Section B - Why do anarchists oppose the current system?
This section of the FAQ presents an analysis of the basic social relationships of modern society and the structures which create them, particularly those aspects of society that anarchists want to change.
Anarchism is, essentially, a revolt against capitalism. It was born at the same time as capitalism was born and grew in influence as capitalism colonised more and more parts of society. This does not mean that anarchistic ideas have not existed within society since before the dawn of capitalism. Far from it. Thinkers whose ideas can be classified as anarchist go back thousands of years and are found in Eastern as well as Western civilisations. It would be no exaggeration to say that anarchism was born the moment the state and private property were created.
However, anarchism as a political movement was the product of the transformation of society which accompanied the creation of the modern (nation-) state and capital. As such, the analysis and critique presented in this section of the FAQ will concentrate on modern, capitalist society.
Anarchists realise that the power of governments and other forms of hierarchy depends upon the agreement of the governed. Fear is not the whole answer, it is far more "because they [the oppressed] subscribe to the same values as their governors. Rulers and ruled alike believe in the principle of authority, of hierarchy, of power." [Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action, p. 15] With this in mind, we present in this section of the FAQ our arguments to challenge this "consensus," to present the case why we should become anarchists, why authoritarian social relationships and organisations are not in our interests.
From this discussion, it will become apparent why anarchists are dissatisfied with the very limited amount of freedom in modern mass society and why they want to create a truly free society. In the words of Noam Chomsky, the anarchist critique of modern society means:
"to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. That includes political power, ownership and management, relations among men and women, parents and children, our control over the fate of future generations (the basic moral imperative behind the environmental movement. . .), and much else." ["Anarchism, Marxism and Hope for the Future", Red and Black Revolution, No. 2]
In section J of the FAQ will discuss how anarchists try to encourage this process of justification, this critical evaluation of authority and domination, this undermining of what previously was considered "natural" or "common-sense" until we started to question it. Part of this process is to encourage direct action (see section J.2) by the oppressed against their oppressors as well as encouraging the anarchistic tendencies and awareness that exist (to a greater or lesser degree) in any hierarchical society.
However, this section of the FAQ is concerned directly with the critical or "negative" aspect of anarchism, the exposing of the evil inherent in all authority, be it from state, property or whatever. Later sections will indicate how, after analysing the world, anarchists plan to change it constructively, but some of the constructive core of anarchism will be seen even in this section. After this broad critique of the current system, we move onto more specific areas. Section C explains the anarchist critique of the economics of capitalism and section D discusses how the social relationships and institutions described in this section impact on society as a whole.
Section B - Why do anarchists oppose the current system?
Introduction
B.1 Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy?
B.1.1 What are the effects of authoritarian social relationships?
B.1.2 Is capitalism hierarchical?
B.1.3 What kind of hierarchy of values does capitalism create?
B.1.4 Why do racism, sexism and homophobia exist?
B.1.5 How is the mass-psychological basis for authoritarian civilisation created?
B.2 Why are anarchists against the state?
B.2.1 What is the main function of the state?
B.2.2 Does the state have subsidiary functions?
B.2.3 How does the ruling class maintain control of the state?
B.2.4 How does state centralisation affect freedom?
B.2.5 Who benefits from centralisation?
B.3 Why are anarchists against private property?
B.3.1 What is the difference between private property and possession?
B.3.2 What kinds of private property does the state protect?
B.3.3 Why is private property exploitative?
B.3.4 Can private property be justified?
B.4 How does capitalism affect liberty?
B.4.1 Is capitalism based on freedom?
B.4.2 Is capitalism based on self-ownership?
B.4.3 But no one forces you to work for them!
B.4.4 But what about periods of high demand for labour?
B.4.5 But I want to be "left alone"!
B.5 Is capitalism empowering and based on human action?
B.6 But will not the decisions made by intelligent individuals with their own financial success or failure on the line will be better most of the time?
B.7 What classes exist within modern society?
B.7.1 But do classes actually exist?
B.7.2 Why is the existence of classes denied?
B.7.3 What do anarchists mean by "class consciousness"?
B.1 Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy?
First, it is necessary to indicate what kind of authority anarchism challenges. As Erich Fromm points out in To Have or To Be, "authority" is "a broad term with two entirely different meanings: it can be either 'rational' or 'irrational' authority. Rational authority is based on competence, and it helps the person who leans on it to grow. Irrational authority is based on power and serves to exploit the person subjected to it." [pp. 44-45] The same point was made by Bakunin 100 years earlier (see God and the State, for example) when he indicated the difference between authority and influence.
This crucial point is expressed in the difference between having authority and being an authority. Being an authority just means that a given person is generally recognised as competent for a given task, based on his or her individual skills and knowledge. Put differently, it is socially acknowledged expertise. In contrast, having authority is a social relationship based on status and power derived from a hierarchical position, not on individual ability. Obviously this does not mean that competence is not an element for obtaining a hierarchical position; it just means that the real or alleged initial competence is transferred to the title or position of the authority and so becomes independent of individuals, i.e. institutionalised.
This difference is important because the way people behave is more a product of the institutions in which we are raised than of any inherent nature. In other words, social relationships shape the individuals involved. This means that the various groups individuals create have traits, behaviours and outcomes that cannot be understood by reducing them to the individuals within them. That is, groups consist not only of individuals, but also relationships between individuals and these relationships will effect those subject to them. For example, obviously "the exercise of power by some disempowers others" and so through a "combination of physical intimidation, economic domination and dependency, and psychological limitations, social institutions and practices affect the way everyone sees the world and her or his place in it." [Martha A. Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain, p. 20]
Authoritarian social relationships means dividing society into (the few) order givers and (the many) order takers, impoverishing the individuals involved (mentally, emotionally and physically) and society as a whole. Human relationships, in all parts of life, are stamped by authority, not liberty. And as freedom can only be created by freedom, authoritarian social relationships (and the obedience they require) do not and cannot educate a person in freedom - only participation (self-management) in all areas of life can do that.
Of course, it will be pointed out that in any collective undertaking there is a need for co-operation and co-ordination and this need to "subordinate" the individual to group activities is a form of authority. Yes, but there are two different ways of co-ordinating individual activity within groups - either by authoritarian means or by libertarian means. Proudhon, in relation to workplaces, makes the difference clear:
"either the workman. . . will be simply the employee of the proprietor-capitalist-promoter; or he will participate. . . [and] have a voice in the council, in a word he will become an associate.
"In the first case the workman is subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience. . . In the second case he resumes his dignity as a man and citizen. . . he forms part of the producing organisation, of which he was before but the slave; as, in the town, he forms part of the sovereign power, of which he was before but the subject . . . 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." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution, pp. 215-216]
In other words, associations can be based upon a form of rational authority, based upon natural influence and so reflect freedom, the ability of individuals to think, act and feel and manage their own time and activity. Otherwise, we include elements of slavery into our relationships with others, elements that poison the whole and shape us in negative ways (see section B.1.1). Only the reorganisation of society in a libertarian way (and, we may add, the mental transformation such a change requires and would create) will allow the individual to "achieve more or less complete blossoming, whilst continuing to develop" and banish "that spirit of submission that has been artificially thrust upon him [or her]" [Nestor Makhno, The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays, p. 62]
So, anarchists "ask nothing better than to see [others]. . . exercise over us a natural and legitimate influence, freely accepted, and never imposed . . . We accept all natural authorities and all influences of fact, but none of right. . . " [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 255] Anarchist support for free association within directly democratic groups is based upon such organisational forms increasing influence and reducing irrational authority in our lives. Members of such organisations can create and present their own ideas and suggestions, critically evaluate the proposals and suggestions from their fellows, accept those that they agree with or become convinced by and have the option of leaving the association if they are unhappy with its direction. Hence the influence of individuals and their free interaction determine the nature of the decisions reached, and no one has the right to impose their ideas on another. As Bakunin argued, in such organisations "no function remains fixed and it will not remain permanently and irrevocably attached to one person. Hierarchical order and promotion do not exist. . . In such a system, power, properly speaking, no longer exists. Power is diffused to the collectivity and becomes the true expression of the liberty of everyone." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 415]
Therefore, anarchists are opposed to irrational (e.g., illegitimate) authority, in other words, hierarchy -- hierarchy being the institutionalisation of authority within a society. Hierarchical social institutions include the state (see section B.2), private property (see section B.3) and, therefore, capitalism (see section B.4). Due to their hierarchical nature, anarchists oppose these institutions with passion. However, hierarchy exists beyond these institutions. For example, hierarchical social relationships include sexism, racism and homophobia (see section B.1.4), and anarchists oppose, and fight, them all.
As noted earlier (A.2.8), anarchists consider all hierarchies to be not only harmful but unnecessary, and think that there are alternative, more egalitarian ways to organise social life. In fact, they argue that hierarchical authority creates the conditions it is presumably designed to combat, and thus tends to be self-perpetuating. Thus, bureaucracies ostensibly set up to fight poverty wind up perpetuating it, because without poverty, the high-salaried top administrators would be out of work. The same applies to agencies intended to eliminate drug abuse, fight crime, etc. In other words, the power and privileges deriving from top hierarchical positions constitute a strong incentive for those who hold them not to solve the problems they are supposed to solve. (For further discussion see Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals, Summit Books, 1985.)
B.1.1 What are the effects of authoritarian social relationships?
Hierarchical authority is inextricably connected with the marginalisation and disempowerment of those without authority. This has negative effects on those over whom authority is exercised, since "[t]hose who have these symbols of authority and those who benefit from them must dull their subject people's realistic, i.e. critical, thinking and make them believe the fiction [that irrational authority is rational and necessary], . . .[so] the mind is lulled into submission by clich‰s. . .[and] people are made dumb because they become dependent and lose their capacity to trust their eyes and judgement." [Erich Fromm, Op. Cit., p. 47]
Or, in the words of Bakunin, "the principle of authority, applied to men who have surpassed or attained their majority, becomes a monstrosity, a source of slavery and intellectual and moral depravity." [God and the State, p. 41]
This is echoed by the syndicalist miners who wrote the classic The Miners' Next Step when they indicate the nature of authoritarian organisations and their effect on those involved. Leadership (i.e. hierarchical authority) "implies power held by the leader. Without power the leader is inept. The possession of power inevitably leads to corruption. . . in spite of. . . good intentions . . . [Leadership means] power of initiative, this sense of responsibility, the self-respect which comes from expressed manhood [sic!], is taken from the men, and consolidated in the leader. The sum of their initiative, their responsibility, their self-respect becomes his. . . [and the] order and system he maintains is based upon the suppression of the men, from being independent thinkers into being 'the men'. . . In a word, he is compelled to become an autocrat and a foe to democracy." Indeed, for the "leader," such marginalisation can be beneficial, for a leader "sees no need for any high level of intelligence in the rank and file, except to applaud his actions. Indeed such intelligence from his point of view, by breeding criticism and opposition, is an obstacle and causes confusion." [The Miners' Next Step, pp. 16-17 p. 15]
Anarchists argue that hierarchical social relationships will have a negative effect on those subject to them, who can no longer exercise their critical, creative and mental abilities freely. As Colin Ward argues, people "do go from womb to tomb without realising their human potential, precisely because the power to initiate, to participate in innovating, choosing, judging, and deciding is reserved for the top men" (and it usually is men!) [Anarchy in Action, p, 42]. Anarchism is based on the insight that there is an interrelationship between the authority structures of institutions and the psychological qualities and attitudes of individuals. Following orders all day hardly builds an independent, empowered, creative personality. As Emma Goldman made clear, if a person's "inclination and judgement are subordinated to the will of a master" (such as a boss, as most people have to sell their labour under capitalism) then little wonder such an authoritarian relationship "condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 36]
As the human brain is a bodily organ, it needs to be used regularly in order to be at its fittest. Authority concentrates decision-making in the hands of those at the top, meaning that most people are turned into executants, following the orders of others. If muscle is not used, it turns to fat; if the brain is not used, creativity, critical thought and mental abilities become blunted and side-tracked onto marginal issues, like sports and fashion.
Therefore, "[h]ierarchical institutions foster alienated and exploitative relationships among those who participate in them, disempowering people and distancing them from their own reality. Hierarchies make some people dependent on others, blame the dependent for their dependency, and then use that dependency as a justification for further exercise of authority. . . .Those in positions of relative dominance tend to define the very characteristics of those subordinate to them. . . .Anarchists argue that to be always in a position of being acted upon and never to be allowed to act is to be doomed to a state of dependence and resignation. Those who are constantly ordered about and prevented from thinking for themselves soon come to doubt their own capacities. . .[and have] difficulty acting on [their] sense of self in opposition to societal norms, standards and expectations." [Martha Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain, pp. 19-20]
Thus, in the words of Colin Ward, the "system makes its morons, then despises them for their ineptitude, and rewards its 'gifted few' for their rarity." [Op. Cit., p. 43]
In addition to these negative psychological effects from the denial of liberty, authoritarian social relationships also produce social inequality. This is because an individual subject to the authority of another has to obey the orders of those above them in the social hierarchy. In capitalism this means that workers have to follow the orders of their boss (see next section), orders that are designed to make the boss richer (for example, from 1994 to 1995 alone, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation in the USA rose 16 percent, compared to 2.8 percent for workers, which did not even keep pace with inflation, and whose stagnating wages cannot be blamed on corporate profits, which rose a healthy 14.8 percent for that year). Inequality in terms of power will translate itself into inequality in terms of wealth (and vice versa). The effects of such social inequality are wide-reaching.
For example, poor people are more likely to be sick and die at an earlier age, compared to rich people. Moreover, the degree of inequality is important (i.e. the size of the gap between rich and poor). According to an editorial in the British Medical Journal "what matters in determining mortality and health in a society is less the overall wealth of that society and more how evenly wealth is distributed. The more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society," [Vol. 312, April 20, 1996, p. 985]
Research in the USA found overwhelming evidence of this. George Kaplan and his colleagues measured inequality in the 50 US states and compared it to the age-adjusted death rate for all causes of death, and a pattern emerged: the more unequal the distribution of income, the greater the death rate. In other words, it is the gap between rich and poor, and not the average income in each state, that best predicts the death rate in each state. ["Inequality in income and mortality in the United States: analysis of mortality and potential pathways," British Medical Journal Vol. 312, April 20, 1996, pp. 999-1003]
This measure of income inequality was also tested against other social conditions besides health. States with greater inequality in the distribution of income also had higher rates of unemployment, higher rates of incarceration, a higher percentage of people receiving income assistance and food stamps, a greater percentage of people without medical insurance, greater proportion of babies born with low birth weight, higher murder rates, higher rates of violent crime, higher costs per-person for medical care, and higher costs per person for police protection.
Moreover states with greater inequality of income distribution also spent less per person on education, had fewer books per person in the schools, and had poorer educational performance, including worse reading skills, worse mathematics skills, and lower rates of completion of high school.
As the gap grows between rich and poor (indicating an increase in social hierarchy within and without of workplaces) the health of a people deteriorates and the social fabric unravels. The psychological hardship of being low down on the social ladder has detrimental effects on people, beyond whatever effects are produced by the substandard housing, nutrition, air quality, recreational opportunities, and medical care enjoyed by the poor.[see George Davey Smith, "Income inequality and mortality: why are they related?" British Medical Journal, Vol. 312 (April 20, 1996), pp. 987-988]
The growing gap between rich and poor has not been ordained by god, nature or some other superhuman force. It has been created by a specific social system, its institutions and workings - a system based upon authoritarian social relationships which effect us both physically and mentally.
All this is not to suggest that those at the bottom of hierarchies are victims nor that those at the top of hierarchies only gain benefits - far from it. Those at the bottom are constantly resisting the negative effects of hierarchy and creating non-hierarchical ways of living and fighting. This constant process of self-activity and self-liberation can be seen from the labour, women's and other movements - in which, to some degree, people create their own alternatives based upon their own dreams and hopes. Anarchism is based upon, and grew out of, this process of resistance, hope and direct action.
If we look at those at the top of the system, yes, indeed they often do very well in terms of material goods and access to education, leisure, health and so on but they can lose their humanity and individuality. As Bakunin pointed out, "power and authority corrupt those who exercise them as much as those who are compelled to submit to them." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 249] Power operates destructively, even on those who have it, reducing their individuality as it "renders them stupid and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling." [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 22]
When it boils down to it, hierarchy is self-defeating, for if "wealth is other people," then by treating others as less than yourself, restricting their growth, you lose all the potential insights and abilities these individuals have, so impoverishing your own life and restricting your own growth. Unfortunately in these days material wealth (a particularly narrow form of "self-interest") has replaced concern for developing the whole person and leading a fulfilling and creative life (a broad self-interest, which places the individual within society, one that recognises that relationships with others shape and develop all individuals). In a hierarchical, class based society everyone loses to some degree, even those at the "top."
B.1.2 Is capitalism hierarchical?
Yes. Under capitalism workers do not exchange the products of their labour they exchange the labour itself for money. They sell themselves for a given period of time, and in return for wages, promise to obey their paymasters. Those who pay and give the orders -- owners and managers -- are at the top of the hierarchy, those who obey at the bottom. This means that capitalism, by its very nature, is hierarchical.
As Carole Pateman argues, "[c]apacities or labour power cannot be used without the worker using his will, his understanding and experience, to put them into effect. The use of labour power requires the presence of its 'owner,' and it remains mere potential until he acts in the manner necessary to put it into use, or agrees or is compelled so to act; that is, the worker must labour. To contract for the use of labour power is a waste of resources unless it can be used in the way in which the new owner requires. The fiction 'labour power' cannot be used; what is required is that the worker labours as demanded. The employment contract must, therefore, create a relationship of command and obedience between employer and worker. . .In short, the contract in which the worker allegedly sells his labour power is a contract in which, since he cannot be separated from his capacities, he sells command over the use of his body and himself. To obtain the right to use another is to be a (civil) master" [The Sexual Contract, pp. 150-1 -- compare to Proudhon quoted above]
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. 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). As Karl Polanyi writes:
"Labour is only another name for human activity which goes with life itself, which is in turn not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life itself, be stored or mobilised." [The Great Transformation, p. 72]
In other words, labour is much more than the commodity to which capitalism tries to reduce it. 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. Indeed, Proudhon went so far as to argue that capitalist companies "plunder the bodies and souls of the wage-workers" and were an "outrage upon human dignity and personality." [Op. Cit., p. 219]
Separating labour from other activities of life and subjecting it to the laws of the market means to annihilate its natural, organic form of existence -- a form that evolved with the human race through tens of thousands of years of co-operative economic activity based on sharing and mutual aid -- and replacing it with an atomistic and individualistic one based on contract and competition.
The social relationship of wage labour, which is a very recent development, is then claimed by capitalists to be a source of "freedom," whereas in fact it is a form of involuntary servitude (see section B.4 and A.2.14). Therefore a libertarian who did not support economic liberty (i.e. self-government in industry, socialism) would be no libertarian at all, and no believer in liberty.
Therefore capitalism is based upon hierarchy and the denial of liberty. To present it otherwise denies the nature of wage labour. However supporters of capitalism try to but - as Karl Polanyi points out - the idea that wage labour is based upon some kind of "natural" liberty is false:
"To represent this principle [wage labour] as one of non-interference [with freedom], as economic liberals were wont to do, was merely the expression of an ingrained prejudice in favour of a definite kind of interference, namely, such as would destroy non-contractual relations between individuals and prevent their spontaneous re-formation." [Op. Cit., p.163]
This replacement of human relationships by economic ones soon results in the replacement of human values by economic ones, giving us an "ethics" of the account book, in which people are valued by how much they earn. It also leads, as Murray Bookchin argues, to a debasement of human values:
"[S]o deeply rooted is the market economy in our minds that its grubby language has replaced our most hallowed moral and spiritual expressions. We now 'invest' in our children, marriages, and personal relationships, a term that is equated with words like 'love' and 'care.' We live in a world of 'trade-offs' and we ask for the 'bottom line' of any emotional 'transaction.' We use the terminology of contracts rather than that of loyalties and spiritual affinities." [The Modern Crisis, p. 79]
With human values replaced by the ethics of calculation, and with only the laws of market and state "binding" people together, social breakdown is inevitable. As Karl Polanyi argues, "in disposing of a man's labour power the [market] system would, incidently, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity 'man' attached to that tag." [Op. Cit., p. 73]
Little wonder modern capitalism has seen a massive increase in crime and dehumanisation under the freer markets established by "conservative" governments, such as those of Thatcher and Reagan and their transnational corporate masters. We now live in a society where people live in self-constructed fortresses, "free" behind their walls and defences (both emotional and physical).
Of course, some people like the "ethics" of mathematics. But this is mostly because -- like all gods -- it gives the worshipper an easy rule book to follow. "Five is greater than four, therefore five is better" is pretty simple to understand. John Steinbeck noticed this when he wrote:
"Some of them [the owners] hated the mathematics that drove them [to kick the farmers off their land], and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling" [The Grapes of Wrath, p. 34].
B.1.3 What kind of hierarchy of values does capitalism create?
Capitalism produces a perverted hierarchy of values -- one that places humanity below property. As Erich Fromm argues, "the use [i.e. exploitation] of man by man is expressive of the system of values underlying the capitalistic system. Capital, the dead past, employs labour -- the living vitality and power of the present. In the capitalistic hierarchy of values, capital stands higher than labour, amassed things higher than the manifestations of life. Capital employs labour, and not labour capital. The person who owns capital commands the person who 'only' owns his life, human skill, vitality and creative productivity. 'Things' are higher than man. The conflict between capital and labour is much more than the conflict between two classes, more than their fight for a greater share of the social product. It is the conflict between two principles of value: that between the world of things, and their amassment, and the world of life and its productivity." [The Sane Society, pp. 94-95]
Capitalism only values a person as representing a certain amount of the commodity called "labour power," in other words, as a thing. Instead of being valued as an individual -- a unique human being with intrinsic moral and spiritual worth -- only one's price tag counts.
This debasement of the individual in the workplace, where so much time is spent, necessarily affects a person's self-image, which in turn carries over into the way he or she acts in other areas of life. If one is regarded as a commodity at work, one comes to regard oneself and others in that way also. Thus all social relationships -- and so, ultimately, all individuals -- are commodified. In capitalism, literally nothing is sacred -- "everything has its price" -- be it dignity, self-worth, pride, honour -- all become commodities up for grabs.
Such debasement produces a number of social pathologies. "Consumerism" is one example which can be traced directly to the commodification of the individual under capitalism. To quote Fromm again, "Things have no self, and men who have become things [i.e. commodities on the labour market] can have no self." [The Sane Society, p. 143]
However, people still feel the need for selfhood, and so try to fill the emptiness by consuming. The illusion of happiness, that one's life will be complete if one gets a new commodity, drives people to consume. Unfortunately, since commodities are yet more things, they provide no substitute for selfhood, and so the consuming must begin anew. This process is, of course, encouraged by the advertising industry, which tries to convince us to buy what we don't need because it will make us popular/sexy/happy/free/etc. (delete as appropriate!). But consuming cannot really satisfy the needs that the commodities are bought to satisfy. Those needs can only be satisfied by social interaction based on truly human values and by creative, self-directed work.
