Anarcho-communism: My economic theory

[grandpa]

Here's the wikipedia entry for my economic theory. Go ahead and discuss, criique. I helped write it, thanks to the wonders of Wikipedia (unless someone decides to simply delete my contributions).

Anarchist communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anarcho-Communism stresses egalitarianism and the abolition of social hierarchy and class distinctions that arise from unequal wealth distribution, as well as the abolition of capitalism and money. Replacing these approaches would be collective production and distribution of wealth by means of voluntary association. In anarchist communism, the state and property would no longer exist. Each individual and group would be free to contribute to production and to satisfy their needs based on their own choice. Systems of production and distribution would be managed by their participants. The abolition of wage labor is central to anarchist communism. With distribution of wealth being based on self-determined needs, people would be free to engage in whatever activities they found most fulfilling and would no longer have to engage in work for which they have neither the temperament nor the aptitude. Anarchist 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. For instance, one could not measure the value of a factory worker's daily production without taking into account how transportation, food, water, shelter, relaxation, machine efficiency, emotional mood etc. contributed to their production. To truly give numerical economic value to anything, an infinite amount of externalities and contributing factors would need to be taken into account -- especially current or past labor contributing to the ability to utilize future labor. Anarchist communists argue that any economic system based on wage labor and private property requires a coercive state apparatus to enforce property rights and to maintain unequal economic relationships that inevitably arise from differences in wages or amount of property. They further argue that markets and systems of currency divide labor into classes and assign artificial 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. Anarchist communists recognize money as fundamentally quantitative in nature, rather than qualitative. They believe production should be a qualitative matter, and that consumption and distribution should be self-determined by each individual without arbitrary value assigned to labor, goods and services by others. In place of a market, most anarcho-communists support a currency-less gift economy where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essetially 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); compensation comes in the form of whatever the person decides is of equal value to their products of labor (what is commonly called bartering). Any limits on production and distribution would be determined by the individuals within the groups involved, rather than by capitalist owners, investors, banks or other artificial market pressures. Communist anarchism shares many traits with collectivist anarchism but has defining differences. Collectivist anarchism believes in collective ownership but communist anarchism negates the entire concept of ownership in favor of the concept of usage. [19] Thus, things are seen as either private possessions used by an individual, or social possessions used to produce for society. Anarcho-communists believe that means of production should not be owned by any one person or entity, leaving it free to be used by individuals for their own self-determined needs and wants. Land and housing would no longer be subject to rent or property taxes (and therefore, its use would be free of eviction threats). It would instead be subject simply to the desires of occupants on an egalitarian basis. For example, in an apartment building in which many live, no one person would have a say in the arrangements. All who live there would be involved in decisionmaking. For example, occupants may decide to share certain responsibilities on a revolving-door basis rather than relegate them to a particular individual. Crucially, the abstract relationship of "landlord" and "tenant" would no longer exist, for such titles are held to occur under conditional legal coercion and are not absolutely necessary to occupy buildings or spaces (intellectual property rights would also cease). In addition to believing rent and other fees are exploitative, anarcho-communists feel these are arbitrary pressures inducing people to carry out unrelated functions. For example, they question why one should have to work for 'X hours' a day to merely live somewhere. So instead of working conditionally for the sake of the wage earned, they believe in working directly for the objective at hand. From this it follows that, rather than land being for sale or rent, vacant land and housing would be freely taken regardless of one's employment or financial status (essentially, the "for sale" sign could be replaced by a "vacant" sign). Therefore, in anarcho-communist theory, land used by individuals for themselves or their families, or productive property used to produce for an individual (such as a small farm), would be considered private possessions rather than social possessions. The individual would be perfectly free to create something and keep it as long as it is not a crucial means of production for the community or general public. So an artist's paintbrushes would not need outside approval to be utilized, and the same basic principle would apply to other personal items such as one's toothbrush, musical instruments or book collection, which others needn't tamper with. However, if the matter at hand involves production for society (such as a factory which makes toothbrushes, musical instruments or books), it would become a social possession, accountable to all who work within it and the consuming public. In that regard, anarcho-communism could be considered a compromise between collective and individual use. [20] Anarcho-communists reject mutualist economics because they believe that market competition, even non-capitalist markets, inherently create inequalities in wealth and land which would lead to inequalities of power - thus the recreation of the State and capitalism as some workers would have more access to capital and defence force than others. They reject collectivist economics arguing that remuneration would require a type of currency, which, again, anarcho-communists reject as an artificial measurement of the value of labor. They further argue that those who are not part of collective groups or unions in workers' councils and collectives could be alienated from access to capital, and thus promote common use over ownership by collective groups.

