Anarchist economics is the set of theories
and practices of economic activity within
the political philosophy of anarchism. With
the exception of anarcho-capitalists who accept
private ownership of the means of production,
anarchists are anti-capitalists. They argue
that its characteristic institutions promote
and reproduce various forms of economic activity
which they consider oppressive, including
private property, hierarchical production
relations, collecting rents from private property,
taking a profit in exchanges and collecting
interest on loans. They generally endorse
possession-based ownership rather than propertarianism.
== Historical overview ==
=== Early views ===
The early English anarchist William Godwin's
views on economics could be summarized as
follows: "[H]e envisages the possibility of
specialization in the various crafts, which
would lead to a man's following the task for
which he had the greatest aptitude, and distributing
his surplus products to whoever may need them,
receiving what he himself needs of other things
from the surplus produced by his neighbours,
but always on the basis of free distribution,
not of exchange. It is evident that, despite
his speculations on the future of machinery,
Godwin's ideal society is based on the economics
of handcrafts and cultivation".For the influential
German individualist anarchist philosopher
Max Stirner, "private property is a spook
which "lives by the grace of law" and it "becomes
'mine' only by effect of the law". In other
words, private property exists purely "through
the protection of the State, through the State's
grace". Recognising its need for state protection,
Stirner is also aware that "[i]t need not
make any difference to the 'good citizens'
who protects them and their principles, whether
an absolute King or a constitutional one,
a republic, if only they are protected. And
what is their principle, whose protector they
always 'love'? Not that of labour", rather
it is "interest-bearing possession [...] labouring
capital, therefore [...] labour certainly,
yet little or none at all of one's own, but
labour of capital and of the – subject labourers".Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon was involved with the Lyons mutualists
and later adopted the name to describe his
own teachings. In What Is Mutualism?, Clarence
Lee Swartz gives his own account of the origin
of the term, claiming that "[t]he word "mutualism"
seems to have been first used by John Gray,
an English writer, in 1832". Proudhon opposed
government privilege that protects capitalist,
banking and land interests as well as the
accumulation or acquisition of property (and
any form of coercion that led to it) which
he believed hampers competition and keeps
wealth in the hands of the few.
Proudhon favoured a right of individuals to
retain the product of their labour as their
own property, but believed that any property
beyond that which an individual produced and
could possess was illegitimate. He thus saw
private property as both essential to liberty
and a road to tyranny, the former when it
resulted from labour and was required for
labour and the latter when it resulted in
exploitation (profit, interest, rent and tax).
He generally called the former "possession"
and the latter "property". For large-scale
industry, he supported workers associations
to replace wage labour and opposed the ownership
of land.
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first
American anarchist and the four-page weekly
paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful
Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical
published. Warren termed the phrase "Cost
the limit of price", with "cost" here referring
not to monetary price paid but the labor one
exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e
proposed a system to pay people with certificates
indicating how many hours of work they did.
They could exchange the notes at local time
stores for goods that took the same amount
of time to produce".Warren put his theories
to the test by establishing an experimental
"labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati
Time Store where trade was facilitated by
notes backed by a promise to perform labor.
The store proved successful and operated for
three years after which it was closed so that
Warren could pursue establishing colonies
based on mutualism. These included Utopia
and Modern Times. Warren said that Stephen
Pearl Andrews' The Science of Society, published
in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition
of Warren's own theories.In Europe, an early
anarcho-communist was Joseph Déjacque, the
first person to describe himself as "libertarian".
Unlike and against Proudhon, he argued that
"it is not the product of his or her labor
that the worker has a right to, but to the
satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever
may be their nature". Returning to New York,
he was able to serialise his book in his periodical
Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement social.
Published in twenty-seven issues from 9 June
1858 to 4 February 1861, Le Libertaire was
the first anarcho-communist journal published
in the United States.
=== Economics in organized mass social anarchism
===
The anti-authoritarian sections of the First
International proclaimed at the St. Imier
Congress (1872) that "the aspirations of the
proletariat can have no purpose other than
the establishment of an absolutely free economic
organization and federation, founded upon
the labour and equality of all and absolutely
independent of all political government" in
which each worker will have the "right to
the enjoyment of the gross product of his
labours and thereby the means of developing
his full intellectual, material and moral
powers in a collective setting". This revolutionary
transformation could "only be the outcome
of the spontaneous action of the proletariat
itself, its trades bodies and the autonomous
communes". Due to its links to active workers'
movements, the International became a significant
organization. Karl Marx became a leading figure
in the International and a member of its General
Council. Proudhon's followers, the mutualists,
opposed Marx's state socialism, advocating
political abstentionism and small property
holdings.In 1868, following their unsuccessful
participation in the League of Peace and Freedom
(LPF), Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin
and his collectivist anarchist associates
joined the First International (which had
decided not to get involved with the LPF).
They allied themselves with the federalist
socialist sections of the International, who
advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the
state and the collectivization of property.
A similar position was adopted by the Workers'
Federation of the Spanish Region in 1882 as
articulated by anarchist veteran of the First
International Josep Llunas i Pujals in his
essay, "Collectivism". The collectivist anarchists
advocated remuneration for the type and amount
of labor adhering to the principle "to each
according to deeds".Anarcho-communism as a
coherent, modern economic-political philosophy
was first formulated in the Italian section
of the First International by Carlo Cafiero,
Emilio Covelli, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa
and other ex Mazzinian republicans. Out of
respect for Mikhail Bakunin, they did not
make their differences with collectivist anarchism
explicit until after Bakunin's death. The
collectivist anarchists sought to collectivize
ownership of the means of production while
retaining payment proportional to the amount
and kind of labor of each individual, but
the anarcho-communists sought to extend the
concept of collective ownership to the products
of labor as well. While both groups argued
against capitalism, the anarcho-communists
departed from Proudhon and Bakunin, who maintained
that individuals have a right to the product
of their individual labor and to be remunerated
for their particular contribution to production.
As Errico Malatesta put it, "instead of running
the risk of making a confusion in trying to
distinguish what you and I each do, let us
all work and put everything in common. In
this way each will give to society all that
his strength permits until enough is produced
for every one; and each will take all that
he needs, limiting his needs only in those
things of which there is not yet plenty for
every one".By the early 1880s, most of the
European anarchist movement had adopted an
anarcho-communist position, advocating the
abolition of wage labour and distribution
according to need. Ironically, the "collectivist"
label then became more commonly associated
with Marxist state socialists who advocated
the retention of some sort of wage system
during the transition to full communism. Anarcho-communist
Peter Kropotkin attacked this position in
his essay, "The Collectivist Wages System",
which was reprinted in his book The Conquest
of Bread in 1892. Cafiero explains in Anarchy
and Communism (1880) that private property
in the product of labor will lead to unequal
accumulation of capital and therefore the
reappearance of social classes and their antagonisms;
and thus the resurrection of the state: "If
we preserve the individual appropriation of
the products of labour, we would be forced
to preserve money, leaving more or less accumulation
of wealth according to more or less merit
rather than need of individuals". At the Florence
Conference of the Italian Federation of the
International in 1876, held in a forest outside
Florence due to police activity, they declared
the principles of anarcho-communism.
=== Anarchism economics in practice: the Spanish
Revolution ===
In the strong anarchist movement in Spain,
the debate between collectivism and anarcho-communism
was revived: "This double base, both industrial
and rural, had turned the libertarian communism
of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism in somewhat
divergent directions, the one communalist,
the other syndicalist. The communalism was
expressed in a more local, more rural spirit,
one might almost say: more southern, for one
of its principal bastions was in Andalusia.
Syndicalism, on the other hand, was more urban
and unitarian in spirit – more northerly,
too, since its main center was Catalonia".Spanish
anarchist theoreticians were somewhat divided
on this subject. A section of them had given
their hearts to Peter Kropotkin and his erudite
yet simplistic idealization of the communes
of the Middle Ages which they identified with
the Spanish tradition of the primitive peasant
community. Their favorite slogan was the "free
commune". Mikhail Bakunin was the founder
of the Spanish collectivist, syndicalist and
internationalist workers' movement. Those
anarchists tended to follow him and his disciple
Ricardo Mella. They were concerned with economic
unification and believed that a long transitional
period would be necessary during which it
would be wiser to reward labor according to
the hours worked and not according to need.
They envisaged the economic structure of the
future as a combination of local trade-union
groupings and federations of branches of industry.In
1932, the Spanish anarchist theoretician Isaac
Puente published an outline of anarcho-communism
and its ideas were taken up by the Saragossa
congress of the Confederación Nacional del
Trabajo in May 1936. The Spanish anarchist
economist Diego Abad de Santillan published
an influential treatise on economics, El Organismo
Economico de la Revolucion (The Economic Organization
of the Revolution). He saw the following:
Our ideal is the commune which is associated,
federated, integrated into the total economy
of the country, and of other countries in
a state of revolution." To replace the single
owner by a hydra-headed owner is not collectivism,
is not self-management. The land, the factories,
the mines, the means of transport are the
product of the work of all and must be at
the service of all. Nowadays the economy is
neither local, nor even national, but world-wide.
The characteristic feature of modern life
is the cohesion of all the productive and
distributive forces. "A socialized economy,
directed and planned, is an imperative necessity
and corresponds to the trend of development
of the modern economic world.Santillan was
to play an important part in the Spanish Revolution.
He became a member of the central committee
of the anti-fascist militia, a member of the
Catalan Economic Council and Economics Minister
of the Catalan government.Anarchist historian
George Woodcock reports the following: "For
several months the armed forces in these regions
were mostly anarchist controlled militia units.
The factories were largely taken over by the
workers and run by C.N.T. committees, while
hundreds of villages either shared out or
collectivized the land, and many of them attempted
to set up libertarian communes of the kind
advocated by Kropotkin".