This does not mean, of course, that anarchists are against higher living standards or material goods. To the contrary, they recognise that liberty and a good life are only possible when one does not have to worry about having enough food, decent housing, and so forth. Freedom and 16 hours of work a day do not go together, nor do equality and poverty or solidarity and hunger. However, anarchists consider consumerism to be a distortion of consumption caused by the alienating and inhuman "account book" ethics of capitalism, which crushes the individual and his or her sense of identity, dignity and selfhood.
B.1.4 Why do racism, sexism and homophobia exist?
Since racism, sexism and homophobia (hatred/fear of homosexuals) are institutionalised throughout society, sexual, racial and gay oppression are commonplace. The primary cause of these three evil attitudes is the need for ideologies that justify domination and exploitation, which are inherent in hierarchy -- in other words, "theories" that "justify" and "explain" oppression and injustice. As Tacitus said, "We hate those whom we injure." Those who oppress others always find reasons to regard their victims as "inferior" and hence deserving of their fate. Elites need some way to justify their superior social and economic positions. Since the social system is obviously unfair and elitist, attention must be distracted to other, less inconvenient, "facts," such as alleged superiority based on biology or "nature." Therefore, doctrines of sexual, racial, and ethnic superiority are inevitable in hierarchical, class-stratified societies.
We will take each form of bigotry in turn.
From an economic standpoint, racism is associated with the exploitation of cheap labour at home and imperialism abroad. Indeed, early capitalist development in both America and Europe was strengthened by the bondage of people, particularly those of African descent. In the Americas, Australia and other parts of the world the slaughter of the original inhabitants and the expropriation of their land was also a key aspect in the growth of capitalism. As the subordination of foreign nations proceeds by force, it appears to the dominant nation that it owes its mastery to its special natural qualities, in other words to its "racial" characteristics. Thus imperialists have frequently appealed to the Darwinian doctrine of "Survival of the Fittest" to give their racism a basis in "nature."
In Europe, one of the first theories of racial superiority was proposed by Gobineau in the 1850s to establish the natural right of the aristocracy to rule over France. He argued that the French aristocracy was originally of Germanic origin while the "masses" were Gallic or Celtic, and that since the Germanic race was "superior", the aristocracy had a natural right to rule. Although the French "masses" didn't find this theory particularly persuasive, it was later taken up by proponents of German expansion and became the origin of German racial ideology, used to justify Nazi oppression of Jews and other "non-Aryan" types. Notions of the "white man's burden" and "Manifest Destiny" developed at about the same time in England and to a lesser extent in America, and were used to rationalise Anglo-Saxon conquest and world domination on a "humanitarian" basis.
The idea of racial superiority was also found to have great domestic utility. As Paul Sweezy points out, "[t]he intensification of social conflict within the advanced capitalist countries. . . has to be directed as far as possible into innocuous channels -- innocuous, that is to say, from the standpoint of capitalist class rule. The stirring up of antagonisms along racial lines is a convenient method of directing attention away from class struggle," which of course is dangerous to ruling-class interests [Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 311]. Indeed, employers have often deliberately fostered divisions among workers on racial lines as part of a strategy of "divide and rule."
In other words, racism (like other forms of bigotry) can be used to split and divide the working class by getting people to blame others of their class for the conditions they all suffer. Thus white workers are subtly encouraged, for example, to blame unemployment on blacks instead of capitalism, crime on Hispanics instead of poverty. In addition, discrimination against racial minorities and women has the full sanction of capitalist economics, "for in this way jobs and investment opportunities can be denied to the disadvantaged groups, their wages and profits can be depressed below prevailing levels, and the favoured sections of the population can reap substantial material rewards." [Ibid.]
Thus capitalism has continued to benefit from its racist heritage. Racism has provided pools of cheap labour for capitalists to draw upon (blacks still, usually, get paid less than whites for the same work) and permitted a section of the population to be subjected to worse treatment, so increasing profits by reducing working conditions and other non-pay related costs.
All this means that blacks are "subjected to oppression and exploitation on the dual grounds of race and class, and thus have to fight the extra battles against racism and discrimination." [Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarcho-syndicalists of the world unite]
Sexism only required a "justification" once women started to act for themselves and demand equal rights. Before that point, sexual oppression did not need to be "justified" -- it was "natural" (saying that, of course, equality between the sexes was stronger before the rise of Christianity as a state religion and capitalism so the "place" of women in society has fallen over the last few hundred years before rising again thanks to the women's movement).
The nature of sexual oppression can be seen from marriage. Emma Goldman pointed out that marriage "stands for the sovereignty of the man over the women," with her "complete submission" to the husbands "whims and commands." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 139] As Carole Pateman notes, until "the late nineteenth century the legal and position of a wife resembled that of a slave. . . A slave had no independent legal existence apart from his master, and husband and wife became 'one person,' the person of the husband." [The Sexual Contract, p. 119] Indeed, the law "was based on the assumption that a wife was (like) property" and only the marriage contract "includes the explicit commitment to obey." [Ibid., p. 122, p. 181]
However, when women started to question the assumptions of male domination, numerous theories were developed to explain why women's oppression and domination by men was "natural." Because men enforced their rule over women by force, men's "superiority" was argued to be a "natural" product of their gender, which is associated with greater physical strength (on the premise that "might makes right"). In the 17th century, it was argued that women were more like animals than men, thus "proving" that women had as much right to equality with men as sheep did. More recently, elites have embraced socio-biology in response to the growing women's movement. By "explaining" women's oppression on biological grounds, a social system run by men and for men could be ignored.
Women's subservient role also has economic value for capitalism (we should note that Goldman considered capitalism to be another "paternal arrangement" like marriage, both of which robbed people of their "birthright," "stunts" their growth, "poisons" their bodies and keeps people in "ignorance, in poverty and dependence." [Op. Cit., p. 164]). Women often provide necessary (and unpaid) labour which keeps the (usually) male worker in good condition; and it is primarily women who raise the next generation of wage-slaves (again without pay) for capitalist owners to exploit. Moreover, women's subordination gives working-class men someone to look down upon and, sometimes, a convenient target on whom they can take out their frustrations (instead of stirring up trouble at work). As Lucy Parsons pointed out, a working class woman is "a slave to a slave."
The oppression of lesbians, gays and bisexuals is inextricably linked with sexism. A patriarchal, capitalist society cannot see homosexual practices as the normal human variations they are because they blur that society's rigid gender roles and sexist stereotypes. Most young gay people keep their sexuality to themselves for fear of being kicked out of home and all gays have the fear that some "straights" will try to kick their sexuality out of them if they express their sexuality freely.
Gays are not oppressed on a whim but because of the specific need of capitalism for the nuclear family. The nuclear family, as the primary - and inexpensive - creator of submissive people (growing up within the authoritarian family gets children used to, and "respectful" of, hierarchy and subordination - see section B.1.5) as well as provider and carer for the workforce fulfils an important need for capitalism. Alternative sexuality represent a threat to the family model because they provide a different role model for people. This means that gays are going to be in the front line of attack whenever capitalism wants to reinforce "family values" (i.e. submission to authority, "tradition", "morality" and so on). The introduction of Clause 28 in Britain is a good example of this, with the government making it illegal for public bodies to promote gay sexuality (i.e. to present it as anything other than a perversion). Therefore, the oppression of people based on their sexuality will not end until sexism is eliminated.
Before discussing how anarchists think these forms of oppression can be got rid of, it is useful to highlight why they are harmful to those who practice them (and in some way benefit from them) as well as the oppressed.
Sexism, racism and homophobia divide the working class, which means that whites, males and heterosexuals hurt themselves by maintaining a pool of low-paid competing labour, ensuring low wages for their own wives, daughters, mothers, relatives and friends. Such divisions create inferior conditions and wages for all as capitalists gain a competitive advantage using this pool of cheap labour, forcing all capitalists to cut conditions and wages to survive in the market (in addition, such social hierarchies, by undermining solidarity against the employer on the job and the state possibly create a group of excluded workers who could become scabs during strikes). Also, "privileged" sections of the working class lose out because their wages and conditions are less than those which unity could have won them. Only the boss really wins.
This can be seen from research into this subject. The researcher Al Szymanski sought to systematically and scientifically test the proposition that white workers gain from racism ["Racial Discrimination and White Gain", in American Sociological Review, vol. 41, no. 3, June 1976, pp. 403-414]. He compared the situation of "white" and "non-white" (i.e. black, Native American, Asian and Hispanic) workers in United States and found several key things:
(1) the narrower the gap between white and black wages in an American state, the higher white earnings were relative to white earnings elsewhere. This means that "whites do not benefit economically by economic discrimination. White workers especially appear to benefit economically from the absence of economic discrimination. . . both in the absolute level of their earnings and in relative equality among whites." [p. 413] In other words, the less wage discrimination there was against black workers, the better were the wages that white workers received.
(2) the more "non-white" people in the population of a given American State, the more inequality there was between whites. In other words, the existence of a poor, oppressed group of workers reduced the wages of white workers, although it did not affect the earnings of non-working class whites very much ("the greater the discrimination against [non-white] people, the the greater the inequality among whites" [p. 410]). So white workers clearly lost economically from this discrimination.
(3) He also found that "the more intense racial discrimination is, the lower are the white earnings because of . . . [its effect on] working-class solidarity." [p. 412] In other words, racism economically disadvantages white workers because it undermines the solidarity between black and white workers and weakens trade union organisation.
So overall, these white workers recieve some apparent privileges from racism, but are in fact screwed by it. Thus racism and other forms of hierarchy actually works against the interests of those working class people who practice it -- and, by weakening workplace and social unity, benefits the ruling class.
In addition, a wealth of alternative viewpoints, insights, experiences, cultures, thoughts and so on are denied the racist, sexist or homophobe. Their minds are trapped in a cage, stagnating within a mono-culture -- and stagnation is death for the personality. Such forms of oppression are dehumanising for those who practice them, for the oppressor lives as a role, not as a person, and so are restricted by it and cannot express their individuality freely (and so do so in very limited ways). This warps the personality of the oppressor and impoverishes their own life and personality. Homophobia and sexism also limits the flexibility of all people, gay or straight, to choose the sexual expressions and relationships that are right for them. The sexual repression of the sexist and homophobe will hardly be good for their mental health, their relationships or general development.
From the anarchist standpoint, oppression based on race, sex or sexuality will remain forever intractable under capitalism or, indeed, under any economic system based on domination and exploitation. While individual members of "minorities" may prosper, racism as a justification for inequality is too useful a tool for elites to discard. By using the results of racism (e.g. poverty) as a justification for racist ideology, criticism of the status quo can, yet again, be replaced by nonsense about "nature" and "biology." Similarly with sexism or discrimination against gays.
The long-term solution is obvious: dismantle capitalism and the hierarchical, economically class-stratified society with which it is bound up. By getting rid of capitalist oppression and exploitation and its consequent imperialism and poverty, we will also eliminate the need for ideologies of racial or sexual superiority used to justify the oppression of one group by another or to divide and weaken the working class.
As part of that process, anarchists encourage and support all sections of the population to stand up for their humanity and individuality by resisting racist, sexist and anti-gay activity and challenging such views in their everyday lives, everywhere (as Carole Pateman points out, "sexual domination structures the workplace as well as the conjugal home" [Op. Cit., p. 142]). It means a struggle of all working class people against the internal and external tyrannies we face -- we must fight against own our prejudices while supporting those in struggle against our common enemies, no matter their sex, skin colour or sexuality. Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin words on fighting racism are applicable to all forms of oppression:
"Racism must be fought vigorously wherever it is found, even if in our own ranks, and even in ones own breast. Accordingly, we must end the system of white skin privilege which the bosses use to split the class, and subject racially oppressed workers to super-exploitation. White workers, especially those in the Western world, must resist the attempt to use one section of the working class to help them advance, while holding back the gains of another segment based on race or nationality. This kind of class opportunism and capitulationism on the part of white labour must be directly challenged and defeated. There can be no workers unity until the system of super-exploitation and world White Supremacy is brought to an end." [Op. Cit.]
Progress towards equality can and has been made. While it is still true that (in the words of Emma Goldman) "[n]owhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex" [Op. Cit., p. 145] and that education is still patriarchal, with young women still often steered away from traditionally "male" courses of study and work (which teaches children that men and women are assigned different roles in society and sets them up to accept these limitations as they grow up) it is also true that the position of women, like that of blacks and gays, has improved. This is due to the various self-organised, self-liberation movements that have continually developed throughout history and these are the key to fighting oppression in the short term (and creating the potential for the long term solution of dismantling capitalism and the state).
Emma Goldman argued that emancipation begins "in [a] woman's soul." Only by a process of internal emancipation, in which the oppressed get to know their own value, respect themselves and their culture, can they be in a position to effectively combat (and overcome) external oppression and attitudes. Only when you respect yourself can you be in a position to get others to respect you. Those men, whites and heterosexuals who are opposed to bigotry, inequality and injustice, must support oppressed groups and refuse to condone racist, sexist or homophobia attitudes and actions by others or themselves. For anarchists, "not a single member of the Labour movement may with impunity be discriminated against, suppressed or ignored. . . Labour [and other] organisations must be built on the principle of equal liberty of all its members. This equality means that only if each worker is a free and independent unit, co-operating with the others from his or her mutual interests, can the whole labour organisation work successfully and become powerful." [Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Op. Cit.]
We must all treat people as equals, while at the same time respecting their differences. Diversity is a strength and a source of joy, and anarchists reject the idea that equality means conformity. By these methods, of internal self-liberation and solidarity against external oppression, we can fight against bigotry. Racism, sexism and homophobia can be reduced, perhaps almost eliminated, before a social revolution has occurred by those subject to them organising themselves, fighting back autonomously and refusing to be subjected to racial, sexual or anti-gay abuse or to allowing others to get away with it (which plays an essential role in making others aware of their own attitudes and actions, attitudes they may not even be blind to!). An essential part of this process is for such autonomous groups to actively support others in struggle (including members of the dominant race/sex/sexuality). Such practical solidarity and communication can, when combined with the radicalising effects of the struggle itself on those involved, help break down prejudice and bigotry, undermining the social hierarchies that oppress us all. For example, gay and lesbian groups supporting the 1984/5 UK miners' strike resulted in such groups being given pride of place in many miners' marches.
For whites, males and heterosexuals, the only anarchistic approach is to support others in struggle, refuse to tolerate bigotry in others and to root out their own fears and prejudices (while refusing to be uncritical of self-liberation struggles -- solidarity does not imply switching your brain off!). This obviously involves taking the issue of social oppression into all working class organisations and activity, ensuring that no oppressed group is marginalised within them.
Only in this way can the hold of these social diseases be weakened and a better, non-hierarchical system be created. An injury to one is an injury to all.
The example of the Mujeres Libres (Free Women) in Spain during the 1930s shows what is possible. Women anarchists involved in the C.N.T. and F.A.I. organised themselves autonomously raise the issue of sexism in the wider libertarian movement, to increase women involvement in libertarian organisations and help the process of women's self-liberation against male oppression. Along the way they also had to combat the (all too common) sexist attitudes of their "revolutionary" male fellow anarchists. Martha A. Ackelsberg's book Free Women of Spain is an excellent account of this movement and the issues it raises for all people concerned about freedom.
Needless to say, anarchists totally reject the kind of "equality" that accepts other kinds of hierarchy, that accepts the dominant priorities of capitalism and the state and accedes to the devaluation of relationships and individuality in name of power and wealth. There is a kind of "equality" in having "equal opportunities," in having black, gay or women bosses and politicians, but one that misses the point. Saying "Me too!" instead of "What a mess!" does not suggest real liberation, just different bosses and new forms of oppression. We need to look at the way society is organised, not at the sex, colour, nationality or sexuality of who is giving the orders!
B.1.5 How is the mass-psychological basis for authoritarian civilisation created?
We noted in section A.3.6 that hierarchical, authoritarian institutions tend to be self-perpetuating, because growing up under their influence creates submissive/authoritarian personalities -- people who both "respect" authority (based on fear of punishment) and desire to exercise it themselves on subordinates. Individuals with such a character structure do not really want to dismantle hierarchies, because they are afraid of the responsibility entailed by genuine freedom. It seems "natural" and "right" to them that society's institutions, from the authoritarian factory to the patriarchal family, should be pyramidal, with an elite at the top giving orders while those below them merely obey. Thus we have the spectacle of so-called "Libertarians" and "anarcho" capitalists bleating about "liberty" while at the same time advocating factory fascism and privatised states. In short, authoritarian civilisation reproduces itself with each generation because, through an intricate system of conditioning that permeates every aspect of society, it creates masses of people who support the status quo.
Wilhelm Reich has given one of the most thorough analyses of the psychological processes involved in the reproduction of authoritarian civilisation. Reich based his analysis on four of Freud's most solidly grounded discoveries, namely, (1) that there exists an unconscious part of the mind which has a powerful though irrational influence on behaviour; (2) that even the small child develops a lively "genital" sexuality, i.e. a desire for sexual pleasure which has nothing to do with procreation; (3) that childhood sexuality along with the Oedipal conflicts that arise in parent-child relations under monogamy and patriarchy are usually repressed through fear of punishment or disapproval for sexual acts and thoughts; (4) that this blocking of the child's natural sexual activity and extinguishing it from memory does not weaken its force in the unconscious, but actually intensifies it and enables it to manifest itself in various pathological disturbances and anti-social drives; and (5) that, far from being of divine origin, human moral codes are derived from the educational measures used by the parents and parental surrogates in earliest childhood, the most effective of these being the ones opposed to childhood sexuality.
By studying Bronislaw Malinowsli's research on the Trobriand Islanders, a woman-centred (matricentric) society in which children's sexual behaviour was not repressed and in which neuroses and perversions as well as authoritarian institutions and values were almost non-existent, Reich came to the conclusion that patriarchy and authoritarianism originally developed when tribal chieftains began to get economic advantages from a certain type of marriage ("cross-cousin marriages") entered into by their sons. In such marriages, the brothers of the son's wife were obliged to pay a dowry to her in the form of continuous tribute, thus enriching her husband's clan (i.e. the chief's). By arranging many such marriages for his sons (which were usually numerous due to the chief's privilege of polygamy), the chief's clan could accumulate wealth. Thus society began to be stratified into ruling and subordinate clans based on wealth.
To secure the permanence of these "good" marriages, strict monogamy was required. However, it was found that monogamy was impossible to maintain without the repression of childhood sexuality, since, as statistics show, children who are allowed free expression of sexuality often do not adapt successfully to life-long monogamy. Therefore, along with class stratification and private property, authoritarian child-rearing methods were developed to inculcate the repressive sexual morality on which the new patriarchal system depended for its reproduction. Thus there is a historical correlation between, on the one hand, pre-patriarchal society, primitive libertarian communism (or "work democracy," to use Reich's expression), economic equality, and sexual freedom, and on the other, patriarchal society, a private-property economy, economic class stratification, and sexual repression. As Reich puts it:
"Every tribe that developed from a [matricentric] to a patriarchal organisation had to change the sexual structure of its members to produce a sexuality in keeping with its new form of life. This was a necessary change because the shifting of power and of wealth from the democratic gens [maternal clans] to the authoritarian family of the chief was mainly implemented with the help of the suppression of the sexual strivings of the people. It was in this way that sexual suppression became an essential factor in the division of society into classes.
"Marriage, and the lawful dowry it entailed, became the axis of the transformation of the one organisation into the other. In view of the fact that the marriage tribute of the wife's gens to the man's family strengthened the male's, especially the chief's, position of power, the male members of the higher ranking gens and families developed a keen interest in making the nuptial ties permanent. At this stage, in other words, only the man had an interest in marriage. In this way natural work-democracy's simple alliance, which could be easily dissolved at any time, was transformed into the permanent and monogamous marital relationship of patriarchy. The permanent monogamous marriage became the basic institution of patriarchal society -- which it still is today. To safeguard these marriages, however, it was necessary to impose greater and greater restrictions upon and to depreciate natural genital strivings." [The Mass Psychology of Fascism, p. 90]
The suppression of natural sexuality involved in this transformation from matricentric to patriarchal society created various anti-social drives (sadism, destructive impulses, rape fantasies, etc.), which then also had to be suppressed through the imposition of a compulsive morality, which took the place the natural self-regulation that one finds in pre-patriarchal societies. In this way, sex began to be regarded as "dirty," "diabolical," "wicked," etc. -- which it had indeed become through the creation of secondary drives. Thus:
"The patriarchal- authoritarian sexual order that resulted from the revolutionary processes of latter-day [matricentrism] (economic independence of the chief's family from the maternal gens, a growing exchange of goods between the tribes, development of the means of production, etc.) becomes the primary basis of authoritarian ideology by depriving the women, children, and adolescents of their sexual freedom, making a commodity of sex and placing sexual interests in the service of economic subjugation. From now on, sexuality is indeed distorted; it becomes diabolical and demonic and has to be curbed" [Ibid. p. 88].
Once the beginnings of patriarchy are in place, the creation of a fully authoritarian society based on the psychological crippling of its members through sexual suppression follows:
"The moral inhibition of the child's natural sexuality, the last stage of which is the severe impairment of the child's genital sexuality, makes the child afraid, shy, fearful of authority, obedient, 'good,' and 'docile' in the authoritarian sense of the words. It has a crippling effect on man's rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear; and since sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and man's critical faculty also become inhibited. In short, morality's aim is to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment required of him later. Man's authoritarian structure -- this must be clearly established -- is basically produced by the embedding of sexual inhibitions and fear" in the person's bioenergetic structure. [Ibid., p. 30]
In this way, by damaging the individual's power to rebel and think for him/herself, the inhibition of childhood sexuality -- and indeed other forms of free, natural expression of bioenergy (e.g. shouting, crying, running, jumping, etc.) -- becomes the most important weapon in creating reactionary personalities. This is why every reactionary politician puts such an emphasis on "strengthening the family" and promoting "family values" (i.e. patriarchy, compulsive monogamy, premarital chastity, corporal punishment, etc.).
