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Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economic activity within the political philosophy of
anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
. Many anarchists are anti-authoritarian
anti-capitalists Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as so ...
, with anarchism usually referred to as a form of
libertarian socialism Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing,Diemer, Ulli (1997)"What Is Libertarian Socialism?" The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 4 August 2019. anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarianLong, Roderick T. (2 ...
, i.e. a stateless system of
socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...
. Anarchists support
personal property property is property that is movable. In common law systems, personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In civil law systems, personal property is often called movable property or movables—any property that can be moved fr ...
(defined in terms of possession and use, i.e. mutualist
usufruct Usufruct () is a limited real right (or ''in rem'' right) found in civil-law and mixed jurisdictions that unites the two property interests of ''usus'' and ''fructus'': * ''Usus'' (''use'') is the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, direct ...
) and oppose capital concentration,
interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...
,
monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...
,
private ownership Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
of productive property such as the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
(
capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...
,
land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of the planet Earth that is not submerged by the ocean or other bodies of water. It makes up 29% of Earth's surface and includes the continents and various isla ...
and the means of labor),
profit Profit may refer to: Business and law * Profit (accounting), the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market * Profit (economics), normal profit and economic profit * Profit (real property), a nonpossessory inter ...
,
rent Rent may refer to: Economics *Renting, an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property *Economic rent, any payment in excess of the cost of production *Rent-seeking, attempting to increase one's share of e ...
,
usury Usury () is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is c ...
and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to
capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
. Anarchism is often considered a
radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics * Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe an ...
left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
or
far-left Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars conside ...
movement and much of its economics as well as legal philosophy reflect anti-authoritarian,
anti-statist Anti-statism is any approach to social, economic or political philosophy that rejects statism. An anti-statist is one who opposes intervention by the state into personal, social and economic affairs. In anarchism, this is characterized by a comp ...
and
libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
interpretations of left-wing and socialist politics such as
communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
, collectivism,
free-market In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any ot ...
,
individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
, mutualism, participism and
syndicalism Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...
, among other libertarian socialist economics. The majority of anarchist theorists do not consider
anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-capitalism (or, colloquially, ancap) is an anti-statist, libertarian, and anti-political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property en ...
as a part of the anarchist movement due to the fact that anarchism has historically been an
anti-capitalist Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as so ...
movement and seen as incompatible with
capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
. Meltzer, Albert (2000)
''Anarchism: Arguments For and Against''
AK Press AK Press is a worker-managed, independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. Operated out of Chico, California, the company is collectively owned. History AK was founded in Stirling, S ...
. p. 50. "The philosophy of "anarcho-capitalism" dreamed up by the "libertarian" New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper."
"In fact, few anarchists would accept the 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice, Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practising voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists." Peter Marshall. '' Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism''. Harper Perennial. London. 2008. p. 565"It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)."
Saul Newman Saul Newman (born 22 March 1972) is a British political theorist who writes on post-anarchism. He is professor of political theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Newman took up the term "post-anarchism" as a general term for poli ...
,
The Politics of Postanarchism, Edinburgh University Press
'' 2010, p. 43

at An Anarchist FAQ
"'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick and their adoption of the words 'libertarian' and 'libertarianism'. It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition." '' Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward'' by David Goodway. Liverpool University Press. Liverpool. 2006 Unlike anarcho-capitalists, the free market individualist anarchists retain the
labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
and socialist doctrines. Anarchists argue that characteristic capitalist institutions promote and reproduce various forms of economic activity which they consider oppressive, including private property (as in productive property rather than personal property),
hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
production relations, collecting rents from private property, taking a profit in exchanges and collecting interest on loans. Anarchists see the
ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the capitalist social class who own the means of production and by ex ...
, including
capitalists Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...
,
landlords A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant (also a ''lessee'' or ''renter''). When a juristic person is in this position, th ...
and all other forms of involuntary, coercive hierarchy, socio-economic rulership and
social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and politi ...
, as the primary rulers of society, with
workers' self-management Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a def ...
, democratic education and cooperative housing seen as removing such authority. Unlike right-libertarians, anarchists endorse possession-based ownership rather than propertarianism.