The beginnings of collectivization seem to
have been similar in villages and factories.
The landlords in the villages had fled, the
Civil Guards had been killed or chased away,
and the village syndicate would transform
itself into a popular assembly in which every
villager could participate directly in the
affairs of the community. An administrative
committee would be elected, but this would
operate under the constant supervision of
the population, meeting at least once a week
in full assembly to hasten the achievement
of free communism. In the factories the process
was similar, with a workers' committee becoming
responsible to the general assembly of the
syndicate, and technicians (in a few cases
the former owners or managers) planning production
in accordance with the workers' views.
== Theoretical economic systems ==
=== 
Classical theoretical economic systems ===
In a chronological and theoretical sense,
there are classical—those created throughout
the 19th century—and post-classical anarchist
schools–those created since the mid-20th
century and after.
==== Mutualism ====
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought
which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each
person might possess a means of production,
either individually or collectively, with
trade representing equivalent amounts of labor
in the free market. Integral to the scheme
was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank
which would lend to producers at a minimal
interest rate only high enough to cover the
costs of administration. Mutualism is based
on a labor theory of value which holds that
when labor or its product is sold, in exchange
it ought to receive goods or services embodying
"the amount of labor necessary to produce
an article of exactly similar and equal utility".Some
mutualists believe that if the state did not
intervene as a result of increased competition
in the marketplace, individuals would receive
no more income than that in proportion to
the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists
oppose the idea of individuals receiving an
income through loans, investments and rent
as they believe these individuals are not
laboring. Some of them argue that if state
intervention ceased, these types of incomes
would disappear due to increased competition
in capital.Although Proudhon opposed this
type of income, he expressed: "[...] I never
meant to [...] forbid or suppress, by sovereign
decree, ground rent and interest on capital.
I believe that all these forms of human activity
should remain free and optional for all".
Insofar as they ensure the workers right to
the full product of their labor, mutualists
support markets and private property in the
product of labor. However, they argue for
conditional titles to land, whose private
ownership is legitimate only so long as it
remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon
called "possession").Proudhon's mutualism
supports labor-owned cooperative firms and
associations for "we need not hesitate, for
we have no choice [...] it is necessary to
form an ASSOCIATION among workers [...] because
without that, they would remain related as
subordinates and superiors, and there would
ensue two [...] castes of masters and wage-workers,
which is repugnant to a free and democratic
society" and so "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". As for
capital goods (man-made, non-land "means of
production"), mutualist opinion differs on
whether these should be commonly managed public
assets or private property.
===== Evolution =====
As a term, "mutualism" has seen a variety
of related uses. Charles Fourier first used
the French term mutualisme in 1822, although
the reference was not to an economic system.
The first use of the noun "mutualist" was
in the New-Harmony Gazette by an American
Owenite in 1826. In the early 1830s, a labor
organization in Lyons, France called themselves
the Mutuellists. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was
involved with the Lyons mutualists and later
adopted the name to describe his own teachings.In
What Is Mutualism?, Clarence Lee Swartz gives
his own account of the origin of the term,
claiming that "[t]he word "mutualism" seems
to have been first used by John Gray, an English
writer, in 1832". When John Gray's 1825 Lecture
on Human Happiness was first published in
the United States in 1826, the publishers
appended the Preamble and Constitution of
the Friendly Association for Mutual Interests,
located at Valley Forge. 1826 also saw the
publication of the Constitution of the Friendly
Association for Mutual Interests at Kendal,
Ohio.
By 1846, Proudhon was speaking of mutualité
in his writings and used the term mutuellisme
at least as early as 1848 in his "Programme
Révolutionnaire". In 1850, William Batchelder
Greene used the term "mutualism" to describe
a mutual credit system similar to that of
Proudhon. Also in 1850, the American newspaper
The Spirit of the Age, edited by William Henry
Channing, published proposals for a "mutualist
township" by Joshua King Ingalls and Albert
Brisbane, together with works by Proudhon,
Greene, Pierre Leroux and others.
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette
Schuster, "[i]t is apparent...that 
Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the
United States at least as early as 1848 and
that it was not conscious of its affinity
to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren
and Stephen Pearl Andrews...William B. Greene
presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its
purest and most systematic form". Later, Benjamin
Tucker fused Max Stirner's egoism with the
economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic
influential publication Liberty. Mutualism
has been associated with two types of currency
reform. Labor notes were first discussed in
Owenite circles and received their first practical
test in 1827 in the Time Store of former New
Harmony member and individualist anarchist
Josiah Warren. Mutual banking aimed at the
monetization of all forms of wealth and the
extension of free credit. It is most closely
associated with William Batchelder Greene,
but Greene drew from the work of Proudhon,
Edward Kellogg and William Beck as well as
from the land bank tradition.
Mutualists argue that association is only
necessary where there is an organic combination
of forces. For instance, an operation that
requires specialization and many different
workers performing their individual tasks
to complete a unified product, i.e. a factory.
In this situation, workers are inherently
dependent on each other; and without association,
they are related as subordinate and superior,
master and wage-slave. An operation that can
be performed by an individual without the
help of specialized workers does not require
association. Proudhon argued that peasants
do not require societal form, and only feigned
association for the purposes of solidarity
in abolishing rents, buying clubs, etc.
Mutualists argue that free banking should
be taken back by the people to establish systems
of free credit. They contend that banks have
a monopoly on credit, just as capitalists
have a monopoly on land. Kevin Carson is a
contemporary mutualist and author of Studies
in Mutualist Political Economy. Carson holds
that capitalism[4] has been founded on "an
act of robbery as massive as feudalism" and
argues that capitalism could not exist in
the absence of a state. He says that "[i]t
is state intervention that distinguishes capitalism
from the free market". As Robert Graham notes,
"Proudhon's market socialism is indissolubly
linked to his notions of industry democracy
and workers' self-management". K. Steven Vincent
notes in his in-depth analysis of this aspect
of Proudhon's ideas that "Proudhon consistently
advanced a program of industrial democracy
which would return control and direction of
the economy to the workers". For Proudhon,
"strong workers' associations [...] would
enable the workers to determine jointly by
election how the enterprise was to be directed
and operated on a day-to-day basis".
==== Collectivist anarchism ====
Collectivist anarchism (also known as anarcho-collectivism)
is a revolutionary doctrine that advocates
the abolition of the state and private ownership
of the means of production. Instead, it envisions
the means of production being owned collectively
and controlled and managed by the producers
themselves. For the collectivization of the
means of production, it was originally envisaged
that workers will revolt and forcibly collectivize
the means of production. Once collectivization
takes place, workers' salaries would be determined
in democratic organizations based on the amount
of time they contributed to production. These
salaries would be used to purchase goods in
a communal market.This contrasts with anarcho-communism,
where wages would be abolished and where individuals
would take freely from a storehouse of goods
"to each according to his need". Notwithstanding
the title, Mikhail Bakunin's collectivist
anarchism is thus seen as a blend of individualism
and collectivism. Collectivist anarchism is
most commonly associated with Bakunin, the
anti-authoritarian sections of the First International
and the early Spanish anarchist movement.
===== Criticism of Marxism and relationship
with other anarchist classical currents =====
The collectivist anarchists at first used
the term "collectivism" to distinguish themselves
from the mutualism of the followers of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon and the state socialists associated
with Karl Marx. Mikhail Bakunin wrote that
"we shall always protest against anything
that may in any way resemble communism or
state socialism", which Bakunin regarded as
fundamentally authoritarian ("Federalism,
Socialism, and Anti-Theologism", 1867).The
dispute between Bakunin and Marx highlighted
the differences between anarchism and Marxism.
Bakunin argued—against certain ideas of
a number of Marxists—that not all revolutions
need be violent. He also strongly rejected
Marx's concept of the "dictatorship of the
proletariat", a concept that vanguardist socialism
including Marxism–Leninism would use to
justify one-party rule from above by a party
claiming to represent the proletariat. Bakunin
insisted that revolutions must be led by the
people directly while any "enlightened elite"
must only exert influence by remaining "invisible...not
imposed on anyone...[and] deprived of all
official rights and significance". He held
that the state should be immediately abolished
because all forms of government eventually
lead to oppression. Bakunin has sometimes
been called the first theorist of the "new
class", meaning that a class of intellectuals
and bureaucrats running the state in the name
of the people or the proletariat—but in
reality in their own interests alone. Bakunin
argued that the "[s]tate has always been the
patrimony of some privileged class: a priestly
class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois
class. And finally, when all the other classes
have exhausted themselves, the State then
becomes the patrimony of the bureaucratic
class and then falls – or, if you will,
rises – to the position of a machine". Bakunin
also had a different view as compared to Marx's
on the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat
and the proletariat. As such, "[b]oth agreed
that the proletariat would play a key role,
but for Marx the proletariat was the exclusive,
leading revolutionary agent while Bakunin
entertained the possibility that the peasants
and even the lumpenproletariat (the unemployed,
common criminals, etc.) could rise to the
occasion". Bakunin "considers workers' integration
in capital as destructive of more primary
revolutionary forces. For Bakunin, the revolutionary
archetype is found in a peasant milieu (which
is presented as having longstanding insurrectionary
traditions, as well as a communist archetype
in its current social form – the peasant
commune) and amongst educated unemployed youth,
assorted marginals from all classes, brigands,
robbers, the impoverished masses, and those
on the margins of society who have escaped,
been excluded from, or not yet subsumed in
the discipline of emerging industrial work...in
short, all those whom Marx sought to include
in the category of the lumpenproletariat".The
anti-authoritarian sections of the First International
proclaimed at the St. Imier Congress (1872)
that "the aspirations of the proletariat can
have no purpose other than the establishment
of an absolutely free economic organization
and federation, founded upon the labour and
equality of all and absolutely independent
of all political government" in which each
worker will have the "right to the enjoyment
of the gross product of his labours and thereby
the means of developing his full intellectual,
material and moral powers in a collective
setting". This revolutionary transformation
could "only be the outcome of the spontaneous
action of the proletariat itself, its trades
bodies and the autonomous communes". A similar
position was adopted by the Workers' Federation
of the Spanish Region in 1882 as articulated
by anarchist veteran of the First International
Jose Llunas Pujols in his essay, "Collectivism".The
difference between collectivist anarchism
and anarcho-communism is that collectivist
anarchism stresses collective ownership of
productive, subsistence and distributary property
while anarcho-communist negates the concept
of ownership in favor of usage or possession
with productive means being a possession not
owned by any individual or particular group.