[Autolykos]

A couple of comments right off the bat.

First, "abolition" can only make sense when there is a State. Even then, it is in fact very difficult to abolish anything. In the absence of the State, what will physically prevent individuals from adopting methods of indirect exchange (i.e. monies)?

Second, what incentive would a person have, under anarcho-communism, to equate the products of his (finite) labor to an infinite amount of everything? These "gift stores" you describe would run out of everything very quickly. People would want to take as much as they can before anyone else does.

- Rob

[kubedawg]

Wouldn't anarcho-capitalism be a better thing to strive for?
Anarcho-capitalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Chancellor]

Couldn't he have come up with a better source than Wikipedia?

[Milton Bradley]

This is what the confused socialists and communists who pretend to be anarchists never understand: every single individual is different.
They differ in what they want to do, and what they are able to do, and what they need in life. Therefore, all forms of "collectivism" is just forcing people to conform.


It is not freedom.

[HelioPrime]

I guess you could argue that if all people are brought up in the same teachings with no concept of themselves as an individual then they might really all think alike and think only for the greater good of society.

How do you profess individual freedoms to people who place the collective good above their own wants.

You could say we do not have freedoms. We are raised to desire freedoms.

[BobbyO]

You have this mania for landlords and tenants, it seems...

My only initial comment wouid be in the attempt to distinguish between personal and collctive property (the paintbrush example). Since the community cannot make an infinite supply of paintbrushes (without diverting resources from the production of other needed goods), and since the community has to approve the production of paintbrushes, the claim that the community has no interest in your personal possession of a paintbrush cannot be considered true. Since the community has collectivelly decided to produce paintbrushes, it has an absolute interest in how you utilse those paintbrushes (especially since at some point you will need to go back for "more.").

[tivodan1116]

This economic theory has an almost childlike misunderstanding of the way human behavior works, thinking that people can just "agree" on what to produce, etc.

It also denies several fundamental concepts of economics that are absolutely undeniable - scarcity and the tragedy of the commons among them.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Autolykos First, "abolition" can only make sense when there is a State. Even then, it is in fact very difficult to abolish anything. In the absence of the State, what will physically prevent individuals from adopting methods of indirect exchange (i.e. monies)?

Nothing will "physically prevent" people from using money. That's the whole point of free trade.

But you mischaracterize how money is used, and how it seems intended to be used. It is the money system imposed on people, not the other way around. I certainly never begged to pay the price for bread, or for anything else. Such conditions are imposed.
It certainly doesn't take a great deal of effort to see what I mean.
Money is not used in a neutral way, and overwhelmingly financial transactions involving money also involve legal coercion (what should be considered the state). This is not some abstract theory, but a highly accurate description of how capitalist economics take place, and how the foundation of the money system is maintained. When you base decisions over resources on the quality of dollars, those with the most money will end up with more control (hence, you have elite positions of authority).

I wouldn't say it's easy to abolish these conditions, because they are currently so widespread, but certainly we can take steps in this direction. In my view, we should, at least if we're interested in genuine freedom.

Quote by: Autolykos Second, what incentive would a person have, under anarcho-communism, to equate the products of his (finite) labor to an infinite amount of everything? These "gift stores" you describe would run out of everything very quickly. People would want to take as much as they can before anyone else does.

Well, people don't have to "equate their products to an infinite amount" of anything, mostly because there isn't an "infinite amount of everything." I think people have brains enough to understand trade as a qualitative matter, and this includes how there isn't an infinite number of tradeable
things and useable resources.

Your assumption that thes estores would "run out of everything very quickly" is just that, an assumption.
Such stores needn't give everything away all at once. In fact, if you'd actually read up on it (there's even information on the bottom of that Wikipedia link, or you could look it up elsewhere), the cooperatives in anarchist Spain were very successful, and highly participatory and libertarian -- which is above all the point.