Historical overview


Early views

The early English anarchist
William Godwin William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosophy, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. God ...
's views on economics could be summarized as follows: " 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".
George Woodcock George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...
. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements''. 1962
For the influential German
individualist anarchist Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism t ...
philosopher
Max Stirner Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...
, "
private property Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
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 " 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 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
was involved with the Lyons mutualists and later adopted the name to describe his own teachings.Woodcock, George. Anarchism: A History Of Libertarian Ideas And Movements. Broadview Press. p. 100 In ''What Is Mutualism?'',
Clarence Lee Swartz Clarence Lee Swartz (1868–1936) was an American individualist anarchist, whose best-known work, ''What is Mutualism?'' (1927) is a book explaining the economic system of mutualism. Swartz was a friend of Benjamin Tucker and frequent contribu ...
gives his own account of the origin of the term, claiming that " e word " mutualism" seems to have been first used by John Gray, an English writer, in 1832".Swartz, Clarence Lee. What is Mutualism? 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 Coercion () is compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats, including threats to use force against a party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to induce a des ...
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 Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like Jam ...
is widely regarded as the first
American anarchist Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and ca ...
Palmer, Brian (2010-12-29
What do anarchists want from us?
'' Slate.com''
and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, ''The Peaceful Revolutionist'', was the first anarchist periodical published.William Bailie
''Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist – A Sociological Study''
, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1906, p. 20
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."A watch has a ''cost'' and a ''value''. The COST consists of the amount of labor bestowed on the mineral or natural wealth, in converting it into metals…". Warren, Josiah. ''Equitable Commerce'' Therefore, " 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 A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island soc ...
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.Charles A. Madison. "Anarchism in the United States". ''Journal of the History of Ideas'', Vol. 6, No. 1. (January 1945), p. 53 In Europe, an early anarcho-communist was
Joseph Déjacque Joseph Déjacque (; 27 December 1821, in Paris – 1864, in Paris) was a French early anarcho-communist poet, philosopher and writer. He coined the term "libertarian" (French: ''libertaire'') for himselfJoseph DéjacqueDe l'être-humain mâle ...
, the first person to describe himself as "
libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
".Joseph Déjacque
De l'être-humain mâle et femelle – Lettre à P.J. Proudhon par Joseph Déjacque
(in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
)
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"."l'Echange"
article in ''Le Libertaire'' no 6, September 21, 1858, New York.
Déjacque criticized French mutualist anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon as far as "the Proudhonist version of Ricardian socialism, centred on the reward of labour power and the problem of exchange value. In his polemic with Proudhon on women's emancipation, Déjacque urged Proudhon to push on 'as far as the abolition of the contract, the abolition not only of the sword and of capital, but of property and authority in all their forms,' and refuted the commercial and wages logic of the demand for a 'fair reward' for 'labour' (labour power). Déjacque asked: 'Am I thus... right to want, as with the system of contracts, to measure out to each – according to their accidental capacity to produce – what they are entitled to?' The answer given by Déjacque to this question is unambiguous: 'it is not the product of his or her labour that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature.' ..For Déjacque, on the other hand, the communal state of affairs – the phalanstery 'without any hierarchy, without any authority' except that of the 'statistics book' – corresponded to 'natural exchange,' i.e. to the 'unlimited freedom of all production and consumption; the abolition of any sign of agricultural, individual, artistic or scientific property; the destruction of any individual holding of the products of work; the demonarchisation and the demonetarisation of manual and intellectual capital as well as capital in instruments, commerce and buildings
Alain Pengam. "Anarchist-Communism"
/ref> 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 The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trad ...
proclaimed at the
St. Imier Congress The St. Imier Congress was a meeting of the Jura Federation and anti-authoritarian apostates of the First International in September 1872. Background Among the ideological debates within the socialist First International, Karl Marx and Mik ...
(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 The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
itself, its trades bodies and the autonomous communes". Due to its links to active workers' movements, the International became a significant organization.
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
became a leading figure in the International and a member of its General Council. Proudhon's followers, the mutualists, opposed Marx's
state socialism State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition ...
, advocating political abstentionism and small property holdings. In 1868, following their unsuccessful participation in the
League of Peace and Freedom The Ligue internationale de la paix (League of Peace and Freedom) was created after a public opinion campaign against a war between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia over Luxembourg. The Luxembourg crisis was peacefully resolved ...
(LPF), Russian revolutionary
Mikhail Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...
and his
collectivist anarchist Collectivist anarchism, also called anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, Buckley, A. M. (2011). ''Anarchism''. Essential Libraryp. 97 "Collectivist anarchism, also called anarcho-collectivism, arose after mutualism." . is an anarchis ...
associates joined the First International (which had decided not to get involved with the LPF). They allied themselves with the
federalist The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters called themselves ''Federalists''. History Europe federation In Europe, proponents of de ...
socialist sections of the International, who advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the
state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
and the
collectivization Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
of property. A similar position was adopted by the Federation of Workers 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". By the early 1880s, most of the European anarchist movement had adopted an anarcho-communist position, advocating the abolition of
wage labour Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomics, socioeconomic relationship between a workforce, worker and an employment, employer in which the w ...
and distribution according to need. Ironically, the "collectivist" label then became more commonly associated with
Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
state socialists who advocated the retention of some sort of wage system during the transition to full
communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
. Anarcho-communist
Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (; russian: link=no, Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин ; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activist ...
attacked this position in his essay, "The Collectivist Wages System", which was reprinted in his book ''
The Conquest of Bread ''The Conquest of Bread'' (french: La Conquête du Pain; rus, Хлѣбъ и воля, Khleb i volja, "Bread and Freedom"; in contemporary spelling), also known colloquially as The Bread Book, is an 1892 book by the Russian anarcho-communist P ...
'' in 1892. Cafiero explains in '' Anarchy and Communism'' (1880) that private property in the product of labor will lead to unequal
accumulation of capital Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form o ...
and therefore the reappearance of
social class A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inc ...
es 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".Robert Graham, ''Anarchism – A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas – Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939)'', Black Rose Books, 2005 At the Florence Conference of the Italian Federation of the International in 1876, held in a forest outside
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
due to
police The police are a Law enforcement organization, constituted body of Law enforcement officer, persons empowered by a State (polity), state, with the aim to law enforcement, enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citize ...
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 Anarcho-communism, also known as anarchist communism, (or, colloquially, ''ancom'' or ''ancomm'') is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retains r ...
of Spanish
anarcho-syndicalism Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in ...
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 Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The ...
. Syndicalism, on the other hand, was more urban and unitarian in spirit – more northerly, too, since its main center was
Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...
".''Anarchism: From Theory to Practice''
by Daniel Guérin. Monthly Review Press. 1970.
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 In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
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 Isaac Puente Amestoy (3 June 1896 – 1 September 1936), born in Las Carreras near Biscay, was a Basque physician and Spanish anarchist of a strong anarchist communist bent, who adhered to concerns around birth control, hygiene and sexuality ...
published an outline of anarcho-communism and its ideas were taken up by the Saragossa congress of the
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo ( en, National Confederation of Labor; CNT) is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions, which was long affiliated with the International Workers' Association (AIT). When working ...
in May 1936. The Spanish anarchist economist
Diego Abad de Santillan Diego is a Spanish masculine given name. The Portuguese equivalent is Diogo. The name also has several patronymic derivations, listed below. The etymology of Diego is disputed, with two major origin hypotheses: ''Tiago'' and ''Didacus''. E ...
published an influential treatise on economics, ''El Organismo Economico de la Revolucion'' (''The Economic Organization of the Revolution''). He saw the following: 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 George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...
reports the following:


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.


