Anarchist communism

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Anarchist Communism, also known as Anarcho-Communism, Communo-Anarchism or Libertarian Communism, is a political ideology related to Libertarian socialism. However, the terms Anarchist Communism and Libertarian Communism should not be considered synonyms for libertarian socialism. Anarchist Communism is a particular branch of libertarian socialism. It is also important to note that although the term Libertarian Communism is often used as a synom for Anarchist Communism, they are not necessarily the same ideology. While all Anarchist Communists are Libertarian Communists, not all Libertarian Communists are anarchists. For example, Council Communism is a form of Libertarian Communism, but not anarchism.

Anarchist Communism was first formulated in the Italian section of the First International, by Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa and other ex-Mazzinian Republicans. Out of respect for Mikhail Bakunin, they did not make their differences from Proudhon's individualist anarchism and mutualism explicit until after Bakunin's death. While both groups argued against capitalism for the freedom of the worker to retain the full benefit of their labor, they departed in that Proudhon argued that such benefit should take the form of individual ownership, while anarcho-communists felt that collective ownership would better protect against what each group saw as the negative effects of large-scale accumulation of capital. Cafeiro explains in Anarchie et Communisme that private property in the product of labor will lead to unequal accumulation of capital, and therefore undesirable class distinctions. Joseph Dejacque altered Proudhon's theory, asserting 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." In 1876, at the Florence Conference of the Italian Federation of the International (which was actually held in a forest outside Florence, due to police activity), they declared the principles of Anarcho-Communism, beginning with:

"The Italian Federation considers the collective property of the products of labour as the necessary complement to the collectivist programme, the aid of all for the satisfaction of the needs of each being the only rule of production and consumption which corresponds to the principle of solidarity. The federal congress at Florence has eloquently demonstrated the opinion of the Italian International on this point..."

The above report was made in an article by Malatesta and Cafiero in the (Swiss) Jura Federation's bulletin later that year.

Anarchist Communism stresses egalitarianism, the abolition of money, and the introduction of the gift economy to facilitate the sharing of goods.

In Anarchist Communism, profit no longer exists and goods are given away as gifts in the certainty that others will also give products back (in an industrial setting, this would occur between worker syndicates as well as between individuals). If one syndicate does not share their products, they will not receive resources from other syndicates, making it in their best interest to share.

Anarchist Communism also advocates the abolition of work in the sense of wage slavery, and recommends worker self management to improve working conditions, increase efficiency, and make working enjoyable.

1 Philosophical arguments
2 Criticisms
3 People
4 Books
5 External links

Philosophical arguments

Anarchist Communism emphasizes the collective experience as distinct and important in the pursuit of freedom. All forms of Anarchism recognize the experience of collective identity to some extent, but the Anarchist Communists, starting with Peter Kropotkin and extending out through Alexander Berkman, Nestor Makhno, and many others recognized that there was more to experiences which were less individualistic than meets the eye.

Implicitly, the Anarchist Communists followed a Kantian scheme of classification: like Kant they divided life into its individualistic parts, which have a parallel with Kant's Pure Reason, and the less obvious parts of life which characterize our relations to one another, which parallels Kant's Practical Reason. To put it bluntly: no matter how autonomous we might be to ourselves when we're alone, once we start interacting with the world and with other people our change in circumstance calls for a different perspective.

This follows from our biology. The parts of life that Kant singled out in his work on Practical Reason are generally not well understood. How does the experience of work actually feel? What do we actually think when we work? Because of some sort of biological limitation when people deal with these aspects of life they tend to resort to using obscure and abstract metaphors and analogies to explain what they're talking about.

This is where the difference between Anarchism and Anarchist Communism shows up most clearly: the Anarchist Communists have taken on these hard to explain aspects of life, have desired to understand them, and have integrated strategies for liberation involving these aspects of life into their overall point of view.

The catch with these aspects of life is that while mental liberation might be amazing, becoming aware of the collective substructure of life and society leads to deeper liberation than is commonly thought possible.

So in this respect the Anarchist Communists see themselves as pursuing a fuller definition of liberation than other anarchists.

Criticisms

Some of the early individualist anarchists believed that elements of Anarchist Communism were inconsistent with anarchist principles. Benjamin Tucker calls communist-anarchism "pseudo-anarchism." [1] However, many individualists of that time, such as Tucker and E. Armand, felt they had much in common with anarchist communism, or worked to propagate its ideas along with their own. In modern times almost all individualist anarchists believe that anarchist communism is a legitimate form of anarchism, though most still reject collective economics.

Proudhon, whose philosophy had great influence on early anarcho-communists, nonetheless rejected communism himself: "Communism, as I have often complained, is the very denial of society in its foundation, which is the progressive equivalence of functions and capacities. The communists, toward whom all socialism tends, do not believe in equality by nature and education; they supply it by sovereign decrees which they cannot carry out, whatever they may do. Instead of seeking justice in the harmony of facts, they take it from their feelings, calling justice everything that seems to them to be love of one's neighbor, and incessantly confounding matters of reason with those of sentiment."