Anarcho-communists believe that subsistence,
productive and distributive property should
be common or social possessions while personal
property should be private possessions. Collectivist
anarchists agree with this, but they disagree
on the subject of remuneration—some collectivist
anarchists, such as Mikhail Bakunin, believe
in the remuneration of labor while anarcho-communists
such as Peter Kropotkin believe that such
remuneration would lead to the recreation
of currency and that this would need a state.
Thus it could be said that collectivist anarchists
believe in freedom through collective ownership
of production and a communal market of sorts
to distribute goods and services and compensate
workers in the form of remuneration. Collectivist
anarchism could be seen as a combination of
communism and mutualism.
The Anarchist FAQ compares and contrasts collectivist
anarchism with communist anarchism this way:
The major difference between collectivists
and communists is over the question of "money"
after a revolution. Anarcho-communists consider
the abolition of money to be essential, while
anarcho-collectivists consider the end of
private ownership of the means of production
to be the key. As Kropotkin noted, "[collectivist
anarchism] express[es] a state of things in
which all necessaries for production are owned
in common by the labour groups and the free
communes, while the ways of retribution [i.e.
distribution] of labour, communist or otherwise,
would be settled by each group for itself."
Thus, while communism and collectivism both
organise production in common via producers'
associations, they differ in how the goods
produced will be distributed. Communism is
based on free consumption of all while collectivism
is more likely to be based on the distribution
of goods according to the labour contributed.
However, most anarcho-collectivists think
that, over time, as productivity increases
and the sense of community becomes stronger,
money will disappear.
==== Anarcho-communism ====
Anarcho-communism (also known as anarchist
communism and occasionally as free communism
or libertarian communism) is a theory of anarchism
which advocates the abolition of the state,
markets, money, capitalism and private property
(while retaining respect for personal property)
and in favor of common ownership of the means
of production, direct democracy and a horizontal
network of voluntary associations and workers'
councils with production and consumption based
on the guiding principle: "From each according
to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Some forms of anarcho-communism such as insurrectionary
anarchism are strongly influenced by egoism
and radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism
is the best social system for the realization
of individual freedom. Most anarcho-communists
view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling
the opposition between the individual and
society.The abolition of wage labor is central
to anarchist communism. With distribution
of wealth being based on self-determined needs,
people would be free to engage in whatever
activities they found most fulfilling and
would no longer have to engage in work for
which they have neither the temperament nor
the aptitude. Anarcho-communists argue that
there is no valid way of measuring the value
of any one person's economic contributions
because all wealth is a collective product
of current and preceding generations.Anarcho-communists
argue that any economic system based on wage
labor and private property requires a coercive
state apparatus to enforce property rights
and to maintain unequal economic relationships
that inevitably arise from differences in
wages or amount of property. They further
argue that markets and systems of currency
divide labor into classes and assign arbitrary
numerical values to an individual's work and
attempt to regulate production, consumption
and distribution. They argue that money restricts
an individual's ability to consume the products
of their labor by limiting their intake with
prices and wages.
Anarcho-communists recognize money as fundamentally
quantitative in nature, rather than qualitative.
They believe production should be a qualitative
matter and that consumption and distribution
should be self-determined by each individual
without arbitrary value assigned to labor,
goods and services by others. In place of
a market, most anarcho-communists support
a currency-less gift economy where goods and
services are produced by workers and distributed
in community stores where everyone (including
the workers who produced them) is essentially
entitled to consume whatever they want or
need as "payment" for their production of
goods and services.
A gift economy does not necessarily involve
an immediate return (such as with remuneration)
as compensation comes in the form of whatever
the person decides is of equal value to their
products of labor (what is commonly called
bartering). Any limits on production and distribution
would be determined by the individuals within
the groups involved, rather than by capitalist
owners, corporations, investors, banks or
other artificial market pressures. Crucially,
the abstract relationship of "landlord" and
"tenant" would no longer exist as such titles
are held to occur under conditional legal
coercion and are not absolutely necessary
to occupy buildings or spaces (intellectual
property rights would also cease since they
are a form of private property).
===== Evolution and role in early 20th century
revolutions =====
Anarcho-communism developed out of radical
socialist currents after the French Revolution,
but it was first formulated as such in the
Italian section of the First International.
An early anarcho-communist was Joseph Déjacque,
the first person to describe himself as "libertarian".
Unlike Proudhon, he argued that "it is not
the product of his or her labor that the worker
has a right to, but to the satisfaction of
his or her needs, whatever may be their nature".Anarcho-communism
as a coherent, modern economic-political philosophy
was first formulated in the Italian section
of the First International by Carlo Cafiero,
Emilio Covelli, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa
and other ex Mazzinian republicans. Out of
respect for Mikhail Bakunin, they did not
make their differences with collectivist anarchism
explicit until after Bakunin's death. The
collectivist anarchists sought to collectivize
ownership of the means of production while
retaining payment proportional to the amount
and kind of labor of each individual, but
the anarcho-communists sought to extend the
concept of collective ownership to the products
of labor as well.
While both groups argued against capitalism,
the anarchist communists departed from Proudhon
and Bakunin, who maintained that individuals
have a right to the product of their individual
labor and to be remunerated for their particular
contribution to production. As Malatesta put
it, "instead of running the risk of making
a confusion in trying to distinguish what
you and I each do, let us all work and put
everything in common. In this way each will
give to society all that his strength permits
until enough is produced for every one; and
each will take all that he needs, limiting
his needs only in those things of which there
is not yet plenty for every one". The theoretical
work of Peter Kropotkin took importance later
as it expanded and developed pro-organizationalist
and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist
sections.During the Russian Revolution, anarchists
such as Nestor Makhno worked to create and
defend—through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary
Army of Ukraine—anarcho-communism in the
Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before
being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.
A commander of the peasant Revolutionary Insurrectionary
Army of Ukraine, also known as the Anarchist
Black Army, Makhno led a guerrilla campaign
opposing both the Bolshevik "Reds" and monarchist
"Whites". The revolutionary autonomous movement
of which he was a part made various tactical
military pacts while fighting various forces
of reaction and organizing the Free Territory
of Ukraine, an anarchist society committed
to resisting state authority, whether capitalist
or Bolshevik.After successfully repelling
Austro-Hungarian, White and Ukrainian nationalist
forces, the Makhnovists militia forces and
anarcho-communist territories in the Ukraine
were eventually crushed by Bolshevik military
forces. In the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican
Liberal Party was established and during the
early 1910s led a series of military offensives
leading to the conquest and occupation of
certain towns and districts in Baja California
with the leadership of anarcho-communist Ricardo
Flores Magón. Kropotkin's The Conquest of
Bread, which Flores Magón considered a kind
of anarchist bible, served as basis for the
short-lived revolutionary communes in Baja
California during the Magónista Revolt of
1911.To date, the best-known examples of an
anarcho-communist society (i.e. established
around the ideas as they exist today and achieving
worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical
canon), are the anarchist territories during
the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory
during the Russian Revolution. Through the
efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists
during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish
Civil War starting in 1936, anarcho-communism
existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante
and Andalusia as well as in the stronghold
of anarchist Catalonia before being crushed
by the combined forces of the regime that
won the war, Hitler, Mussolini, Spanish Communist
Party repression (backed by the Soviet Union)
as well as economic and armaments blockades
from the capitalist countries and the Spanish
Republic itself.
=== Post-classical theoretical economic systems
===
==== 
Participatory economics ====
Participatory economics, often abbreviated
parecon, is an economic system proposed by
activist and political theorist Michael Albert
and radical economist Robin Hahnel. For Albert,
"participatory economics and participatory
society provide a worthy, viable, and even
necessary and potentially sufficient anarchist
revolutionary vision". It uses participatory
decision making as an economic mechanism to
guide the production, consumption and allocation
of resources in a given society. Proposed
as an alternative to contemporary capitalist
market economies and also an alternative to
centrally planned socialism, it is described
as "an anarchistic economic vision" and it
could be considered a form of socialism as
under parecon the means of production are
owned by the workers.
The underlying values that parecon seeks to
implement are equity, solidarity, diversity,
workers' self-management and efficiency (efficiency
here means accomplishing goals without wasting
valued assets). It proposes to attain these
ends mainly through the following principles
and institutions:
Workers' and consumers' councils utilizing
self-managerial methods for decision making
Balanced job complexes
Remuneration according to effort and sacrifice
Participatory planningAlbert and Hahnel stress
that parecon is only meant to address an alternative
economic theory and must be accompanied by
equally important alternative visions in the
fields of politics, culture and kinship. The
authors have also discussed elements of anarchism
in the field of politics, polyculturalism
in the field of culture and feminism in the
field of family and gender relations as being
possible foundations for future alternative
visions in these other spheres of society.
Stephen R. Shalom has begun work on a participatory
political vision he calls "parpolity".
