Kropotkin post-rev property

[$lim_$weezy]

Greetings, all!

I read "The Conquest of Bread" by Peter Kropotkin and have some questions regarding ownership of property after an anarcho-communist revolution. First off, there is to be no private ownership of property. However, when he speaks of luxury items (when you want a piano, go join an association of workers who make pianos in their free time and acquire one by working with them), would those be privately owned by those who spent their free time working on it? There would not be such an abundance (nor demand...) for pianos as there would be for necessities (which all would work on). My point is, for projects taken up on one's free time to produce luxury items, are the products to be privately owned? How would one share a piano otherwise? Would one go to a public "piano hall" where many are kept? What about items where communal ownership is not desirable, but which are also not necessities, such as computers? Would that property be allowed which could not cause exploitation, or would all private property be viewed as evil and exploitative?

Anyway, I hope I've interpreted Kropotkin correctly, and that I'm making sense! Thanks in advance for any answers you might give!

[Broletariat]

Property would be defined based on use and occupancy instead of by title, jus in rem instead of jus ad rem justification.

[syndicat]

there isn't any rational way of defining what a luxury is. a luxury to one person is an essential to another. K.'s description sounds almost like he's assuming some form of market socialism, which is contrary to communism. better to think of all workplaces as owned by everyone and also the products owned by everyone, so we figure out a way to allocate each person a share of the total social product. if it is by your work effort, as Marx suggested, then you'd simply decide to take part of your consumption entitlement as a piano. but Kropotkin doesn't like the idea of people having to work to earn a share of the social product...or so it seems. but maybe not. after all, if you to arrange with a worker group to make you a piano, what do they get to motivate them to do this? and where do you get what you'd give them in exchange?

of course the piano itself is not productive property, unless you're a singer and its one of your tools. if you just want it to entertain yourself and your family, then it's a personal possession, like your shoes. and those are not productive property. there is no problem with individuals owning personal possessions.

[$lim_$weezy]

Ah, thank you, Syndicat and That_Which_Isnt!
The distinction between productive property and personal possessions is one Kropotkin either glazed over or one that I just didn't catch.
To be clear, as far as I understand it, according to Kropotkin, everyone works towards producing necessities for 4 or 5 hours a day, and everyone gets necessities from the communal production. Since they have the whole rest of the day left to do whatever they want, they can use that time to make luxury items if they want, such as pianos, or, if they don't want more stuff, they can sleep, read, or do whatever pleases them.
I assume it would be up to the individual communities to decide what was necessity and what wasn't. Who else?

[syndicat]

To be clear, as far as I understand it, according to Kropotkin, everyone works towards producing necessities for 4 or 5 hours a day, and everyone gets necessities from the communal production. Since they have the whole rest of the day left to do whatever they want, they can use that time to make luxury items if they want, such as pianos, or, if they don't want more stuff, they can sleep, read, or do whatever pleases them.
I assume it would be up to the individual communities to decide what was necessity and what wasn't. Who else?

well, there might be some things that are produced on a regional scale, like electricity or health care or whatever. actually economies are pretty integrated over a very large area, so we have to keep that in mind.

i interpret K. as saying there will be some set of collectively provided goods and services. call this the "needs" or "free" sector. what this sector provides will be decided by the region probably.

and then anything else people want themselves is the private consumption sector. but I think K. is mistaken to say this is you making things for yourself. that would be a huge reduction in human culture. i think of this as the private consumption goods sector, and what you can acquire here depends, if you're an able-bodied adult, on your work effort. if you're a child, out of work, retired, disabled, then we provide you some socially average level of consumption entitlement and you take this in whatever mix of things you want. but the private consumption goods are also made in the socially owned and worker managed economy, just like the "free" sector. it's just that the principle of distribution of the products is different since these are personal consumption items, and what someone wants will vary from person to person. so there's no common community decision about what you get in regard to private consumption items. you make that decision.

[$lim_$weezy]

Hm... So do you exchange anything for these private goods or what? Does anything motivate the associations dedicated to making pianos besides human compassion?
You mentioned that it depends on your work effort. How could this be gauged? There's no money in this society, so what would it be? Would those who knew how to make pianos do it out of the good of their hearts, or would they acquire labor to help them make more pianos or what? How can we limit what a person gets privately without any kind of money or allowance? Wouldn't such a concept go against communism?

