The contradiction and tragedy of communist-anarchism Part II Share This:





The contradiction and tragedy of communist-anarchism Part II

by Ken Knudsen



The obvious question again arises, "Who is to decide what another man needs?" Anarchists once more must leave that decision up to the individual involved. To do otherwise would be to invite tyranny, for who can better determine a person's needs than the person himself?* But if the individual is to decide for himself what he needs, what is to prevent him from "needing" a yacht and his own private airplane? If you think we've got a consumer society now, what would it be like if everything was free for the needing? You may object that luxuries aren't needs. But that is just begging the question: what is a luxury, after all? To millions of people in the world today food is a luxury. To the English central heating is a luxury, while to the Americans it's a necessity. The Nazi concentration camps painfully demonstrated just how little man actually NEEDS. But is that the criterion communists would use for determining need? I should hope (and think) not. So it seems to me that this posses a definite dilemma for the communist-anarchist: what do you do about unreasonable, irrational, or extravagant "needs"? What about the man who "needs" a new pair of shoes every month? "Nonsense," you may say, "no one needs new shoes that often." Well, how often then? Once a year? Every five years perhaps? And who will decide? Then what about me? I live in Switzerland and I'm crazy about grape jam - but unfortunately the Swiss aren't. I feel that a jam sandwich isn't a jam sandwich unless it's made with GRAPE jam. But tell that to the Swiss! If Switzerland were a communist federation, there wouldn't be a single communal warehouse which would stock grape jam. If I were to go up to the commissar-in-charge-of-jams and ask him to put in a requisition for a few cases, he would think I was nuts. "Grapes are for wine," he'd tell me with infallible logic, "and more people drink wine than eat grape jam." "But I'm a vegetarian," I plead, "and just think of all the money I'm saving the commune by not eating any of that expensive meat." After which he would lecture me on the economics of jam making, tell me that a grape is more valuable in its liquid form, and chastise me for being a throwback to bourgeois decadence.



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* I'm reminded here of the tale of the man who decided his mule didn't NEED any food. He set out to demonstrate his theory and almost proved his point when, unfortunately, the beast died. Authoritarian communism runs a similar risk when it attempts to determine the needs of others.

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And what about you, dear reader? Have you no individual idiosyncrasies? Perhaps you've got a thing about marshmallows. What if the workers in the marshmallow factories decide (under workers' control, of course) that marshmallows are bad for your health, too difficult to make, or just simply a capitalist plot? Are you to be denied the culinary delights that only marshmallows can offer, simply because some distant workers get it into their heads that a marshmallowless world would be a better world?



Even today people are beginning to complain about the injustices of the (relatively mild) welfare state. Theodore Roszak writes that in British schools there has been a "strong trend away from the sciences over the past four years" and that people are showing "annoyed concern" and "loudly observing that the country is not spending its money to produce poets and Egyptologists - and then demanding a sharp cut in university grants and stipends."[27] If people are upset NOW at the number of poets and Egyptologists that they are supporting, what would it be like if EVERYONE could simply take up his favourite hobby as his chosen profession? I suspect it wouldn't be long before our professional chess players and mountain climbers found the warehouse stocks dwindling to nothing. Social unrest would surely increase in direct proportion to the height of the trash piling up on the doorsteps and the subsequent yearning for the "good old days" would bring about the inevitable counter-revolution. Such would be the fate of the anarchist-communist utopia.



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Peter Kropotkin opens his chapter on "Consumption and Production" in "The Conquest of Bread" with the following words:



"If you open the works of any economist you will find that he begins with PRODUCTION, the analysis of means employed nowadays for the creation of wealth; division of labour, manufacture, machinery, accumulation of capital. From Adam Smith to Marx, all have proceeded along these lines. Only in the latter parts of their books do they treat of CONSUMPTION, that is to say, of the means necessary to satisfy the needs of individuals ....Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must create the wherewithal to satisfy them. But before producing anything, must you not feel the need of it? Is it not necessity that first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land, to make implements, and later on to invent machinery? Is it not the study of needs that should govern production?"[28]



When I first came upon these words, I must admit I was rather surprised. "What have we here," I thought, "is the prince of anarchist-communism actually going to come out in favour of the consumer?" It didn't take long to find out that he wasn't. Most communists try very hard to ignore the fact that the sole purpose of production is consumption. But not Kropotkin; he first recognises the fact - and THEN he ignores it. It's only a matter of three pages before he gets his head back into the sand and talks of "how to reorganise PRODUCTION so as to really satisfy all needs." [My emphasis]



Under communism it is not the consumer that counts; it is the producer. The consumer is looked upon with scorn - a loathsome, if necessary, evil. The worker, on the other hand, is depicted as all that is good and heroic. It is not by accident that the hammer and sickle find themselves as the symbols of the Russian "workers' paradise." Can you honestly imagine a communist society raising the banner of bread and butter and declaring the advent of the "consumers' paradise"? If you can, your imagination is much more vivid than mine.