==== Inclusive Democracy ====
According to the Inclusive Democracy (ID)
project, economic democracy is the authority
of demos (community) in the economic sphere,
which requires equal distribution of economic
power. As with the case of direct democracy,
economic democracy today is only feasible
at the level of the confederated demoi. It
involves the ownership and control of the
means of production by the demos. This is
radically different from the two main forms
of concentration of economic power: capitalist
and "socialist" growth economy. It is also
different from the various types of collectivist
capitalism, such as workers' control and milder
versions suggested by post-Keynesian social
democrats. The demos therefore becomes the
authentic unit of economic life.
The main characteristic of the proposed model,
which also differentiates it from socialist
planning models like parecon, is that it explicitly
presupposes a stateless, moneyless and marketless
economy that precludes private accumulation
of wealth and the institutionalisation of
privileges for some sections of society without
relying on a mythical post-scarcity state
of abundance, or sacrificing freedom of choice.
The proposed system aims at satisfying the
double aim of: (a) meeting the basic needs
of all citizens—which requires that basic
macro-economic decisions have to be made democratically;
and (b) securing freedom of choice—which
requires the individual to make important
decisions affecting his/her own life (what
work to do, what to consume and so on).
Therefore, the system consists of two basic
elements: (1) democratic planning, which involves
a feedback process between workplace assemblies,
demotic assemblies and the confederal assembly;
and (2) an artificial market using personal
vouchers, which ensures freedom of choice,
but it avoids the adverse effects of real
markets. Although some have called this system
"a form of money based on the labour theory
of value", it is not a money model since vouchers
cannot be used as a general medium of exchange
and store of wealth.
Another distinguishing feature of ID is its
distinction between basic and non-basic needs.
Remuneration is according to need for basic
needs and according to effort for non-basic
needs. ID is based on the principle that meeting
basic needs is a fundamental human right which
is guaranteed to all who are in a physical
condition to offer a minimal amount of work.
By contrast, parecon guarantees that basic
needs are satisfied only to the extent they
are characterized public goods or are covered
by compassion and by a guaranteed basic income
for the unemployed and those who cannot work.
==== Left-wing market anarchism ====
Left-wing market anarchism, a form of left-libertarianism
and individualist anarchism, is associated
with scholars such as Kevin Carson, Roderick
T. Long, Charles Johnson, Brad Spangler, Samuel
Edward Konkin III, Sheldon Richman, Chris
Matthew Sciabarra and Gary Chartier who stress
the value of radically free markets, termed
"freed markets" to distinguish them from the
common conception which these libertarians
believe to be riddled with statist and capitalist
privileges. Referred to as left-wing market
anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians,
proponents of this approach strongly affirm
the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership
and free markets while maintaining that taken
to their logical conclusions these ideas support
anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical,
pro-labor positions in economics; anti-imperialism
in foreign policy; and thoroughly liberal
or radical views regarding such cultural issues
as gender, sexuality and race.
The genealogy of contemporary market-oriented
left-libertarianism, sometimes labeled "left-wing
market anarchism", overlaps to a significant
degree with that of Steiner–Vallentyne left-libertarianism
as the roots of that tradition are sketched
in the book The Origins of Left-Libertarianism.
Carson–Long-style left-libertarianism is
rooted in nineteenth-century mutualism and
in the work of figures such as Thomas Hodgskin
and the individualist anarchists Benjamin
Tucker and Lysander Spooner. While with notable
exceptions market-oriented libertarians after
Tucker tended to ally with the political right,
relationships between such libertarians and
the New Left thrived in the 1960s, laying
the groundwork for modern left-wing market
anarchism.Left-wing market anarchism identifies
with left-libertarianism (or left-wing libertarianism)
which names several related but distinct approaches
to politics, society, culture and political
and social theory, which stress both individual
freedom and social justice. Unlike right-libertarians,
they believe that neither claiming nor mixing
one's labor with natural resources is enough
to generate full private property rights;
and maintain that natural resources (land,
oil, gold and trees) ought to be held in some
egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned
collectively. Those left-libertarians who
support private property do so under the condition
that recompense is offered to the local community.
==== Anarcho-capitalism ====
Anarcho-capitalism advocates the elimination
of the state in favor of a laissez-faire economic
system. In an anarcho-capitalist society,
law enforcement, courts and all other security
services would be funded voluntarily through
the marketplace rather than through confiscatory
taxation and money would be privately and
competitively provided in an open market.
Therefore, personal and economic activities
under anarcho-capitalism would be regulated
through the legal marketplace for tort and
property law by contracts rather than monopolistically
through majority or autocracy. Anarcho-capitalism
developed from radical anti-state libertarianism
drawing from Austrian School economics, study
of law and economics and public choice theory.The
majority of anarchist theorists do not consider
anarcho-capitalism as a part of the anarchist
movement due to the fact that anarchism has
historically been an anti-capitalist movement
and for definitional reasons which see anarchism
incompatible with capitalist forms.
== Issues and proposals ==
=== Anarchist criticisms of capitalism ===
The authors of An Anarchist FAQ state that
anarchists have long recognised that capitalism
is by its very nature hierarchical. The worker
is subjected to the authority of the boss
during working hours (sometimes outside work
too). They state: "This hierarchical control
of wage labour has the effect of alienating
workers from their own work, and so from themselves.
Workers no longer govern themselves during
work hours and so are no longer free". So
this is why capitalism, "by treating labour
as analogous to all other commodities denies
the key distinction between labour and other
"resources"—that is to say its inseparability
from its bearer—labour, unlike other "property",
is endowed with will and agency. Thus when
one speaks of selling labour there is a necessary
subjugation of will (hierarchy)... Creative,
self-managed work is a source of pride and
joy and part of what it means to be fully
human. Wrenching control of work from the
hands of the worker profoundly harms his or
her mental and physical health". They also
establish the following: [...] capitalism
itself was created by state violence and the
destruction of traditional ways of life and
social interaction was part of that task.
From the start, bosses spent considerable
time and energy combating attempts of working
people to join together to resist the hierarchy
they were subjected to and reassert human
values. Such forms of free association between
equals (such as trade unions) were combated,
just as attempts to regulate the worse excesses
of the system by democratic governments. Indeed,
capitalists prefer centralised, elitist and/or
authoritarian regimes precisely because they
are sure to be outside of popular control
(see section B.2.5). They are the only way
that contractual relations based on market
power could be enforced on an unwilling population.
Capitalism was born under such states and
as well as backing fascist movements, they
made high profits in Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy. Today many corporations "regularly
do business with totalitarian and authoritarian
regimes – again, because it is profitable
to do so." Indeed, there is a "trend by US
corporations to invest in" such countries...
Perhaps unsurprisingly, as such regimes are
best able to enforce the necessary conditions
to commodify labour fully.
For the influential German individualist anarchist
philosopher Max Stirner, "private property
is a spook which "lives by the grace of law"
and it "becomes 'mine' only by effect of the
law". In other words, private property exists
purely "through the protection of the State,
through the State's grace". Recognising its
need for state protection, Stirner is also
aware that "[i]t need not make any difference
to the 'good citizens' who protects them and
their principles, whether an absolute King
or a constitutional one, a republic, if only
they are protected. And what is their principle,
whose protector they always 'love'? Not that
of labour", rather it is "interest-bearing
possession [...] labouring capital, therefore
[...] labour certainly, yet little or none
at all of one's own, but labour of capital
and of the – subject labourers". French
anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon opposed government
privilege that protects capitalist, banking
and land interests as well as the accumulation
or acquisition of property (and any form of
coercion that led to it) which he believed
hampers competition and keeps wealth in the
hands of the few. The Spanish individualist
anarchist Miguel Gimenez Igualada sees "capitalism
is an effect of government; the disappearance
of government means capitalism falls from
its pedestal vertiginously...That which we
call capitalism is not something else but
a product of the State, within which the only
thing that is being pushed forward is profit,
good or badly acquired. And so to fight against
capitalism is a pointless task, since be it
State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism,
as long as Government exists, exploiting capital
will exist. The fight, but of consciousness,
is against the State".Within anarchism there
emerged a critique of wage slavery which refers
to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary
slavery, where a person's livelihood depends
on wages, especially when the dependence is
total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted
term used to draw an analogy between slavery
and wage labor by focusing on similarities
between owning and renting a person. The term
"wage slavery" has been used to criticize
economic exploitation and social stratification,
with the former seen primarily as unequal
bargaining power between labor and capital
(particularly when workers are paid comparatively
low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter
as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling
job choices and leisure in an economy. Libertarian
socialists believe that if freedom is valued,
then society must work towards a system in
which individuals have the power to decide
economic issues along with political issues.
Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified
authority with direct democracy, voluntary
federation and popular autonomy in all aspects
of life, including physical communities and
economic enterprises. With the advent of the
Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon
and Marx elaborated the comparison between
wage labor and slavery in the context of a
critique of societal property not intended
for active personal use, Luddites emphasized
the dehumanization brought about by machines
while later Emma Goldman famously denounced
wage slavery by saying: "The only difference
is that you are hired slaves instead of block
slaves". Goldman believed that the economic
system of capitalism was incompatible with
human liberty. "The only demand that property
recognizes", she wrote in Anarchism and Other
Essays, "is its own gluttonous appetite for
greater wealth, because wealth means power;
the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit,
the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade".
She also argued that capitalism dehumanized
workers, "turning the producer into a mere
particle of a machine, with less will and
decision than his master of steel and iron".Noam
Chomsky contends that there is little moral
difference between chattel slavery and renting
one's self to an owner or "wage slavery".
He feels that it is an attack on personal
integrity that undermines individual freedom.