"Since authoritarian society reproduces itself in the individual structures of the masses with the help of the authoritarian family, it follows that political reaction has to regard and defend the authoritarian family as the basis of the 'state, culture, and civilisation. . . .' [It is] political reaction's germ cell, the most important centre for the production of reactionary men and women. Originating and developing from definite social processes, it becomes the most essential institution for the preservation of the authoritarian system that shapes it." [Op. cit., pp. 104-105]
The family is the most essential institution for this purpose because children are most vulnerable to psychological maiming in their first few years, from the time of birth to about six years of age, during which time they are mostly in the charge of their parents. The schools and churches then continue the process of conditioning once the children are old enough to be away from their parents, but they are generally unsuccessful if the proper foundation has not been laid very early in life by the parents. Thus A.S. Neill observes that "the nursery training is very like the kennel training. The whipped child, like the whipped puppy, grows into an obedient, inferior adult. And as we train our dogs to suit our own purposes, so we train our children. In that kennel, the nursery, the human dogs must be clean; they must feed when we think it convenient for them to feed. I saw a hundred thousand obedient, fawning dogs wag their tails in the Templehof, Berlin, when in 1935, the great trainer Hitler whistled his commands." [Summerhill: a Radical Approach to Child Rearing, p. 100]
The family is also the main agency of repression during adolescence, when sexual energy reaches its peak. This is because the vast majority of parents provide no private space for adolescents to pursue undisturbed sexual relationships with their partners, but in fact actively discourage such behaviour, often (as in fundamentalist Christian families) demanding complete abstinence -- at the very time when abstinence is most impossible! Moreover, since teenagers are economically dependent on their parents under capitalism, with no societal provision of housing or dormitories allowing for sexual freedom, young people have no alternative but to submit to irrational parental demands for abstention from premarital sex. This in turn forces them to engage in furtive sex in the back seats of cars or other out-of-the-way places where they cannot relax or obtain full sexual satisfaction. As Reich found, when sexuality is repressed and laden with anxiety, the result is always some degree of what he terms "orgastic impotence": the inability to fully surrender to the flow of energy discharged during orgasm. Hence there is an incomplete release of sexual tension, which results in a state of chronic bioenergetic stasis. Such a condition, Reich found, is the breeding ground for neuroses and reactionary attitudes. (For further details see the section J.6).
In this connection it is interesting to note that "primitive" societies, such as the Trobriand Islanders, prior to their developing patriarchal-authoritarian institutions, provided special community houses where teenagers could go with their partners to enjoy undisturbed sexual relationships -- and this with society's full approval. Such an institution would be taken for granted in an anarchist society, as it is implied by the concept of freedom. (For more on adolescent sexual liberation, see section J.6.8.)
Nationalistic feelings can also be traced to the authoritarian family. A child's attachment to its mother is, of course, natural and is the basis of all family ties. Subjectively, the emotional core of the concepts of homeland and nation are mother and family, since the mother is the homeland of the child, just as the family is the "nation in miniature." According to Reich, who carefully studied the mass appeal of Hitler's "National Socialism," nationalistic sentiments are a direct continuation of the family tie and are rooted in a fixated tie to the mother. As Reich points out, although infantile attachment to the mother is natural, fixated attachment is not, but is a social product. In puberty, the tie to the mother would make room for other attachments, i.e., natural sexual relations, if the unnatural sexual restrictions imposed on adolescents did not cause it to be eternalised. It is in the form of this socially conditioned externalisation that fixation on the mother becomes the basis of nationalist feelings in the adult; and it is only at this stage that it becomes a reactionary social force.
Later writers who have followed Reich in analysing the process of creating reactionary character structures have broadened the scope of his analysis to include other important inhibitions, besides sexual ones, that are imposed on children and adolescents. Rianne Eisler, for example, in her book Sacred Pleasure, stresses that it is not just a sex-negative attitude but a pleasure-negative attitude that creates the kinds of personalities in question. Denial of the value of pleasurable sensations permeates our unconscious, as reflected, for example, in the common idea that to enjoy the pleasures of the body is the "animalistic" (and hence "bad") side of human nature, as contrasted with the "higher" pleasures of the mind and "spirit." By such dualism, which denies a spiritual aspect to the body, people are made to feel guilty about enjoying any pleasurable sensations -- a conditioning that does, however, prepare them for lives based on the sacrifice of pleasure (or indeed, even of life itself) under capitalism and statism, with their requirements of mass submission to alienated labour, exploitation, military service to protect ruling-class interests, and so on. And at the same time, authoritarian ideology emphasises the value of suffering, as for example through the glorification of the tough, insensitive warrior hero, who suffers (and inflicts "necessary" suffering on others ) for the sake of some pitiless ideal.
Eisler also points out that there is "ample evidence that people who grow up in families where rigid hierarchies and painful punishments are the norm learn to suppress anger toward their parents. There is also ample evidence that this anger is then often deflected against traditionally disempowered groups (such as minorities, children, and women)" [Ibid., p. 187]. This repressed anger then becomes fertile ground for reactionary politicians, whose mass appeal usually rests in part on scapegoating minorities for society's problems.
As the psychologist Else Frenkel-Brunswick documents in The Authoritarian Personality, people who have been conditioned through childhood abuse to surrender their will to the requirements of feared authoritarian parents, also tend to be very susceptible as adults to surrender their will and minds to authoritarian leaders. "In other words, at the same time that they learn to deflect their repressed rage against those they perceive as weak, they also learn to submit to autocratic or 'strong-man' rule. Moreover, having been severely punished for any hint of rebellion (even 'talking back' about being treated unfairly), they gradually also learn to deny to themselves that there was anything wrong with what was done to them as children -- and to do it in turn to their own children" [Ibid., p. 187].
These are just some of the mechanisms that perpetuate the status quo by creating the kinds of personalities who worship authority and fear freedom. Consequently, anarchists are generally opposed to traditional child-rearing practices, the patriarchal-authoritarian family (and its "values"), the suppression of adolescent sexuality, and the pleasure-denying, pain-affirming attitudes taught by the Church and in most schools. In place of these, anarchists favour non-authoritarian, non-repressive child-rearing practices and educational methods (see sections J.6 and secJ.5.13, respectively) whose purpose is to prevent, or at least minimise, the psychological crippling of individuals, allowing them instead to develop natural self-regulation and self-motivated learning. This, we believe, is the only way to for people to grow up into happy, creative, and truly freedom-loving individuals who will provide the psychological ground where anarchist economic and political institutions can flourish.
B.2 Why are anarchists against the state?
As previously noted (see section B.1), anarchists oppose all forms of hierarchical authority. Historically, however, the they have spent most of their time and energy opposing two main forms in particular. One is capitalism, the other, the state. These two forms of authority have a symbiotic relationship and cannot be easily separated. In this section, as well as explaining why anarchists oppose the state, we will necessarily have to analyse the relationship between it and capitalism.
So what is the state? As Malatesta put it, anarchists ""have used the word State . . . to mean the sum total of the political, legislative, judiciary, military and financial institutions through which the management of their own affairs, the control over their personal behaviour, the responsibility for their personal safety, are taken away from the people and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or delegation, are vested with the power to make laws for everything and everybody, and to oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the use of collective force." [Anarchy, p. 13]
He continues:
"For us, governments [or the state]is up of all governors . . . those who have the power to make laws regulating inter-human relations and to see that they are carried out . . . [and] who have the power, to a greater or lesser degree, to make use of the social power, that is of the physical, intellectual and economic power of the whole community, in order to oblige everybody to carry out their wishes." [Op. Cit., pp. 15-16 -- see also Kropotkin's The State: Its Historic Role, p. 10]
This means that many, if not most, anarchists would agree with Randolph Bourne's characterisation of the state as the politico-military domination of a certain geographical territory by a ruling elite (see his "Unfinished Fragment on the State," in Untimely Papers). On this subject Murray Bookchin writes:
"Minimally, the State is a professional system of social coercion . . . It is only when coercion is institutionalised into a professional, systematic and organised form of social control - . . . with the backing of a monopoly of violence - that we can properly speak of a State." [Remaking Society, p. 66]
Therefore, we can say that, for anarchists, the state is marked by three things:
1) A "monopoly of violence" in a given territorial area;
2) This violence having a "professional," institutional nature; and
3) A hierarchical nature, centralisation of power and initiative into the hands of a few.
Of these three aspects, the last one (its centralised, hierarchical nature) is the most important simply because the concentration of power into the hands of the few ensures a division of society into government and governed (which necessitates the creation of a professional body to enforce that division). Without such a division, we would not need a monopoly of violence and so would simply have an association of equals, unmarked by power and hierarchy (such as exists in many stateless "primitive" tribes).
Some types of states, e.g. Communist and social-democratic ones, are directly involved not only in politico-military domination but also in economic domination via state ownership of the means of production; whereas in liberal democratic capitalist states, such ownership is in the hands of private individuals. In liberal democratic states, however, the mechanisms of politico-military domination are controlled by and for a corporate elite, and hence the large corporations are often considered to belong to a wider "state-complex."
As the state is the delegation of power into the hands of the few, it is obviously based on hierarchy. This delegation of power results in the elected people becoming isolated from the mass of people who elected them and outside of their control. In addition, as those elected are given power over a host of different issues and told to decide upon them, a bureaucracy soon develops around them to aid in their decision-making. However, this bureaucracy, due to its control of information and its permanency, soon has more power than the elected officials. This means that those who serve the people's (so-called) servant have more power than those they serve, just as the politician has more power than those who elected him. All forms of state-like (i.e. hierarchical) organisations inevitably spawn a bureaucracy about them. This bureaucracy soon becomes the de facto focal point of power in the structure, regardless of the official rules.
This marginalisation and disempowerment of ordinary people (and so the empowerment of a bureaucracy) is the key reason for anarchist opposition to the state. Such an arrangement ensures that the individual is disempowered, subject to bureaucratic, authoritarian rule which reduces the person to a object or a number, not a unique individual with hopes, dreams, thoughts and feelings. As Proudhon forcefully argued:
"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so... To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolised, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown it all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 294]
Anarchists see the state, with its vast scope and control of deadly force, as the "ultimate" hierarchical structure, suffering from all the negative characteristics associated with authority described in the last section. "Any logical and straightforward theory of the State," argued Bakunin, "is essentially founded upon the principle of authority, that is the eminently theological, metaphysical, and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must at all times submit to the beneficent yoke of a wisdom and a justice imposed upon them, in some way or other, from above." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 142] Such a system of authority cannot help being centralised, hierarchical and bureaucratic in nature. And because of its centralised, hierarchical, and bureaucratic nature, the state becomes a great weight over society, restricting its growth and development and making popular control impossible. As Bakunin puts it:
"the so-called general interests of society supposedly represented by the State . . . [are] in reality . . . the general and permanent negation of the positive interests of the regions, communes, and associations, and a vast number of individuals subordinated to the State . . . [in which] all the best aspirations, all the living forces of a country, are sanctimoniously immolated and interred." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 207]
In the rest of this section we will discuss the state, its role, its impact on a society's freedom and who benefits from its existence. Kropotkin's classic essay, The State: It's Historic Role is recommended for further reading on this subject.
B.2.1 What is main function of the state?
The main function of the state is to enable the ruling elite to exploit lower social strata, i.e. derive an economic surplus from them. The state, to use Malatesta's words, is basically "the property owners' gendarme" [Anarchy, p. 19] (compare to the maxim of the Founding Fathers of American "democracy" -- "the people who own the country ought to govern it" (John Jay)). Those in the upper-middle levels of the social pyramid also frequently use the state to obtain income without working, as from investments, but the elite gain by far the most economic advantages, which is why in the US, one percent of the population controls over 40 percent of total wealth. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the state is the extractive apparatus of society's parasites.
The state ensures the exploitative privileges of its ruling elite by protecting certain economic monopolies from which its members derive their wealth (see section B.3.2). This service is referred to as "protecting private property" and is said to be one of the two main functions of the state, the other being to ensure that individuals are "secure in their persons." However, although this second aim is professed, in reality most state laws and institutions are concerned with the protection of property (for the anarchist definition of "property" see section B.3.1.).
From this fact we may infer that references to the "security of persons," "crime prevention," etc. are mostly rationalisations of the state's existence and smokescreens for its perpetuation of elite power and privileges. Moreover, even though the state does take a secondary interest in protecting the security of persons (particularly elite persons), the vast majority of crimes against persons are motivated by poverty and alienation due to state-supported exploitation and also by the desensitisation to violence created by the state's own violent methods of protecting private property.
Hence, anarchists maintain that without the state and the crime-engendering conditions to which it gives rise, it would be possible for decentralised, voluntary community associations to deal compassionately (not punitively) with the few incorrigibly violent people who might remain (see section I.5.8).
It is clear that the state represents the essential coercive mechanisms by which capitalism and the authority relations associated with private property are sustained. The protection of property is fundamentally the means of assuring the social domination of owners over non-owners, both in society as a whole and in the particular case of a specific boss over a specific group of workers. Class domination is the authority of property owners over those who use that property and it is the primary function of the state to uphold that domination (and the social relationships that generate it). In Kropotkin's words, "the rich perfectly well know that if the machinery of the State ceased to protect them, their power over the labouring classes would be gone immediately." [Evolution and Environment, p. 98]
In other words, protecting private property and upholding class domination are the same thing. Yet this primary function of the state is disguised by the "democratic" facade of the representative electoral system, through which it is made to appear that the people rule themselves. Thus Bakunin writes that the modern state "unites in itself the two conditions necessary for the prosperity of the capitalistic economy: State centralisation and the actual subjection of . . . the people . . . to the minority allegedly representing it but actually governing it." [Op. Cit., p. 210]
The historian Charles Beard makes a similar point:
"Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be protected must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government" [An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, quoted by Howard Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 89].
This role of the state -- to protect capitalism and the property, power and authority of the property owner -- was also noticed by Adam Smith:
"[T]he inequality of fortune . . . introduces among men a degree of authority and subordination which could not possibly exist before. It thereby introduces some degree of that civil government which is indispensably necessary for its own preservation . . . [and] to maintain and secure that authority and subordination. The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to support that order of things which can alone secure them in the possession of their own advantages. Men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs . . . [T]he maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to support their authority. Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." [Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, book 5]
In a nutshell, the state is the means by which the ruling class rules. Hence Bakunin:
"the State is the organised authority, domination and power of the possessing classes over the masses." [quoted by David Deleon, Reinventing Anarchy, p. 71]
However, while recognising that the state protects the power and position of the economically dominant class within a society anarchists also argue that the state has, due to its hierarchical nature, interests of its own. Thus it cannot be considered as simply the tool of the economically dominant class in society. States have their own dynamics, due to their structure, which generate their own classes and class interests and privileges (and which allows them to escape from the control of the economic ruling class and pursue their own interests, to a greater or lesser degree). As Malatesta put it "the government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends, as with every servant and every protector, to achieve its own emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects." [Anarchy, p. 22]
This means that the state machine (and structure), while its modern form is intrinsically linked to capitalism, cannot be seen as being a tool usable by the majority. This is because the "State, any State -- even when it dresses-up in the most liberal and democratic form -- is essentially based on domination, and upon violence, that is upon despotism -- a concealed but no less dangerous despotism." The State "denotes force, authority, predominance; it presupposes inequality in fact." [The Political Philosophy of Michael Bakunin, p. 211 and p. 223]
This is due to its hierarchical and centralised nature, which empowers the few who control the state machine -- "[e]very state power, every government, by its nature places itself outside and over the people and inevitably subordinates them to an organisation and to aims which are foreign to and opposed to the real needs and aspirations of the people." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 328] If "the whole proletariat . . . [are] members of the government . . . there will be no government, no state, but, if there is to be a state there will be those who are ruled and those who are slaves." [Op. Cit., p. 330]
In other words, the state bureaucracy is itself directly an oppressor and can exist independently of an economically dominant class. In Bakunin's prophetic words:
"What have we seen throughout history? The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: the sacerdotal class, the nobility, the bourgeoisie -- and finally, when all other classes have exhausted themselves, the class of the bureaucracy enters the stage and then the State falls, or rises, if you please, to the position of a machine." [The Political Philosophy of Michael Bakunin, p. 208]
The experience of Soviet Russian indicates the validity of his analysis (the working class was exploited and dominated by the state bureaucracy rather than by an economic class).
Thus the role of the state is to repress the individual and the working class as a whole in the interests of the capitalist class and in its own interests. This means that "the State organisation . . . [is] the force to which minorities resorted for establishing and organising their power over the masses." Little wonder, then, that Kropotkin argued that "[i]n the struggle between the individual and the State, anarchism . . . takes the side of the individual as against the State, of society against the authority which oppresses it." While the state is a "superstructure in the interests of capitalism," it is a "power which was created for the purpose of welding together the interests of the landlord, the judge, the warrior, and the priest" and, we must add, cannot be considered purely as being a tool for the capitalist/landlord class. The state structure ("the judge, the warrior" etc.) has interests of its own. [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 170 and pp. 192-3]
B.2.2 Does the state have subsidiary functions?
Besides its primary function of protecting private property, the state operates in other ways as an economic instrument of the ruling class.
First, the state intervenes in the modern economy to solve problems that arise in the course of capitalist development. These interventions have taken different forms in different times and include state funding for industry (e.g. military spending); the creation of social infrastructure too expensive for private capital to provide (railways, motorways); tariffs to protect developing industries from more efficient international competition (the key to successful industrialisation as it allows capitalists to rip-off consumers, making them rich and increasing funds available for investment); imperialist ventures to create colonies (or protect citizen's capital invested abroad) in order to create markets or get access to raw materials and cheap labour; government spending to stimulate consumer demand in the face of underconsumption and stagnation; maintaining a "natural" level of unemployment that can be used to discipline the working class, so ensuring they produce more, for less; manipulating the interest rate in order to try and reduce the effects of the business cycle and undermine workers' gains in the class struggle.
Second, because of the inordinate political power deriving from wealth (see next section), capitalists use the state directly to benefit their class, as from subsidies, tax breaks, government contracts, protective tariffs, bailouts of corporations judged by state bureaucrats as too important to let fail, and so on.
And third, the state may be used to grant concessions to the working class in cases where not doing so would threaten the integrity of the system as a whole.
Hence David Deleon:
"Above all, the state remains an institution for the continuance of dominant socioeconomic relations, whether through such agencies as the military, the courts, politics or the police . . . Contemporary states have acquired . . . less primitive means to reinforce their property systems [than state violence -- which is always the means of last, often first, resort]. States can regulate, moderate or resolve tensions in the economy by preventing the bankruptcies of key corporations, manipulating the economy through interest rates, supporting hierarchical ideology through tax benefits for churches and schools, and other tactics. In essence, it is not a neutral institution; it is powerfully for the status quo. The capitalist state, for example, is virtually a gyroscope centred in capital, balancing the system. If one sector of the economy earns a level of profit, let us say, that harms the rest of the system -- such as oil producers' causing public resentment and increased manufacturing costs -- the state may redistribute some of that profit through taxation, or offer encouragement to competitors." [Reinventing Anarchy, pp. 71-72]
The example of state legislation to set the length of the working day is an example of both the first and third functions enumerated above. In the early period of capitalist development, a shortage of labour power led to the state's ignoring the lengthening working day, thus allowing capitalists to appropriate more surplus value from workers and increase the rate of profit without interference. Later, however, after workers began to organise, reducing the length of the working day became a key demand around which revolutionary socialist fervour was developing. Hence, in order to defuse this threat (and socialist revolution is the worst-case scenario for the capitalist), the state passed legislation to reduce the length of the working day (which, once workers' struggle calmed down, were happily ignored and became "dead laws"). Initially, the state was functioning purely as the protector of the capitalist class, using its powers to solve problems that arise in the course of capitalist development (namely repressing the labour movement to allow the capitalists to do as they liked). In the second it was granting concessions to the working class to eliminate a threat to the integrity of the system as a whole.
It should be noted that none of these three subsidiary functions implies that capitalism can be changed through a series of piecemeal reforms into a benevolent system that primarily serves working class interests. To the contrary, these functions grow out of, and supplement, the basic role of the state as the protector of capitalist property and the social relations they generate -- i.e. the foundation of the capitalist's ability to exploit. Therefore reforms may modify the functioning of capitalism but they can never threaten its basis. As Malatesta argued:
"The basic function of government . . . is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the oppressors and the exploiters . . . It is true that to these basic functions . . . other functions have been added in the course of history . . . hardly ever has a government existed . . . which did not combine with its oppressive and plundering activities others which were useful . . . to social life. But this does not detract from the fact that government is by nature oppressive . . . and that it is in origin and by its attitude, inevitably inclined to defend and strengthen the dominant class; indeed it confirms and aggravates the position . . . [I]t is enough to understand how and why it carries out these functions to find the practical evidence that whatever governments do is always motivated by the desire to dominate, and is always geared to defending, extending and perpetuating its privileges and those of the class of which it is both the representative and defender.
"A government cannot maintain itself for long without hiding its true nature behind a pretence of general usefulness; it cannot impose respect for the lives of the privileged if it does not appear to demand respect for all human life; it cannot impose acceptance of the privileges of the few if it does not pretend to be the guardian of the rights of all." [Op. Cit., pp. 20-1]
Ultimately, what the state concedes, it can also take back (as was the case of the laws limiting the working day). Thus the rise and fall of the welfare state -- granted to stop more revolutionary change (see section D.1.3), it did not fundamentally challenge the existence of wage labour and was useful as a means of regulating capitalism but was "reformed" (i.e. made worse, rather than better) when its existence conflicted with the needs of the capitalist economy.
In other words, the state acts to protect the long-term interests of the capitalist class as a whole (and ensure its own survival) by protecting the system. This role can and does clash with the interests of particular capitalists or even whole sections of the ruling class (see next section). But this conflict does not change the role of the state as the property owners' policeman. Indeed, the state can be considered as a means for settling (in a peaceful and apparently independent manner) upper-class disputes over what to do to keep the system going.
B.2.3 How does the ruling class maintain control of the state?
For simplicity, let's just consider the capitalist state, whose main purpose is to protect the exploitative monopolies described below. Because their economic monopolies are protected by the state, the elites whose incomes are derived from them -- namely, finance capitalists, industrial capitalists, and landlords -- are able to accumulate vast wealth from those whom they exploit. This stratifies society into a hierarchy of economic classes, with a huge disparity of wealth between the small property-owning elite at the top and the non-property-owning majority at the bottom.
Then, because it takes enormous wealth to win elections and lobby or bribe legislators, the propertied elite are able to control the political process -- and hence the state -- through the "power of the purse." For example, it costs well over $20 million to run for President of the USA. In other words, elite control of politics through huge wealth disparities insures the continuation of such disparities and thus the continuation of elite control. In this way the crucial political decisions of those at the top are insulated from significant influence by those at the bottom.