Classical theoretical economic systems


Mutualism

Mutualism is an
anarchist school of thought Anarchism is the political philosophy which holds ruling classes and the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, The following sources cite anarchism as a political philosophy: Slevin, Carl. "Anarchism." ''The Concise Oxford Dict ...
which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
, either individually or collectively, with
trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exc ...
representing equivalent amounts of labor in the
free market In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any ot ...
. 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 The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
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 Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...
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 good The economic concept of a capital good (also called complex product systems (CoPS),H. Rush, "Managing innovation in complex product systems (CoPS)," IEE Colloquium on EPSRC Technology Management Initiative (Engineering & Physical Sciences Researc ...
s (man-made, non-land "
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
"), 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 François Marie Charles Fourier (;; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical ...
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 Clarence Lee Swartz (1868–1936) was an American individualist anarchist, whose best-known work, ''What is Mutualism?'' (1927) is a book explaining the economic system of mutualism. Swartz was a friend of Benjamin Tucker and frequent contribu ...
gives his own account of the origin of the term, claiming that " e 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 The plat for the town of Kendal, in Stark County, Ohio was entered on April 20, 1812. It was named by its founder, Thomas Rotch (1767–1823), after the town of Kendal, in Cumbria, England. Kendal was absorbed into the town of Massillon, Ohio in 1 ...
. 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 William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was a 19th-century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene was a member of the First International. Biography ...
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 Albert Brisbane (August 22, 1809 – May 1, 1890) was an American utopian socialist and is remembered as the chief popularizer of the theories of Charles Fourier in the United States. Brisbane was the author of several books, notably ''Social D ...
, together with works by Proudhon, Greene,
Pierre Leroux Pierre Henri Leroux (7 April 1797 – 12 April 1871), was a French philosopher and political economist. He was born at Bercy, now a part of Paris, the son of an artisan. Life His education was interrupted by the death of his father, which ...
and others. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, " is apparent...that
Proudhonian Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
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 Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism th ...
of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form".''Native American Anarchism: A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism'' by Eunice Minette Schuster
Later,
Benjamin Tucker Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.Martin, James J. (1953)''Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''< ...
fused Max Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication ''
Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...
''. 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 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 " 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 Industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. While in participative management organizational designs workers are listened to and take part in the decisi ...
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 is a revolutionaryPatsouras, Louis. 2005. Marx in Context. iUniverse. p. 54 doctrine that advocates the abolition of both the
state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
and private ownership of the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
. Instead, it envisions the means of production being owned collectively and controlled and managed by the producers themselves. For the
collectivization Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
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 Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
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 Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
. 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 Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
. 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 Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and vario ...
would use to justify one-party rule from above by a party claiming to represent the
proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
.Woodcock, George (1962, 1975). ''Anarchism'', 158. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. . 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... nddeprived 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 New class is used as a polemic term by critics of countries that followed the Soviet-type Communism to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist party functionaries which arose in these states. Generally, the group known ...
", 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 " ate 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, " th 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 A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...
and even the
lumpenproletariat In Marxist theory, the ''Lumpenproletariat'' () is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary a ...
(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-communism 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.Proudhon. ''What is Property'', pp. 395–96 Anarcho-communists believe that subsistence, productive and distributive property should be common or social possessions while personal property should be private possessions.What is Anarchism?, p. 217 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 Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessaril ...
'' compares and contrasts collectivist anarchism with communist anarchism this way:


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 State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
,
markets Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...
,
money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money ar ...
, capitalism and private property (while retaining respect for
personal property property is property that is movable. In common law systems, personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In civil law systems, personal property is often called movable property or movables—any property that can be moved fr ...
) and in favor of
common ownership Common ownership refers to holding the assets of an organization, enterprise or community indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or groups of members as common property. Forms of common ownership exist in every econom ...
of the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
,
direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are repres ...
and a horizontal network of
voluntary association A voluntary group or union (also sometimes called a voluntary organization, common-interest association, association, or society) is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement, usually as volunteers, to form a body (or organization) to ac ...
s and
workers' council A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what thei ...
s 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 Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory and tendency within the anarchist movement that emphasizes insurrection as a revolutionary practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are base ...
are strongly influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism is the best social system for the realization of individual freedom."Towards the creative Nothing"
by
Renzo Novatore Abele Rizieri Ferrari (May 12, 1890 – November 29, 1922), better known by the pen name Renzo Novatore, was an Italian individualist anarchist, illegalist and anti-fascist poet, philosopher and militant, now mostly known for his posthumously p ...
Post-left anarcho-communist
Bob Black Robert Charles Black Jr. (born January 4, 1951) is an American anarchist and author. He is the author of the books '' The Abolition of Work and Other Essays'', ''Beneath the Underground'', ''Friendly Fire'', ''Anarchy After Leftism'', and ''Def ...
after analysing insurrectionary anarcho-communist
Luigi Galleani Luigi Galleani (; 1861–1931) was an Italian anarchist active in the United States from 1901 to 1919. He is best known for his enthusiastic advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", i.e. the use of violence to eliminate those he viewed as tyrant ...
's view on anarcho-communism went as far as saying that "communism is the final fulfillment of
individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
...The apparent contradiction between individualism and communism rests on a misunderstanding of both...Subjectivity is also objective: the individual really is subjective. It is nonsense to speak of "emphatically prioritizing the social over the individual,"...You may as well speak of prioritizing the chicken over the egg. Anarchy is a "method of individualization." It aims to combine the greatest individual development with the greatest communal unity
Bob Black. ''Nightmares of Reason''.
/ref> Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.
L. Susan Brown ''The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism'' is a 1993 political science book by L. Susan Brown. She begins by noting that liberalism and anarchism seem at times to share common components, but on other occasions ...
, '
The Politics of Individualism ''The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism'' is a 1993 political science book by L. Susan Brown. She begins by noting that liberalism and anarchism seem at times to share common components, but on other occasions ...
,' Black Rose Books (2002)
L. Susan Brown ''The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism'' is a 1993 political science book by L. Susan Brown. She begins by noting that liberalism and anarchism seem at times to share common components, but on other occasions ...