He holds that workers should own and control
their workplace. Many libertarian socialists
argue that large-scale voluntary associations
should manage industrial manufacture while
workers retain rights to the individual products
of their labor. As such, they see a distinction
between the concepts of "private property"
and "personal possession". Whereas "private
property" grants an individual exclusive control
over a thing whether it is in use or not and
regardless of its productive capacity, "possession"
grants no rights to things that are not in
use.In addition to anarchist Benjamin Tucker's
"big four" monopolies (land, money, tariffs
and patents) that have emerged under capitalism,
neo-mutualist economist Kevin Carson argues
that the state has also transferred wealth
to the wealthy by subsidizing organizational
centralization in the form of transportation
and communication subsidies. He believes that
Tucker overlooked this issue due to Tucker's
focus on individual market transactions whereas
Carson also focuses on organizational issues.
The theoretical sections of Studies in Mutualist
Political Economy are presented as an attempt
to integrate marginalist critiques into the
labor theory of value. Carson holds that "arising
as a new class society directly from the old
class society of the Middle Ages, [capitalism]
was founded on an act of robbery as massive
as the earlier feudal conquest of the land.
It has been sustained to the present by continual
state intervention to protect its system of
privilege without which its survival is unimaginable".
Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar
libertarianism", a phrase that describes the
use of a free market rhetoric in defense of
corporate capitalism and economic inequality
(see economic liberalism and right-libertarianism).
According to Carson, the term is derived from
the phrase "vulgar political economy", which
Karl Marx described as an economic order that
"deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic
and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of
existence the ideas which contain the contradictions
[existing in economic life]".
=== Economics as anarchist strategy ===
Economic secession has been variously defined
by sources. In its narrowest sense, it is
abstention from the state's economic system—for
instance by replacing the use of government
money with barter, local exchange trading
systems, or commodity money (such as gold).
As such, "anarchists can often be found advocating
for mass refusal and the withdrawal of our
participation-sometimes in the form of general
strikes; sometimes as in the case of the illegalists,
in the forms of direct expropriations – with
the support and participation of social movements
or not; sometimes in the forms of occupations
and the taking of space; and still other times
in advocating for creating alternatives to
capitalist relations in the here and now;
and so on".Some anarchists believe that it
is not radical political activity that will
transform society, but radical economic activity
that will make true change. They regard boycotts,
consumer advocacy and class action lawsuits
to be merely liberal actions that do not address
the core problem which is capitalism itself.
Italian anarcho-communist Errico Malatesta
argued that "each victory, however small,
gained by the workers against their exploiters,
each decrease of profit, every bit of wealth
taken from the individual owners and put at
the disposal of all, shall be a progress – a
forward step towards Anarchism".Participatory
economics addresses the division of labor
question by advocating balanced job complexes
wherein all workers at a production facility
share in all aspects of labor, i.e. everyone
takes part in labor, management, maintenance
and all related work to ensure equality and
that skills are shared amongst workers. Some
anarchists that changing personal consumption
habits to minimize (or eliminate entirely)
involvement in the prevailing capitalist economy
is essential to practicing anarchism in their
lives. Withdrawing from the system by living
on scavenged, stolen, or scammed resources
is often touted by individuals and groups
influenced by the Situationists such as CrimethInc.
as a viable means of survival and non-participation
in the system.
=== Anarchist value theory ===
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism and American
individualist anarchists such as Josiah Warren,
Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker adopted
the liberal labor theory of value of classical
economics, but they used it to criticize capitalism—instead
favoring a non-capitalist market system.Egoist
anarchist Max Stirner did not adhere to anything
close to the labor theory of value and affirmed
that the only real base for possession is
might over it.Collectivist anarchism, as defended
by Mikhail Bakunin, defended a form of the
labour theory of value when it advocated a
system where "all necessaries for production
are owned in common by the labour groups and
the free communes...based on the distribution
of goods according to the labour contributed".Anarcho-communism,
as defended by Peter Kropotkin and Errico
Malatesta, rejected the labor theory of value
and exchange value itself, advocated a gift
economy and to base distribution on need.
==== Ethics of pricing ====
Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the
limit of price", with "cost" here referring
not to monetary price paid but the labor one
exerted to produce an item. This understanding
of cost is congruent with that of the classical
economist Adam Smith who said: "The real price
of every thing, what every thing really costs
to the man who wants to acquire it, is the
toil and trouble of acquiring it". However,
Warren reached different conclusions as he
believed that goods and services should trade
according to how much labor was exerted to
produce them and bring them to market, instead
of according to how individuals believed them
to be subjectively worth. Therefore, "[h]e
proposed a system to pay people with certificates
indicating how many hours of work they did.
They could exchange the notes at local time
stores for goods that took the same amount
of time to produce". To charge more labor
for something that entailed less labor was
"cannibalism", according to him. Moreover,
he believed that trading according to "cost
the limit of price" would promote increasing
efficiency in an economy, as he explains in
Equitable Commerce: If cost is made the limit
of price, every one becomes interested in
reducing COST, by bringing in all the economies,
all the facilities to their aid. But, on the
contrary, if cost does not govern the price,
but every thing is priced at what it will
bring, there are no such co-operating interests.
If I am to have my supply of flour at cost,
then, any facility I can afford to the wheat
grower, reduces the cost to me, and it does
the same for all who have any portion of the
wheat, I am promoting all their interests
while pursuing my own...Now if the wheat were
NOT TO BE SOLD TO us AT COST, but at "whatever
it would bring" according to our necessities,
then none of us would have any interest in
affording facilities, repairing breaches,
nor in any other way co-operating with the
producer of it. The same motive would act
in the production, preservation, and use of
every thing."
He put his theories to the test by establishing
an experimental "labor for labor store" called
the Cincinnati Time Store at the corner of
5th and Elm Streets in what is now downtown
Cincinnati, where trade was facilitated by
notes backed by a promise to perform labor:
"All the goods offered for sale in Warren's
store were offered at the same price the merchant
himself had paid for them, plus a small surcharge,
in the neighborhood of 4 to 7 percent, to
cover store overhead". The store proved successful
and operated for three years after which it
was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing
colonies based on mutualism. These included
Utopia and Modern Times. Warren said that
Stephen Pearl Andrews' The Science of Society,
published in 1852, was the most lucid and
complete exposition of Warren's own theories.
==== Energy credits ====
The theory that all values can be evaluated
in terms of joules. In the same vein as the
labor theory of value, this is an attempt
to make a normative basis for value by accounting
for embodied energy. Accounting for such a
system would be vastly more complex than current
or other theoretical currency systems because
all energy output of workers and energy expenditure
on goods/services must be tracked (something
that is thought impossible and useless by
many anarchists).
One group that has advocated a system using
energy is the technocracy movement with a
system based on energy accounting where energy
is used to "buy" a product or service without
being exchanged, so the effect is that products
or services are distributed to the user without
gain by the provider (who has the same amount
of energy in his or her account regardless)
so allegedly making profit impossible.
=== Workers issues and anarcho-syndicalism
===
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism
which focuses on the labour movement. Syndicalisme
is a French word, ultimately derived from
the Greek, meaning "trade unionism"—hence,
the "syndicalism" qualification. Syndicalism
is an alternative co-operative economic system.
Adherents view it as a potential force for
revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism
and the state with a new society democratically
self-managed by workers.
The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism
are workers' solidarity, direct action and
workers' self-management. Anarcho-syndicalists
believe that only direct action—that is,
action concentrated on directly attaining
a goal as opposed to indirect action, such
as electing a representative to a government
position—will allow workers to liberate
themselves. Moreover, anarcho-syndicalists
believe that workers' organizations (the organizations
that struggle against the wage system, which
in anarcho-syndicalist theory will eventually
form the basis of a new society) should be
self-managing. They should not have bosses
or "business agents"; rather, the workers
should be able to make all the decisions that
affect them themselves.
Rudolf Rocker was one of the most popular
voices in the anarcho-syndicalist movement.
He outlined a view of the origins of the movement,
what it sought and why it was important to
the future of labor in his 1938 pamphlet Anarcho-Syndicalism.
The International Workers Association is an
international anarcho-syndicalist federation
of various labor unions from different countries.
The Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
(CNT) played and still plays a major role
in the Spanish labor movement. It was also
an important force in the Spanish Civil War.
Anarcho-syndicalists seek to abolish the wage
system, regarding it as "wage slavery" and
state or private ownership of the means of
production, which they believe lead to class
divisions. Not all seek to abolish money per
se. Ralph Chaplin states that "the ultimate
aim of the General Strike as regards wages
is to give to each producer the full product
of his labor. The demand for better wages
becomes revolutionary only when it is coupled
with the demand that the exploitation of labor
must cease".Additionally, anarcho-syndicalists
regard the state as a profoundly anti-worker
institution. They view the primary purpose
of the state as being the defence of private
property and therefore of economic, social
and political privilege, even when such defence
denies its citizens the ability to enjoy material
independence and the social autonomy which
springs from it. In contrast to other bodies
of thought (Marxism–Leninism being a prime
example), anarcho-syndicalists deny that there
can be any kind of workers' state, or a state
which acts in the interests of workers, as
opposed to those of the rich and powerful.
Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which
it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism
holds to the idea that power corrupts.Although
anarcho-syndicalism originated close to the
beginning of the twentieth century, it remains
a popular and active school of anarchism today
and has many supporters as well as many currently
active organizations. Anarcho-syndicalist
trade unionists, being social anarchists,
vary in their points of view on anarchist
economic arrangements from a collectivist
anarchism type economic system to an anarcho-communist
economic system.