[revolution inaction]

Hm... So do you exchange anything for these private goods or what? Does anything motivate the associations dedicated to making pianos besides human compassion?
You mentioned that it depends on your work effort. How could this be gauged? There's no money in this society, so what would it be? Would those who knew how to make pianos do it out of the good of their hearts, or would they acquire labor to help them make more pianos or what? How can we limit what a person gets privately without any kind of money or allowance? Wouldn't such a concept go against communism?

syndicat is not a communist, they are a paraconists, and i don't think represent communism accurately.

I don't see a problem with limiting what a person gets of particular goods where demand is greater than supply, they could be rationed, this is much fairer that trying to link consumption to production.

[revolution inaction]

Greetings, all!

I read "The Conquest of Bread" by Peter Kropotkin and have some questions regarding ownership of property after an anarcho-communist revolution. First off, there is to be no private ownership of property. However, when he speaks of luxury items (when you want a piano, go join an association of workers who make pianos in their free time and acquire one by working with them), would those be privately owned by those who spent their free time working on it? There would not be such an abundance (nor demand...) for pianos as there would be for necessities (which all would work on). My point is, for projects taken up on one's free time to produce luxury items, are the products to be privately owned? How would one share a piano otherwise? Would one go to a public "piano hall" where many are kept? What about items where communal ownership is not desirable, but which are also not necessities, such as computers? Would that property be allowed which could not cause exploitation, or would all private property be viewed as evil and exploitative?

i'd consider computers as necessities personally. I think that for things like pianos,some would be owned by individuals and some would be collectively owned.
But its not possible to make detailed plans for after the revolution, we have no idea what the conditions will be like and we can't predict in detail what peoples priority will be.



Anyway, I hope I've interpreted Kropotkin correctly, and that I'm making sense! Thanks in advance for any answers you might give!

Well you don't have to completely agree with kropotkin to be an anarchist-communist, we're not kropotkinists after all.

[$lim_$weezy]

Thanks, radicalgraffiti.
So, in a case where an item is not a necessity, people just work to make it in their free time after work? I'm still not sure on how one would acquire a piano for private ownership. The people who knew how to make pianos would have to want to make them for themselves and others after they had completed their daily necessity-production.
I guess what I'm asking is, do the makers of pianos have any incentive to make them for others, or is it just love of their fellow men and of helping society? Since making certain "luxury" items would probably not be deemed a necessity, the people who made them would have to work like everyone else, and then do extra work afterward to make that luxury item!
Am I missing something, or is it just human compassion?

[syndicat]

Hm... So do you exchange anything for these private goods or what? Does anything motivate the associations dedicated to making pianos besides human compassion?
You mentioned that it depends on your work effort. How could this be gauged? There's no money in this society, so what would it be? Would those who knew how to make pianos do it out of the good of their hearts, or would they acquire labor to help them make more pianos or what? How can we limit what a person gets privately without any kind of money or allowance? Wouldn't such a concept go against communism?


there has to be some system of prices or there can't be an efficient economy because there'd be no way to evaluate social costs and benefits. there needs to be a way to measure relative demand and projected supply.

and, no, the existence of a form of money is not inconsistent with libertarian communism. this is a common anarchist mistake.

when society emerges out of capitalism, people will have been shaped in their mentality by existence in a competitive dog-eat-dog society and many people will not necessarily be terribly altruistic or solidaristic in their thinking. we can't afford to simply say, "Take what you want." that would encourage the most predatory and aggressive and amoral people to be free riders.

in the early stage of communism, as Marx suggested, it will be necessary to require work from able-bodied people to earn entitlement to private consumption goods. they will be remunerated based on their work effort.

thus people pay for things with their consumption entitlement. but this "payment" does not become revenue for groups of workers producing things. that's because all the means of production and all the products are socially owned. a person is simply using up part of their consumption entitlement when they decide to get item X from a distribution center, such as a bicycle or a pair of shoes.

[syndicat]

syndicat is not a communist, they are a paraconists, and i don't think represent communism accurately.


radicalgriffiti is being sectarian. in fact participatory economics is a particular way of specifying libertarian communism. when the CNT celebrated its cententary recently in Barcelona, they invited Robin Hahnel (an economist who is a co-developer of participatory planning concept) to speak. The reason is because a number of anarchist economists in the CNT view participatory economics as a form of libertarian communism. Participatory planning is a particularly anarchist proposal because it is a decentralized planning system which would ensure that workers would develop the plans for their workplaces rather than being subordinate to some central planning regime.

minimal libertarian communism can be defined as having these features:

1. common ownership of the land and means of production

2. generalized self-management, including workers self-management of workplaces, since this is a necessary condition of eliminating class oppression.