Does Work Really Work?
/ref> The abolition of
wage labor Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power unde ...
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 The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership) is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely and is typically h ...
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 A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general ...
-less
gift economy A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where Anthropological theories of value, valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift ...
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
barter In trade, barter (derived from ''baretor'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists disti ...
ing). 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 Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
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 Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
currents after the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...
, but it was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the
First International The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trad ...
.Nunzio Pernicone, "Italian Anarchism 1864–1892", pp. 111–13, AK Press 2009. An early anarcho-communist was
Joseph Déjacque Joseph Déjacque (; 27 December 1821, in Paris – 1864, in Paris) was a French early anarcho-communist poet, philosopher and writer. He coined the term "libertarian" (French: ''libertaire'') for himselfJoseph DéjacqueDe l'être-humain mâle ...
, the first person to describe himself as "
libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
". 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 The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trad ...
by
Carlo Cafiero Carlo Cafiero (1846–1892) was an Italian anarchist, champion of Mikhail Bakunin during the second half of the 19th century and one of the main proponents of anarcho-communism and insurrectionary anarchism during the First International T ...
,
Emilio Covelli Emilio Covelli (1846–1915) was an Italian anarchist and socialist who together with Carlo Cafiero was one of the most important figures in the early socialist movement in Italy, a member of the International Workingmen's Association, or "First ...
, 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.James Guillaume
"Michael Bakunin – A Biographical Sketch"
/ref> 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".Malatesta, Errico. A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers. Also available at: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/malatesta/MalatestaATAC.html 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 The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
, anarchists such as
Nestor Makhno Nestor Ivanovych Makhno, The surname "Makhno" ( uk, Махно́) was itself a corruption of Nestor's father's surname "Mikhnenko" ( uk, Міхненко). ( 1888 – 25 July 1934), also known as Bat'ko Makhno ("Father Makhno"),; According to ...
worked to create and defend anarcho-communism in Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by the
Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
in 1921. A commander of the peasant
Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine ( uk, Революційна Повстанська Армія України), also known as the Black Army or as Makhnovtsi ( uk, Махновці), named after their leader Nestor Makhno, was a ...
, 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
Makhnovshchina The Makhnovshchina () was an attempt to form a stateless anarchist society in parts of Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917–1923. It existed from 1918 to 1921, during which time free soviets and libertarian communes operated un ...
, an anarchist society committed to resisting state authority, whether capitalist or Bolshevik. After successfully repelling Austro-Hungarian, White and Ukrainian nationalist forces, the Makhnovist militia forces and anarcho-communist territories in Ukraine were eventually crushed by Bolshevik military forces. In the
Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
, 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 Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
with the leadership of anarcho-communist
Ricardo Flores Magón Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (, known as Ricardo Flores Magón; September 16, 1874 – November 21, 1922) was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers o ...
. Kropotkin's ''
The Conquest of Bread ''The Conquest of Bread'' (french: La Conquête du Pain; rus, Хлѣбъ и воля, Khleb i volja, "Bread and Freedom"; in contemporary spelling), also known colloquially as The Bread Book, is an 1892 book by the Russian anarcho-communist P ...
'', 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 Makhnovshchina during the Russian Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the
Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
starting in 1936, anarcho-communism existed in most of
Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, Aragón ; ca, Aragó ) is an autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to s ...
, parts of the Levante and
Andalusia Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The ...
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 The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
) as well as economic and armaments blockades from the capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself.


Post-classical theoretical economic systems


Anarcho Distributism

Anarcho distributism is the distributism thought by the Catholic anarchist
Dorothy day Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic without abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known ...
and
Catholic Worker ''Catholic Worker'' is a newspaper published seven times a year by the flagship Catholic Worker community in New York City. The newspaper was started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin to make people aware of church teaching on social justice. ...
anarcho distributist opposes the
centralization Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...
of the state and social security (including different mechanisms of the state to oppress) is civically
pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campai ...
and seeks a society under the scheme of confederated communes and generalized
private property Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
among the population, including
workers The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic reg ...
. Some people compare it to mutualism, but mutualism is necessarily opposed to private property and seeks an economy of time.


Participatory economics

Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an
economic system An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entit ...
proposed by activist and political theorist Michael Albert and radical economist
Robin Hahnel Robin Eric Hahnel (born March 25, 1946) is an American economist and professor emeritus of economics at American University. He was a professor at American University for many years and traveled extensively advising on economic matters all over ...
. 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 Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their av ...
in a given society. Proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalist market economies and also an alternative to centrally planned
socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...
, 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 Equity may refer to: Finance, accounting and ownership *Equity (finance), ownership of assets that have liabilities attached to them ** Stock, equity based on original contributions of cash or other value to a business ** Home equity, the diff ...
,
solidarity ''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti ...
, diversity,
workers' self-management Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a def ...
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 complex A balanced job complex is a way of organizing a workplace or group that is both directly democratic and also creates relative equal empowerment among all people involved. Specifically a balanced job complex is a collection of tasks within a given ...
es *
Remuneration Remuneration is the pay or other financial compensation provided in exchange for an employee's ''services performed'' (not to be confused with giving (away), or donating, or the act of providing to). A number of complementary benefits in addition ...
according to effort and sacrifice * Participatory planning Albert 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 Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
,
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
and
kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...
. The authors have also discussed elements of anarchism in the field of politics, polyculturalism in the field of culture and
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
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 Demos may refer to: Computing * DEMOS, a Soviet Unix-like operating system * DEMOS (ISP), the first internet service provider in the USSR * Demos Commander, an Orthodox File Manager for Unix-like systems * plural for Demo (computer programming) ...
(community) in the economic sphere, which requires equal distribution of economic power. As with the case of
direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are repres ...
,
economic democracy Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift decision-making power from corporate managers and corporate shareholders to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, customers, suppliers, neighbou ...
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 Growth may refer to: Biology * Auxology, the study of all aspects of human physical growth * Bacterial growth * Cell growth * Growth hormone, a peptide hormone that stimulates growth * Human development (biology) * Plant growth * Secondary grow ...
economy. It is also different from the various types of collectivist capitalism, such as
workers' control Workers' control is 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, distributists and Christ ...
and milder versions suggested by
post-Keynesian Post-Keynesian economics is a school of economic thought with its origins in '' The General Theory'' of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Sidney ...
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 Freedom of choice describes an individual's wikt:opportunity, opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties. In politics In the abortion debate, for example, the te ...
, 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.