Moreover, the ability of capital to disinvest (capital flight) and otherwise adversely impact the economy is a powerful weapon to keep the state as its servant. As Noam Chomsky notes:
"In capitalist democracy, the interests that must be satisfied are those of capitalists; otherwise, there is no investment, no production, no work, no resources to be devoted, however marginally, to the needs of the general population" [Turning the Tide, p. 233]
Hence, even allegedly "democratic" capitalist states are in effect dictatorships of the propertariat. Errico Malatesta put it this way:
"Even with universal suffrage - we could well say even more so with universal suffrage - the government remained the bourgeoisie's servant and gendarme. For were it to be otherwise with the government hinting that it might take up a hostile attitude, or that democracy could ever be anything but a pretence to deceive the people, the bourgeoisie, feeling its interests threatened, would by quick to react, and would use all the influence and force at its disposal, by reason of its wealth, to recall the government to its proper place as the bourgeoisie's gendarme." [Anarchy, p. 20]
The existence of a state bureaucracy is a key feature in ensuring that the state remains the ruling class's "policeman" and will be discussed in greater detail in section J.2.2 (Why do anarchists reject voting as a means for change?). As far as economic forces go, we see their power implied when the news report that changes in government, policies and law have been "welcomed by the markets." As the richest 1% of households in America (about 2 million adults) owned 35% of the stock owned by individuals in 1992 - with the top 10% owning over 81% - we can see that the "opinion" of the markets actually means the power of the richest 1-5% of a countries population (and their finance experts), power derived from their control over investment and production. Given that the bottom 90% of the US population has a smaller share (23%) of all kinds of investable capital that the richest 1/2% (who own 29%), with stock ownership being even more concentrated (the top 5% holding 95% of all shares), its obvious why Doug Henwood (author of Wall Street) argues that stock markets are "a way for the very rich as a class to own an economy's productive capital stock as a whole," are a source of "political power" and a way to have influence over government policy (see section D.2). [Wall Street: Class Racket]
Of course, this does not mean that the state and the capitalist class always see "eye to eye." Top politicians, for example, are part of the ruling elite, but they are in competition with other parts of it. In addition, different sectors of the capitalist class are competing against each other for profits, political influence, privileges, etc. The bourgeoisie, argued Malatesta, "are always at war among themselves . . . and . . . the government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its protector, tends . . . to dominate whoever it protects. Thus the games of the swings, the manoeuvres, the concessions and withdrawals, the attempts to find allies among the people against the conservatives, and among the conservatives against the people." [Op. Cit., p. 22] As such, the state is often in conflict with sections of the capitalist class, just as sections of that class use the state to advance their own interests within the general framework of protecting the capitalist system (i.e. the interests of the ruling class as a class). Such conflicts sometimes give the impression of the state being a "neutral" body, but this is an illusion -- it exists to defend class power and privilege, and to resolve disputes within that class peacefully via the "democratic" process (within which we get the chance of picking the representatives of the elite who will oppress us least).
Nevertheless, without the tax money from successful businesses, the state would be weakened. Hence the role of the state is to ensure the best conditions for capital as a whole, which means that, when necessary, it can and does work against the interests of certain parts of the capitalist class. This is what can give the state the appearance of independence and can fool people into thinking that it represents the interests of society as a whole. (For more on the ruling elite and its relation to the state, see C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite [Oxford, 1956]; cf. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society [Basic Books, 1969] and Divided Societies [Oxford, 1989]; G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? [Prentice Hall, 1967]; Who Rules America Now? A View for the '80s [Touchstone, 1983] and Toxic Sludge is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton [Common Courage Press, 1995]).
B.2.4 How does state centralisation affect freedom?
It's a common but false idea that voting every four or so years to elect the public face of a highly centralised and bureaucratic machine means that ordinary people control the state. Obviously, to say that this idea is false does not imply that there is no difference between a liberal republic and a fascistic or monarchical state. Far from it.
The vote is an important victory wrested from the powers that be. It is one small step on the road to libertarian socialism. Nevertheless, all forms of hierarchy, even those in which the top officers are elected are marked by authoritarianism and centralism. Power is concentrated in the centre (or at the "top"), which means that society becomes "a heap of dust animated from without by a subordinating, centralist idea." [P.J. Proudhon, quoted by Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, p. 29] For, once elected, top officers can do as they please, and in all political bureaucracies, many important decisions are made by non-elected staff.
The nature of centralisation places power into the hands of the few. Representative democracy is based on this delegation of power, with voters electing others to govern them. This cannot help but create a situation in which freedom is endangered -- universal suffrage "does not prevent the formation of a body of politicians, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the administration of the nation's public affairs, end by becoming a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 240]
Centralism makes democracy meaningless, as political decision-making is given over to professional politicians in remote capitals. Lacking local autonomy, people are isolated from each other (atomised) by having no political forum where they can come together to discuss, debate, and decide among themselves the issues they consider important. Elections are not based on natural, decentralised groupings and thus cease to be relevant. The individual is just another "voter" in the mass, a political "constituent" and nothing more. The amorphous basis of modern, statist elections "aims at nothing less than to abolish political life in towns, communes and departments, and through this destruction of all municipal and regional autonomy to arrest the development of universal suffrage" [Proudhon, Ibid.] Thus people are disempowered by the very structures that claim to allow them to express themselves. To quote Proudhon again, in the centralised state "the citizen divests himself of sovereignty, the town and the Department and province above it, absorbed by central authority, are no longer anything but agencies under direct ministerial control." He continues:
"The Consequences soon make themselves felt: the citizen and the town are deprived of all dignity, the state's depredations multiply, and the burden on the taxpayer increases in proportion. It is no longer the government that is made for the people; it is the people who are made for the government. Power invades everything, dominates everything, absorbs everything. . ." [The Principle of Federation, p. 59]
As intended, isolated people are no threat to the powers that be. This process of marginalisation can be seen from American history, for example, when town meetings were replaced by elected bodies, with the citizens being placed in passive, spectator roles as mere "voters" (see section B.5 "Is capitalism empowering and based on human action?"). Being an atomised voter is hardly an ideal notion of "freedom," despite the rhetoric of politicians about the virtues of a "free society" and "The Free World" -- as if voting once every four or five years could ever be classed as "liberty" or even "democracy."
In this way, social concern and power are taken away from ordinary citizens and centralised in the hands of the few. Marginalisation of the people is the key control mechanism in the state and authoritarian organisations in general. Considering the European Community (EC), for example, we find that the "mechanism for decision-making between EC states leaves power in the hands of officials (from Interior ministries, police, immigration, customs and security services) through a myriad of working groups. Senior officials . . . play a critical role in ensuring agreements between the different state officials. The EC Summit meetings, comprising the 12 Prime Ministers, simply rubber-stamp the conclusions agreed by the Interior and Justice Ministers. It is only then, in this intergovernmental process, that parliaments and people are informed (and them only with the barest details)." [Tony Bunyon, Statewatching the New Europe, p. 39]
As well as economic pressures from elites, governments also face pressures within the state itself due to the bureaucracy that comes with centralism. There is a difference between the state and government. The state is the permanent collection of institutions that have entrenched power structures and interests. The government is made up of various politicians. It's the institutions that have power in the state due to their permanence, not the representatives who come and go. As Clive Ponting (an ex-civil servant himself) indicates, "the function of a political system in any country... is to regulate, but not to alter radically, the existing economic structure and its linked power relationships. The great illusion of politics is that politicians have the ability to make whatever changes they like . . ." [quoted in Alternatives, no.5, p. 19].
Therefore, as well as marginalising the people, the state also ends up marginalising "our" representatives. As power rests not in the elected bodies, but in a bureaucracy, popular control becomes increasingly meaningless. As Bakunin pointed out, "liberty can be valid only when . . . [popular] control [of the state] is valid. On the contrary, where such control is fictitious, this freedom of the people likewise becomes a mere fiction" [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 212].
This means that state centralism can become a serious source of danger to the liberty and well-being of most of the people under it. However, some people do benefit from state centralisation, namely those with power who desire to be "left alone" to use it: that is, the two sections of the ruling elite, bureaucrats of capital and state (as will be discussed further in the next section).
B.2.5 Who benefits from centralisation?
No social system would exist unless it benefited someone or some group. Centralisation, be it in the state or the company, is no different. In all cases, centralisation directly benefits those at the top, because it shelters them from those who are below, allowing the latter to be controlled and governed more effectively. Therefore, it is in the direct interests of bureaucrats and politicians to support centralism.
Under capitalism, however, various sections of the business class also support state centralism. This is the symbiotic relationship between capital and the state. As will be discussed later, (in section F.8) the state played an important role in "nationalising" the market, i.e. forcing the "free market" onto society. By centralising power in the hands of representatives and so creating a state bureaucracy, ordinary people were disempowered and thus became less likely to interfere with the interests of the wealthy. "In a republic," writes Bakunin, "the so-called people, the legal people, allegedly represented by the State, stifle and will keep on stifling the actual and living people" by "the bureaucratic world" for "the greater benefit of the privileged propertied classes as well as for its own benefit" [Op. Cit., p. 211].
Examples of increased political centralisation being promoted by wealthy business interests by can be seen throughout the history of capitalism. "In revolutionary America, 'the nature of city government came in for heated discussion,' observes Merril Jensen . . . Town meetings . . .' had been a focal point of revolutionary activity'. The anti-democratic reaction that set in after the American revolution was marked by efforts to do away with town meeting government . . . Attempts by conservative elements were made to establish a 'corporate form (of municipal government) whereby the towns would be governed by mayors and councils' elected from urban wards . . .[T]he merchants 'backed incorporation consistently in their efforts to escape town meetings' . . ." [Murray Bookchin, Towards an Ecological Society, p. 182]
Here we see local policy making being taken out of the hands of the many and centralised in the hands of the few (who are always the wealthy). France provides another example:
"The Government found . . . the folkmotes [of all households] 'too noisy', too disobedient, and in 1787, elected councils, composed of a mayor and three to six syndics, chosen among the wealthier peasants, were introduced instead" [Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, pp. 185-186].
This was part of a general movement to disempower the working class by centralising decision making power into the hands of the few (as in the American revolution). Kropotkin indicates the process at work:
"[T]he middle classes, who had until then had sought the support of the people, in order to obtain constitutional laws and to dominate the higher nobility, were going, now that they had seen and felt the strength of the people, to do all they could to dominate the people, to disarm them and to drive them back into subjection.
[. . .]
"[T]hey made haste to legislate in such a way that the political power which was slipping out of the hand of the Court should not fall into the hands of the people. Thus . . . [it was] proposed . . . to divide the French into two classes, of which one only, the active citizens, should take part in the government, whilst the other, comprising the great mass of the people under the name of passive citizens, should be deprived of all political rights . . . [T]he [National] Assembly divided France into departments . . . always maintaining the principle of excluding the poorer classes from the Government . . . [T]hey excluded from the primary assemblies the mass of the people . . . who could no longer take part in the primary assemblies, and accordingly had no right to nominate the electors [who chose representatives to the National Assembly], or the municipality, or any of the local authorities . . .
"And finally, the permanence of the electoral assemblies was interdicted. Once the middle-class governors were appointed, these assemblies were not to meet again. Once the middle-class governors were appointed, they must not be controlled too strictly. Soon the right even of petitioning and of passing resolutions was taken away -- 'Vote and hold your tongue!' "As to the villages . . . the general assembly of the inhabitants . . . [to which] belonged the administration of the affairs of the commune . . . were forbidden by the . . . law. Henceforth only the well-to-do peasants, the active citizens, had the right to meet, once a year, to nominate the mayor and the municipality, composed of three or four middle-class men of the village.
"A similar municipal organisation was given to the towns. . .
"[Thus] the middle classes surrounded themselves with every precaution in order to keep the municipal power in the hands of the well-to-do members of the community." [The Great French Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 179-186]
Thus centralisation aimed to take power away from the mass of the people and give it to the wealthy. The power of the people rested in popular assemblies, such as the "Sections" and "Districts" of Paris (expressing, in Kropotkin's words, "the principles of anarchism" and "practising . . . Direct Self-Government" [Op. Cit., p. 204 and p. 203]) and village assemblies. However, the National Assembly "tried all it could to lessen the power of the districts . . . [and] put an end to those hotbeds of Revolution . . . [by allowing] active citizens only . . . to take part in the electoral and administrative assemblies." [Op. Cit., p. 211] Thus the "central government was steadily endeavouring to subject the sections to its authority" with the state "seeking to centralise everything in its own hands . . . [I]ts depriving the popular organisations . . . all . . . administrative functions . . . its subjecting them to its bureaucracy in police matters, meant the death of the sections." [Op. Cit., vol. 2, p. 549 and p. 552]
As can be seen, in both the French and American revolutions saw a similar process by which the wealthy centralised power into their own hands. This ensured that working class people (i.e. the majority) were excluded from the decision making process and subject to the laws and power of others. Which, of course, benefits the minority class whose representatives have that power. (Volume one of Murray Bookchin's The Third Revolution discusses the French and American revolutions in some detail).
On the federal and state levels in the US after the Revolution, centralisation of power was encouraged, since "most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government . . . there was . . . a positive need for strong central government to protect the large economic interests." [Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, p. 90] In particular, state centralisation was essential to mould US society into one dominated by capitalism:
"In the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, the law was increasingly interpreted in the courts to suit capitalist development. Studying this, Morton Horwitz (The Transformation of American Law) points out that the English common-law was no longer holy when it stood in the way of business growth . . . Judgements for damages against businessmen were taken out of the hands of juries, which were unpredictable, and given to judges . . . The ancient idea of a fair price for goods gave way in the courts to the idea of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) . . . contract law was intended to discriminate against working people and for business . . . The pretence of the law was that a worker and a railroad made a contract with equal bargaining power . . . 'The circle was completed; the law had come simply to ratify those forms of inequality that the market system had produced.'" [Op. Cit., p. 234]
The US state was created on elitist liberal doctrine and actively aimed to reduce democratic tendencies (in the name of "individual liberty"). What happened in practice (unsurprisingly enough) was that the wealthy elite used the state to undermine popular culture and common right in favour of protecting and extending their own interests and power. In the process, US society was reformed in their own image:
"By the middle of the nineteenth century the legal system had been reshaped to the advantage of men of commerce and industry at the expense of farmers, workers, consumers, and other less powerful groups in society . . . it actively promoted a legal distribution of wealth against the weakest groups in society." [Horwitz, quoted by Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 235]
In more modern times, state centralisation and expansion has gone hand in glove with rapid industrialisation and the growth of business. As Edward Herman points out, "[t]o a great extent, it was the growth in business size and power that elicited the countervailing emergence of unions and the growth of government. Bigness beyond business was to a large extent a response to bigness in business." [Corporate Control, Corporate Power, p. 188 -- see also, Stephen Skowronek, Building A New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920] State centralisation was required to produce bigger, well-defined markets and was supported by business when it acted in their interests (i.e. as markets expanded, so did the state in order to standardise and enforce property laws and so on). On the other hand, this development towards "big government" created an environment in which big business could grow (often encouraged by the state by subsidies and protectionism - as would be expected when the state is run by the wealthy) as well as further removing state power from influence by the masses and placing it more firmly in the hands of the wealthy. It is little wonder we see such developments, for "[s]tructures of governance tend to coalesce around domestic power, in the last few centuries, economic power." [Noam Chomsky, World Orders, Old and New, p. 178]
State centralisation makes it easier for business to control government, ensuring that it remains their puppet and to influence the political process. For example, the European Round Table (ERT) "an elite lobby group of. . .chairmen or chief executives of large multi-nationals based mainly in the EU... [with] 11 of the 20 largest European companies [with] combined sales [in 1991] . . . exceeding $500 billion, . . . approximately 60 per cent of EU industrial production," makes much use of the EU. As two researchers who have studied this body note, the ERT "is adept at lobbying . . . so that many ERT proposals and 'visions' are mysteriously regurgitated in Commission summit documents." The ERT "claims that the labour market should be more 'flexible,' arguing for more flexible hours, seasonal contracts, job sharing and part time work. In December 1993, seven years after the ERT made its suggestions [and after most states had agreed to the Maastricht Treaty and its "social chapter"], the European Commission published a white paper . . . [proposing] making labour markets in Europe more flexible." [Doherty and Hoedeman, "Knights of the Road," New Statesman, 4/11/94, p. 27]
The current talk of globalisation, NAFTA, and the Single European Market indicates an underlying transformation in which state growth follows the path cut by economic growth. Simply put, with the growth of transnational corporations and global finance markets, the bounds of the nation-state have been made economically redundant. As companies have expanded into multi-nationals, so the pressure has mounted for states to follow suit and rationalise their markets across "nations" by creating multi-state agreements and unions.
As Noam Chomsky notes, G7, the IMF, the World Bank and so forth are a "de facto world government," and "the institutions of the transnational state largely serve other masters [than the people], as state power typically does; in this case the rising transnational corporations in the domains of finance and other services, manufacturing, media and communications." [Op. Cit., p. 179]
As multi-nationals grow and develop, breaking through national boundaries, a corresponding growth in statism is required. Moreover, a "particularly valuable feature of the rising de facto governing institutions is their immunity from popular influence, even awareness. They operate in secret, creating a world subordinated to the needs of investors, with the public 'put in its place', the threat of democracy reduced." [Chomsky, Op. Cit., p. 178]
This does not mean that capitalists desire state centralisation for everything. Often, particularly for social issues, relative decentralisation is often preferred (i.e. power is given to local bureaucrats) in order to increase business control over them. By devolving control to local areas, the power which large corporations, investment firms and the like have over the local government increases proportionally. In addition, even middle-sized enterprise can join in and influence, constrain or directly control local policies and set one workforce against another. Private power can ensure that "freedom" is safe, their freedom.
No matter which set of bureaucrats are selected, the need to centralise social power, thus marginalising the population, is of prime importance to the business class. It is also important to remember that capitalist opposition to "big government" is often financial, as the state feeds off the available social surplus, so reducing the amount left for the market to distribute to the various capitals in competition.
In reality, what capitalists object to about "big government" is its spending on social programs designed to benefit the poor and working class, an "illegitimate" function which "wastes" part of the surplus that might go to capital (and also makes people less desperate and so less willing to work cheaply). Hence the constant push to reduce the state to its "classical" role as protector of private property and the system, and little else. Other than their specious quarrel with the welfare state, capitalists are the staunchest supports of government (and the "correct" form of state intervention, such as defence spending), as evidenced by the fact that funds can always be found to build more prisons and send troops abroad to advance ruling-class interests, even as politicians are crying that there is "no money" in the treasury for scholarships, national health care, or welfare for the poor.
B.3 Why are anarchists against private property?
Capitalism is one of the two things all anarchists oppose. Capitalism is marked by two main features, "private property" (or in some cases, state-owned property) and wage labour. The latter, however, is dependent on the former, i.e. for wage labour to exist, workers must not own or control the means of production they use. In turn, private (or state) ownership of the means of production is only possible if there is a state, meaning mechanisms of organised coercion at the disposal of the propertied class (see section B.2).
Anarchists oppose private property (i.e. capitalism) because it is a source of coercive, hierarchical authority and elite privilege ("Property . . . violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism. . . [and has] perfect identity with robbery," to use Proudhon's words - What is Property, p. 251). And so private property (capitalism) necessarily excludes participation, influence, and control by those who use, but do not own, the means of life.
Therefore, for all true anarchists, property is opposed as a source of authority, indeed despotism. To quote Proudhon on this subject:
"The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign - for all these titles are synonymous - imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once. . . [and so] property engenders despotism. . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings -- kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?" [Op. Cit., pp. 266-7]
In other words, private property is the state writ small, with the property owner acting as the "sovereign lord" over their property, and so the absolute king of those who use it. As in any monarchy, the worker is the subject of the capitalist, having to follow their orders, laws and decisions while on their property. This, obviously, is the total denial of liberty (and dignity, we may note, as it is degrading to have to follow orders). Little wonder, then, that anarchists oppose private property as Anarchy is "the absence of a master, of a sovereign" [Op. Cit., p. 264] and call capitalism for what it is, namely wage slavery!
Also, it ought to be easy to see that capitalism, by giving rise to an ideologically inalienable "right" to private property, will also quickly give rise to inequalities in the distribution of external resources, and that this inequality in resource distribution will give rise to a further inequality in the relative bargaining positions of the propertied and the property less. While apologists for capitalism usually attempt to justify private property by claiming that "self-ownership" is a "universal right" (see section B.4.2 - "Is capitalism based on self-ownership?), it is clear that capitalism actually makes universal self-ownership, in it's true sense, impossible. For the real principle of self-ownership implies that people are not used in various ways against their will. The capitalist system, however, has undermined this principle, and ironically, has used the term "self-ownership" as the "logical" basis for doing so. Under capitalism, as will be seen in section B.4, most people are usually left in a situation where their best option is to allow themselves to be used in just those ways that are logically incompatible with genuine self-ownership.
For these reasons, anarchists agree with Rousseau when he states:
"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.'" ["Discourse on Inequality," The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 84]
Only libertarian socialism can continue to affirm self-ownership whilst building the conditions that guarantee it. Only by abolishing private property can there be access to the means of life for all, so making self-ownership a reality by universalising self-management in all aspects of life.
Before discussing the anti-libertarian aspects of capitalism, it will be necessary to define "private property" as distinct from "personal possessions" and show in more detail why the former requires state protection and is exploitative.
B.3.1 What is the difference between private property and possession?
Anarchists define "private property" (or just "property," for short) as state-protected monopolies of certain objects or privileges which are used to exploit others. "Possession," on the other hand, is ownership of things that are not used to exploit others (e.g. a car, a refrigerator, a toothbrush, etc.). Thus many things can be considered as either property or possessions depending on how they are used. For example, a house that one lives in is a possession, whereas if one rents it to someone else at a profit it becomes property. Similarly, if one uses a saw to make a living as a self-employed carpenter, the saw is a possession; whereas if one employs others at wages to use the saw for one's own profit, it is property.
While it may initially be confusing to make this distinction, it is very useful to understand the nature of capitalist society. Capitalists tend to use the word "property" to mean anything from a toothbrush to a transnational corporation -- two very different things, with very different impacts upon society. Hence Proudhon:
"Originally the word property was synonymous with proper or individual possession. . . But when this right of use . . . became active and paramount - that is, when the usufructuary converted his right to personally use the thing into the right to use it by his neighbour's labour - then property changed its nature and this idea became complex." [What is Property, pp. 395-6]
As Alexander Berkman frames this distinction, anarchism "abolishes private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and with it goes capitalistic business. Personal possession remains only in the things you use. Thus, your watch is your own, but the watch factory belongs to the people. Land, machinery, and all other public utilities will be collective property, neither to be bought nor sold. Actual use will be considered the only title -- not to ownership but to possession." [The ABC of Anarchism, p. 68] (For more on the anarchist theory of property, see P.-J. Proudhon, What is Property?. William Godwin, in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, makes the same point concerning the difference between property and possession -- which indicates its central place in anarchist thought). Proudhon graphically illustrated the distinction by comparing a lover as a possessor, and a husband as a proprietor!
