Anarchist-Communism

[DaComm]

I've found myself meandering my way over to the Anarchist side, and am very sympathetic of Anarcho-Communism. I like the idea of freely-associating councils to run the economy, with the place of work totally collectivized; along with labor vouchers, the rejection of most of Leninism, and of course democracy. Insofar as communities being totally autonomous and sovereign, firstly what exactly is the great idea behind this, and what exactly is classified as a community; a city? A municipality? Elementary questions I suppose, but I’d still find the answers to be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[blackwave]

I don't believe there is any agreement on what would constitute a community - could be a small commune or a large district.
I think the point of the demolition of the nation-state as such is to ensure that a central bureacracy don't dominate the masses and exploit their power, as is the typical anarchist criticism of bolshevik style socialism. Though one of my personal reasons for favouring this is that it allows communities to separate themselves based on moral and cultural disagreements (one group is quite happy with its citizens smoking weed, the other is strongly against it, for example) whilst still co-operating with each other, thus decreasing daily conflict and allowing people to gravitate towards whichever community they feel must comfortable in.

[revolution inaction]

i think if you have labour vouchers thats collectivism not communism.
i don't think it is possible for any community to be completely autonomass because there will always need things from outside, or maybe you mean autonomass differentially?

[syndicat]

i think if you have labour vouchers thats collectivism not communism.


not according to Marx. the CNT's 1936 libertarian communist program also allowed for remuneration for work effort. but the means of production are owned by the whole society, that is, worker organizations will need to be accountable to the larger society in what they produce etc.

a local community should be able to decide those decisions that affect mainly them as a community. but economies are integrated over a vast territory. there will inevitably be decisions that affect people over a larger terrain. this is where the idea of a federation comes into play. if there is a federation throughout the revolutionary region -- and the larger the better -- then it will have delegate congresses and so on, and there will be decisions that will need to be made that relate to the federation as a whole.

autarky isn't a viable ideal.

[blackwave]

Such universal decisions could be made by a confederation, they would just have to be voluntarily instigated, rather than forced on them by the *cough cough* 'supreme soviet'.

[revolution inaction]

not according to Marx. the CNT's 1936 libertarian communist program also allowed for remuneration for work effort. but the means of production are owned by the whole society, that is, worker organizations will need to be accountable to the larger society in what they produce etc.


i don't really care if marx considered a system with labour vouchers to be communist, the way communist use the word now in not conpatable with communism

the cnt used to have communists, collectivists and even some mutualists

[ContrarianLemming]

I've found myself meandering my way over to the Anarchist side, and am very sympathetic of Anarcho-Communism. I like the idea of freely-associating councils to run the economy, with the place of work totally collectivized; along with labor vouchers, the rejection of most of Leninism, and of course democracy.

explain?

[DaComm]

not according to Marx. the CNT's 1936 libertarian communist program also allowed for remuneration for work effort. but the means of production are owned by the whole society, that is, worker organizations will need to be accountable to the larger society in what they produce etc.

a local community should be able to decide those decisions that affect mainly them as a community. but economies are integrated over a vast territory. there will inevitably be decisions that affect people over a larger terrain. this is where the idea of a federation comes into play. if there is a federation throughout the revolutionary region -- and the larger the better -- then it will have delegate congresses and so on, and there will be decisions that will need to be made that relate to the federation as a whole.

autarky isn't a viable ideal.

Thankyou, that was very helpful and calrifying. Lemming, well, I didn;t think I could have made that clear. Advocating democracy.

[syndicat]

i don't really care if marx considered a system with labour vouchers to be communist, the way communist use the word now in not conpatable with communism

the cnt used to have communists, collectivists and even some mutualists

well, dogmatism is what i've learned to expect from the AF. anyway, the way MLs use the word "communist" nowadays is irrelevant to what Marx was talking about. for example since Lenin MLs distinguish "communism" as some far off thing from the immediate aim which is "socialism." but for Marx the immediate aim was communism, which was a classless society run by the "associated producers".

and I wasn't talking about this or that member of the CNT, I was talking about how they defined "libertarian communism" in 1936.

and I've yet to see anyone explain what "collectivism" means as an alleged economic system that is neither mutualist nor communist.

[blackwave]

i don't really care if marx considered a system with labour vouchers to be communist, the way communist use the word now in not conpatable with communism

the cnt used to have communists, collectivists and even some mutualists

I thought 'communism' just meant the abolition of private property and workers control of the means of production. I flick between communism and anarchism, and whenever I am in the mood to call myself a communist I don't have an inclination toward the anti-currency line. It's a utopian idea which would be worth trying in a post-scarcity world, but I don't consider it one of the fundamentals.