Free-market anarchism

Free-market anarchism, based on the economic theories of mutualism and individualist anarchism, is a revival of such free-market anarchist theories. It encompasses diverse economic theories like those proposed by individualist anarchists and libertarian socialists such as the Europeans
Émile Armand Émile Armand (26 March 1872 – 19 February 1962), pseudonym of Ernest-Lucien Juin Armand, was an influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, a ...
,
Thomas Hodgskin Thomas Hodgskin (12 December 1787 – 21 August 1869) was an English socialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism and defender of free trade and early trade unions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the term ''socialis ...
, Miguel Giménez Igualada and
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
, or the Americans Stephen Pearl Andrews,
William Batchelder Greene William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was a 19th-century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene was a member of the First International. Biography ...
,
Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, abolitionist, entrepreneur, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian and writer. Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor ...
,
Benjamin Tucker Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.Martin, James J. (1953)''Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''< ...
and
Josiah Warren Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like Jam ...
, among others; and various anti-capitalists, left-libertarians and left-wing market anarchists such as Kevin Carson,
Gary Chartier Gary William Chartier (born 1966) Gary Chartier is a legal scholar, philosopher, political theorist, and theologian. His work addresses anarchism and ethics. Chartier is a professor and serves as associate dean of La Sierra University's busines ...
, Samuel Edward Konkin III, and
Chris Matthew Sciabarra Chris Matthew Sciabarra (born February 17, 1960) is an American political theorist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of three scholarly books—''Marx, Hayek, and Utopia''; '' Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical''; and ''Total Freedom: T ...
. Anarcho-capitalism advocates the elimination of the
public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, inf ...
in favor of a ''
laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...
'' economic systemEdward Stringham, ''Anarchy and the law: the political economy of choice''
p. 51
/ref> and is associated with individuals such as David D. Friedman and
Murray Rothbard Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian ...
. In an anarcho-capitalist society,
law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term ...
,
court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...
s and all other security services would be funded through the marketplace rather than through confiscatory
taxation A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, o ...
and money would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Anarcho-capitalism developed from
Austrian School The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. Austrian scho ...
economics, study of
law and economics Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law, which emerged primarily from scholars of the Chicago school of economics. Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of law ...
and
public choice theory Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science".Gordon Tullock, 9872008, "public choice," ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics''. . Its content includes the st ...
. Since employers are generally categorised as rulers in
political sociology Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how ...
and always in anarchist theory, anarchists do not associate anarcho-capitalism with anarchist thought. The belief in the need of a police force, a kind of centralised law enforcement, to prevent crime, whether privatised or not, has been criticised by anarchists as constituting a state since police are a group with a
monopoly on force In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area. While the mon ...
. 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 Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as so ...
movement and see it incompatible with
capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
. Meltzer, Albert (2000)
''Anarchism: Arguments For and Against''
AK Press AK Press is a worker-managed, independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. Operated out of Chico, California, the company is collectively owned. History AK was founded in Stirling, S ...
. p. 50. "The philosophy of "anarcho-capitalism" dreamed up by the "libertarian" New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper."
While inspired by individualist anarchists such as
Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, abolitionist, entrepreneur, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian and writer. Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor ...
and
Benjamin Tucker Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.Martin, James J. (1953)''Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''< ...
, both espoused mutualism and criticised wage labour. Rothbard argued that individualist anarchism is different from anarcho-capitalism and capitalism because the individualist anarchists retained the
labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
and socialist doctrines. The Really Really Free Market movement is a horizontally organized collective of individuals who form a temporary market based on an alternative
gift economy A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where Anthropological theories of value, valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift ...
. The movement aims to counteract capitalism in a proactive way by creating a positive example to challenge the myths of scarcity and competition. The name itself is a play on words as it is a reinterpretation and re-envisioning of
free market In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any ot ...
, a term which generally refers to an economy of
consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the su ...
governed by
supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris paribus, holding all else equal, in a perfect competition, competitive market, the unit price for a ...
.


Issues and proposals


Anarchist criticism 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: For the influential German individualist anarchist philosopher
Max Stirner Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...
, "
private property Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
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 " 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 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests as well as the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of
coercion Coercion () is compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats, including threats to use force against a party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to induce a des ...
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez 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 State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital ...
or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State"."el capitalismo es sólo el efecto del gobierno; desaparecido el gobierno, el capitalismo cae de su pedestal vertiginosamente...Lo que llamamos capitalismo no es otra cosa que el producto del Estado, dentro del cual lo único que se cultiva es la ganancia, bien o mal habida. Luchar, pues, contra el capitalismo es tarea inútil, porque sea Capitalismo de Estado o Capitalismo de Empresa, mientras el Gobierno exista, existirá el capital que explota. La lucha, pero de conciencias, es contra el Estado.
''Anarquismo'' by Miguel Giménez Igualada
/ref> Within anarchism there emerged a critique of wage slavery which refers to a situation perceived as quasi- voluntary slavery,. where a person's
livelihood A person's livelihood (derived from ''life-lode'', "way of life"; cf. OG ''lib-leit'') refers to their "means of securing the basic necessities (food, water, shelter and clothing) of life". Livelihood is defined as a set of activities essential t ...
depends on
wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', '' prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remune ...
s, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and
wage labor Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power unde ...
by focusing on similarities between owning and
renting Renting, also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for a ...
a person. The term "wage slavery" has been used to criticize economic exploitation and
social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and politi ...
, 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 Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing,Diemer, Ulli (1997)"What Is Libertarian Socialism?" The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 4 August 2019. anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarianLong, Roderick T. (20 ...
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 Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are repres ...
, voluntary federation and popular autonomy in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises. With the advent of the
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, 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,.
Luddite The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century who formed a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group is believed to have taken its name from Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver ...
s emphasized the
dehumanization Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are c ...
brought about by machines while later
Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...
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".Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. 3rd ed. 1917. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1969., p. 54. 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 Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
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 State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
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 Marginalism is a theory of economics that attempts to explain the discrepancy in the value of goods and services by reference to their secondary, or marginal, utility. It states that the reason why the price of diamonds is higher than that of wa ...
critiques into the
labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
. Carson holds that "arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, apitalismwas founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier
feudal Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
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".Richman, Sheldon
Libertarian Left
, ''
The American Conservative ''The American Conservative'' (''TAC'') is a magazine published by the American Ideas Institute which was founded in 2002. Originally published twice a month, it was reduced to monthly publication in August 2009, and since February 2013, it has ...
'' (March 2011)
Carson coined the
pejorative A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...
term "vulgar libertarianism", a phrase that describes the use of a free market rhetoric in defense of
corporate capitalism In social science and economics, corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations. Overview A large proportion of the economy of the United States and its labour mark ...
and
economic inequality There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of ...
(see
economic liberalism Economic liberalism is a political and economic ideology that supports a market economy based on individualism and private property in the means of production. Adam Smith is considered one of the primary initial writers on economic libera ...
and
right-libertarianism Right-libertarianism,Rothbard, Murray (1 March 1971)"The Left and Right Within Libertarianism" ''WIN: Peace and Freedom Through Nonviolent Action''. 7 (4): 6–10. Retrieved 14 January 2020.Goodway, David (2006). '' Anarchist Seeds Beneath the ...
). According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy", which
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
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 xisting 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 A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...
money with barter, local exchange trading systems, or
commodity money Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made. Commodity money consists of objects having value or use in themselves (intrinsic value) as well as their value in buying goods. This is in contrast to representa ...
(such as
gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...
). As such, "anarchists can often be found advocating for mass refusal and the withdrawal of our participation-sometimes in the form of
general strike A general strike refers to a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coa ...
s; sometimes as in the case of the
illegalists Illegalism is a tendency of anarchism that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland during the late 1890s and early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism. Illegalists embrace criminality either openly or secretly ...
, 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
boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict so ...
s, consumer advocacy and
class action lawsuit A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...
s 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 Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impa ...
addresses the
division of labor The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...
question by advocating
balanced job complex A balanced job complex is a way of organizing a workplace or group that is both directly democratic and also creates relative equal empowerment among all people involved. Specifically a balanced job complex is a collection of tasks within a given ...
es 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) 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 The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...
such as
CrimethInc. CrimethInc., also known as CWC, which stands for either "CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective" or "CrimethInc Ex-Workers Ex-Collective", is a decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells. * * * CrimethInc. emerged in the mid-1990s, initi ...
as a viable means of survival and non-participation in the system.