The difference between property and possession can be seen from the types of authority relations each generates. Taking the example of a capitalist workplace, its clear that those who own the workplace determine how it is used, not those who do the actual work. This leads to an almost totalitarian system. As Noam Chomsky points out, "the term 'totalitarian' is quite accurate. There is no human institution that approaches totalitarianism as closely as a business corporation. I mean, power is completely top-down. You can be inside it somewhere and you take orders from above and hand 'em down. Ultimately, it's in the hands of owners and investors."
In an anarchist society, as noted, actual use is considered the only title. This means that a workplace is organised and run by those who work within it, thus reducing hierarchy and increasing freedom and equality within society. Hence anarchist opposition to private property and capitalism flows naturally from its basic principles and ideas.
B.3.2 What kinds of property does the state protect?
Kropotkin argued that the state was "the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 286] While some of these monopolies are obvious (such as tariffs, state granted market monopolies and so on - see section F.8 on the state's role in developing capitalism) most are "behind the scenes" and work to ensure that capitalist domination does not need extensive force to maintain.
The state therefore maintains various kinds of "class monopolies" (to use Tucker's phrase) to ensure that workers do not receive their "natural wage," the full product of their labour. There are four major kinds of property, or exploitative monopolies, that the state protects:
(1) the power to issue credit and currency, the basis of capitalist banking;
(2) land and buildings, the basis of landlordism;
(3) productive tools and equipment, the basis of industrial capitalism;
(4) ideas and inventions, the basis of copyright and patent ("intellectual property") royalties.
By enforcing these forms of property, capitalism ensures that the objective conditions within the economy favour the capitalist, with the worker free only to accept oppressive and exploitative contracts within which they forfeit their autonomy and promise obedience or face misery and poverty. Due to these "initiations of force" conducted previously to any specific contract being signed, capitalists enrich themselves at the expense of us as well as making a mockery of free agreement (see section B.4). Of course, despite the supposedly subtle role of such "objective" pressures in controlling the working class, working class resistance has been such that capital has never been able to dispense with the powers of the state, both direct and indirect. When "objective" means of control fail, the capitalists will always turn to the use of state repression to restore the "natural" order.
To indicate the importance of these state backed monopolies, we shall sketch their impact.
The credit monopoly, by which the state controls who can and cannot loan money, reduces the ability of working class people to create their own alternatives to capitalism. By charging high amounts of interest on loans (which is only possible because competition is restricted) few people can afford to create co-operatives or one-person firms. In addition, having to repay loans at high interest to capitalist banks ensures that co-operatives often have to undermine their own principles by having to employ wage labour to make ends meet (see section J.5.11). It is unsurprising, therefore, that the very successful Mondragon co-operatives in the Basque Country created their own credit union which is largely responsible for the experiments success.
Just as increasing wages is an important struggle within capitalism, so is the question of credit. Proudhon and his followers supported the idea of a People's Bank. If the working class could take over and control increasing amounts of money it could undercut capitalist power while building its own alternative social order (for money is ultimately the means of buying labour power, and so authority over the labourer - which is the key to surplus value production). Proudhon hoped that by credit being reduced to cost (namely administration charges) workers would be able to buy the means of production they needed. While most anarchists would argue that increased working class access to credit would no more bring down capitalism than increased wages, all anarchists recognise how more credit, like more wages, and how the struggle for credit, like the struggle for wages, might play a useful role in the development of the power of the working class within capitalism. Obvious cases that spring to mind are those where money has been used by workers to finance their struggles against capital, from strike funds and weapons to the periodical avoidance of work made possible by sufficiently high money income. Increased access to cheap credit would give working class people slightly more options than selling their liberty or facing misery (just as increased wages and unemployment benefit also gives us more options).
Therefore, the credit monopoly reduces competition to capitalism from co-operatives (which are generally more productive than capitalist firms) while at the same time forcing down wages for all workers as the demand for labour is lower than it would otherwise be. This, in turn, allows capitalists to use the fear of the sack to extract higher levels of surplus value from employees, so consolidating capitalist power (within and outwith the workplace) and expansion (increasing set-up costs and so creating oligarchic markets dominated by a few firms). In addition, high interest rates transfer income directly from producers to banks. Credit and money are both used as weapons in the class struggle. This is why, again and again, we see the ruling class call for centralised banking and use state action (from the direct regulation of money itself to the management of its flows) in the face of repeated threats to the nature (and role) of money within capitalism.
So the credit monopoly, by artificially restricting the option to work for ourselves, ensures we work for a boss.
The land monopoly consists of enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation. In addition, it also includes making the squatting of abandoned housing and other forms of property illegal. This leads to ground-rent, by which landlords get payment for letting others use the land they own but do not actually cultivate. While this monopoly is less important in a modern capitalist society (as few people know how to farm) it did, however, play an important role in creating capitalism (also see section F.8.3). Economist William Lazonick summaries this process:
"The reorganisation of agricultural land [the enclosure movement] . . . inevitably undermined the viability of traditional peasant agriculture. . . [it] created a sizeable labour force of disinherited peasants with only tenuous attachments to the land. To earn a living, many of these peasants turned to 'domestic industry' - the production of goods in their cottages . . .It was the eighteenth century expansion of domestic industry. . . that laid the basis for the British Industrial Revolution. The emergence of labour-saving machine technology transformed. . . textile manufacture. . . and the factory replaced the family home as the predominant site of production." [Business Organisation and the Myth of the Market Economy, pp. 3-4]
By being able to "legally" bar people from "their" property, the landlord class used the land monopoly to ensure the creation of a class of people with nothing to sell but their labour (i.e. liberty). Land was taken from those who traditionally used it, violating common rights, and it was used by the landlord to produce for their own profit (more recently, a similar process has been going on in the Third World as well). Personal occupancy was replaced by landlordism and agricultural wage slavery, and so "the Enclosure Acts. . . reduced the agricultural population to misery, placed them at the mercy of the landowners, and forced a great number of them to migrate to the towns where, as proletarians, they were delivered to the mercy of the middle-class manufacturers." [Peter Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, p. 117]
This was the land monopoly in action (also see section F.8.3) and from it sprang the tools and equipment monopoly as domestic industry could not survive in the face of industrial capitalism. The tools and equipment monopoly is based upon the capitalist denying workers access to their capital unless the worker pays tribute to the owner for using it. While capital is "simply stored-up labour which has already received its pay in full" and so "the lender of capital is entitled to its return intact, and nothing more" (to use Tucker's words), due to legal privilege the capitalist is in a position to charge a "fee" for its use. This is because, with the working class legally barred from both the land and available capital (the means of life), members of that class have little option but to agree to wage contracts which let capitalists extract a "fee" for the use of their equipment (see section B.3.3).
While the initial capital for investing in industry came from wealth plundered from overseas or from the proceeds of feudalist and landlordist exploitation, the fact of state protection of property ensured that the manufacturer was able to exact usury from labour. The "fee" charged to workers was partly reinvested into capital, which reduced the prices of goods, ruining domestic industry. In addition, investment also increased the set-up costs of potential competitors, which continued the dispossession of the working class from the means of production as these "natural" barriers to entry into markets ensured few members of that class had the necessary funds to create co-operative workplaces of appropriate size. So while the land monopoly was essential to create capitalism, the "tools and equipment" monopoly that sprang from it soon became the mainspring of the system.
In this way usury became self-perpetuating, with apparently "free exchanges" being the means by which capitalist domination survives. In other words, "past initiations of force" combined with the current state protection of property ensure that capitalist domination of society continues with only the use of "defensive" force (i.e. violence used to protect the power of property owners against unions, strikes, occupations, etc.). The "fees" extracted from previous generations of workers has ensured that the current one is in no position to re-unite itself with the means of life by "free competition" (in other words, the paying of usury ensures that usury continues). Needless to say, the surplus produced by this generation will be used to increase the capital stock and so ensure the dispossession of future generations and so usury becomes self-perpetuating. And, of course, state protection of "property" against "theft" by working people ensures that property remains theft and the real thieves keep their plunder.
As far as the "ideas" monopoly is concerned, this has been used to enrich capitalist corporations at the expense of the general public and the inventor. As David Noble points out, the "inventor, the original focus of the patent system, tended to increasingly to 'abandon' his patent in exchange for corporate security; he either sold or licensed his patent rights to industrial corporations or assigned them to the company of which he became an employee, bartering his genius for a salary. In addition, by means of patent control gained through purchase, consolidation, patent pools, and cross-licensing agreements, as well as by regulated patent production through systematic industrial research, the corporations steadily expanded their 'monopoly of monopolies.'" As well as this, corporations used "patents to circumvent anti-trust laws." This reaping of monopoly profits at the expense of the customer made such "tremendous strides" between 1900 and 1929 and "were of such proportions as to render subsequent judicial and legislative effects to check corporate monopoly through patent control too little too late." [American By Design, p. 87, 84 and 88]
By creating "legal" monopolies and reaping the excess profits these create, capitalists not only enriched themselves at the expense of others, they also ensured their dominance in the market. Some of the excess profits reaped due to the legal monopolies where invested back into the company, securing advantages for the company by creating various barriers to potential competitors.
Moreover, the ruling class, by means of the state, is continually trying to develop new forms of private property by creating artificial scarcities and monopolies, e.g. by requiring expensive licenses to engage in particular types of activities, such as broadcasting. In the "Information Age," usury (use fees) from intellectual property are becoming a much more important source of income for elites, as reflected in the attention paid to strengthening mechanisms for enforcing copyright in the recent GATT agreements, or in US pressure on foreign countries (like China) to respect copyright laws, and so on.
In other words, capitalists desire to restrict competition in the "free market" by ensuring that the law reflects and protects their interests, namely their "property rights." By this process they ensure that co-operative tendencies within society are crushed by state-supported "market forces." As Noam Chomsky puts it, modern capitalism is "state protection and public subsidy for the rich, market discipline for the poor." ["Rollback, Part I", Z Magazine] Self-proclaimed defenders of "free market" capitalism are usually nothing of the kind, while the few who actually support it only object to the "public subsidy" aspect of modern capitalism and happily support state protection for property rights. (For more on capitalism as based on state-protected monopolies, see Benjamin Tucker, Instead of a Book by a Man Too Busy to Write One).
All these monopolies seek to enrich the capitalist (and increase their capital stock) at the expense of working people, to restrict their ability to undermine the ruling elites power and wealth. All aim to ensure that any option we have to work for ourselves (either individually or collectively) is restricted by tilting the playing field against us, making sure that we have little option but to sell our labour on the "free market" and be exploited. In other words, the various monopolies make sure that "natural" barriers to entry (see section C.4) are created, leaving the heights of the economy in the control of big business while alternatives to capitalism are marginalised at its fringes.
So it is these kinds of property and the authoritarian social relationships that they create which the state exists to protect. It should be noted that converting private to state ownership (i.e. nationalisation) does not fundamentally change the nature of property relationships; it just removes private capitalists and replaces them with bureaucrats.
B.3.3 Why is property exploitative?
To answer this question, consider the monopoly of productive "tools and equipment." This monopoly, obtained by the class of industrial capitalists, allows this class in effect to charge workers a "fee" for the privilege of using the monopolised tools and equipment.
This occurs because property, in Proudhon words, "excommunicates" the working class. The state enforces property rights in land, workplaces and so on, meaning that the owner can bar others from using them and enforce their rules on those they do let use "their" property. So the boss "gives you a job: that is permission to work in the factory or mill which was not built by him but by other workers like yourself. And for that permission you help to support him for . . .as long as you work for him." [Alexander Berkman, What is Communist Anarchism?, p. 11]
Therefore, due to the dispossession of the vast majority of the population from the means of life, capitalists are in an ideal position to charge a "use-fee" for the capital they own, but neither produced nor use. Having little option, workers agree to contracts within which they forfeit their autonomy during work and the product of that work. This results in capitalists having access to a "commodity" (labour) that can potentially produce more value than it gets paid for in wages. During working hours, the owner can dictate (within certain limits determined by worker resistance and solidarity as well as objective conditions, such as the level of unemployment within an industry or country) the level, duration and intensity of work, and so the amount of output (which the owner has sole rights over even though they did not produce it). Thus the "fee" (or "surplus value") is created by owners paying workers less than the full value added by their labour to the products or services they create for the firm. The capitalist's profit is thus the difference between this "surplus value," created by and appropriated from labour, minus the firm's overhead and cost of raw materials (See also section C.2, "Where do profits come from?").
So property is exploitative because it allows a surplus to be monopolised by the owners. Property creates hierarchical relationships within the workplace (the "tools and equipment monopoly" might better be called the "power monopoly") and as in any hierarchical system, those with the power use it to protect and further their own interests at the expense of others. Within the workplace there is resistance by workers to this oppression and exploitation, which the "hierarchical. . . relations of the capitalist enterprise are designed to resolve this conflict in favour of the representatives of capital..." [William Lazonick, Op. Cit., p. 184]
Needless to say, the state is always on hand to protect the rights of property and management against the actions of the dispossessed. When it boils down to it, it is the existence of the state as protector of the "power monopoly" that allows it to exist at all.
So, capitalists are able to appropriate this surplus value from workers solely because they own the means of production, not because they earn it by doing productive work themselves. Of course some capitalists may also contribute to production, in which case they are in fairness entitled to the amount of value added to the firm's output by their own labour; but owners typically pay themselves much more than this, and are able to do so because the state guarantees them that right as property owners (which is unsurprising, as they alone have knowledge of the firms inputs and outputs and, like all people in unaccountable positions, abuse that power -- which is partly why anarchists support direct democracy as the essential counterpart of free agreement, for no one in power can be trusted not to prefer their own interests over those subject to their decisions). And of course many capitalists hire managers to run their businesses for them, thus collecting income for doing nothing except owning.
Capitalists' profits, then, are a form of state-supported exploitation. This is equally true of the interest collected by bankers and rents collected by landlords. Without some form of state, these forms of exploitation would be impossible, as the monopolies on which they depend could not be maintained. For instance, in the absence of state troops and police, workers would simply take over and operate factories for themselves, thus preventing capitalists from appropriating an unjust share of the surplus they create.
B.3.4 Can private property be justified?
No. Even though a few supporters of capitalism recognise that private property, particularly in land, was created by the use of force, most maintain that private property is just. One common defence of private property is found in the work of Robert Nozick (a supporter of "free market" capitalism). For Nozick, the use of force makes acquisition illegitimate and so any current title to the property is illegitimate (in other words, theft and trading in stolen goods does not make ownership of these goods legal). So, if the initial acquisition of land was illegitimate then all current titles are also illegitimate. And since private ownership of land is the basis of capitalism, capitalism itself would be rendered illegal.
To get round this problem, Nozick utilises the work of Locke ("The Lockean Proviso") which can be summarised as:
1. People own themselves.
2. The world is initially owned in common (or unowned in Nozick's case.)
3. You can acquire absolute rights over a larger than average share in the world, if you do not worsen the condition of others.
4. Once people have appropriated private property, a free market in capital and labour is morally required.
Take for example two individuals who share land in common. Nozick allows for one individual to claim the land as their own as long as the "process normally giving rise to a permanent bequeathable property right in a previously unowned thing will not do so if the position of others no longer at liberty to use the thing is therefore worsened." [Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 178]
But, if one person appropriated the land then the other cannot live off the remaining land. However, if the new land owner offers the other a wage to work their land and this exceeds what the new wage slave originally produced, then this meets the "Lockean Proviso." Of course, the new wage slave has no option but to work for another, but this is irrelevant for the Lockean Proviso.
Interestingly, for a ideology that calls itself "libertarian" Nozick theory defines "worse off" in terms purely of material welfare, compared to the conditions that existed within the society based upon common use. In other words, being "worse off" in terms of liberty (i.e. self-ownership or self-government) is irrelevant for Nozick, a very telling position to take.
Nozick claims to place emphasis on self-ownership in his ideology because we are separate individuals, each with our own life to lead. It is strange, therefore, to see that Nozick does not emphasise people's ability to act on their own conception of themselves in his account of appropriation. Indeed, there is no objection to an appropriation that puts someone in an unnecessary and undesirable position of subordination and dependence on the will of others.
Notice that the fact that individuals are now subject to the decisions of other individuals is not considered by Nozick in assessing the fairness of the appropriation. The fact that the creation of private property results in the denial of important freedoms for wage slaves (namely, the wage slave has no say over the status of the land they had been utilising and no say over how their labour is used). Before the creation of private property, all managed their own work, had self-government in all aspects of their lives. After the appropriation, the new wage slave has no such liberty and indeed must accept the conditions of employment within which they relinquish control over how they spend much of their time.
Considering Nozick's many claims in favour of self-ownership and why it is important, you would think that the autonomy of the newly dispossessed wage slaves would be important to him. However, no such concern is to be found - the autonomy of wage slaves is treated as if it were irrelevant. Nozick claims that a concern for people's freedom to lead their own lives underlies his theory of unrestricted property-rights, but, this apparently does not apply to wage slaves. His justification for the creation of private property treats only the autonomy of the land owner as relevant. However, as Proudhon rightly argues:
"if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all . . . Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another . . . from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can he prevent individuals to come." [What is Property?, pp. 84-85]
Under capitalism people are claimed to own themselves, but this is purely formal as most people do not have independent access to resources. And as they have to use other peoples' resources, they become under the control of those who own the resources. In other words, private property reduces the autonomy of the majority of the population, and creates a regime of authority which has many similarities to enslavement. As John Stuart Mill put it:
"No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of property; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident of birth to both the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggles, the poor are not wrong in believing." ["Chapters on Socialism", Principles of Political Economy, pp. 377-8]
Capitalism, even though claiming formal self-ownership, in fact not only restricts the self-determination of working class people, it also makes them a resource for others. Those who enter the market after others have appropriated all the available property are limited to charity or working for others. The latter, as we discuss in section C, results in exploitation as the worker's labour is used to enrich others. Working people are compelled to co-operate with the current scheme of property and are forced to benefit others. This means that self-determination requires resources as well as rights over one's physical and mental being. Concern for self-determination (i.e. meaningful self-ownership) leads us to common property plus workers' control of production and so some form of libertarian socialism - not private property and capitalism.
And, of course, the appropriation of the land requires a state to defend it against the dispossessed as well as continuous interference in people's lives. Left to their own devices, people would freely use the resources around them which they considered unjustly appropriated by others and it is only continuous state intervention that prevents then from violating Nozick's principles of justice (to use Nozick's own terminology, the "Lockean Proviso" is a patterned theory, his claims otherwise not withstanding).
In addition, we should note that private ownership by one person presupposes non-ownership by others ("we who belong to the proletaire class, property excommunicates us!" [Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 105]) and so the "free market" restricts as well as creates liberties just as any other economic system. Hence the claim that capitalism constitutes "economic liberty" is obviously false. In fact, it is based upon denying liberty for the vast majority during work hours (as well as having serious impacts on liberty outwith work hours due to the effects of concentrations of wealth upon society).
Perhaps Nozick can claim that the increased material benefits of private property makes the acquisition justified. However, it seems strange that a theory supporting "liberty" should consider well off slaves to be better than poor free men and women. As Nozick claims that the wage slaves consent is not required for the initial acquisition, so perhaps he can claim that the gain in material welfare outweighs the loss of autonomy and so allows the initial act as an act of paternalism. But as Nozick opposes paternalism when it restricts private property rights he can hardly invoke it when it is required to generate these rights. And if we exclude paternalism and emphasise autonomy (as Nozick claims he does elsewhere in his theory), then justifying the initial creation of private property becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.
And if each owner's title to their property includes the historical shadow of the Lockean Proviso on appropriation, then such titles are invalid. Any title people have over unequal resources will be qualified by the facts that "property is theft" and that "property is despotism." The claim that private property is economic liberty is obviously untrue, as is the claim that private property can be justified in terms of anything except "might is right."
For more anarchist analysis on private property and why it cannot be justified (be it by occupancy, labour, natural right, or whatever) consult Proudhon's classic work What is Property?.
B.4 How does capitalism affect liberty?
Private property is in many ways like a private form of state. The owner determines what goes on within the area he or she "owns," and therefore exercises a monopoly of power over it. When power is exercised over one's self, it is a source of freedom, but under capitalism it is a source of coercive authority. As Bob Black points out in The Abolition of Work:
"The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid."
Unlike a company, the democratic state can be influenced by its citizens, who are able to act in ways that limit (to some extent) the power of the ruling elite to be "left alone" to enjoy their power. As a result, the wealthy hate the democratic aspects of the state, and its ordinary citizens, as potential threats to their power. This "problem" was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in early 19th-century America:
"It is easy to perceive that the wealthy members of the community entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and their fears."
These fears have not changed, nor has the contempt for democratic ideas. To quote one US Corporate Executive, "one man, one vote will result in the eventual failure of democracy as we know it." [L. Silk and D. Vogel, Ethics and Profits: The Crisis of Confidence in American Business, pp. 189f]
This contempt for democracy does not mean that capitalists are anti-state. Far from it. As previously noted, capitalists depend on the state. This is because "[classical] Liberalism, is in theory a kind of anarchy without socialism, and therefore is simply a lie, for freedom is not possible without equality. . .The criticism liberals direct at government consists only of wanting to deprive it some of its functions and to call upon the capitalists to fight it out amongst themselves, but it cannot attack the repressive functions which are of its essence: for without the gendarme the property owner could not exist." [Errico Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 46].
Capitalists call upon and support the state when it acts in their interests and when it supports their authority and power. The "conflict" between state and capital is like two gangsters fighting over the proceeds of a robbery: they will squabble over the loot and who has more power in the gang, but they need each other to defend their "property" against those from whom they stole it.
The statist nature of private property can be seen in "Libertarian" (i.e. minarchist, or "classical" liberal) works representing the extremes of laissez-faire capitalism:
"[I]f one starts a private town, on land whose acquisition did not and does not violate the Lockean proviso [of non-aggression], persons who chose to move there or later remain there would have no right to a say in how the town was run, unless it was granted to them by the decision procedures for the town which the owner had established" [Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 270]
This is voluntary feudalism, nothing more. Of course, it can be claimed that "market forces" will result in the most liberal owners being the most successful, but a nice master is still a master. To paraphrase Tolstoy, "the liberal capitalist is like a kind donkey owner. He will do everything for the donkey -- care for it, feed it, wash it. Everything except get off its back!" And as Bob Black notes, "Some people giving orders and others obeying them: this is the essence of servitude. . . . [F]reedom means more than the right to change masters." [The Libertarian as Conservative]. That supporters of capitalism often claim that this "right" to change masters is the essence of "freedom" is a telling indictment of the capitalist notion of "liberty."
B.4.1 Is capitalism based on freedom?