[revolution inaction]

well, dogmatism is what i've learned to expect from the AF.

thank you, but i have noticed that vary few people agree with you interpritation of communism on other websites and few the people disageing with you where af members, why is it dogmatic for me to present my veiw of communism but not for you to state you view as a fact?



anyway, the way MLs use the word "communist" nowadays is irrelevant to what Marx was talking about. for example since Lenin MLs distinguish "communism" as some far off thing from the immediate aim which is "socialism." but for Marx the immediate aim was communism, which was a classless society run by the "associated producers".

why do you bring leinists into it? if you have ever read my posts you will know i dont give a shit about there opinion, i dont really consider them communist even.
and for me the immediate aim is communism, a classless, money less society run by ist members.



and I wasn't talking about this or that member of the CNT, I was talking about how they defined "libertarian communism" in 1936.

and I've yet to see anyone explain what "collectivism" means as an alleged economic system that is neither mutualist nor communist.
i havent see the cnt's definition of libertarian communism so i will not comment on it.
i am not terribly farmilar with collectivist theory, but i understand that it involved collective ownership of the means of production and remuneration for work done, i imagine you would call it communism, how ever as i understand it one of/the main difference between colectivism and anarchist communism was the lack of remuneration in communism


I thought 'communism' just meant the abolition of private property and workers control of the means of production. I flick between communism and anarchism, and whenever I am in the mood to call myself a communist I don't have an inclination toward the anti-currency line. It's a utopian idea which would be worth trying in a post-scarcity world, but I don't consider it one of the fundamentals.
"between communism and anarchism" do you mean marxism and anarchism? there is a thing called anarchist communism you know.
i think is a lot more utopian to think that money/labor credits what ever could be used with out tending to degenerate towards capitalism or something like it.

[AK]

I think you have to realise that the free and unrestricted exchange of scarce goods is going to end an anarchist economy up in a bad way. We need to produce certain things in abundance before we can afford to let people take them in huge quantities whenever they please.

[blackwave]

"between communism and anarchism" do you mean marxism and anarchism? there is a thing called anarchist communism you know.
i think is a lot more utopian to think that money/labor credits what ever could be used with out tending to degenerate towards capitalism or something like it.

One can be a communist and reject a lot of Marx's ideas, and thus a communist but not a Marxist. Perhaps I should have said 'socialism and anarchism' so that you didn't get confused.

[syndicat]

i am not terribly farmilar with collectivist theory, but i understand that it involved collective ownership of the means of production and remuneration for work done, i imagine you would call it communism, how ever as i understand it one of/the main difference between colectivism and anarchist communism was the lack of remuneration in communism


so you redefine "communism" to mean your group's ideology.

the word "communism" was used by a variety of people in the 19th century. for Marx it referred to a society where there was no longer class division, run by the "associated producers". for "anarchists" it meant this also. in the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx argued that in the early stage of communism, coming out of capitalist society, and taking account of the attitudes of many people at that time and so on, it would make sense to require that able bodied people work to produce the social product and that they be remunerated for items of personal consumption based on length of time they work.

I think it would be necessary to do this because we can't be sure that people would do their fair share without this motivation to work. Kropotkin, Makhno and Isaac Puente all agreed about the requirement of work for able-bodied adults.

if people are required to work and acquire personal consumption entitlement in proportion to some measure of their work contribution, this is more likely to seem just and more feasible to many workers than a scheme of free sharing that allows for social parasitism.

We will in any event need some system of social accounting where the economy gains information about what people want and can measure the social opportunity costs of producing one thing rather than another. This means being able to put alternatives on a scale of what they cost where cost is measured in terms of what people's preferences are for outcomes. No economy will be effective for people if it can't do this.

The point to a social revolution is to end the various forms of oppression and exploitation. It's hard to see how there is any oppression or class division just because people earn consumption entitlement through work, if able-bodied.


but i have noticed that vary few people agree with you interpritation of communism on other websites

vague bullshit that doesn't mean anything.