==== Concept of wage slavery ====
Wage slavery refers to a situation perceived
as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's
livelihood depends on wages, especially when
the dependence is total and immediate. It
is a negatively connoted term used to draw
an analogy between slavery and wage labor
by focusing on similarities between owning
and renting a person. The term "wage slavery"
has been used to criticize economic exploitation
and social stratification, with the former
seen primarily as unequal bargaining power
between labor and capital (particularly when
workers are paid comparatively low wages,
e.g. in sweatshops) and the latter as a lack
of workers' self-management, fulfilling job
choices and leisure in an economy. The criticism
of social stratification covers a wider range
of employment choices bound by the pressures
of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise
unfulfilling work that deprives humans of
their "species character" not only under threat
of starvation or poverty, but also of social
stigma and status diminution.The exchange
of money and debt for work traces back to
the disintegration of the "playful" work in
hunter-gatherer gift economies and the establishment
of prostitution as a "fundamental feature
of human civilization". Similarities between
wage labor and slavery were noted in ancient
Rome by Cicero while the pervasive practice
of voluntary slavery in Medieval Russia indicates
the previous historical coexistence of slavery
and voluntary choice. Before the American
Civil War, Southern defenders of African American
slavery invoked the concept of wage slavery
to favorably compare the condition of their
slaves to workers in the North. With the advent
of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such
as Proudhon and Marx elaborated the comparison
between wage labor and slavery in the context
of a critique of societal property not intended
for active personal use while Luddites emphasized
the dehumanization brought about by machines.
Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery
by saying: "The only difference is that you
are hired slaves instead of block slaves".The
introduction of wage labor in 18th-century
Britain was met with resistance—giving rise
to the principles of syndicalism. Historically,
some labor organizations and individual social
activists have espoused workers' self-management
or worker cooperatives as possible alternatives
to wage labor.
==== Collectivizations and workers control
====
Workers' control is a term meaning participation
in the management of factories and other commercial
enterprises by the people who work there.
It has been variously advocated by anarchists,
socialists, communists, social democrats and
Christian democrats and has been combined
with various socialist and mixed economy systems.
Workers' councils are a form of workers' control.
For Proudhon, mutualism involved creating
"industrial democracy", a system where workplaces
would be "handed over to democratically organised
workers' associations [...] We want these
associations to be models for agriculture,
industry and trade, the pioneering core of
that vast federation of companies and societies
woven into the common cloth of the democratic
social Republic". He urged "workers to form
themselves into democratic societies, with
equal conditions for all members, on pain
of a relapse into feudalism". This would result
in "[c]apitalistic and proprietary exploitation,
stopped everywhere, the wage system abolished,
equal and just exchange guaranteed". Workers
would no longer sell their labour to a capitalist
but rather work for themselves in co-operatives.Council
communism, such as in the early Soviet Union
advocated workers' control through workers
councils and factory committees. Syndicalism
advocates workers' control through trade unions.
Guild socialism advocates workers' control
through a revival of the guild system. Participatory
economics represents a recent variation on
the idea of workers' control.
Workers' control can be contrasted to control
of the economy via the state such as nationalisation
and central planning (see state socialism)
and private control of the means of production
as found in capitalism. A worker cooperative
is a cooperative owned and democratically
managed by its worker-owners. This control
may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative
enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner
participates in decision making in a democratic
fashion, or it may refer to one in which managers
and administration is elected by every worker-owner
and finally it can refer to a situation in
which managers are considered and treated
as, workers of the firm.In traditional forms
of worker cooperative, all shares are held
by the workforce with no outside or consumer
owners and each member has one voting share.
In practice, control by worker owners may
be exercised through individual, collective
or majority ownership by the workforce, or
the retention of individual, collective or
majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member
one-vote basis). A worker cooperative therefore
has the characteristic that the majority of
its workforce own shares, and the majority
of shares are owned by the workforce.Nevertheless,
anarcho-communism has been critical of workers
ownership of large means of production for
the following reasons: "Whereas the syndicalist
alternative re-privatizes the economy into
"self-managed" collectives and opens the way
to their degeneration into traditional forms
of private property – whether "collectively"
owned or not – libertarian municipalism
politicizes the economy and dissolves it into
the civic domain. Neither factory or land
appear as separate interests within the communal
collective. Nor can workers, farmers, technicians,
engineers, professionals, and the like perpetuate
their vocational identities as separate interests
that exist apart from the citizen body in
face-to-face assemblies. "Property" is integrated
into the commune as a material constituent
of its libertarian institutional framework,
indeed as a part of a larger whole that is
controlled by the citizen body in assembly
as citizens – not as vocationally oriented
interest groups".
=== Forms of exchange ===
Anarchist economist Kevin Carson manifests
that "[l]ocal currencies, barter networks
and mutual credit‐clearing systems are a
solution to a basic problem: a world in which
there is a lot of work to be done, but there
is simply no money around to bring the people
and the work together".
==== Alternate currency ====
An alternative currency is any currency used
as an alternative to the dominant national
or multinational currency systems (usually
referred to as national or fiat money). Alternative
currencies can be created by an individual,
corporation, or organization, they can be
created by national, state, or local governments,
or they can arise naturally as people begin
to use a certain commodity as a currency.
Mutual credit is a form of alternative currency
and thus any form of lending that does not
go through the banking system can be considered
a form of alternative currency.
When used in combination with or when designed
to work in combination with national or multinational
fiat currencies they can be referred to as
complementary currency. Most complementary
currencies are also local currencies and are
limited to a certain region. Barters are another
type of alternative currency. These are actually
exchange systems, which only trade items;
thus without the use of any currency whatsoever.
Finally, local exchange trading system is
a special form of barter which trades points
for items. One point stands for one man-hour
of work and often there are issues related
to paying tax. Some alternative currencies
are considered tax-exempt, but most of them
are fully taxed as if they were national currency,
with the caveat that the tax must be paid
in the national currency. The legality and
tax status of alternative currencies varies
widely from country to country as some systems
in use in some countries would be illegal
in others.
==== Labor notes and local exchange trading
systems ====
Labour notes are an alternative currency based
on exchange of hours of labor. Josiah Warren
is widely regarded as the first American anarchist.
Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the
limit of price", with "cost" here referring
not to monetary price paid but the labor one
exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e
proposed a system to pay people with labour
notes indicating how many hours of work they
did. They could exchange the notes at local
time stores for goods that took the same amount
of time to produce".He put his theories to
the test by establishing an experimental "labor
for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time
Store where trade was facilitated by notes
backed by a promise to perform labor. The
store proved successful and operated for three
years after which it was closed so that Warren
could pursue establishing colonies based on
mutualism. These included Utopia and Modern
Times.
A local exchange trading system (also local
employment and trading system or local energy
transfer system; abbreviated to LETS or LETSystem)
is a locally initiated, democratically organised,
not-for-profit community enterprise that provides
a community information service and record
transactions of members exchanging goods and
services by using the currency of locally
created LETS Credits. LETS networks use interest-free
local credit so direct swaps do not need to
be made. For instance, a member may earn credit
by doing childcare for one person and spend
it later on carpentry with another person
in the same network. In LETS, unlike other
local currencies, no scrip is issued, but
rather transactions are recorded in a central
location open to all members. As credit is
issued by the network members, for the benefit
of the members themselves, LETS are considered
mutual credit systems.
=== Credit and banking ===
Anarchist mutualists argued that free banking
should be taken back by the people to establish
systems of free credit. They contend that
banks have a monopoly on credit, just as capitalists
have a monopoly on land. Banks are essentially
creating money by lending out deposits that
do not actually belong to them, then charging
interest on the difference. Mutualists argue
that by establishing a democratically run
mutual savings bank or credit union, it would
be possible to issue free credit so that money
could be created for the benefit of the participants
rather than for the benefit of the bankers.
Individualist anarchists noted for their detailed
views on mutualist banking include Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, William Batchelder Greene and Lysander
Spooner. Some modern forms of mutual credit
are LETS and the Ripple monetary system project.
In a session of the French legislature, Proudhon
proposed a government-imposed income tax to
fund his mutual banking scheme, with some
tax brackets reaching as high as 33​1⁄3
percent and 50 percent, which was turned down
by the legislature. This income tax Proudhon
proposed to fund his bank was to be levied
on rents, interest, debts and salaries. Specifically,
Proudhon's proposed law would have required
all capitalists and stockholders to disburse
one sixth of their income to their tenants
and debtors and another sixth to the national
treasury to fund the bank. This scheme was
vehemently objected to by others in the legislature,
including Frédéric Bastiat; the reason given
for the income tax's rejection was that it
would result in economic ruin and that it
violated "the right of property". In his debates
with Bastiat, Proudhon did once propose funding
a national bank with a voluntary tax of 1%.
Proudhon also argued for the abolition of
all taxes.American mutualist William Batchelder
Greene is best known for the works Mutual
Banking, which proposed an interest-free banking
system. In 1850 and 1851, he organized citizens
of Brookfield, Warren and Ware, Massachusetts
to petition the state's General Court for
a charter to establish a mutual bank: "Upon
all the petitions, the Committee on Banks
and Banking, after hearing the arguments of
the petitioners, reported simply, "Leave to
withdraw!" (The Radical Deficiency of the
Existing Circulating Medium 1857). Similar
attempts by the New England Labor Reform League
in the 1870s met with similar results. Greene's
mutualist banking ideas resembled those of
Proudhon as well as the "land banks" of the
colonial period. He had an important influence
on Benjamin Tucker, the editor of the anarchist
journal Liberty.