This idea that people would take everything for themselves is a legitimate fear, but only practical in a capitalist society where people are allowe dto act in such a way and dominate resources and decisionmaking. All the problems you are describing occur in non-anarchist, hierarchical and greed-driven societies -- the kind of Western paradign that expands and merely exploit others. Your criticism is thus not about anarchism, but state capitalism and its culture, which is constantly being imposed by force upon people, many who would rather organize differently.

Having free stores doesn't mean you give it up altogether (in fact, I thought the link addressed this).

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: kubedawg Wouldn't anarcho-capitalism be a better thing to strive for?

No, because, for starters, it's a fundamental contradiction in terms. Anarchism is about getting rid of abstraction as much as possible. Capital (money) inherently has abstract properties and, when used extensively, creates elite positions of domination (over resources, workers, etc.). In other words, capitalism has some of the basic properties of statism. That's a big deal to us anarchist-leaning folks.

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Chancellor Couldn't he have come up with a better source than Wikipedia?

If you distrusted the article for some reason other than it being Wikipedia, you'd have a valid point. But even I can watch something like FOX News and find a point or two of agreement.

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Milton Bradley This is what the confused socialists and communists who pretend to be anarchists never understand: every single individual is different. They differ in what they want to do, and what they are able to do, and what they need in life. Therefore, all forms of "collectivism" is just forcing people to conform.

"Pretend to be anarchists?" What nonsense! Furthermore, I'm fully aware that every individual is different, which is why their methods of trading or working should not be coralled up into the legally-imposed money system. Anarchism, whether we call it Libertarian Socialism or Libertarian Communism does not need individualism to be eradicated in order to work. It actually requires the opposite. The individual should be strengthened; free to live both as an independent spirit and as a social being. If people can not be at all different from the rest, the world would indeed be a dreaded place.

In reality, it's capitalism and the state that breeds conformity, by placing the masses under dominating influences and by creating superstitions and attitudes of subordination. Under such conditions, goods and services are divvied out to us only if we obey those in charge; and in a capitalist society that means if we obey the profit motive.

As expected, you have it backwards. People are, by and large, not forced to be equal. It is inequality that requires some degree of force, or cultural coercion. Without the indoctrination system, the legal fictions and implied violence, people would practically automatically be more equal.

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: BobbyO You have this mania for landlords and tenants, it seems...

Well, landlords and others have a mania for dominating resources. My obsession is one of disgust (though I talk extensively about other issues). Even more, this is an issue no one is supposed to talk about. Landlords and rent are supposed to be sacrosanct, hence I bring them up a lot.
A very common form of authority should not be above all question.

Quote by: BobbyO My only initial comment wouid be in the attempt to distinguish between personal and collctive property (the paintbrush example). Since the community cannot make an infinite supply of paintbrushes (without diverting resources from the production of other needed goods), and since the community has to approve the production of paintbrushes, the claim that the community has no interest in your personal possession of a paintbrush cannot be considered true. Since the community has collectivelly decided to produce paintbrushes, it has an absolute interest in how you utilse those paintbrushes (especially since at some point you will need to go back for "more.").

Frankly, I have no idea why you would find an issue here.

The field of vision needn't be limited. Obviously, mass production could still exist, if people so choose (also, if they choose, they could act in a most brutish way). The difference is, all in the factory would be "property owners," for lack of a better term.
This doesn't mean the producer of toothbrushes needs to agree with what the artist paints (this isn't the case now, nor would it ever need to be). It's also true that the producers of toothbrushes wouldn't tell us when we brush our teeth, that book manufacturers wouldn't tell us when and what to read, etc.
I think one could also have more than one toothbrush or paintbrush.

Nor does everyone in the community need to be involved in every aspect of productive activity. If people wish to not produce something, then they need not be involved. NOtice how this is different now, when people feel significant artificial pressures to work, even at places they might despise under pathetic conditions (thus undoubtedly wasting the potential growth and realization of other talents).

Finally, I'd argue that a community doens't have an absolute interest in anything, unless by some miracle its individuals all want the exact same things and share a totally universal consciousness. I don't think that's the case. From my point of view, these situations are part of the human condition.