For anarchists, freedom means both "freedom from" and "freedom to." "Freedom from" signifies not being subject to domination, exploitation, coercive authority, repression, or other forms of degradation and humiliation. "Freedom to" means being able to develop and express one's abilities, talents, and potentials to the fullest possible extent compatible with the maximum freedom of others. Both kinds of freedom imply the need for self-management, responsibility, and independence, which basically means that people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives. And since individuals do not exist in a social vacuum, it also means that freedom must take on a collective aspect, with the associations that individuals form with each other (e.g. communities, work groups, social groups) being run in a manner which allows the individual to participate in the decisions that the group makes. Thus freedom for anarchists requires participatory democracy, which means face-to-face discussion and voting on issues by the people affected by them.
Are these conditions of freedom met in the capitalist system? Obviously not. Despite all their rhetoric about "democracy," most of the "advanced" capitalist states remain only superficially democratic -- and this because the majority of their citizens are employees who spend about half their waking hours under the thumb of capitalist dictators (bosses) who allow them no voice in the crucial economic decisions that affect their lives most profoundly and require them to work under conditions inimical to independent thinking. If the most basic freedom, namely freedom to think for oneself, is denied, then freedom itself is denied.
The capitalist workplace is profoundly undemocratic. Indeed, as Noam Chomsky points out, the oppressive authority relations in the typical corporate hierarchy would be called fascist or totalitarian if we were referring to a political system. In his words :
"There's nothing individualistic about corporations. These are big conglomerate institutions, essentially totalitarian in character, but hardly individualistic. There are few institutions in human society that have such strict hierarchy and top-down control as a business organisation. Nothing there about 'don't tread on me`. You're being tread on all the time." [Keeping the Rabble in Line, p. 280]
Far from being "based on freedom," then, capitalism actually destroys freedom. In this regard, Robert E. Wood, the chief executive officer of Sears, spoke plainly when he said "[w]e stress the advantages of the free enterprise system, we complain about the totalitarian state, but... we have created more or less of a totalitarian system in industry, particularly in large industry." [quoted by Allan Engler, Apostles of Greed, p. 68]
Or, as Chomsky puts it, supporters of capitalism do not understand "the fundamental doctrine, that you should be free from domination and control, including the control of the manager and the owner" [Feb. 14th, 1992 appearance on Pozner/Donahue].
Under corporate authoritarianism, the psychological traits deemed most desirable for average citizens to possess are efficiency, conformity, emotional detachment, insensitivity, and unquestioning obedience to authority -- traits that allow people to survive and even prosper as employees in the company hierarchy. And of course, for "non-average" citizens, i.e., bosses, managers, administrators, etc., authoritarian traits are needed, the most important being the ability and willingness to dominate others.
But all such master/slave traits are inimical to the functioning of real (i.e. participatory/libertarian) democracy, which requires that citizens have qualities like flexibility, creativity, sensitivity, understanding, emotional honesty, directness, warmth, realism, and the ability to mediate, communicate, negotiate, integrate and co-operate. Therefore, capitalism is not only undemocratic, it is anti-democratic, because it promotes the development of traits that make real democracy (and so a libertarian society) impossible.
Many capitalist apologists have attempted to show that capitalist authority structures are "voluntary" and are, therefore, somehow not a denial of individual and social freedom. Milton Friedman (a leading free market capitalist economist) has attempted to do just this. Like most apologists for capitalism he ignores the authoritarian relations explicit within wage labour (within the workplace, "co-ordination" is based upon top-down command, not horizontal co-operation). Instead he concentrates on the decision of a worker to sell their labour to a specific boss and so ignores the lack of freedom within such contracts. He argues that "individuals are effectively free to enter or not enter into any particular exchange, so every transaction is strictly voluntary. . . The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers for whom he can work." [Capitalism and Freedom, pp. 14-15]
Friedman, to prove the free nature of capitalism, compares capitalism with a simple exchange economy based upon independent producers. He states that in such a simple economy each household "has the alternative of producing directly for itself, [and so] it need not enter into any exchange unless it benefits from it. Hence no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit from it. Co-operation is thereby achieved without coercion." [Op. Cit., p. 13] Under capitalism (or the "complex" economy) Friedman states that "individuals are effectively free to enter or not to enter into any particular exchange, so that every transaction is strictly voluntary." [Op. Cit., p. 14]
A moments thought, however, shows that capitalism is not based on "strictly voluntary" transactions as Friedman claims. This is because the proviso that is required to make every transaction "strictly voluntary" is not freedom not to enter any particular exchange, but freedom not to enter into any exchange at all.
This, and only this, was the proviso that proved the simple model Friedman presents (the one based upon artisan production) to be voluntary and non-coercive; and nothing less than this would prove the complex model (i.e. capitalism) is voluntary and non-coercive. But Friedman is clearly claiming above that freedom not to enter into any particular exchange is enough and so, only by changing his own requirements, can he claim that capitalism is based upon freedom.
It is easy to see what Friedman has done, but it is less easy to excuse it (particularly as it is so commonplace in capitalist apologetics). He moved from the simple economy of exchange between independent producers to the capitalist economy without mentioning the most important thing the distinguishes them - namely the separation of labour from the means of production. In the society of independent producers, the worker had the choice of working for themselves - under capitalism this is not the case. Capitalism is based upon the existence of a labour force without its own sufficient capital, and therefore without a choice as to whether to put its labour in the market or not. Milton Friedman would agree that where there is no choice there is coercion. His attempted demonstration that capitalism co-ordinates without coercion therefore fails.
Capitalist apologists are able to convince some people that capitalism is "based on freedom" only because the system has certain superficial appearances of freedom.
On closer analysis these appearances turn out to be deceptions. For example, it is claimed that the employees of capitalist firms have freedom because they can always quit. But, as noted earlier, "Some people giving orders and others obeying them: this is the essence of servitude. Of course, as [right-Libertarians] smugly [observe], 'one can at least change jobs,' but you can't avoid having a job -- just as under statism one can at least change nationalities but you can't avoid subjection to one nation-state or another. But freedom means more than the right to change masters" [Bob Black, The Libertarian as Conservative]. Under capitalism, workers have only the Hobson's choice of being governed/exploited or living on the street.
Anarchists point out that for choice to be real, free agreements and associations must be based on the social equality of those who enter into them, and both sides must receive roughly equivalent benefit. But social relations between capitalists and employees can never be equal, because private ownership of the means of production gives rise to social hierarchy and relations of coercive authority and subordination, as was recognised even by Adam Smith (see below).
The picture painted by Walter Reuther of working life in America before the Wagner act is a commentary on class inequality : "Injustice was as common as streetcars. When men walked into their jobs, they left their dignity, their citizenship and their humanity outside. They were required to report for duty whether there was work or not. While they waited on the convenience of supervisors and foremen they were unpaid. They could be fired without a pretext. They were subjected to arbitrary, senseless rules. . . .Men were tortured by regulations that made difficult even going to the toilet. Despite grandiloquent statements from the presidents of huge corporations that their door was open to any worker with a complaint, there was no one and no agency to which a worker could appeal if he were wronged. The very idea that a worker could be wronged seemed absurd to the employer." Much of this indignity remains, and with the globalisation of capital, the bargaining position of workers is further deteriorating, so that the gains of a century of class struggle are in danger of being lost.
A quick look at the enormous disparity of power and wealth between the capitalist class and the working class shows that the benefits of the "agreements" entered into between the two sides are far from equal. Walter Block, a leading Fraser Institute ideologue, makes clear the differences in power and benefits when discussing sexual harassment in the workplace:
"Consider the sexual harassment which continually occurs between a secretary and a boss. . . while objectionable to many women, [it] is not a coercive action. It is rather part of a package deal in which the secretary agrees to all aspects of the job when she agrees to accept the job, and especially when she agrees to keep the job. The office is, after all, private property. The secretary does not have to remain if the 'coercion' is objectionable." [quoted by Engler, Op. Cit., p. 101]
The primary goal of the Fraser Institute is to convince people that all other rights must be subordinated to the right to enjoy wealth. In this case, Block makes clear that under private property, only bosses have "freedom to," and most also desire to ensure they have "freedom from" interference with this right.
So, when capitalists gush about the "liberty" available under capitalism, what they are really thinking of is their state-protected freedom to exploit and oppress workers through the ownership of property, a freedom that allows them to continue amassing huge disparities of wealth, which in turn insures their continued power and privileges. That the capitalist class in liberal-democratic states gives workers the right to change masters (though this is not true under state capitalism) is far from showing that capitalism is based on freedom, For as Peter Kropotkin rightly points out, "freedoms are not given, they are taken" [Peter Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 43]. In capitalism, you are "free" to do anything you are permitted to do by your masters, which amounts to "freedom" with a collar and leash.
B.4.2 Is capitalism based on self-ownership?
Murray Rothbard, a leading "libertarian" capitalist, claims that capitalism is based on the "basic axiom" of "the right to self-ownership." This "axiom" is defined as "the absolute right of each man [sic]. . .to control [his or her] body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man [sic] the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered by coercive molestation." [For a New Liberty, pp. 26-27]
So far, so good. However, we reach a problem once we consider private property. As Ayn Rand, another ideologue for "free market" capitalism argued, "there can be no such thing as the right to unrestricted freedom of speech (or of action) on someone else's property" [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 258]. Or, as is commonly said by capitalist owners, "I don't pay you to think."
Similarly, capitalists don't pay their employees to perform the other "vital activities" listed by Rothbard (learning, valuing, choosing ends and means) -- unless, of course, the firm requires that workers undertake such activities in the interests of company profits. Otherwise, workers can rest assured that any efforts to engage in such "vital activities" on company time will be "hampered" by "coercive molestation." Therefore wage labour (the basis of capitalism) in practice denies the rights associated with "self-ownership," thus alienating the individual from his or her basic rights. Or as Michael Bakunin expresses it, "the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time" under capitalism.
In a society of relative equals, "private property" would not be a source of power. For example, you would still be able to fling a drunk out of your home. But in a system based on wage labour (i.e. capitalism), private property is a different thing altogether, becoming a source of institutionalised power and coercive authority through hierarchy. As Noam Chomsky writes, capitalism is based on "a particular form of authoritarian control. Namely, the kind that comes through private ownership and control, which is an extremely rigid system of domination." When "property" is purely what you, as an individual, use (i.e. possession) it is not a source of power. In capitalism, however, "property" rights no longer coincide with use rights, and so they become a denial of freedom and a source of authority and power over the individual. Little wonder that Proudhon labelled property as "theft" and "despotism".
As we've seen in the discussion of hierarchy (section A.2.8 and B.1), all forms of authoritarian control depend on "coercive molestation" -- i.e. the use or threat of sanctions. This is definitely the case in company hierarchies under capitalism. Bob Black describes the authoritarian nature of capitalism as follows:
"[T]he place where [adults] pass the most time and submit to the closest control is at work. Thus . . . it's apparent that the source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is not the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade."
We have already noted the objection that people can leave their jobs, which just amounts to saying "love it or leave it!" and does not address the issue at hand. Needless to say, the vast majority of the population cannot avoid wage labour. Far from being based on the "right to self-ownership," then, capitalism denies it, alienating the individual from such basic rights as free speech, independent thought, and self-management of one's own activity, which individuals have to give up when they are employed. But since these rights, according to Rothbard, are the products of humans as humans, wage labour alienates them from themselves, exactly as it does the individual's labour power and creativity.
To quote Chomsky again, "people can survive, [only] by renting themselves to it [capitalist authority], and basically in no other way. . . ." You do not sell your skills, as these skills are part of you. Instead, what you have to sell is your time, your labour power, and so yourself. Thus under wage labour, rights of "self-ownership" are always placed below property rights, the only "right" being left to you is that of finding another job (although even this right is denied in some countries if the employee owes the company money).
So, contrary to Rothbard's claim, capitalism actually alienates the right to self-ownership because of the authoritarian structure of the workplace, which derives from private property. If we desire real self-ownership, we cannot renounce it for most of our adult lives by becoming wage slaves. Only workers' self-management of production, not capitalism, can make self-ownership a reality.
B.4.3 But no one forces you to work for them!
Of course it is claimed that entering wage labour is a "voluntary" undertaking, from which both sides allegedly benefit. However, due to past initiations of force (e.g. the seizure of land by conquest) plus the tendency for capital to concentrate, a relative handful of people now control vast wealth, depriving all others access to the means of life. As Immanuel Wallerstein points out in The Capitalist World System (vol. 1), capitalism evolved from feudalism, with the first capitalists using inherited family wealth derived from large land holdings to start factories. That "inherited family wealth" can be traced back originally to conquest and forcible seizure. Thus denial of free access to the means of life is based ultimately on the principle of "might makes right." And as Murray Bookchin so rightly points out, "the means of life must be taken for what they literally are: the means without which life is impossible. To deny them to people is more than 'theft'... it is outright homicide." [Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, p. 187]
David Ellerman has also noted that the past use of force has resulted in the majority being limited to those options allowed to them by the powers that be:
"It is a veritable mainstay of capitalist thought... that the moral flaws of chattel slavery have not survived in capitalism since the workers, unlike the slaves, are free people making voluntary wage contracts. But it is only that, in the case of capitalism, the denial of natural rights is less complete so that the worker has a residual legal personality as a free 'commodity owner.' He is thus allowed to voluntarily put his own working life to traffic. When a robber denies another person's right to make an infinite number of other choices besides losing his money or his life and the denial is backed up by a gun, then this is clearly robbery even though it might be said that the victim making a 'voluntary choice' between his remaining options. When the legal system itself denies the natural rights of working people in the name of the prerogatives of capital, and this denial is sanctioned by the legal violence of the state, then the theorists of 'libertarian' capitalism do not proclaim institutional robbery, but rather they celebrate the 'natural liberty' of working people to choose between the remaining options of selling their labour as a commodity and being unemployed." [quoted by Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader, p. 186]
Therefore the existence of the labour market depends on the worker being separated from the means of production. The natural basis of capitalism is wage labour, wherein the majority have little option but to sell their skills, labour and time to those who do own the means of production. In advanced capitalist countries, less than 10% of the working population are self-employed (in 1990, 7.6% in the UK, 8% in the USA and Canada - however, this figure includes employers as well, meaning that the number of self-employed workers is even smaller!). Hence for the vast majority, the labour market is their only option.
Michael Bakunin notes that these facts put the worker in the position of a serf with regard to the capitalist, even though the worker is formally "free" and "equal" under the law:
"Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realisation, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 187-8]
Obviously, a company cannot force you to work for them but, in general, you have to work for someone. This is because of past "initiation of force" by the capitalist class and the state which have created the objective conditions within which we make our employment decisions. Before any specific labour market contract occurs, the separation of workers from the means of production is an established fact (and the resulting "labour" market usually gives the advantage to the capitalists as a class). So while we can usually pick which capitalist to work for, we, in general, cannot choose to work for ourselves (the self-employed sector of the economy is tiny, which indicates well how spurious capitalist liberty actually is). Of course, the ability to leave employment and seek it elsewhere is an important freedom. However, this freedom, like most freedoms under capitalism, is of limited use and hides a deeper anti-individual reality.
As Karl Polanyi puts it:
"In human terms such a postulate [of a labour market] implied for the worker extreme instability of earnings, utter absence of professional standards, abject readiness to be shoved and pushed about indiscriminately, complete dependence on the whims of the market. [Ludwig Von] Mises justly argued that if workers 'did not act as trade unionists, but reduced their demands and changed their locations and occupations according to the labour market, they would eventually find work.' This sums up the position under a system based on the postulate of the commodity character of labour. It is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed." [The Great Transformation, p. 176]
(Although we should point out that von Mises argument that workers will "eventually" find work as well as being nice and vague -- how long is "eventually"?, for example -- is contradicted by actual experience. As the Keynesian economist Michael Stewart notes, in the nineteenth century workers "who lost their jobs had to redeploy fast or starve (and even this feature of the ninetheenth century economy. . . did not prevent prolonged recessions)" [Keynes in the 1990s, p. 31] Workers "reducing their demands" may actually worsen an economic slump, causing more unemployment in the short run and lengthening the length of the crisis. We address the issue of unemployment and workers "reducing their demands" in more detail in section C.9).
It is sometimes argued that capital needs labour, so both have an equal say in the terms offered, and hence the labour market is based on "liberty." But for capitalism to be based on real freedom or on true free agreement, both sides of the capital/labour divide must be equal in bargaining power, otherwise any agreement would favour the most powerful at the expense of the other party. However, due to the existence of private property and the states needed to protect it, this equality is de facto impossible, regardless of the theory. This is because. in general, capitalists have three advantages on the "free" labour market-- the law and state placing the rights of property above those of labour, the existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle and capitalists having more resources to fall back on. We will discuss each in turn.
The first advantage, namely property owners having the backing of the law and state, ensures that when workers go on strike or use other forms of direct action (or even when they try to form a union) the capitalist has the full backing of the state to employ scabs, break picket lines or fire "the ring-leaders." This obviously gives employers greater power in their bargaining position, placing workers in a weak position (a position that may make them, the workers, think twice before standing up for their rights).
The existence of unemployment over most of the business cycle ensures that "employers have a structural advantage in the labour market, because there are typically more candidates. . . than jobs for them to fill." This means that "[c]ompetition in labour markets us typically skewed in favour of employers: it is a buyers market. And in a buyer's market, it is the sellers who compromise. Competition for labour is not strong enough to ensure that workers' desires are always satisified." [Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American, p. 71, p. 129] If the labour market generally favours the employer, then this obviously places working people at a disadvantage as the threat of unemployment and the hardships associated with encourages workers to take any job and submit to their bosses demands and power while employed. Unemployment, in other words, serves to discipline labour. The higher the prevailing unemployment rate, the harder it is to find a new job, which raises the cost of job loss and makes it less likely for workers to strike, join unions, or to resist employer demands, and so on.
As Bakunin argued, "the property owners... are likewise forced to seek out and purchase labour... but not in the same measure . . . [there is no] equality between those who offer their labour and those who purchase it." [Op. Cit., p. 183] This ensures that any "free agreements" made benefit the capitalists more than the workers (see the next section on periods of full employment, when conditions tilt in favour of working people).
Lastly, there is the issue of inequalities in wealth and so resources. The capitalist generally has more resources to fall back on during strikes and while waiting to find employees (for example, large companies with many factories can swap production to their other factories if one goes on strike). And by having more resources to fall back on, the capitalist can hold out longer than the worker, so placing the employer in a stronger bargaining position and so ensuring labour contracts favour them. This was recognised by Adam Smith:
"It is not difficult to foresee which of the two parties [workers and capitalists] must, upon all ordinary occasions... force the other into a compliance with their terms... In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer... though they did not employ a single workman [the masters] could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scare any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. . . [I]n disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage." [Wealth of Nations, pp. 59-60]
How little things have changed.
So, while it is definitely the case that no one forces you to work for them, the capitalist system is such that you have little choice but to sell your liberty and labour on the "free market." Not only this, but the labour market (which is what makes capitalism capitalism) is (usually) skewed in favour of the employer, so ensuring that any "free agreements" made on it favour the boss and result in the workers submitting to domination and exploitation. This is why anarchists support collective organisation (such as unions) and resistance (such as strikes), direct action and solidarity to make us as, if not more, powerful than our exploiters and win important reforms and improvements (and, ultimately, change society), even when faced with the disadvantages on the labour market we have indicated. The despotism associated with property (to use Proudhon's expression) is resisted by those subject to it and, needless to say, the boss does not always win.
B.4.4 But what about periods of high demand for labour?
Of course there are periods when the demand for labour exceeds supply, but these periods hold the seeds of depression for capitalism, as workers are in an excellent position to challenge, both individually and collectively, their allotted role as commodities. This point is discussed in more detail in section C.7 (What causes the capitalist business cycle? ) and so we will not do so here. For now it's enough to point out that during normal times (i.e. over most of the business cycle), capitalists often enjoy extensive authority over workers, an authority deriving from the unequal bargaining power between capital and labour, as noted by Adam Smith and many others.
However, this changes during times of high demand for labour. To illustrate, let us assume that supply and demand approximate each other. It is clear that such a situation is only good for the worker. Bosses cannot easily fire a worker as there is no one to replace them and the workers, either collectively by solidarity or individually by "exit" (i.e. quitting and moving to a new job), can ensure a boss respects their interests and, indeed, can push these interests to the full. The boss finds it hard to keep their authority intact or from stopping wages rising and causing a profits squeeze. In other words, as unemployment drops, workers power increases.
Looking at it another way, giving someone the right to hire and fire an input into a production process vests that individual with considerable power over that input unless it is costless for that input to move; that is unless the input is perfectly mobile. This is only approximated in real life for labour during periods of full employment, and so perfect mobility of labour costs problems for a capitalist firm because under such conditions workers are not dependent on a particular capitalist and so the level of worker effort is determined far more by the decisions of workers (either collectively or individually) than by managerial authority. The threat of firing cannot be used as a threat to increase effort, and hence production, and so full employment increases workers power.
With the capitalist firm being a fixed commitment of resources, this situation is intolerable. Such times are bad for business and so occur rarely with free market capitalism (we must point out that in neo-classical economics, it is assumed that all inputs - including capital - are perfectly mobile and so the theory ignores reality and assumes away capitalist production itself!).
During the last period of capitalist boom, the post-war period, we can see the breakdown of capitalist authority and the fear this held for the ruling elite. The Trilateral Commission's 1975 report, which attempted to "understand" the growing discontent among the general population, makes our point well. In periods of full employment, according to the report, there is "an excess of democracy." In other words, due to the increased bargaining power workers gained during a period of high demand for labour, people started thinking about and acting upon their needs as humans, not as commodities embodying labour power. This naturally had devastating effects on capitalist and statist authority: "People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talent".
This loosening of the bonds of compulsion and obedience led to "previously passive or unorganised groups in the population, blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women... embark[ing] on concerted efforts to establish their claims to opportunities, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled to before."
Such an "excess" of participation in politics of course posed a serious threat to the status quo, since for the elites who authored the report, it was considered axiomatic that "the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups. . . . In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it is also one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively." Such a statement reveals the hollowness of the establishment's concept of 'democracy,' which in order to function effectively (i.e. to serve elite interests) must be "inherently undemocratic."
Any period where people feel empowered allows them to communicate with their fellows, identify their needs and desires, and resist those forces that deny their freedom to manage their own lives. Such resistance strikes a deadly blow at the capitalist need to treat people as commodities, since (to re-quote Polanyi) people no longer feel that it "is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed." Instead, as thinking and feeling people, they act to reclaim their freedom and humanity.