[revolution inaction]

I think you have to realise that the free and unrestricted exchange of scarce goods is going to end an anarchist economy up in a bad way. We need to produce certain things in abundance before we can afford to let people take them in huge quantities whenever they please.
hence why i support rationing of scarce goods


One can be a communist and reject a lot of Marx's ideas, and thus a communist but not a Marxist. Perhaps I should have said 'socialism and anarchism' so that you didn't get confused.
i'm a communist who is not a marxist, and all anarchists are socialists, so now i am more confused. are you referring to a specific non anarchists tendency


so you redefine "communism" to mean your group's ideology.

no this definition is quite widely used by anarchists communists, on the other hand your position that communism can include payment seems to be only agreed by you and a few other paraconists



the word "communism" was used by a variety of people in the 19th century. for Marx it referred to a society where there was no longer class division, run by the "associated producers". for "anarchists" it meant this also. in the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx argued that in the early stage of communism, coming out of capitalist society, and taking account of the attitudes of many people at that time and so on, it would make sense to require that able bodied people work to produce the social product and that they be remunerated for items of personal consumption based on length of time they work.

i am not a marxist, so your argument marx said this is not so convincing, i am talking about how the word is used by anarchist communist now, not how marx used it in th e19yh century



I think it would be necessary to do this because we can't be sure that people would do their fair share without this motivation to work. Kropotkin, Makhno and Isaac Puente all agreed about the requirement of work for able-bodied adults.

if people are required to work and acquire personal consumption entitlement in proportion to some measure of their work contribution, this is more likely to seem just and more feasible to many workers than a scheme of free sharing that allows for social parasitism.

i don't have a problem with people being required to work if thay are able, i think that wages are a bad way to do that



We will in any event need some system of social accounting where the economy gains information about what people want and can measure the social opportunity costs of producing one thing rather than another. This means being able to put alternatives on a scale of what they cost where cost is measured in terms of what people's preferences are for outcomes. No economy will be effective for people if it can't do this.

prices are not a good way to measure the social cost of anything




The point to a social revolution is to end the various forms of oppression and exploitation. It's hard to see how there is any oppression or class division just because people earn consumption entitlement through work, if able-bodied.


this is exactly what i propose, it is not the same as paying people by hoe much they work which encourages compartition

[Aesop]

why do you bring leinists into it? if you have ever read my posts you will know i dont give a shit about there opinion, i dont really consider them communist

Hold on,is this the AFED line of thought?
If it is your party's thought, than that orgainsation better than those ardent libertarins who claim that USA is the only state that is capitalist.

[syndicat]

no this definition is quite widely used by anarchists communists, on the other hand your position that communism can include payment seems to be only agreed by you and a few other paraconists

that may be the way things are in Britain but that dank isle isn't the whole world. there is apparently a distinction between "anarchist communism" and "libertarian communism."

me:

The point to a social revolution is to end the various forms of oppression and exploitation. It's hard to see how there is any oppression or class division just because people earn consumption entitlement through work, if able-bodied.
you:

this is exactly what i propose, it is not the same as paying people by hoe much they work which encourages compartition

so, if joe is lazy and refuses to work more than 2 hours but Henry puts his soul into the work and works 8 hours, you think it's okay to give Joe as much consumption entitlement as Henry? do you seriously believe workers will go along with that? in fact it would generate division and resentment.

people can't even be responsible consumers if they don't know what the social costs are of the things they consume. and for that you need prices.

existing market prices do not accurately capture social costs. that's why we need a socialist price system, based on internalizing all environmental and other costs. without such a price system we will have no way to accurately assess social costs.

and scarcity is inevitable. all goods are scarce since they use scarce resources. there are only so many total hours the population will want to or be able to work. and only so many resources available to us. if we put resources into making X, there will be things we couldn't made but won't be able to make. so we need to use the preference of the population for outcomes as the way to determine where to put our scarce time and resources. and that requires a price system...a numeric scale to measure value as indicated by strength of desire for this or that product.

if people are paid an equal amount of consumption entitlement based on an expectation of equal effort, how is that going to encourage competition? on the contrary, it seems to me this is the way to have a society of equals, and thus to encourage solidarity.

if "anarchist-communism" is defined the way you say, then i'd say that it it's not something we should be for, as far as revolutionary program is concerned, because it's not feasible and people will see it as being not feasible.

[revolution inaction]

Hold on,is this the AFED line of thought?
If it is your party's thought, than that orgainsation better than those ardent libertarins who claim that USA is the only state that is capitalist.

i am speaking for my self, i cant think of a document where we have stated an position as an organisation on the nature of leninist organisation and whether they're communist or not.
i vary much doubt that anyone in the AF would disagree with me that the so called communist/socialist countries are or were state capitalist, and that capitalism is the dominate economy system in every part of the world.
we sometimes publish things that criticise the left, but i don't think we ever mention ML's except historically as they are basally none existent in the uk

i don't think american libertarians have any thing to do with anarchism or european libertarians.

