Anarchism and Natural Resources

Under a capitalist system, natural resources are owned by the government of the country under which they are located. The extraction and sale of these resources is either done by the state, in the form of a nationalized industry, or by a private corporation, which usually pays a lease to the government. What I'm wondering is, how are natural, planetary resources distributed when society is organized under anarchist principles? Taking oil as an example, how can this resource be fairly distributed ensuring that no group is neglected or exploited by any other? I haven't read a huge amount of the older anarchist ideologues, but it seems to me that those writing in 1800's were able to more easily skirt this question because globalised trade in natural resources wasn’t as developed as it is today.

It seems as though ideas founded on the self-sufficient commune presuppose that it's possible to live unaffected by the availability of resources like oil. This kind of societal abstention from the use of resources like oil seems practically impossible given the world’s current population size and the industry required to sustain it. Supporting a population of 7 billion people requires modern agriculture, industry and transportation, which all depend on natural resources, especially oil. The figure I heard recently is that on average, it takes two barrels of oil to produce one kilogram of food, counting all production and transport costs. So unless people are willing to accept a mass dying off of billions of people in order to create self sufficient communal life, self sufficiency and indifference to natural resources seems implausible.

Anarchist ideas that don’t require communal self-sufficiency suggest that communities and societies form free associations with one another in voluntarily participated in confederate hierarchies. The higher the level of the confederacy, the more global that confederates responsibilities are. Would distribution of natural resources be the responsibility of each appropriate layer of confederacy? So lumber, would be distributed by more local confederacies, whereas oil would probably be the responsibility of the highest level?

Anarchist principles stress that all confederate powers, in this case the power to distribute resources, be freely associated. Are all resources un-owned under anarchist principles? Can a community refuse to ascribe power over its surrounding resources to a higher level of confederacy? Or because that community doesn’t ‘own’ those resources in the first place, can they be confiscated by the appropriate confederate level by force? These sorts of problems seem hard to form a genuinely anarchic position on. My knowledge of anarchist theory is pretty limited, I’m wondering if anyone could help me understand this stuff?

Thanks alot!

I don't know if your still making appearances here anymore or not, this is an old thread, and I don't really have any answers but my own two cents.

As for federations, I personally loathe the idea, because in order to have a communal distribution system you need the entire world resources so that everyone can lve a more than adequate life. If my area were to form such a federation, I do not think living on a steady diet of eggs, oranges and pork wil notl cut the mustard for anyone; with the hopes that other federations have produced more than enough so that we can finally get some rice and bread ect. Am I to say "Well its their damn problem in Iowa if they've got scurvy", While they say, " It's their damn problem in Florida if they don't have enough fiber to rid their bodies of toxins". That's totally illogical when there are enough respurces in the world for three times its population.

As for this whole issue of gasoline-- we're seeing that renewable alternative fuels are a hard thing to develop in our present society. For the capitalists that means taking giant risks in developing alternatives that may or may not work, and they must do it before their competitors, plus it has to mesh with our infrastructure, or give birth to a new infrastructure cheaply with efficiency and expediance. None of them want the government to step and coordinate the operations. So, theoretically with Anarchism and Communism the obstacle of development should be overcome, as competition will not be necessary.