Grandpa h.

[Dieval]

Quote by: grandpa People are, by and large, not forced to be equal. It is inequality that requires some degree of force, or cultural coercion. Without the indoctrination system, the legal fictions and implied violence, people would practically automatically be more equal.

This may sound like an odd question, but why are you trying to force equality on people?

[grandpa]

Quote by: tivodan1116 This economic theory has an almost childlike misunderstanding of the way human behavior works, thinking that people can just "agree" on what to produce, etc.

Do you have any proof that people cannot agree on what to produce? Human beings who have received sufficient culturation certainly can.

The link I provided touches upon this:

...despite criticisms, anarchist communist communes, such as anarchist Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, saw increased productivity. The production of potatoes increased 50% and the production of sugar beets and feed for livestock doubled. Through the use of more modernized machinery and chemical fertilizers, the yield per hectare was 50% greater on collective property than on individually-owned land. [64] The anarchist collectivization in Spain also showed that such ideas are possible to implement in industrial settings. 75% of Spanish industry was located in the Catalon region. According to local sources at the time,

"Catalonia and Aragon, were about 70 per cent of the workforce was involved. The total for the whole of Republican territory was nearly 800,000 on the land and a little more than a million in industry. In Barcelona workers' committees took over all the services, the oil monopoly, the shipping companies, heavy engineering firms such as Volcano, the Ford motor company, chemical companies, the textile industry and a host of smaller enterprises. . . Services such as water, gas and electricity were working under new management within hours of the storming of the Atarazanas barracks . . .a conversion of appropriate factories to war production meant that metallurgical concerns had started to produce armed cars by 22 July . . . The industrial workers of Catalonia were the most skilled in Spain . . . One of the most impressive feats of those early days was the resurrection of the public transport system at a time when the streets were still littered and barricaded." [65] ”

The collectivist projects were quite successful, sources noted:

"In distribution the collectives' co-operatives eliminated middlemen, small merchants, wholesalers, and profiteers, thus greatly reducing consumer prices. The collectives eliminated most of the parasitic elements from rural life, and would have wiped them out altogether if they were not protected by corrupt officials and by the political parties. Non-collectivised areas benefited indirectly from the lower prices as well as from free services often rendered by the collectives (laundries, cinemas, schools, barber and beauty parlours, etc.)" [66]

Quote by: tivodan1116 It also denies several fundamental concepts of economics that are absolutely undeniable - scarcity and the tragedy of the commons among them.

Does capitalism make resources less scarce, or does it often deprive people of resources (conditions of artificial scarcity)? Second, most examples of "the tragedy of the commons" have nothing to do with teh commons, but the institution of private property and the break-up of communities.

Indeed, the prevailing system gives us health costs, toxic cleanup programs, and greater scarcity of resources due to environmental degradation

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Dieval This may sound like an odd question, but why are you trying to force equality on people?

"Odd" would be the polite way of putting it. Where, in any of my statemente here or anywhere else, have I suggested people must be forced to be equal? One needn't look far at all to see how it is inequality that requires force.

Grandpa h.

[Dieval]

Quote by: grandpa "Odd" would be the polite way of putting it. Where, in any of my statemente here or anywhere else, have I suggested people must be forced to be equal? One needn't look far at all to see how it is inequality that requires force. Grandpa h.

Under the system you are advocating, isn't everyone required to be equal?

[Autolykos]

Quote by: grandpa Nothing will "physically prevent" people from using money. That's the whole point of free trade.

Then you won't have a problem with people freely using commodity money for indirect exchange, as will be bound to happen?

[Snipped: Broad claims and platitudes without the slightest degree of logical support or factual evidence.]

Well, people don't have to "equate their products to an infinite amount" of anything, mostly because there isn't an "infinite amount of everything."

Let me explain more clearly.

Human desires are infinite. While there is no infinite amount of anything, let alone everything, infinite human desires means taking as much of everything as one can before anyone else does, ceteris paribus. That last part is important, because typically there are incentive structures in place (read: markets) to motivate people to do otherwise.

I think people have brains enough to understand trade as a qualitative matter, and this includes how there isn't an infinite number of tradeable things and useable resources.