3. replacement of the state by a system of popular social self-governance, rooted in assemblies in neighborhoods and workplaces

4. production for use or direct benefit, not for profit.

5. roughly equal access to the means to develop your potential

6. some system of public goods & services to provide for at least some significant part of people's needs, such as health care, education, housing.

Kropotkin, Makhno and Isaac Puente all insisted that the able bodied have an obligation to work. in his discussion of "the earlier phase of communism" in Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx proposed that people who work receive equal remuneration, that is, same hourly pay rate. This presupposes a form of money.

In the Spanish revolution, the CNT's initial aim in the revolution was to equalize pay rates.

Thus some form of prices and remuneration for work effort are certainly consistent with libertarian communism.

[$lim_$weezy]

I see...
Everyone who works gets the same pay...?
But no one would be obligated (or even paid) to make something like pianos, right? I mean, extra stuff that is separate from one's 4 or 5 hour work day would not receive payment, would it?
For that matter, how can you have money within anarchist-communism?

[syndicat]

Everyone who works gets the same pay...?
But no one would be obligated (or even paid) to make something like pianos, right? I mean, extra stuff that is separate from one's 4 or 5 hour work day would not receive payment, would it?
For that matter, how can you have money within anarchist-communism?

one element of libertarian communism that i should have included in my llist is what Kropotkin called "integration of labor." This means that jobs are re-org'd so that there are elements of skill, conceptualization and planning in each job as well as doing some of the physical work. This eliminates the class power of the managerial/professional bureaucracy.

since jobs are redesigned to ensure that jobs are at least very roughly equal in terms of doing some of the boring or drudge tasks, and effort required of jobs is more equal, then, yes, equal pay per hour of work is the order of the day. all of social production is a common venture among equals. why should some be paid more than others?

no one is obligated to do any particular job. it's up to you to decide to apply for whatever job you want, and its up to the worker organization there to decide if they want to hire you. presumably this would be based on things like having the relevant qualifications.

if there is demand in society for pianos, then this is justification for a portion of the society's resources for production to be allotted to a worker group making pianos. In a libertarian communist society EVERY JOB comes within the purview of the social system of production. There is no making of anything outside of the social requirements as to how production is to be carried on, and the system of planning for allocation of resources. this is because every form of production uses social resources.

we can't decide in advance how many hours would be the standard work day. that's for a particular regional or national or local society to decide. it depends on the particular consumption/leisure trade off they have decided to make. in other words, if there are things they want, they need to make them, and this requires hours of work. if they want to increase this for certain additional things, that will require a longer average work day. if they want a shorter average work day, this means they can make fewer things.

a system of prices are consistent with libertarian communism. in libertarian communism money does not exist as capital. this is the key thing, and anarchists often get confused about this. money does not exist as capital within libertarian communism because, as Marx said, capital is a social relation. capital is the power of its possessor to go out into markets and hire workers and managers and rent or buy land, buildings, equipment, and then sell products in consumer markets. now, libertarian communism is a non-market society. there are no "factor markets". it would not be allowed for anyone to try to be a boss and hire people to work for him. this is why the capital/wage labor relationship no longer exists.

but even if the capital/wage labor relation is abolished, there can still be a role for a non-market price system. this has to do with the way in which we calculate benefits and costs in planning production and in how we distribute products to people, for example, by requiring able bodied adults to engage in work effort, and then they earn an entitlement to a share of the socially owned social product.

[$lim_$weezy]

Thank you for the reply, Syndicat.
I believe I was too hung up on absolutes, and did not fully realize the implications of anarchism in Kropotkin's model. These things are to be decided by the workers based on the local situations, and different areas will approach these questions differently based on the community. Am I correct in this?

I wish to approach each theory individually and with equal open-mindedness. I believe I have become somewhat closer to understanding Kropotkin through your help.
If there are any other points anyone would wish to make, I will be happy to listen! Or perhaps further reading that could give me better understanding?
Thanks, all.

[syndicat]

These things are to be decided by the workers based on the local situations, and different areas will approach these questions differently based on the community. Am I correct in this?


yes. but it's not feasible for local areas to be completely self-sufficient. economies tend to be integrated over wide areas. so some things will need to be coordinated/decided over larger areas.