Collectivist anarchism

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

What is it

[Red Banana]

Isn't it just how people distinguish the left (actual) anarchists from the "Anarcho-capitalists", an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.

[Let's Get Free]

The belief that a socialist society cannot be created by the commands and statutes of a government, but only by the solidaric collaboration of the workers themselves, through the taking over of the management of all plants by the producers themselves under such form that the separate groups, plants, and branches of industry are independent members of the general economic organism and systematically carry on production and the distribution of the products in the interest of the community on the basis of free mutual agreements.

As Marx put it, anarchist socialists look forward to a society in which labor will "become not only a means of life, but also the highest want in life," an impossibility when the worker is driven by external authority or need rather than inner impulse

[helot]

Collectivist anarchism isn't a broad term to distinguish anarchism from Rothbardians.


It's distinguished from anarchist communism over the question of distribution. Where anarchist communism seeks distribution according to need collectivist anarchism seeks distribution according to labour even though the means of production are to be collectivised.

It's a moot debate these days as i don't think anyone actually identifies as a collectivist anarchist anymore. The debates over it are a century ago.

[Blake's Baby]

Helot's right, Bakunin was an anarcho-collectivist - it came as a current between Proudhon's 'anarcho-mutualism' and Kropotkin's 'anarchist communism'. As an historical development of anarchist theory, it's more or less confined to the period 1865-1885.

[Caj]

It's distinguished from anarchist communism over the question of distribution. Where anarchist communism seeks distribution according to need collectivist anarchism seeks distribution according to labour even though the means of production are to be collectivised.

This is a common misconception. Collectivist anarchism is a term of purely historical significance denoting the anarchists of the First International (Bakunin and his lot). They adopted the term "collectivists" so as to distinguish themselves from the Marxists of the First International (who were simply referred to as "communists"). After their expulsion from the First International, anarchists began to adopt the term communist.

There were certainly differences between collectivist and communist anarchism -- an example would be that the anarchist communists were far more utopian and individualistic (e.g. "propaganda by the deed") than the collectivists had been, a reflection of the anarchists' alienation from the workers after the expulsion of the former from the First International -- but there were no theoretical differences between the two.

As far as the question of production and distribution, both the collectivists and the communists were concerned with what was practical. Thus, there were collectivists like James Guillaume who argued that a system of production and distribution organized around the maxim "from each according to his or her abilities, to each according to his or her needs" should be established and communists like Errico Malatesta who argued that remuneration for labor will be a necessity immediately following the revolution in regions lacking an abundance of certain essential resources.

Here are some quotes that demonstrate this:


The problem of property having been resolved, and there being no capitalists placing a tax on the labor of the masses, the question of types of distribution and remuneration become secondary. We should to the greatest possible extent institute and be guided by the principle From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. When, thanks to the progress of scientific industry and agriculture, production comes to outstrip consumption, and this will be attained some years after the Revolution, it will no longer be necessary to stingily dole out each worker’s share of goods. Everyone will draw what he needs from the abundant social reserve of commodities, without fear of depletion; and the moral sentiment which will be more highly developed among free and equal workers will prevent, or greatly reduce, abuse and waste. In the meantime, each community will decide for itself during the transition period the method they deem best for the distribution of the products of associated labor.
(http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...orks/ideas.htm -- right before section III)


At first [1868 Congress of the International] the term "collectivists" designated the partisans of collective property. . . . [A]t the Basel Congress (1869) the partisans of collective ownership split into two opposing factions. Those who advocated collective ownership by the State were called "state" or "authoritarian communists." Those who advocated ownership of collective property directly by the workers' associations were called "anti-authoritarian communists" or "communist federalists" or "communist anarchists." To distinguish themselves from the authoritarians and avoid confusion, the anti-authoritarians called themselves "collectivists." . . . As to the distribution of the products of collective labor, I wrote ". . . Once the worker owns the instruments of labor, all the rest is of secondary importance. How the products of collective labor will be equitably shared must be left to the judgement of each group." . . . In my essay "On Building the New Social Order" [see selection, p. 56] I stated clearly that in the collectivist society, when machines will triple production, goods will not be sold to consumers but distributed according to needs. . . . These, and many other quotations that I could easily supply, show clearly that the collectivist Internationalists never accepted the theory of "to each according to the product of his [or her] labor.
(from a letter dated August 24, 1909 -- quoted from Bakunin on Anarchy edited by Sam Dolgoff, page 158)


In 1884 Malatesta, drafting the program for a projected anarchist international, admitted that communism [as in "from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her needs"] could be brought about immediately only in a very limited number of areas and, "for the rest," collectivism [as in remuneration for labor] would have to be accepted "for a transitional period."
(from Daniel Guerin's Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, page 51)

[Yuppie Grinder]

Collectivist anarchism isn't a broad term to distinguish anarchism from Rothbardians.


It's distinguished from anarchist communism over the question of distribution. Where anarchist communism seeks distribution according to need collectivist anarchism seeks distribution according to labour even though the means of production are to be collectivised.

It's a moot debate these days as i don't think anyone actually identifies as a collectivist anarchist anymore. The debates over it are a century ago.

This is a myth actually.
The term collectivist anarchism was adopted by Bakunin and his buddies to differentiate themselves from Marx and his buddies, because at that time Communism, Anarchism, (and in Monarchist countries) Republicanism were always getting mixed up.
The difference between Anarcho-Collectivism and Anarcho-Communism historically has been one of tactics. The former took the same class struggle approach as Marxists, the latter were into revolutionary terrorism, propaganda of the deed sort of stuff. The division between the two doesn't really matter today.
Today Anarchism is divided into two main camps, Insurrectionary Anarchists who take a sorta Autonomist approach to revolutionary activity, and Class Struggle Anarchists who are more old school.