You seem to have a problem when I "just make assumptions", but have no trouble at all making your own. :)

The assumption above is, in my view, entirely baseless unless you can present logical support and/or factual evidence in favor of it.

[qutoe]Your assumption that thes estores would "run out of everything very quickly" is just that, an assumption.[/quote]

Keep in mind that we are talking about a hypothetical situation. There are nothing but assumptions and propositions there.

The assumption that I made seems to have been borne out by history countless times. Just look up "tragedy of the commons".

Such stores needn't give everything away all at once.

But what if people demand everything? On what basis will the stores not give away everything all at once? How will they defend themselves against people who disagree with their methods of distribution?

In fact, if you'd actually read up on it (there's even information on the bottom of that Wikipedia link, or you could look it up elsewhere), the cooperatives in anarchist Spain were very successful, and highly participatory and libertarian -- which is above all the point.

That doesn't tell me anything -- sorry. I feel obliged to take it as another baseless statement until further notice.

This idea that people would take everything for themselves is a legitimate fear, but only practical in a capitalist society where people are allowe dto act in such a way and dominate resources and decisionmaking. All the problems you are describing occur in non-anarchist, hierarchical and greed-driven societies -- the kind of Western paradign that expands and merely exploit others. Your criticism is thus not about anarchism, but state capitalism and its culture, which is constantly being imposed by force upon people, many who would rather organize differently.

Please. Support, support, support! All of this drivel -- I'm sorry, I must call it what it is -- does not help your position in the slightest. In fact, I'm confused as to what your position actually is. No doubt you'll try to explain but, in trying to explain, you'll just repeat the same nonsense over again.

Having free stores doesn't mean you give it up altogether (in fact, I thought the link addressed this).

Give what up altogether???

In an economic context, "free" means something for nothing in a material sense. Unless one provides a good or service in return, the good or service he receives is free -- from his point of view, that is. Of course, for the person providing the good or service, it was decidedly not free. If a person were to provide for others at all times in return for nothing to himself, he will effectively kill himself. Thus those who are inclined to such outrageous self-sacrifice will weed themselves out of the gene pool, as it were.

What you describe is simply impossible in the long run.

- Rob

[Cephus]

Quote by: Autolykos First, "abolition" can only make sense when there is a State. Even then, it is in fact very difficult to abolish anything. In the absence of the State, what will physically prevent individuals from adopting methods of indirect exchange (i.e. monies)?

What's to stop individuals from printing their own money or from declaring that the precious commodity they have to sell is suddenly worth 100x what it was worth yesterday? Without some state to keep the value of money reasonably stable, a dollar may be worth wildly varying amounts depending on who you talk to.

Without an agreed upon valuation system, you would never have money, you'd simply be back to barter.

Second, what incentive would a person have, under anarcho-communism, to equate the products of his (finite) labor to an infinite amount of everything? These "gift stores" you describe would run out of everything very quickly. People would want to take as much as they can before anyone else does.

Beyond that, what's to stop the powerful from just taking everything from everyone else? No state means no public police, no standing military and no control over what one person with a tank wants to do to another person without one.

There's no way to maintain such a system.

[tivodan1116]

Quote by: grandpa Furthermore, I'm fully aware that every individual is different, which is why their methods of trading or working should not be coralled up into the legally-imposed money system.

Their methods of trading are not. People can and do trade using other means all the time. They have drifted towards currency (or more exactly "money", since other forms of it are so widely used) for the vast majority of exchanges because it is easy.

The individual should be strengthened; free to live both as an independent spirit and as a social being.

Which does not happen if everyone is forced to contribute in some way other than money to provide for their basic needs - capitalism allows for super specialization of each individual to their talents, since they can buy the things their talents do not provide on the open market.

In reality, it's capitalism and the state that breeds conformity, by placing the masses under dominating influences and by creating superstitions and attitudes of subordination. Under such conditions, goods and services are divvied out to us only if we obey those in charge; and in a capitalist society that means if we obey the profit motive.

Nonsense. You, like other anti-capitalists, fail to understand that "profit motive" is merely economic shorthand for selfishness, which is a fundamental human nature. What capitalism does is relies on that fundamental human nature to the benefit of the economy. Goods and services are not "divvied out" under a capitalist system, they are assigned a value under the law of supp