As noted at the beginning of this section, the economic effects of such periods of empowerment and revolt are discussed in section C.7. We will end by quoting the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, who noted that a continuous capitalist boom would not be in the interests of the ruling class. In 1943, in response to the more optimistic Keynesians, he noted that "to maintain the high level of employment. . . in the subsequent boom, a strong opposition of 'business leaders' is likely to be encountered. . . lasting full employment is not at all to their liking. The workers would 'get out of hand' and the 'captains of industry' would be anxious 'to teach them a lesson'" because "under a regime of permanent full employment, 'the sack' would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined and the self assurance and class consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. . . 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated by business leaders than profits. Their class interest tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view and that unemployment is an integral part of the normal capitalist system." [cited by Malcolm C. Sawyer, The Economics of Michal Kalecki p. 139, p. 138]
Therefore, periods when the demand for labour outstrips supply are not healthy for capitalism, as they allow people to assert their freedom and humanity -- both fatal to the system. This is why news of large numbers of new jobs sends the stock market plunging and why capitalists are so keen these days to maintain a "natural" rate of unemployment (that it has to be maintained indicates that it is not "natural"). Kalecki, we must point out, also correctly predicted the rise of "a powerful bloc" between "big business and the rentier interests" against full employment and that "they would probably find more than one economist to declare that the situation was manifestly unsound." The resulting "pressure of all these forces, and in particular big business" would "induce the Government to return to. . . orthodox policy." [Kalecki, cited Op. Cit., p. 140] This is exactly what happened in the 1970s, with the monetarists and other sections of the "free market" right providing the ideological support for the business lead class war, and whose "theories" (when applied) promptly generated massive unemployment, thus teaching the working class the required lesson.
So, although detrimental to profit-making, periods of recession and high unemployment are not only unavoidable but are necessary to capitalism in order to "discipline" workers and "teach them a lesson." And in all, it is little wonder that capitalism rarely produces periods approximating full employment -- they are not in its interests (see also section C.9). The dynamics of capitalism makes recession and unemployment inevitable, just as it makes class struggle (which creates these dynamics) inevitable.
B.4.5 But I want to be "left alone"!
It is ironic that supporters of laissez-faire capitalism, such as "Libertarians" and "anarcho"-capitalists, should claim that they want to be "left alone," since capitalism never allows this. As Max Stirner expressed it:
"Restless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm enjoyment. We do not get the comfort of our possessions. . ." [Max Stirner The Ego and Its Own, p. 268]
Capitalism cannot let us "take breath" simply because it needs to grow or die, which puts constant pressure on both workers and capitalists (see section D.4.1). Workers can never relax or be free of anxiety about losing their jobs, because if they do not work, they do not eat, nor can they ensure that their children will get a better life. Within the workplace, they are not "left alone" by their bosses in order to manage their own activities. Instead, they are told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. Indeed, the history of experiments in workers' control and self-management within capitalist companies confirms our claims that, for the worker, capitalism is incompatible with the desire to be "left alone." As an illustration we will use the "Pilot Program" conducted by General Electric between 1968 and 1972.
General Electric proposed the "Pilot Program" as a means of overcoming the problems they faced with introducing Numeric Control (N/C) machinery into its plant at Lynn River Works, Massachusetts. Faced with rising tensions on the shop floor, bottle-necks in production and low-quantity products, GE management tried a scheme of "job enrichment" based on workers' control of production in one area of the plant. By June 1970 the workers' involved were "on their own" (as one manager put it) and "[i]n terms of group job enlargement this was when the Pilot Project really began, with immediate results in increased output and machine utilisation, and a reduction on manufacturing losses. As one union official remarked two years later, 'The fact that we broke down a traditional policy of GE [that the union could never have a hand in managing the business] was in itself satisfying, especially when we could throw success up to them to boot.'" [David Noble, Forces of Production, p. 295]
The project, after some initial scepticism, proved to be a great success with the workers involved. Indeed, other workers in the factory desired to be included and the union soon tried to get it spread throughout the plant and into other GE locations. The success of the scheme was that it was based on workers' managing their own affairs rather than being told what to do by their bosses -- "We are human beings," said one worker, "and want to be treated as such." [quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p. 292] To be fully human means to be free to govern oneself in all aspects of life, including production.
However, just after a year of the workers being given control over their working lives, management stopped the project. Why? "In the eyes of some management supporters of the 'experiment,' the Pilot Program was terminated because management as a whole refused to give up any of its traditional authority . . . [t]he Pilot Program foundered on the basic contradiction of capitalist production: Who's running the shop?" [Noble, Op. Cit., p. 318]
Noble goes on to argue that to GE's top management, "the union's desire to extend the program appeared as a step toward greater workers control over production and, as such, a threat to the traditional authority rooted in private ownership of the means of production. Thus the decision to terminate represented a defence not only of the prerogatives of production supervisors and plant managers but also of the power vested in property ownership." [Ibid.] Noble notes that this result was not an isolated case and that the "demise of the GE Pilot Program followed the typical pattern for such 'job enrichment experiments'" [Op. Cit., p. 320] Even though "[s]everal dozen well-documented experiments show that productivity increases and social problems decrease when workers participant in the work decisions affecting their lives" [Department of Health, Education and Welfare study quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p. 322] such schemes are ended by bosses seeking to preserve their own power, the power that flows from private property.
As one worker in the GE Pilot Program stated, "[w]e just want to be left alone." They were not -- capitalist social relations prohibit such a possibility (as Noble correctly notes, "the 'way of life' for the management meant controlling the lives of others" [Op. Cit., p. 294 and p. 300]). In spite of improved productivity, projects in workers' control are scrapped because they undermined both the power of the capitalists -- and by undermining their power, you potentially undermine their profits too ("If we're all one, for manufacturing reasons, we must share in the fruits equitably, just like a co-op business." [GE Pilot Program worker, quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p. 295]).
As we argue in more detail in section J.5.12, profit maximisation can work against efficiency, meaning that capitalism can harm the overall economy by promoting less efficient production techniques (i.e. hierarchical ones against egalitarian ones) because it is in the interests of capitalists to do so and the capitalist market rewards that behaviour. This is because, ultimately, profits are unpaid labour. If you empower labour, give workers' control over their work then they will increase efficiency and productivity (they know how to do their job the best) but you also erode authority structures within the workplace. Workers' will seek more and more control (freedom naturally tries to grow) and this, as the Pilot Program worker clearly saw, implies a co-operative workplace in which workers', not managers, decide what to do with the surplus produced. By threatening power, you threaten profits (or, more correctly, who controls the profit and where it goes). With the control over production and who gets to control any surplus in danger, it is unsurprising that companies soon abandon such schemes and return to the old, less efficient, hierarchical schemes based on "Do what you are told, for as long as you are told." Such a regime is hardly fit for free people and, as Noble notes, the regime that replaced the GE Pilot Program was "designed to 'break' the pilots of their new found 'habits' of self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-respect." [Op. Cit., p. 307]
Thus the experience of workers' control project within capitalist firms indicates well that capitalism cannot "leave you alone" if you are a wage slave.
Moreover, capitalists themselves cannot relax because they must ensure their workers' productivity rises faster than their workers' wages, otherwise their business will fail (see sections C.2 and C.3). This means that every company has to innovate or be left behind, to be put out of business or work. Hence the boss is not "left alone" -- their decisions are made under the duress of market forces, of the necessities imposed by competition on individual capitalists. Restless acquisition -- in this context, the necessity to accumulate capital in order to survive in the market -- always haunts the capitalist. And since unpaid labour is the key to capitalist expansion, work must continue to exist and grow -- necessitating the boss to control the working hours of the worker to ensure that they produce more goods than they receive in wages. The boss is not "left alone" nor do they leave the worker alone.
These facts, based upon the authority relations associated with private property and relentless competition, ensure that the desire to be "left alone" cannot be satisfied under capitalism.
As Murray Bookchin observes:
"Despite their assertions of autonomy and distrust of state authority . . . classical liberal thinkers did not in the last instance hold to the notion that the individual is completely free from lawful guidance. Indeed, their interpretation of autonomy actually presupposed quite definite arrangements beyond the individual -- notably, the laws of the marketplace. Individual autonomy to the contrary, these laws constitute a social organising system in which all 'collections of individuals' are held under the sway of the famous 'invisible hand' of competition. Paradoxically, the laws of the marketplace override the exercise of 'free will' by the same sovereign individuals who otherwise constitute the "collection of individuals." ["Communalism: The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism", p. 4, Democracy and Nature no. 8, pp. 1-17]
Human interaction is an essential part of life. Anarchism proposes to eliminate only undesired social interactions and authoritarian impositions, which are inherent in capitalism and indeed in any hierarchical form of socio-economic organisation (e.g. state socialism). Hermits soon become less than human, as social interaction enriches and develops individuality. Capitalism may attempt to reduce us to hermits, only "connected" by the market, but such a denial of our humanity and individuality inevitably feeds the spirit of revolt. In practice the "laws" of the market and the hierarchy of capital will never "leave one alone," but instead, crush one's individuality and freedom. Yet this aspect of capitalism conflicts with the human "instinct for freedom," as Noam Chomsky describes it, and hence there arises a counter-tendency toward radicalisation and rebellion among any oppressed people (see section J).
One last point. The desire to "be left alone" often expresses two drastically different ideas -- the wish to be your own master and manage your own affairs and the desire by bosses and landlords to have more power over their property. However, the authority exercised by such owners over their property is also exercised over those who use that property. Therefore, the notion of "being left alone" contains two contradictory aspects within a class ridden and hierarchical society. Obviously anarchists are sympathetic to the first, inherently libertarian, aspect -- the desire to manage your own life, in your own way -- but we reject the second aspect and any implication that it is in the interests of the governed to leave those in power alone. Rather, it is in the interest of the governed to subject those with authority over them to as much control as possible -- for obvious reasons.
Therefore, working people are more or less free to the extent that they restrict the ability of their bosses to be "left alone." One of the aims of anarchists within a capitalist society is ensure that those in power are not "left alone" to exercise their authority over those subject to it. We see solidarity, direct action and workplace and community organisation as a means of interfering with the authority of the state, capitalists and property owners until such time as we can destroy such authoritarian social relationships once and for all.
Hence anarchist dislike of the term "laissez-faire" -- within a class society it can only mean protecting the powerful against the working class (under the banner of "neutrally" enforcing property rights and so the power derived from them). However, we are well aware of the other, libertarian, vision expressed in the desire to be "left alone." That is the reason we have discussed why capitalist society can never actually achieve that desire -- it is handicapped by its hierarchical and competitive nature -- and how such a desire can be twisted into a means of enhancing the power of the few over the many.
B.5 Is capitalism empowering and based on human action?
A key element of the social vision propounded by capitalism, particularly "libertarian" capitalism, is that of "voting" by the "customer," which is compared to political voting by the "citizen." According to Milton Friedman, "when you vote in the supermarket, you get precisely what you voted for and so does everyone else." Such "voting" with one's pocket is then claimed to be an example of the wonderful "freedom" people enjoy under capitalism (as opposed to "socialism," always equated by right-wingers with state socialism, which will be discussed in section H). However, in evaluating this claim, the difference between customers and citizens is critical.
The customer chooses between products on the shelf that have been designed and built by others for the purpose of profit. The consumer is the end-user, essentially a spectator rather than an actor, merely choosing between options created elsewhere by others. Market decision making is therefore fundamentally passive and reactionary, i.e. based on reacting to developments initiated by others. In contrast, the "citizen" is actively involved, at least ideally, in all stages of the decision making process, either directly or through elected delegates. Therefore, given decentralised and participatory-democratic organisations, decision making by citizens can be pro-active, based on human action in which one takes the initiative and sets the agenda oneself. Indeed, most supporters of the "citizen" model support it precisely because it actively involves individuals in participating in social decision making, so creating an educational aspect the process and developing the abilities and powers of those involved.
In addition, the power of the consumer is not evenly distributed across society. Thus the expression "voting" when used in a market context expresses a radically different idea than the one usually associated with it. In political voting everyone gets one vote, in the market it is one vote per dollar. What sort of "democracy" is it that gives one person more votes than tens of thousands of others combined?
Therefore the "consumer" idea fails to take into account the differences in power that exist on the market as well as assigning an essentially passive role to the individual. At best they can act on the market as isolated individuals through their purchasing power. However, such a position is part of the problem for, as E.F. Schumacher argues, the "buyer is essentially a bargain hunter; he is not concerned with the origin of the goods or the conditions under which they have been produced. His sole concern is to obtain the best value for money." He goes on to note that the market "therefore respects only the surface of society and its significance relates to the momentary situation as it exists there and then. There is no probing into the depths of things, into the natural or social facts that lie behind them." [Small is Beautiful, p. 29]
Indeed, the "customer" model actually works against any attempt to "probe" the facts of things. Firstly, consumers rarely know the significance or implications of the goods they are offered because the price mechanism withholds such information from them. Secondly, because the atomistic nature of the market makes discussion about the "why" and "how" of production difficult -- we get to choose between various "whats". Instead of critically evaluating the pros and cons of certain economic practices, all we are offered is the option of choosing between things already produced. We can only re-act when the damage is already done by picking the option which does least damage (often we do not have even that choice). And to discover a given products social and ecological impact we have to take a pro-active role by joining groups which provide this sort of information (information which, while essential for a rational decision, the market does not and cannot provide).
Moreover, the "consumer" model fails to recognise that the decisions we make on the market to satisfy our "wants" are determined by social and market forces. What we are capable of wanting is relative to the forms of social organisation we live in. For example, people choose to buy cars because General Motors bought up and destroyed the tram network in the 1930s and people buy "fast food" because they have no time to cook because of increasing working hours. This means that our decisions within the market are often restricted by economic pressures. For example, the market forces firms, on pain of bankruptcy, to do whatever possible to be cost-effective. Firms that pollute, have bad working conditions and so on often gain competitive advantage in so doing and other firms either have to follow suit or go out of business. A "race to the bottom" ensures, with individuals making "decisions of desperation" just to survive. Individual commitments to certain values, in other words, may become irrelevant simply because the countervailing economic pressures are simply too intense (little wonder Robert Owen argued that the profit motive was "a principle entirely unfavourable to individual and public happiness").
And, of course, the market also does not, and cannot, come up with goods that we do not want in our capacity as consumers but desire to protect for future generations or because of ecological reasons. By making the protection of the planet, eco-systems and other such "goods" dependent on the market, capitalism ensures that unless we put our money where our mouth is we can have no say in the protection of such goods as eco-systems, historical sites, and so on. The need to protect such "resources" in the long term is ignored in favour of short-termism -- indeed, if we do not "consume" such products today they will not be there tomorrow. Placed within a society that the vast majority of people often face difficulties making ends meet, this means that capitalism can never provide us with goods which we would like to see available as people (either for others or for future generations or just to protect the planet) but cannot afford or desire as consumers.
It is clearly a sign of the increasing dominance of capitalist ideology that the "customer" model is being transferred to the political arena. This reflects the fact that the increasing scale of political institutions has reinforced the tendency noted earlier for voters to become passive spectators, placing their "support" behind one or another "product" (i.e. party or leader). As Murray Bookchin comments, "educated, knowledgeable citizens become reduced to mere taxpayers who exchange money for 'services.'" [Remaking Society, p. 71] In practice, due to state centralism, this turns the political process into an extension of the market, with "citizens" being reduced to "consumers." Or, in Erich Fromm's apt analysis, "The functioning of the political machinery in a democratic country is not essentially different from the procedure on the commodity market. The political parties are not too different from big commercial enterprises, and the professional politicians try to sell their wares to the public." [The Sane Society, pp. 186-187]
But does it matter? Friedman suggests that being a customer is better than being a citizen as you get "precisely" what you, and everyone else, wants.
The key questions here are whether people always get what they want when they shop. Do consumers who buy bleached newsprint and toilet paper really want tons of dioxins and other organochlorides in rivers, lakes and coastal waters? Do customers who buy cars really want traffic jams, air pollution, motorways carving up the landscape and the greenhouse effect? And what of those who do not buy these things? They are also affected by the decisions of others. The notion that only the consumer is affected by his or her decision is nonsense -- as is the childish desire to get "precisely" what you want, regardless of the social impact.
Perhaps Friedman could claim that when we consume we also approve of its impact. But when we "vote" on the market we cannot say that we approved of the resulting pollution (or distribution of income or power) because that was not a choice on offer. Such changes are pre-defined or an aggregate outcome and can only be chosen by a collective decision. In this way we can modify outcomes we could bring about individually but which harm us collectively. And unlike the market, in politics we can change our minds and revert back to a former state, undue the mistakes made. No such option is available on the market.
So Friedman's claims that in elections "you end up with something different from what you voted for" is equally applicable to the market place.
These considerations indicate that the "consumer" model of human action is somewhat limited (to say the least!). Instead we need to recognise the importance of the "citizen" model, which we should point out includes the "consumer" model within it. Taking part as an active member of the community does not imply that we stop making individual consumption choices between those available, all it does is potentially enrich our available options by removing lousy choices (such as ecology or profit, cheap goods or labour rights, family or career).
In addition we must stress its role in developing those who practice the "citizen" model and how it can enrich our social and personal life. Being active within participatory institutions fosters and develops an active, "public-spirited" type of character. Citizens, because they are making collective decisions have to weight other interests as well as their own and so consider the impact on themselves, others, society and the environment of possible decisions. It is, by its very nature, an educative process by which all benefit by developing their critical abilities and expanding their definition of self-interest to take into account themselves as part of a society and eco-system as well as as an individual. The "consumer" model, with its passive and exclusively private/money orientation develops few of people's faculties and narrows their self-interest to such a degree that their "rational" actions can actually (indirectly) them.
As Noam Chomsky argues, it is "now widely realised that the economists 'externalities' can no longer be consigned to footnotes. No one who gives a moment's thought to the problems of contemporary society can fail to be aware of the social costs of consumption and production, the progressive destruction of the environment, the utter irrationality of the utilisation of contemporary technology, the inability of a system based on profit or growth maximisation to deal with needs that can only be expressed collectively, and the enormous bias this system imposes towards maximisation of commodities for personal use in place of the general improvement of the quality of life..." [Radical Priorities, p. 223]
Thus "citizen" model takes on board the fact that the sum of rational individual decisions may not yield a rational collective outcome (which, we must add, harms the individuals involved and so works against their self-interest). Social standards, created and enriched by a process of discussion and dialogue can be effective in realms where the atomised "consumer" model is essentially powerless to achieve constructive social change, nevermind protect the individual from "agreeing" to "decisions of desperation" that leave them and society as a whole worse off (see also sections E.4 and E.5).
This is not to suggest that anarchists desire to eliminate individual decision making, far from it. An anarchist society will be based upon individual's making decisions on what they want to consume, where they want to work, what kind of work they want to do and so on. So the aim of the "citizen" model is not to "replace" the "consumer" model, but only to improve the social environment within which we make our individual consumption decisions. What the "citizen" model of human action desires is to place such decisions within a social framework, one that allows to take an active part in improving the quality of life for us all by removing "Hobson choices" as far as possible.
B.6 But will not the decisions made by intelligent individuals with their own financial success or failure on the line be better most of the time?
This question refers to an argument commonly used by capitalists to justify the fact that investment decisions are removed from public control under capitalism, with private investors making all the decisions. Clearly the assumption behind this argument is that individuals suddenly lose their intelligence when they get together and discuss their common interests. But surely, through debate, we can enrich our ideas by social interaction. In the marketplace we do not discuss but instead act as atomised individuals.
This issue involves the "Isolation Paradox," according to which the very logic of individual decision-making is different from that of collective decision-making. An example is the "tyranny of small decisions." Let us assume that in the soft drink industry some companies start to produce (cheaper) non-returnable bottles. The end result of this is that most, if not all, the companies making returnable bottles lose business and switch to non-returnables. Result? Increased waste and environmental destruction.
This is because market price fails to take into account social costs and benefits, indeed it mis-estimates them for both buyer/seller and to others not involved in the transaction. This is because, as Schumacher points out, the "strength of the idea of private enterprise lies in its terrifying simplicity. It suggests that the totality of life can be reduced to one aspect - profits..." [Small is Beautiful, p. 215] But life cannot be reduced to one aspect without impoverishing it and so capitalism "knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."
Therefore the market promotes "the tyranny of small decisions" and this can have negative outcomes for those involved. The capitalist "solution" to this problem is no solution, namely to act after the event. Only after the decisions have been made and their effects felt can action be taken. But by then the damage has been done. Can suing a company really replace a fragile eco-system? In addition, the economic context has been significantly altered, because investment decisions are often difficult to unmake.
In other words, the operations of the market provide an unending source of examples for the argument that the aggregate results of the pursuit of private interest may well be collectively damaging. And as collectives are made up of individuals, that means damaging to the individuals involved. The remarkable ideological success of "free market" capitalism is to identify the anti-social choice with self-interest, so that any choice in the favour of the interests which we share collectively is treated as a piece of self-sacrifice. However, by atomising decision making, the market often actively works against the self-interest of the individuals that make it up.
Game theory is aware that the sum of rational choices do not automatically yield a rational group outcome. Indeed, it terms such situations as "collective action" problems. By not agreeing common standards, a "race to the bottom" can ensue in which a given society reaps choices that we are individuals really don't want. The rational pursuit of individual self-interest leaves the group, and so most individuals, worse off. The problem is not bad individual judgement (far from it, the individual is the only person able to know what is best for them in a given situation). It is the absence of social discussion and remedies that compels people to make unbearable choices because the available menu presents no good options.
By not discussing the impact of their decisions with everyone who will be affected, the individuals in question have not made a better decision. Of course, under our present highly centralised statist and capitalist system, such a discussion would be impossible to implement, and its closest approximation -- the election process -- is too vast, bureaucratic and dominated by wealth to do much beyond passing a few toothless laws which are generally ignored when they hinder profits.
However, let's consider what the situation would be like under libertarian socialism, where the local community assemblies discuss the question of returnable bottles along with the workforce. Here the function of specific interest groups (such as consumer co-operatives, ecology groups, workplace Research and Development action committees and so on) would play a critical role in producing information. Knowledge, as Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc. knew, is widely dispersed throughout society and the role of interested parties is essential in making it available to others. Based upon this information and the debate it provokes, the collective decision reached would most probably favour returnables over waste. This would be a better decision from a social and ecological point of view, and one that would benefit the individuals who discussed and agreed upon its effects on themselves and their society.
In other words, anarchists think we have to take an active part in creating the menu as well as picking options from it which reflect our individual tastes and interests.
It needs to be emphasised that such a system does not involve discussing and voting on everything under the sun, which would paralyse all activity. To the contrary, most decisions would be left to those interested (e.g. workers decide on administration and day-to-day decisions within the factory), the community decides upon policy (e.g. returnables over waste). Neither is it a case of electing people to decide for us, as the decentralised nature of the confederation of communities ensures that power lies in the hands of local people.