[revolution inaction]

that may be the way things are in Britain but that dank isle isn't the whole world. there is apparently a distinction between "anarchist communism" and "libertarian communism."

its raining right now :(
i'm not sure what you are getting at here?





me:

you:


so, if joe is lazy and refuses to work more than 2 hours but Henry puts his soul into the work and works 8 hours, you think it's okay to give Joe as much consumption entitlement as Henry? do you seriously believe workers will go along with that? in fact it would generate division and resentment.

i can't make a blue prit for the organisation of post revolutionary society, but i think that, every one should get the basic nescesitise regardless of if they work or not and that evey one that is able to work should do a ceratn minimum of some tasks that are needed but no one really wants to do to get the rest, and that other things will be done because people want to do them.



people can't even be responsible consumers if they don't know what the social costs are of the things they consume. and for that you need prices.

existing market prices do not accurately capture social costs. that's why we need a socialist price system, based on internalizing all environmental and other costs. without such a price system we will have no way to accurately assess social costs.

a price system does not and can not in any way accurately represent social costs. the idea is as ridiculous as putting a single nutrition number on food, things are far to complicated for that.

you sound as if you think people will consum in the same why they do now, without ever being involved in decisions about what is produced or how.



and scarcity is inevitable. all goods are scarce since they use scarce resources. there are only so many total hours the population will want to or be able to work. and only so many resources available to us. if we put resources into making X, there will be things we couldn't made but won't be able to make. so we need to use the preference of the population for outcomes as the way to determine where to put our scarce time and resources. and that requires a price system...a numeric scale to measure value as indicated by strength of desire for this or that product.

how can people be smart enough to run there work places, and the rest of society, but be to thick to understand how to allocate resources?



if people are paid an equal amount of consumption entitlement based on an expectation of equal effort, how is that going to encourage competition? on the contrary, it seems to me this is the way to have a society of equals, and thus to encourage solidarity.

if a business emplys more people then it spends more on wages, so if workers are self managing there work place and getting paid then it is in there interest to emply less people and work longer hour for themselfs.
if they are not paid its in there interests to recruit more worker so they can work less.



if "anarchist-communism" is defined the way you say, then i'd say that it it's not something we should be for, as far as revolutionary program is concerned, because it's not feasible and people will see it as being not feasible.

i think may be the only feasible revolutionary program, its certainly the most desirable.

a final thing, if you seem to propose that prices be increased in the event of scarcity of something. well what about natural disastrous, crop failers etc? i'm sure you wouldn't say we should increase prices until then number of people who could afford food matches the the food available? but this is a case of real scarcity, something that according to you can only be solved by prices.

[syndicat]

if a business emplys more people then it spends more on wages, so if workers are self managing there work place and getting paid then it is in there interest to emply less people and work longer hour for themselfs.
if they are not paid its in there interests to recruit more worker so they can work less.


here you are operating with a false picture. you are assuming that each production organization is like a private business. it collects revenue and then distributes the surplus of revenue over expenses to the workers.

that is market socialism. that is not what I advocate. I advocate elimination of markets. the consumption entitlement "paid" to workers would be paid by the society as a whole just as the products produced are owned by the society as a whole.

the means of production are owned by the society as a whole and allocated to a production organization -- a group of workers -- to produce things for the benefit of the people.

thus the "surplus" goes to society, not to the workers. workers in one facility are paid the same as workers in any other facility. their consumption entitlement doesn't vary depending on "market demand" for their product.


you sound as if you think people will consum in the same why they do now, without ever being involved in decisions about what is produced or how.


i would say the same of you. what each individual should have the right to decide is how they wish to use their consumption entitlement to request various products up to the limit of their personal budget. this is only in regard to those items that are consumed individually and where there are differences in taste among the population...which particular food items, furnishings, clothes, etc they want. there are also things that are collective goods, and one of the things we want in a libertarian communist society is a big expansion in collective goods and services, which are provided through social provision, such as free public transit, free health care, free child care, free education available throughout one's life and so on. these collective goods are planned through the neighborhood assemblies, and then proposals filter up to regonal congresses via delegates and so on.

now, the decisions that people make about what to personally plan for their own consumption or plan collectively for their community or region, become requests in the planning system, and thus are expressions of the actual desires of the population. within a properly organized libertarian communist economy, this would form the consumer demand input to the planning system.

but we need to know what is feasible, and thus what it is possible to produce given existing capacities and what it would cost to meet the demand. and so this is where worker organizations need to also do planning for their facilities and make proposals for what they will produce. and then you have data on both supply and demand and from this prices should fall out. these are planning system prices, not market prices.

there needs to be conditions of failure for any worker managed facility. that is, how are they held socially accountable? here we need a measure of the social costs of their production and also a measure of the benefit they provide from their work. how can we do this without prices? if we have no way to measure whether we are getting adequate benefit for the social cost of a production operation, how can we ensure the economy is effective for us in providing, at minimum social cost (e.g. minimum burden on our time), maximum benefit?