During the episode known as the Spanish Revolution,
contemporary anarchist theorist Peter Gelderloos
reports the following:
=== Gift economy ===
In anthropology and the social sciences, a
gift economy (or gift culture) is a mode of
exchange where valuable goods and services
are regularly given without any explicit agreement
for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal
quid pro quo exists). Ideally, voluntary and
recurring gift exchange circulates and redistributes
wealth throughout a community and serves to
build societal ties and obligations. In contrast
to a barter economy or a market economy, social
norms and custom governs gift exchange, rather
than an explicit exchange of goods or services
for money or some other commodity.Traditional
societies dominated by gift exchange were
small in scale and geographically remote from
each other. As states formed to regulate trade
and commerce within their boundaries, market
exchange came to dominate. Nonetheless, the
practice of gift exchange continues to play
an important role in modern society. One prominent
example is scientific research, which can
be described as a gift economy.Contrary to
popular conception, there is no evidence that
societies relied primarily on barter before
using money for trade. Instead, non-monetary
societies operated largely along the principles
of gift economics and in more complex economies
on debt. When barter did in fact occur, it
was usually between either complete strangers
or would-be enemies.The expansion of the Internet
has witnessed a resurgence of the gift economy,
especially in the technology sector. Engineers,
scientists and software developers create
open-source software projects. The Linux kernel
and the GNU operating system are prototypical
examples for the gift economy's prominence
in the technology sector and its active role
in instating the use of permissive free software
and copyleft licenses, which allow free reuse
of software and knowledge. Other examples
include file-sharing, the commons and open
access.
Anarcho-communists advocate a gift economy
as an ideal, with neither money, nor markets,
nor central planning. This view traces back
at least to Peter Kropotkin, who saw in the
hunter-gatherer tribes he had visited the
paradigm of "mutual aid". Anarchist anthropologist
David Graeber in his 2011 book Debt: The First
5000 Years argues that with the advent of
the great Axial Age civilizations the nexus
between coinage and the calculability of economic
values was concomitant with the disrupt of
what Graeber calls "human economies" as found
among the Iroquois, Celts, Inuit, Tiv, Nuer
and the Malagasy people of Madagascar among
other groups, which according to Graeber held
a radically different conception of debt and
social relations based on the radical incalculability
of human life and the constant creation and
recreation of social bonds through gifts,
marriages and general sociability.
The author postulates the growth of a "military-coinage-slave
complex" around this time, through which mercenary
armies looted cities and human beings were
cut from their social context to work as slaves
in Greece, Rome and elsewhere in the Eurasian
continent. The extreme violence of the period
marked by the rise of great empires in China,
India and the Mediterranean was in this way
connected with the advent of large-scale slavery
and the use of coins to pay soldiers, together
with the obligation enforced by the state
for its subjects to pay its taxes in currency.
This was also the same time that the great
religions spread out and the general questions
of philosophical enquiry emerged on world
history—many of those directly related,
as in Plato's Republic, with the nature of
debt and its relation to ethics.
==== Free shops ====
Give-away shops, freeshops, or free stores
are stores where all goods are free. They
are similar to charity shops, with mostly
second-hand items—only everything is available
at no cost. Whether it is a book, a piece
of furniture, a garment or a household item,
it is all freely given away, although some
operate a one-in, one-out type policy (swap
shops). The free store is a form of constructive
direct action that provides a shopping alternative
to a monetary framework, allowing people to
exchange goods and services outside of a money-based
economy.
The anarchist 1960s countercultural group
The Diggers opened free stores which simply
gave away their stock, provided free food,
distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized
free music concerts, and performed works of
political art. The Diggers took their name
from the original English Diggers led by Gerrard
Winstanley and sought to create a mini-society
free of money and capitalism.Although free
stores have not been uncommon in the United
States since the 1960s, the freegan movement
has inspired the establishment of more free
stores. Today the idea is kept alive by the
new generations of social centres, anarchists
and environmentalists who view the idea as
an intriguing way to raise awareness about
consumer culture and to promote the reuse
of commodities.
==== Peer-to-peer (P2P) ====
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is not restricted to technology,
but covers every social process with a peer-to-peer
dynamic, whether these peers are humans or
computers. Peer-to-peer as a term originated
from the popular concept of P2P distributed
application architecture that partitions tasks
or workloads between peers. This application
structure was popularized by file sharing
systems like Napster, the first of its kind
in the late 1990s.
The concept has inspired new structures and
philosophies in many areas of human interaction.
P2P human dynamic affords a critical look
at current authoritarian and centralized social
structures. Peer-to-peer is also a political
and social program for those who believe that
in many cases, peer-to-peer modes are a preferable
option. Anarchist scholar Uri Gordon has said
that "the collaborative development of free
software like the Linux operating system and
applications such as OpenOffice clearly approximate
an informational anarchist communism. Moreover,
for anarchists it is precisely the logic of
expropriation and electronic piracy that enables
a radical political extension of the cultural
ideals of the free manipulation, circulation
and use of information associated with the
"hacker ethic" (Himanen 2001). The space of
illegality created by P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing
opens up the possibility, not only of the
open circulation of freely-given information
and software as it is on the Internet today,
but also of conscious copyright violation.
The Internet, then, enables not only communist
relations around information, but also the
militant contamination and erosion of non-communist
regimes of knowledge—a technological "weapon"
to equalise access to information, eating
away at intellectual property rights by rendering
them unenforceable".P2P is a specific form
of relational dynamic, based on the assumed
equipotency of its participants, organized
through the free cooperation of equals in
view of the performance of a common task,
for the creation of a common good, with forms
of decision-making and autonomy that are widely
distributed throughout the network. There
are three fundamental aspects of social P2P
processes:
Peer production: the collaborative production
of use value is open to participation and
use to the widest possible number (as defined
by Yochai Benkler, in his essay Coase's Penguin).
Peer governance: production or project is
governed by the community of producers themselves,
not by market allocation or corporate hierarchy.
Peer property: the use-value of property is
freely accessible on a universal basis; peer
services and products are distributed through
new modes of property, which are not exclusive,
though recognize individual authorship (i.e.
the GNU General Public License or the Creative
Commons licenses).Peer production does not
produce commodities for exchange value, and
does not use the price mechanism or corporate
hierarchy to determine the allocation of resources.
It must therefore be distinguished from both
the capitalist market (though it can be linked
and embedded in the broader market) and from
production through state and corporate planning;
as a mode of governance it differs from traditional
linear hierarchies; and as a mode of property
it differs from both traditional private property
and state-based collective public property;
it is rather the common property of its producers
and users and the whole of humankind. Unlike
private property, peer property is inclusive
rather than exclusive—its nature is to share
ownership as widely, rather than as narrowly
as possible.
While many anarcho-communists are opposed
to trade, some post-left, post-scarcity anarcho-communists
and ones with syndicalist sympathies are not
opposed to trade. Some support a non-monetary
form of trade in the form of post-monetary
trade unions and commons. Others such as Tiziana
Terranova easily see anarcho-communism being
compatible with a non-hierarchical, open access,
free association, post-monetary form of trade
such as P2P.
=== Coexistence of economic systems and economic
pluralism ===
French anarchist without adjectives Max Nettlau
addressed the issue of the coexistence of
different economic systems as follows: Let
me imagine myself for a moment living in a
free society. I should certainly have different
occupations, manual and mental, requiring
strength or skill. It would be very monotonous
if the three or four groups with whom I would
work (for I hope there will be no Syndicates
then!) would be organized on exactly the same
lines; I rather think that different degrees
or forms of Communism will prevail in them.
But might I not become tired of this, and
wish for a spell of relative isolation, of
Individualism? So I might turn to one of the
many possible forms of "equal exchange" Individualism.
Perhaps people will do one thing when they
are young and another thing when they grow
older. Those who are but indifferent workers
may continue with their groups; those who
are efficient will lose patience at always
working with beginners and will go ahead by
themselves, unless a very altruist disposition
makes it a pleasure to them to act as teachers
or advisers to younger people. I also think
that at the beginning I should adopt Communism
with friends and Individualism with strangers,
and shape my future life according to experience.
Thus, a free and easy change from one variety
of Communism to another, thence to any variety
of Individualism, and so on, would be the
most obvious and elementary thing in a really
free society; and if any group of people tried
to check this, to make one system predominant,
they would be as bitterly fought as revolutionists
fight the present system.
French individualist anarchist Émile Armand
argued for a pluralistic economic logic when
he said: "Here and there everything happening
– here everyone receiving what they need,
there each one getting whatever is needed
according to their own capacity. Here, gift
and barter – one product for another; there,
exchange – product for representative value.
Here, the producer is the owner of the product,
there, the product is put to the possession
of the collectivity".At the time of the Spanish
Revolution led by the anarcho-syndicalist
trade union CNT and by the FAI, the issue
of the coexistence of different economic systems
was addressed. Daniel Guérin in Anarchism:
From Theory to Practice reports the following:
"Spanish anarcho-syndicalism had long been
concerned to safeguard the autonomy of what
it called "affinity groups." There were many
adepts of naturism and vegetarianism among
its members, especially among the poor peasants
of the south. Both these ways of living were
considered suitable for the transformation
of the human being in preparation for a libertarian
society. At the Saragossa congress the members
did not forget to consider the fate of groups
of naturists and nudists, "unsuited to industrialization."
As these groups would be unable to supply
all their own needs, the congress anticipated
that their delegates to the meetings of the
confederation of communes would be able to
negotiate special economic agreements with
the other agricultural and industrial communes.
On the eve of a vast, bloody, social transformation,
the CNT did not think it foolish to try to
meet the infinitely varied aspirations of
individual human beings."
=== Commune, federalism and economic democracy
===
Anarcho-communism has been critical of a simple
call for worker's ownership of workplaces
and their administration as cooperatives.
