <i>"is the question of 
how we get back on the mutual aid road <b>instead of</b> commercial health 
insurance and private pension schemes."</i> [<b>Social Policy</b>, p. 17]
As anarchists are both anti-state and anti-capitalist, swapping private
power for the state power is, at best, a step sideways. Usually, it is
worse for capitalist companies are accountable only to their owners and
the profit criteria. This means, as Chomsky suggests, <i>"protecting 
the state sector today is a step towards abolishing the state because it 
maintains a public arena in which people can participate and organise, 
and affect policy, and so on, though in limited ways. If that's removed, 
we'd go back to a . . . private dictatorship, but that's hardly a step 
towards liberation."</i> [ <b>Chomsky on Anarchism</b>, p. 213] Instead 
anarchists try to create <b>real</b> alternatives to hierarchy, be it state 
or capitalist, in the here and now which reflect our ideas of a free and 
just society. For, when it boils down to it, freedom cannot be given, only 
taken and this process of <b>self</b>-liberation is reflected in the 
alternatives we build to help win the class war. 
</p><p>
The struggle <b>against</b> capitalism and statism requires that 
we build <b>for</b> the future and, moreover, we should remember that 
<i>"he who has no confidence in the creative capacity of the masses 
and in their capability to revolt doesn't belong in the revolutionary 
movement. He should go to a monastery and get on his knees and start 
praying. Because he is no revolutionist. He is a son of a bitch."</i> 
[Sam Dolgoff, quoted by Ulrike Heider, <b>Anarchism: left, right, 
and green</b>, p. 12]
</p>

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