Anarchist value theory

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism and
American individualist anarchists Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and ca ...
such as
Josiah Warren Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like Jam ...
,
Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, abolitionist, entrepreneur, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian and writer. Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor ...
and
Benjamin Tucker Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.Martin, James J. (1953)''Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''< ...
adopted the liberal
labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
of
classical economics Classical economics, classical political economy, or Smithian economics is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. Its main thinkers are held to be Adam S ...
, 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."Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!"Max Stirner, The Ego and his Own p. 248. Collectivist anarchism, as defended by
Mikhail Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...
, 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 Anarcho-communism, also known as anarchist communism, (or, colloquially, ''ancom'' or ''ancomm'') is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retains re ...
, as defended by Peter Kropotkin and
Errico Malatesta Errico Malatesta (4 December 1853 – 22 July 1932) was an Italian anarchist propagandist and revolutionary socialist. He edited several radical newspapers and spent much of his life exiled and imprisoned, having been jailed and expelled from ...
, 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 Classical economics, classical political economy, or Smithian economics is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. Its main thinkers are held to be Adam Smith ...
Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——� ...
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, " 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'': 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".Riggenbach, Jeff (2011-02-25
Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist
''
Mises Institute Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a libertarian nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, United States. It is named after the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). I ...
''
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 A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island soc ...
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 Embodied energy is the sum of all the energy required to produce any goods or services, considered as if that energy was incorporated or 'embodied' in the product itself. The concept can be useful in determining the effectiveness of energy-produ ...
. 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 The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...
. ''Syndicalisme'' is a French word, ultimately derived from the Greek, meaning " trade unionism"—hence, the "
syndicalism Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...
" 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 State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
with a new society democratically self-managed by workers. The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are workers'
solidarity ''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti ...
,
direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
and
workers' self-management Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a def ...
. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that only
direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
—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 Johann Rudolf Rocker (March 25, 1873 – September 19, 1958) was a German anarchist writer and activist. He was born in Mainz to a Roman Catholic artisan family. His father died when he was a child, and his mother when he was in his teens, so he ...
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 The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...
. It was also an important force in the
Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
. Anarcho-syndicalists seek to abolish the wage system, regarding it as " wage slavery" and state or private ownership of the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
, which they believe lead to class divisions. Not all seek to abolish money per se.
Ralph Chaplin Ralph Hosea Chaplin (1887–1961) was an American writer, artist and labor activist. At the age of seven, he saw a worker shot dead during the Pullman Strike in Chicago, Illinois. He had moved with his family from Ames, Kansas to Chicago i ...
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 Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and vario ...
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 Social anarchism is the branch of anarchism that sees individual freedom as interrelated with mutual aid.Suissa, Judith (2001). "Anarchism, Utopias and Philosophy of Education". ''Journal of Philosophy of Education'' 35 (4). pp. 627–646. . S ...
, vary in their points of view on anarchist economic arrangements from a
collectivist anarchism Collectivist anarchism, also called anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, Buckley, A. M. (2011). ''Anarchism''. Essential Libraryp. 97 "Collectivist anarchism, also called anarcho-collectivism, arose after mutualism." . is an anarchis ...
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 A person's livelihood (derived from ''life-lode'', "way of life"; cf. OG ''lib-leit'') refers to their "means of securing the basic necessities (food, water, shelter and clothing) of life". Livelihood is defined as a set of activities essential t ...
depends on
wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', '' prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remune ...
s, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and
wage labor Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power unde ...
by focusing on similarities between owning and
renting Renting, also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for a ...
a person. The term "wage slavery" has been used to criticize economic exploitation and
social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and politi ...
, 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 A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their "species character" not only under threat of
starvation Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, de ...
or
poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse
, but also of
social stigma Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigmas are commonly related to culture, gender, ra ...
and status
diminution In Western music and music theory, diminution (from Medieval Latin ''diminutio'', alteration of Latin ''deminutio'', decrease) has four distinct meanings. Diminution may be a form of embellishment in which a long note is divided into a series ...
... The exchange of money and debt for work traces back to the disintegration of the "playful" work in
hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fung ...
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 Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
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 The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...
, Southern defenders of
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
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 The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, 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
Luddite The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century who formed a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group is believed to have taken its name from Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver ...
s emphasized the
dehumanization Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are c ...
brought about by machines.
Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...
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 Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...
..... 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 Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the econ ...
,
communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
, social democrats and
Christian democrats __NOTOC__ Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social tea ...
and has been combined with various
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
and
mixed economy A mixed economy is variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise. Common to all mixed economie ...
systems.
Workers' council A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what thei ...
s 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 " pitalistic 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 Council communism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. Strong in Germany ...
, such as in the early Soviet Union advocated workers' control through workers councils and factory committees.
Syndicalism Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...
advocates workers' control through
trade unions A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
. Guild socialism advocates workers' control through a revival of the
guild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometim ...
system.
Participatory economics Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impa ...
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 Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to p ...
and central planning (see
state socialism State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition ...
) and private control of the means of production as found in capitalism. A worker cooperative is a
cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...
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 psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...
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.Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2009) "Cooperative Social Enterprises: Company Rules, Access to Finance and Management Practice", ''Social Enterprise Journal'', 5(1), forthcoming
/ref> 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.ICA (2005) World Declaration on Worker Cooperatives, Approved by the ICA General Assembly in Cartagena, Colombia, 23 September 2005
.
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 Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ec ...
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 " cal 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 A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general ...
used as an alternative to the dominant national or multinational currency systems (usually referred to as national or
fiat money Fiat money (from la, fiat, "let it be done") is a type of currency that is not backed by any commodity such as gold or silver. It is typically designated by the issuing government to be legal tender. Throughout history, fiat money was sometim ...
). 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 "Mutual credit" (sometimes called "multilateral barter" or " credit clearing") is a term mostly used in the field of complementary currencies to describe a common, usually small-scale, endogenous money system. The term implies that creditors ...
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 A complementary currency is a currency or medium of exchange that is not necessarily a national currency, but that is thought of as supplementing or complementing national currencies. Complementary currencies are usually not legal tender and thei ...
. 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 A complementary currency is a currency or medium of exchange that is not necessarily a national currency, but that is thought of as supplementing or complementing national currencies. Complementary currencies are usually not legal tender and the ...