Murray Bookchin has put it this way "what
of the syndicalist ideal of "collectivized"
self-managed enterprises that are coordinated
by like occupations on a national level and
coordinated geographically by "collectives"
on a local level?...Here, the traditional
socialist criticism of this syndicalist form
of economic management is not without its
point: the corporate or private capitalist,
"worker-controlled" or not – ironically,
a technique in the repertoire of industrial
management that is coming very much into vogue
today as "workplace democracy" and "employee
ownership" and constitutes no threat whatever
to private property and capitalism...In any
case, "economic democracy" has not simply
meant "workplace democracy" and "employee
ownership." Many workers, in fact, would like
to get away from their factories if they could
and find more creative artisanal types of
work, not simply "participate" in "planning"
their own misery. What "economic democracy"
meant in its profoundest sense was free, "democratic"
access to the means of life, the counterpart
of political democracy, that is, the guarantee
of freedom from material want. It is a dirty
bourgeois trick, in which many radicals unknowingly
participate, that "economic democracy" has
been re-interpreted as "employee ownership"
and "workplace democracy" and has come to
mean workers' "participation" in profit sharing
and industrial management rather than freedom
from the tyranny of the factory, rationalized
labor, and "planned production", which is
usually exploitative production with the complicity
of the workers".A common call within anarchism
is for a confederal form in relationships
of mutual aid and free association between
communes as an alternative to the centralism
of the nation-state. Peter Kropotkin thus
suggested: "Representative government has
accomplished its historical mission; it has
given a mortal blow to court-rule; and by
its debates it has awakened public interest
in public questions. But to see in it the
government of the future socialist society
is to commit a gross error. Each economic
phase of life implies its own political phase;
and it is impossible to touch the very basis
of the present economic life – private property
– without a corresponding change in the
very basis of the political organization.
Life already shows in which direction the
change will be made. Not in increasing the
powers of the State, but in resorting to free
organization and free federation in all those
branches which are now considered as attributes
of the State".As such, "no community can hope
to achieve economic autarchy, nor should it
try to do so unless it wishes to become self-enclosed
and parochial, not only "self-sufficient."
Hence the confederation of communes—the
Commune of communes—is reworked economically
as well as politically into a shared universe
of publicly managed resources. The management
of the economy, precisely because it is a
public activity, does not degenerate into
privatized interactions between enterprises;
rather it develops into confederalized interactions
between municipalities. That is to say, the
very elements of societal interaction are
expanded from real or potential privatized
components to institutionally real public
components. Confederation becomes a public
project by definition, not only because of
shared needs and resources. If there is any
way to avoid the emergence of the city-state,
not to speak of self-serving bourgeois "cooperatives",
it is through a municipalization of political
life that is so complete that politics embraces
not only what we call the public sphere but
material means of life as well".Economic democracy
as proposed by Takis Fotopoulos and Bookchin
is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes
to shift decision-making power from corporate
shareholders to a larger group of public stakeholders
that includes workers, customers, suppliers,
neighbors and the broader public. No single
definition or approach encompasses economic
democracy, but most proponents claim that
modern property relations externalize costs,
subordinate the general well-being to private
profit and deny the polity a democratic voice
in economic policy decisions. In addition
to these moral concerns, economic democracy
makes practical claims, such as that it can
compensate for capitalism's claimedly inherent
effective demand gap.Proponents of economic
democracy generally argue that modern capitalism
tends to hinder or prevent society from earning
enough income to purchase its output production.
Corporate monopoly of common resources typically
creates artificial scarcity, resulting in
socio-economic imbalances that restrict workers
from access to economic opportunity and diminish
consumer purchasing power. Economic democracy
has been proposed as a component of larger
socioeconomic ideologies, as a stand-alone
theory and as a variety of reform agendas.
For example, as a means to securing full economic
rights, it opens a path to full political
rights, defined as including the former. As
a reform agenda, supporting theories and real-world
examples range from decentralization to democratic
cooperatives, fair trade and the regionalization
of food production and currency.
== Examples of anarchist economies ==
Utopia (sometimes known as Trialville) was
an individualist anarchist colony begun in
1847 by Josiah Warren and associates in the
United States on a tract of land approximately
30 miles from Cincinnati. Another example
of individual anarchists attempting to put
their economic theories into action was the
Cincinnati Time Store, where labor notes were
redeemable for goods.
The anarchist collectives formed during the
Spanish Civil War are the most famous example
of an anarchist economy operating on a large
scale. The collectives were formed under the
influence of the anarcho-syndicalist union
(the CNT) in rural and urban areas and successfully
practised workers' self-management and collectivist
anarchism for a number of years in extremely
difficult economic and political circumstances.
Other examples of self-management include
the factory committee movement during the
Russian Revolution and the workplace occupations
in Argentina during its crisis at the turn
of the 21st century. Attempts at forming co-operatives
also appeared during the Paris Commune of
1871 and the Italian factory occupations of
1920.
== See also ==
Autonomism
Community-based economics
Decentrally planned economy
Distributism
Gandhian economics
Political economy
Prosumer
Socialist economics
== References ==
== Further research ==
=== Anarchist economics bibliography ===
Michael Albert; Robin Hahnel. A Quiet Revolution
in Welfare Economics.
Albert, Michael, Parecon: Life After Capitalism
(W. W. Norton & Company, April 2003). ISBN
1-85984-698-X
Albert, Michael, Thinking Forward: Learning
To Conceptualize Economic Vision (1997)
Albert, Michael, Moving Forward: Program for
a Participatory Economy (2001)
Albert, Michael, Realizing Hope: Life beyond
Capitalism (2006)
Alexander Berkman, What is Communist Anarchism?,
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, others
Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971
and 2004). ISBN 1-904859-06-2
Carson, Kevin, Studies in Mutualist Political
Economy (BookSurge Publishing, 2007). ISBN
978-1-4196-5869-3
Kevin A. Carson, The Iron Fist behind the
Invisible Hand: Corporate Capitalism As a
State-Guaranteed System of Privilege (Nanaimo,
BC: Red Lion 2001, revised 2002)
Kevin A. Carson, Contract Feudalism: A Critique
of Employer Power Over Employees (London:
Libertarian Alliance 2006)
Gary Chartier. The Conscience of an Anarchist
(2011) Apple Valley, California: Cobden Press.
ISBN 978-1439266991. OCLC 760097242
Diego Abad de Santillán. After the Revolution.
Archived from the original on 2004-06-22.
Dolgoff, Sam, editor, The Anarchist Collectives:
Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution
(Montreal: Black Rose Books). ISBN 0-919618-21-9
Dolgoff, Sam The Relevance of Anarchism to
Modern Society (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr,
1989).
Fotopoulos, Takis, Towards An Inclusive Democracy
(Online, 11MB) (Cassell/Continuum, London/New
York, 1997). ISBN 0-304-33628-9
Fotopoulos, Takis, "The Multidimensional Crisis
and Inclusive Democracy", Athens 2005.
Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5000 Years.
(Melville House, 2011). ISBN 978-1-933633-86-2
Graeber, David. – (2001). Toward an anthropological
theory of value: the false coin of our own
dreams (PDF). New York: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-312-24044-8.
OCLC 46822270.
Guillen, Abraham. Anarchist Economics: An
alternative for a world in crisis. The economics
of the Spanish Libertarian Collectives 1936-39
DAM & La Presa. 1992.
Hahnel, Robin. The ABC's of Political Economy
(Pluto, 2002)
Hahnel, Robin. Economic Justice and Democracy
(Routledge, 2005)
Kropotkin, Peter Fields Factories and Workshops
(The Collected Works of Peter Kropotkin, V.
9) (Black Rose Books, 1 January 1996). ISBN
1-895431-38-7
Kropotkin, Peter Anarchist Communism: Its
Basis and Ideals
Kropotkin, Peter The Conquest of Bread (New
York: New York University Press).
Leval, Gastón Collectives in the Spanish
Revolution (London: Freedom Press). ISBN 0-900384-11-5
G. P. Maximoff, Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism.
(extract from his Constructive Anarchism,
published in English in 1952; this section
is not included in the only edition of the
work now in print.) (Sydney: Monty Miller
Press, 1985).
Proudhon, Pierre, The System of Economic Contradictions,
or The Philosophy of Poverty
Proudhon, Pierre What Is Property? (B. Tucker,
translator). (Cambridge University Press).
ISBN 0-521-40556-4
Solidarity Federation and IWA. The Economics
of Freedom: An anarcho-syndicalist alternative
to capitalism . SolFed Booklets. 2003
Various authors. The Accumulation of Freedom:
Writings on Anarchist Economics. AK Press.
(2012) ISBN 978-1849350945
=== Articles ===
"Anarchist Economics" by Anarcho
"The Economics of Anarchy" by Anarcho
Archive of anarchist economic articles at
the Anarchist Library
Anarchist Economics compiled by Jon Bekken
(overview of the topic with extensive reading
lists from Syndicalist.org).
Open Source Currency – article by Douglas
Rushkoff on The Feature Archives
The Future of Payment Systems – discussion
paper by Bernard Lietaer (the chapter on Complementary
Currency Systems starts on page 23)
Economics Kiosk at Infoshop.org
Institute for Social Ecology
Parecon.org – information on participatory
economics
Panarchy About panarchy, voluntarism and aterritorialism
Anarchist Economics PDF from Invisible Molotov
==== Extensive sections of "An Anarchist FAQ"
on economics ====
Section B – Why do anarchists oppose the
current system?
Section C – What are the myths of capitalist
economics?
An Anarchist FAQ – Section D – How does
statism and capitalism affect society?
*I.4 How could an anarchist economy function?
I.3 What could the economic structure of anarchy
look like?
=== Films ===
Vivir la utopía – Living Utopia [5] by
Juan Gamero 1997. (About Anarchism in Spain
and the Collectives in the Spanish Revolution).
"Anarchist Economics" Workshop presented at
the Mobilizing and Organizing From Below Conference
in Baltimore, Maryland, June 1-3, 2012