This process in no way implies that "society" decides what an individual is to consume. That, like all decisions affecting the individual only, is left entirely up to the person involved. Communal decision-making is for decisions that impact both the individual and society, allowing those affected by it to discuss it among themselves as equals, thus creating a rich social context within which individuals can act. This is an obvious improvement over the current system, where decisions that often profoundly alter people's lives are left to the discretion of an elite class of managers and owners, who are supposed to "know best."
There is, of course, the danger of "tyranny of the majority" in any democratic system, but in a direct libertarian democracy, this danger would be greatly reduced, for reasons discussed in section I.5.6 ( Won't there be a danger of a "tyranny of the majority" under libertarian socialism?).
B.7 What classes exist within modern society?
For anarchists, class analysis is an important means of understanding the world and what is going on in it. While recognition of the fact that classes actually exist is less prevalent now than it once was, this does not mean that classes have ceased to exist. Quite the contrary. As we'll see, it means only that the ruling class has been more successful than before in obscuring the existence of class.
Class can be objectively defined: the relationship between an individual and the sources of power within society determines his or her class. We live in a class society in which a few people possess far more political and economic power than the majority, who usually work for the minority that controls them and the decisions that affect them. This means that class is based both on exploitation and oppression, with some controlling the labour of others for their own gain. The means of oppression have been indicated in earlier parts of section B, while section C (What are the myths of capitalist economics?) indicates exactly how exploitation occurs within a society apparently based on free and equal exchange. In addition, it also highlights the effects on the economic system itself of this exploitation. The social and political impact of the system and the classes and hierarchies it creates is discussed in depth in section D (How does statism and capitalism affect society?).
We must emphasise at the outset that the idea of the "working class" as composed of nothing but industrial wage slaves is simply false. It is not applicable today, if it ever was. Power, in terms of hire/fire and investment decisions, is the important thing. Ownership of capital as a means of determining a person's class is not as useful as once was, since even many working-class people now own shares (although not enough to live on or to give them any say in how a company is run) and since most large companies are owned by other large companies, through pension funds, multinationals, etc. Hence we now have a situation in which the people who have massive power may technically be "salary slaves" (managing directors, etc.) while, obviously, they are members of the ruling class in practice.
For most anarchists, there are two main classes:
(1) Working class -- those who have to work for a living but have no real control over that work or other major decisions that affect them, i.e. order-takers. This class also includes the unemployed, pensioners, etc., who have to survive on handouts from the state. They have little wealth and little (official) power. This class includes the growing service worker sector, most (if not the vast majority) of "white collar" workers as well as traditional "blue collar" industrial workers.
(2) Ruling class -- those who control investment decisions, determine high level policy, set the agenda for capital and state. This is the elite at the top, owners or top managers of large companies, multinationals and banks, owners of large amounts of land, top state officials, politicians, the aristocracy, and so forth. They have real power within the economy and/or state, and so control society. This groups consists of around the top 5-15% of the population.
Obviously there are "grey" areas in any society, individuals and groups who do not fit exactly into either the working or ruling class. Such people include those who work but have some control over other people, e.g. power of hire/fire. These are the people who make the minor, day-to-day decisions concerning the running of capital or state. This area includes lower to middle management, professionals, and small capitalists.
There is some argument within the anarchist movement whether this "grey" area constitutes another ("middle") class or not. Most anarchists say no, most of this "grey" area are working class, others (such as the British Class War Federation) argue it is a different class. One thing is sure, all anarchists agree that this "grey" area has an interest in getting rid of the current system just as much as the working class (we should point out here that what is usually called "middle class" in the USA and elsewhere is nothing of the kind, and usually refers to working class people with decent jobs, homes, etc. As class is a considered a rude word in polite society in the USA, such mystification is to be expected).
So, there will be exceptions to this classification scheme. However, most of society share common interests, as they face the economic uncertainties and hierarchical nature of capitalism.
We do not aim to fit all of reality into this class scheme, but only to develop it as reality indicates, based on our own experiences of the changing patterns of modern society. Nor is this scheme intended to suggest that all members of a class have identical interests or that competition does not exist between members of the same class, as it does between the classes. Capitalism, by its very nature, is a competitive system. As Malatesta pointed out, "one must bear in mind that on the one hand the bourgeoisie (the property owners) are always at war amongst themselves. . . and that on the other hand the government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends, as every servant and every protector, to achieve its own emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects. Thus the game of the swings, the manoeuvres, the concessions and the withdrawals, the attempts to find allies among the people and against the conservatives, and among conservatives against the people, which is the science of the governors, and which blinds the ingenuous and phlegmatic who always wait for salvation to come down to them from above." [Anarchy, p. 22]
However, no matter how much inter-elite rivalry goes on, at the slightest threat to the system from which they benefit, the ruling class will unite to defend their common interests. Once the threat passes, they will return to competing among themselves for power, market share and wealth. Unfortunately, the working class rarely unites as a class, mainly due to its chronic economic and social position. At best, certain sections unite and experience the benefits and pleasure of co-operation. Anarchists, by their ideas and action try to change this situation and encourage solidarity within the working class in order to resist, and ultimately get rid of, capitalism. However, their activity is helped by the fact that those in struggle often realise that "solidarity is strength" and so start to work together and unite their struggles against their common enemy. Indeed, history is full of such developments.
B.7.1 But do classes actually exist?
So do classes actually exist, or are anarchists making them up? The fact that we even need to consider this question points to the pervasive propaganda efforts by the ruling class to suppress class consciousness, which will be discussed further on. First, however, let's examine some statistics, taking the USA as an example (mostly because class is seldom talked about there, although its business class is very class conscious). We find that in 1986, the share of total US income was as follows:
One third went to the bottom 60% of society, one third to the next 30% and one third to the top 10%. In terms of total national wealth, the bottom 90% owned a third, another third went to the next 9% of the population and one third went to the top 1%. Since then, the top 1% has managed to raise its share to 40%, showing that class lines have been greatly tightened during the past decade (see below).
In 1983 the richest 0.5% owned more than 45% of the nation's privately held net wealth. This included 47% of all corporated stock, 62% of non-taxable bonds, and 77% of all trusts. 60% of all US families owned less than $5,000 in assets. Half owned $2,300 in assets, or less. In 1986, the top 1% of families owned about 53% of all income-producing wealth. Only about 51 million Americans directly own stocks or shares in stock mutual funds, which is about 19% of the American population of which the top 5% own 95% of all shares. The richest 1% of households in America (about 2 million adults) owned 35% of the stock owned by individuals in 1992 - with the top 10% owning over 81%. The bottom 90% of the US population has a smaller share (23%) of all kinds of investable capital than the richest 0.5% (who own 29%).
The USA leads the industrialised world in poverty -- 17% of those below age 18 and around 15% of the total population. 22% earn less than half the median income. Forty percent of African-American children lived in poverty in 1986.
All these facts prove that classes do in fact exist, with wealth and power concentrating at the top of society, in the hands of the few.
The following figures from the US Census Bureau show the rate at which wealth polarisation, and hence the tightening of class lines, has been preceding over the past 20 years:
Percentage Share of Aggregate Household Income by Quintile: 1974-1994
Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest Top 5% 1974: 4.3 10.6 17.0 24.6 43.5 16.5 1984: 4.0 9.9 16.3 24.6 45.2 17.1 1994: 3.6 8.9 15.0 23.4 49.1 21.2
Percentage increase/decrease from '74 to '94:
Lowest Quintile: -16% Second Quintile: -16% Middle Quintile: -11.7% Fourth Quintile: -4.9% Highest Quintile : +12.9% Top 5% : +28.5%
In 1994, the income gap between the top quintile (49.1%) and the bottom quintile (3.6%) was the biggest ever recorded. Clearly it was not just households in the bottom two-fifths who lost ground over the past 20 years, but those in the middle as well. The earnings of a typical full time-worker fell more than $300 in 1993. In fact, as can be seen from the percentage decreases, an amazing 80% of the population was in decline while the top 20% got richer. It's actually more skewed than that, however, because 9.9 percent of the top fifth's 12.9 percent increase went to the upper 5 percent.
Although the percentage share of wealth owned by the richest individuals and families in the US has been rising steadily since the mid-fifties, the rate of concentration at the top accelerated more during the eighties than at any time on record. According to a report in the New York Times, the number of billionaires nearly doubled in 1986 -- from fourteen to twenty-six -- in one year alone!
By far the biggest gainers from the wealth concentration of the last two decades have been the super-rich. No wonder US politicians have recently been dusting off their anti-class rhetoric!
The recent increase in wealth polarisation is due partly to the increased globalisation of capital, which lowers the wages of workers in the advanced industrial countries by putting them in competition for jobs with workers in the Third World. This, combined with "trickle-down" economic policies of tax cuts for the wealthy, tax raises for the working classes, the maintaining of a "natural" law of unemployment (which weakens unions and workers power) and cutbacks in social programs, has seriously eroded living standards for all but the upper strata -- a process that is clearly leading toward social breakdown, with effects that will be discussed later (see section D.9).
Moreover, as Doug Henwood notes, "[i]nternational measures put the United States in a disgraceful light. . . The soundbite version of the LIS [Luxembourg Income Study] data is this: for a country th[at] rich, [it] ha[s] a lot of poor people." Henwood looked at both relative and absolute measures of income and poverty using the cross-border comparisons of income distribution provided by the LIS and discovered that "[f]or a country that thinks itself universally middle class [i.e. middle income], the United States has the second-smallest middle class of the nineteen countries for which good LIS data exists." Only Russia, a country in near-total collapse was worse (40.9% of the population where middle income compared to 46.2% in the USA. Households were classed as poor is their incomes were under 50 percent of the national medium; near-poor, between 50 and 62.5 percent; middle, between 62.5 and 150 percent; and well-to-do, over 150 percent. The USA rates for poor (19.1%), near-poor (8.1%) and middle (46.2%) were worse than European countries like Germany (11.1%, 6.5% and 64%), France (13%, 7.2% and 60.4%) and Belgium (5.5%, 8.0% and 72.4%) as well as Canada (11.6%, 8.2% and 60%) and Australia (14.8%, 10% and 52.5%).
The reasons for this? Henwood states that the "reasons are clear -- weak unions and a weak welfare state. The social-democratic states -- the ones that interfere most with market incomes -- have the largest [middles classes]. The US poverty rate is nearly twice the average of the other eighteen." Needless to say, "middle class" as defined by income is a very blunt term (as Henwood states). It says nothing about property ownership or social power, for example, but income is often taken in the capitalist press as the defining aspect of "class" and so is useful to analyse in order to refute the claims that the free-market promotes general well-being (i.e. a larger "middle class"). That the most free-market nation has the worse poverty rates and the smallest "middle class" indicates well the anarchist claim that capitalism, left to its own devices, will benefit the strong (the ruling class) over the weak (the working class) via "free exchanges" on the "free" market (as we argue in section C.7, only during periods of full employment -- and/or wide scale working class solidarity and militancy -- does the balance of forces change in favour of working class people. Little wonder, then, that periods of full employment also see falling inequality -- see James K. Galbraith's Created Unequal for more details on the correlation of unemployment and inequality).
Of course, it could be objected that this relative measure of poverty and income ignores the fact that US incomes are among the highest in the world, meaning that the US poor may be pretty well off by foreign standards. Henwood refutes this claim, noting that "even on absolute measures, the US performance is embarrassing. LIS researcher Lane Kenworthy estimated poverty rates for fifteen countries using the US poverty line as the benchmark. . . Though the United States has the highest average income, it's far from having the lowest poverty rate." Only Italy, Britain and Australia had higher levels of absolute poverty (and Australia exceeded the US value by 0.2%, 11.9% compared to 11.7%). Thus, in both absolute and relative terms, the USA compares badly with European countries. [Doug Henwood, "Booming, Borrowing, and Consuming: The US Economy in 1999", pp.120-33, Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 129-31]
Faced with these facts, many supporters of capitalism still deny the obvious. They do so by confusing a caste system with a class system. In a caste system, those born into it stay in it all their lives. In a class system, the membership of classes can and does change over time. Therefore, it is claimed, what is important is not the existence of classes but of income mobility. According to this argument, if there is a high level of income mobility then the degree of inequality in any given year is unimportant. This is because the redistribution of income over a person's life time would be very even. Unfortunately for the supporters of capitalism this view is deeply flawed.
Firstly, the fact of income mobility and changes in the membership of classes does not cancel out the fact that a class system is marked by differences in power which accompany the differences in income. In other words, because it is possible (in theory) for everyone to become a boss this does not make the power and authority that bosses have over their workers (or the impact of their wealth on society) any more legitimate (just because everyone - in theory - can become a member of the government does not make government any less authoritarian). Because the membership of the boss class can change does not negate the fact that such a class exists.
Secondly, what income mobility that does exist under capitalism is limited.
Taking the USA as an example (usually considered one of the most capitalist countries in the world) there is income mobility, but not enough to make income inequality irrelevant. Census data show that 81.6 percent of those families who were in the bottom quintile of the income distribution in 1985 were still there in the next year; for the top quintile, it was 76.3 percent.
Over longer time periods, there is more mixing but still not that much and those who do slip into different quintiles are typically at the borders of their category (e.g. those dropping out of the top quintile are typically at the bottom of that group). Only around 5% of families rise from bottom to top, or fall from top to bottom. In other words, the class structure of a modern capitalist society is pretty solid and "much of the movement up and down represents fluctuations around a fairly fixed long term distribution." [Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity, p. 143]
Perhaps under a "pure" capitalist system things would be different? Ronald Reagan helped make capitalism more "free market" in the 1980s, but there is no indication that income mobility increased significantly during that time. In fact, according to one study by Greg Duncan of the University of Michigan, the middle class shrank during the 1980s, with fewer poor families moving up or rich families moving down. Duncan compared two periods. During the first period (1975 to 1980) incomes were more equal than they are today. In the second (1981 to 1985) income inequality began soaring. In this period there was a reduction in income mobility upward from low to medium incomes of over 10%.
Here are the exact figures [cited by Paul Krugman, "The Rich, the Right, and the Facts," The American Prospect no. 11, Fall 1992, pp. 19-31]:
Percentages of families making transitions to and from
middle class (5-year period before and after 1980)
Transition Before 1980 After 1980 Middle income to low income 8.5 9.8 Middle income to high income 5.8 6.8 Low income to middle income 35.1 24.6 High income to middle income 30.8 27.6
Little wonder, then, that Doug Henwood argues that "the final appeal of apologists of the American way is an appeal to our legendary mobility" fails. In fact, "people generally don't move far from the income class they are born into, and there is little difference between US and European mobility patterns. In fact, the United States has the largest share of what the OECD called 'low-wage' workers, and the poorest performance on the emergence from the wage cellar of any country it studied." [Op. Cit., p. 130]
Therefore income mobility does not make up for a class system and its resulting authoritarian social relationships and inequalities in terms of liberty, health and social influence. And the facts suggest that the capitalist dogma of "meritocracy" that attempts to justify this system has little basis in reality.
B.7.2 Why is the existence of classes denied?
It is clear, then, that classes do exist, and equally clear that individuals can rise and fall within the class structure -- though, of course, it's easier to become rich if you're born in a rich family than a poor one. Thus James W. Loewen reports that "ninety-five percent of the executives and financiers in America around the turn of the century came from upper-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds. Fewer than 3 percent started as poor immigrants or farm children. Throughout the nineteenth century, just 2 percent of American industrialists came from working-class origins" [in "Lies My Teacher Told Me" citing William Miller, "American Historians and the Business Elite," in Men in Business, pp. 326-28; cf. David Montgomery, Beyond Equality, pg. 15] And this was at the height of USA "free market" capitalism. According to a survey done by C. Wright Mills and reported in his book The Power Elite, about 65% of the highest-earning CEOs in American corporations come from wealthy families. Meritocracy, after all, does not imply a "classless" society, only that some mobility exists between classes. Yet we continually hear that class is an outmoded concept; that classes don't exist any more, just atomised individuals who all enjoy "equal opportunity," "equality before the law," and so forth. So what's going on?
The fact that the capitalist media are the biggest promoters of the "end-of-class" idea should make us wonder exactly why they do it. Whose interest is being served by denying the existence of classes? Clearly it is those who run the class system, who gain the most from it, who want everyone to think we are all "equal." Those who control the major media don't want the idea of class to spread because they themselves are members of the ruling class, with all the privileges that implies. Hence they use the media as propaganda organs to mould public opinion and distract the middle and working classes from the crucial issue, i.e., their own subordinate status. This is why the mainstream news sources give us nothing but superficial analyses, biased and selective reporting, outright lies, and an endless barrage of yellow journalism, titillation, and "entertainment," rather than talking about the class nature of capitalist society (see D.3, "How does wealth influence the mass media?")
The universities, think tanks, and private research foundations are also important propaganda tools of the ruling class. This is why it is virtually taboo in mainstream academic circles to suggest that anything like a ruling class even exists in the United States. Students are instead indoctrinated with the myth of a "pluralist" and "democratic" society -- a Never-Never Land where all laws and public policies supposedly get determined only by the amount of "public support" they have -- certainly not by any small faction wielding power in disproportion to its size.
To deny the existence of class is a powerful tool in the hands of the powerful. As Alexander Berkman points out, "[o]ur social institutions are founded on certain ideas; so long as the latter are generally believed, the institutions built on them are safe. . . the weakening of the ideas which support the evil and oppressive conditions means the ultimate breakdown of government and capitalism." [ABC of Anarchism, p. xv]
Isolated consumers are in no position to act for themselves. One individual standing alone is easily defeated, whereas a union of individuals supporting each other is not. Throughout the history of capitalism there have been attempts by the ruling class -- often successful -- to destroy working class organisations. Why? Because in union there is power -- power which can destroy the class system as well as the state and create a new world.
That's why the very existence of class is denied by the elite. It's part of their strategy for winning the battle of ideas and ensuring that people remain as atomised individuals. By "manufacturing consent" (to use Walter Lipman's expression for the function of the media), force need not be used. By limiting the public's sources of information to propaganda organs controlled by state and corporate elites, all debate can be confined within a narrow conceptual framework of capitalist terminology and assumptions, and anything premised on a different conceptual framework can be maraginalised. Thus the average person is brought to accept current society as "fair" and "just," or at least as "the best available," because no alternatives are ever allowed to be discussed.
B.7.3 What do anarchists mean by "class consciousness"?
Given that the existence of classes is often ignored or considered unimportant ("boss and worker have common interests") by the mainstream media, its important to continually point out the facts of the situation: that a wealthy elite run the world and the vast majority are subjected to hierarchy and work to enrich others.
This is why anarchists stress the need for "class consciousness," for recognising that classes exist and that their interests are in conflict. To be class conscious means that we are aware of the objective facts and act appropriately to change them. Although class analysis may at first appear to be a novel idea, the conflicting interests of the classes is well recognised on the other side of the class divide. For example, James Madison in the Federalist Paper #10 states that "those who hold and those who are without have ever formed distinct interests in society." For anarchists, class consciousness means to recognise what the bosses already know: the importance of solidarity with others in the same class position as oneself and of acting together as equals to attain common goals. However, anarchists think that class consciousness must also mean to be aware of all forms of hierarchical power, not just economic oppression.
It could therefore be argued that anarchists actually want an "anti-class" consciousness to develop -- that is, for people to recognise that classes exist, to understand why they exist, and act to abolish the root causes for their continued existence ("class consciousness," argues Vernon Richards, "but not in the sense of wanting to perpetuate classes, but the consciousness of their existence, an understanding of why they exist, and a determination, informed by knowledge and militancy, to abolish them." [The Impossibilities of Social Democracy, p. 133]). In short, anarchists want to eliminate classes, not universalise the class of "worker" (which would presuppose the continued existence of capitalism).
More importantly, class consciousness does not involve "worker worship." To the contrary, as Murray Bookchin points out, "[t]he worker begins to become a revolutionary when he undoes his [or her] 'workerness', when he [or she] comes to detest his class status here and now, when he begins to shed. . . his work ethic, his character-structure derived from industrial discipline, his respect for hierarchy, his obedience to leaders, his consumerism, his vestiges of puritanism." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 189] For, in the end, anarchists "cannot build until the working class gets rid of its illusions, its acceptance of bosses and faith in leaders." [Marie-Louise Berneri, Neither East Nor West, p. 19]
It may be objected that there are only individuals and anarchists are trying to throw a lot of people in a box and put a label like "working class" on them. In reply, anarchists agree, yes, there are "only" individuals but some of them are bosses, most of them are working class. This is an objective division within society which the ruling class does its best to hide but which comes out during social struggle. And such struggle is part of the process by which more and more oppressed people subjectivity recognise the objective facts. And by more and more people recognising the facts of capitalist reality, more and more people will want to change them.
Currently there are working class people who want an anarchist society and there are others who just want to climb up the hierarchy to get to a position where they can impose their will to others. But that does not change the fact that their current position is that they are subjected to the authority of hierarchy and so can come into conflict with it. And by so doing, they must practise self-activity and this struggle can change their minds, what they think, and so they become radicalised. This, the radicalising effects of self-activity and social struggle, is a key factor in why anarchists are involved in it. It is an important means of creating more anarchists and getting more and more people aware of anarchism as a viable alternative to capitalism.
Ultimately, it does not matter what class you are, it's what you believe in that matters. And what you do. Hence we see anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin, former members of the Russian ruling class, or like Malatesta, born into an Italian middle class family, rejecting their backgrounds and its privileges and becoming supporters of working class self-liberation. But anarchists base their activity primarily on the working class (including peasants, self-employed artisans and so on) because the working class is subject to hierarchy and so have a real need to resist to exist. This process of resisting the powers that be can and does have a radicalising effect on those involved and so what they believe in and what they do changes.
We recognise, therefore, that only those at the bottom of society have a self-interest in freeing themselves from the burden of those at the top, and so we see the importance of class consciousness in the struggle of oppressed people for self-liberation. Thus, "[f]ar from believing in the messianic role of the working class, the anarchists' aim is to abolish the working class in so far as this term refers to the underprivileged majority in all existing societies. . . What we do say is that no revolution can succeed without the active participation of the working, producing, section of the population. . . The power of the State, the values of authoritarian society can only be challenged and destroyed by a greater power and new values." [Vernon Richards, The Raven, no. 14, pp. 183-4] Anarchists also argue that one of the effects of direct action to resist oppression and exploitation of working class people would be the creation of such a power and new values, values based on respect for individual freedom and solidarity (see sections J.2 and J.4 on direct action and its liberating potential).
For anarchists, "[t]he class struggle does not centre around material exploitation alone but also around spiritual exploitation, . . . [as well as] psychological and environmental oppression." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., pp. 229-230] This means that we do not consider economic oppression to be the only important thing, ignoring struggles and forms of oppression outside the workplace. To the contrary, workers are human beings, not the economically driven robots of capitalist and Leninist mythology. They are concerned about everything that affects them -- their parents, their children, their friends, their neighbours, their planet and, very often, total strangers.