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, " 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 A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island soc ...
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."LETSystems Training Pack", (1990) W.A. Government. LETS networks use
interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...
-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 "Mutual credit" (sometimes called "multilateral barter" or " credit clearing") is a term mostly used in the field of complementary currencies to describe a common, usually small-scale, endogenous money system. The term implies that creditors ...
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 A mutual savings bank is a financial institution chartered by a central or regional government, without capital stock, owned by its members who subscribe to a common fund. From this fund, claims, loans, etc., are paid. Profits after deductions a ...
or
credit union A credit union, a type of financial institution similar to a commercial bank, is a member-owned nonprofit financial cooperative. Credit unions generally provide services to members similar to retail banks, including deposit accounts, provis ...
, 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 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
,
William Batchelder Greene William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was a 19th-century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene was a member of the First International. Biography ...
and
Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, abolitionist, entrepreneur, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian and writer. Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor ...
. Some modern forms of mutual credit are LETS and the
Ripple monetary system Ripple may refer to: Science and technology * Capillary wave, commonly known as ripple, a wave traveling along the phase boundary of a fluid ** Ripple, more generally a disturbance, for example of spacetime in gravitational waves * Ripple (electr ...
project. In a session of the French legislature, Proudhon proposed a government-imposed
income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Ta ...
to fund his mutual banking scheme, with some tax brackets reaching as high as 33 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.Martin, Henri, & Alger, Abby Langdon. A Popular History of France from the First Revolution to the Present Time. D. Estes and C.E. Lauria. p. 189 This scheme was vehemently objected to by others in the legislature, including
Frédéric Bastiat Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (; ; 30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French Liberal School. A member of the French National Assembly, Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportu ...
; 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 Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
, 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 Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...
''. During the episode known as the Spanish Revolution, contemporary anarchist theorist
Peter Gelderloos Peter Gelderloos (born ) is an American anarchist activist and writer. Biography In November 2001, Gelderloos was arrested with 30 others for trespass in protest of the American military training facility School of the Americas, which trains ...
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 Goods are items that are usually (but not always) tangible, such as pens, physical books, salt, apples, and hats. Services are activities provided by other people, who include architects, suppliers, contractors, technologists, teachers, doc ...
are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal ''
quid pro quo Quid pro quo ('what for what' in Latin) is a Latin phrase used in English to mean an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other; "a favor for a favor". Phrases with similar meanings include: "give and take", ...
'' 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 A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand, where all suppliers and consumers ...
, social norms and custom governs gift exchange, rather than an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other
commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a co ...
.R. Kranton: ''Reciprocal exchange: a self-sustaining system'', American Economic Review, V. 86 (1996), Issue 4 (September), pp. 830–51 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.''Lewis Hyde: The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property'' One prominent example is scientific research, which can be described as a gift economy.Hagstrom, Warren (1982). "Gift giving as an organizing principle in science". In Barry Barnes and David Edge. ''Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science''. MIT Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts). 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 Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The ...
. 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 Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...
projects. The
Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...
and the
GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...
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 Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...
licenses, which allow free reuse of software and knowledge. Other examples include file-sharing, the commons and
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
. 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 Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (; russian: link=no, Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин ; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activist ...
, who saw in the hunter-gatherer tribes he had visited the paradigm of " mutual aid". Anarchist anthropologist
David Graeber David Rolfe Graeber (; February 12, 1961September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books '' Debt: The First 5,000 Years'' (2011) and ''Bullshit Job ...
in his 2011 book '' Debt: The First 5000 Years'' argues that with the advent of the great
Axial Age Axial Age (also Axis Age, from german: Achsenzeit) is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd centu ...
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 The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...
,
Celts The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...
,
Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territorie ...
, Tiv, Nuer and the
Malagasy people The Malagasy (french: Malgache) are an Austronesian-speaking African ethnic group native to the island country of Madagascar. Traditionally, the population have been divided by subgroups (tribes or ethnicities). Examples include "Highlander ...
of
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...
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 Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's ''
Republic A republic () is a " state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th ...
'', 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 Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
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 Gerrard Winstanley (19 October 1609 – 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist during the period of the Commonwealth of England. Winstanley was the leader and one of the found ...
and sought to create a mini-society free of money and
capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
. Although free stores have not been uncommon in the United States since the 1960s, the
freegan Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans ...
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 Reuse is the action or practice of using an item, whether for its original purpose (conventional reuse) or to fulfill a different function ( creative reuse or repurposing). It should be distinguished from recycling, which is the breaking down of u ...
of commodities.


Peer-to-peer

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 Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a 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 File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...
systems like
Napster Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Sha ...
, 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 Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic vot ...
and
centralized Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...
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 Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...
like the
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
operating system and applications such as OpenOffice clearly approximate an informational anarchist communism. Moreover, for anarchists it is precisely the logic of
expropriation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to p ...
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 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
or the
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
licenses). Peer production does not produce commodities for exchange value, and does not use the
price mechanism In economics, a price mechanism is the manner in which the profits of goods or services affects the supply and demand of goods and services, principally by the price elasticity of demand. A price mechanism affects both buyer and seller who n ...
or
corporate A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...
hierarchy A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
to determine the allocation of resources. It must therefore be distinguished from both the
capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
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 Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, norms, power or language of an organized society over a social system ( family, tribe, formal or informal organization, a territory or across territories). It is done by the g ...
it differs from traditional
linear Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship ('' function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear ...
hierarchies; and as a mode of property it differs from both traditional private property and state-based collective
public property Public property is property that is dedicated to public use. The term may be used either to describe the use to which the property is put, or to describe the character of its ownership (owned collectively by the population of a state). This is in ...
; 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 A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
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 Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau (; 30 April 1865 – 23 July 1944) was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg (today part of Vienna) and raised in Vienna, he lived there until the anschluss to Nazi Germany in 193 ...
addressed the issue of the coexistence of different economic systems as follows: French individualist anarchist
Émile Armand Émile Armand (26 March 1872 – 19 February 1962), pseudonym of Ernest-Lucien Juin Armand, was an influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, a ...
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 A gift or a present is an item given to someone without the expectation of payment or anything in return. An item is not a gift if that item is already owned by the one to whom it is given. Although gift-giving might involve an expectation ...
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".Émile Armand. ''Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Comradeship''
/ref> 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:


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 Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ...
has put it this way "what of the
syndicalist Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of pr ...
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 Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in various forms (examples include voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, systems of appeal) to the workplace. It can be implemented in a variety ...
" 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 Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift decision-making power from corporate managers and corporate shareholders to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, customers, suppliers, neighbou ...
" 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"."Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy"
by Murray Bookchin
A common call within anarchism is for a
confederal A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a union of sovereign groups or states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...
form in relationships of mutual aid and free association between communes as an alternative to the
centralism Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...
of the
nation-state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may in ...
. 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 Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their l ...
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 In economics, effective demand (ED) in a market is the demand for a product or service which occurs when purchasers are constrained in a different market. It contrasts with notional demand, which is the demand that occurs when purchasers are not ...
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 A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...
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 Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
, defined as including the former. As a reform agenda, supporting theories and real-world examples range from
decentralization Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...
to democratic cooperatives,
fair trade Fair trade is an arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. The fair trade movement combines the payment of higher prices to exporters with improved social and envir ...
and the regionalization of
food production The food industry is a complex, global network of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The food industry today has become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditional, ...
and
currency A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general ...
.


Examples of anarchist economies

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island soc ...
, sometimes known as Trialville, was an
individualist anarchist Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism t ...
colony begun in 1847 by Josiah Warren and associates in the United States on a tract of land approximately 30 miles from
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line w ...
. 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 The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
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 Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a def ...
and
collectivist anarchism Collectivist anarchism, also called anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, Buckley, A. M. (2011). ''Anarchism''. Essential Libraryp. 97 "Collectivist anarchism, also called anarcho-collectivism, arose after mutualism." . is an anarchis ...
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 The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
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 The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defende ...
of 1871 and the Italian factory occupations of 1920.


See also

*
Autonomism Autonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tende ...
* Community-based economics * Decentrally planned economy *
Distributism Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching prin ...
*
Gandhian economics Gandhian economics is a school of economic thought based on the spiritual and socio-economic principles expounded by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. It is largely characterised by rejection of the concept of the human being as a rational actor alway ...
*
Political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
*
Prosumer A prosumer is an individual who both consumes and produces. The term is a portmanteau of the words '' producer'' and ''consumer''. Research has identified six types of prosumers: DIY prosumers, self-service prosumers, customizing prosumers, coll ...
* Socialist economics


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Further research


Anarchist economics bibliography

* * Albert, Michael, ''Parecon: Life After Capitalism'' (W. W. Norton & Company, April 2003). * Albert, Michael,
Thinking Forward: Learning To Conceptualize Economic Vision
' (1997) * Albert, Michael,

' (2001) * Albert, Michael, ''Realizing Hope: Life beyond Capitalism'' (2006) *
Alexander Berkman Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870June 28, 1936) was a Russian-American anarchist and author. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing. Be ...
,
What is Communist Anarchism?
', ''Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist'', others *
Murray Bookchin Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ...
, ''
Post-Scarcity Anarchism ''Post-Scarcity Anarchism'' is a collection of essays by Murray Bookchin, first published in 1971 by Ramparts Press. In it, Bookchin outlines the possible form anarchism might take under conditions of post-scarcity. One of Bookchin's major wo ...
'' (1971 and 2004). * Carson, Kevin, '' Studies in Mutualist Political Economy'' (BookSurge Publishing, 2007). * 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 Gary William Chartier (born 1966) Gary Chartier is a legal scholar, philosopher, political theorist, and theologian. His work addresses anarchism and ethics. Chartier is a professor and serves as associate dean of La Sierra University's busines ...
.
The Conscience of an Anarchist
' (2011) Apple Valley, California: Cobden Press. . * * Dolgoff, Sam, editor,
The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution
' (Montreal: Black Rose Books). * 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). * Fotopoulos, Takis,
The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy
, Athens 2005. * * * Graeber, David. * 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). * Kropotkin, Peter
Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Ideals
' * Kropotkin, Peter ''
The Conquest of Bread ''The Conquest of Bread'' (french: La Conquête du Pain; rus, Хлѣбъ и воля, Khleb i volja, "Bread and Freedom"; in contemporary spelling), also known colloquially as The Bread Book, is an 1892 book by the Russian anarcho-communist P ...
'' (New York: New York University Press). * Leval, Gastón
Collectives in the Spanish Revolution
' (London: Freedom Press). * G. P. Maximoff,

'. (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). * *
Solidarity Federation The Solidarity Federation, also known by the abbreviation SolFed, is a federation of class struggle anarchists active in Britain. The organisation advocates a strategy of anarcho-syndicalism as a method of abolishing capitalism and the state, ...
and IWA
''The Economics of Freedom: An anarcho-syndicalist alternative to capitalism ''
SolFed Booklets. 2003 * Various authors.

' AK Press. (2012)


Articles


"Anarchist Economics" by Anarcho

"The Economics of Anarchy" by Anarcho


article by Terry Phillips (in favour of a mixed economy)
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).

– article by Douglas Rushkoff o
The Feature Archives

The Future of Payment Systems
– discussion paper by Bernard Lietaer (the chapter on Complementary Currency Systems starts on page 23)

at Infoshop.org
Institute for Social Ecology

Parecon.org
– information on
participatory economics Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impa ...

Panarchy
About panarchy, voluntarism and aterritorialism
Anarchist Economics
PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
from Invisible Molotov


Extensive sections of ''An Anarchist FAQ'' on economics


Section B – Why do anarchists oppose the current system?




* ttp://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI4.html *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'

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
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anarchist Economics Anarchist economics, Anarchist theory Issues in anarchism