But that's exactly what individualist-anarchists would do. Instead of the communist's "workers' control" (i.e. a producers' democracy), we advocate a consumers' democracy. Both democracies - like all democracies - would in fact be dictatorships. The question for anarchists is which dictatorship is the least oppressive? The answer should be obvious. But, judging from the ratio of communists to individualists in the anarchist movement, apparently it's not. So perhaps I'd better explain.



The workers in some given industry decide that item A should no longer be produced and decide instead to manufacture item B. Now consumer X, who never liked item A anyway, couldn't care less; but poor Y feels his life will never be the same without A. What can Y do? He's just a lone consumer and consumers have no rights in this society. But maybe other Y's agree with him. A survey is taken and it is shown that only 3% of all consumers regret the passing of A. But can't some compromise be arrived at? How about letting just one tiny factory make A's? Perhaps the workers agree to this accommodation. Perhaps not. In any case the workers' decision is final. There is no appeal. The Y's are totally at the mercy of the workers and if the decision is adverse, they'll just have to swallow hard and hope that next week item C isn't taken away as well. So much for the producers' dictatorship.



Let's now take a look at the consumers' dictatorship. Consumers are finicky people - they want the best possible product at the lowest possible price. To achieve this end they will use ruthless means. The fact that producer X asks more for his product than Y asks for his similar product is all that the consumer needs to know. He will mercilessly buy Y's over X's. The extenuating circumstances matter little to him. X may have ten children and a mother-in-law to feed. The consumer still buys from Y. Such is the nature of the consumers' dictatorship over the producer.



Now there is a fundamental difference between these two dictatorships. In the one the worker says to the consumer, "I will produce what I want and if you don't like it you can lump it." In the other the consumer says to the worker, "You will produce what I want and if you don't I will take my business elsewhere." It doesn't take the sensitive antennae of an anarchist to see which of these two statements is the more authoritarian. The first leaves no room for argument; there are no exceptions, no loopholes for the dissident consumer to crawl through. The second, on the other hand, leaves a loophole so big that it is limited only by the worker's imagination and abilities. If a producer is not doing as well as his competitor, there's a reason for it. He may not be suited for that particular work, in which case he will change jobs. He may be charging too much for his goods or services, in which case he will have to lower his costs, profits, and/or overhead to meet the competition. But one thing should be made clear: each worker is also a consumer and what the individual looses in his role as producer by having to cut his costs down to the competitive market level, he makes up in his role as consumer by being able to buy at the lowest possible prices.*



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* The usual objection raised to a "consumers' democracy" is that capitalists have used similar catch phrases in order to justify capitalism and keep the workers in a subjugated position. Individualists sustain this objection but point out that capitalists are being inconsistent by not practicing what they preach. If they did, they would no longer be in a position of privilege, living off the labour of others. This point is made clear in the section on capitalism later in this article.

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Let us turn our attention now to the various philosophies used by communists to justify their social system. The exponents of any social change invariably claim that people will be "happier" under their system than they now are under the status quo. The big metaphysical question then becomes, "What is happiness?" Up until recently the communists - materialists par excellence - used to say it was material well-being. The main gripe they had against capitalism was that the workers were NECESSARILY in a state of increasing poverty. Bakunin, echoing Marx, said that "the situation of the proletariat...by virtue of inevitable economic law, must and will become worse every year." [29] But since World War II this pillar of communist thought has become increasingly shaky - particularly in the United States where "hard hats" are now pulling in salaries upwards of four quid an hour. This fact has created such acute embarrassment among the faithful that many communists are now seeking a new definition of happiness which has nothing to do with material comfort.



Very often what they do in discarding the Marxist happiness albatross is to saddle themselves with a Freudian one.* The new definition of happiness our neo-Freudian communists arrive at is usually derived from what Otto Fenichel called the "Nirvana principle." The essence of this theory is that both life-enhancing behaviour (e.g. sexual intercourse, eating) and life-inhibiting behaviour (e.g. war, suicide) are alternative ways of escaping from tension. Thus Freud's life instinct and death instinct find their common ground in Nirvana where happiness means a secure and carefree existence. This sounds to me very much like the Christian conception of heaven. But with communism, unlike heaven, you don't have to give up your life to get in - just your humanity.



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* Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing are among the latest gurus of the libertarian left. And it's not uncommon in anarchist circles to hear a few sympathetic words about Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilisation," despite the author's totalitarian tendencies.

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Homer Lane used to have a little anecdote which illustrates the point I'm trying to make about the communist idea of happiness:



"A dog and a rabbit are running down a field. Both apparently are doing the same thing, running and using their capacity to the full. Really there is a great difference between them. Their motives are different. One is happy, the other unhappy. The dog is happy because he is trying to do something with the hope of achieving it. The rabbit is unhappy because he is afraid. A few minutes later the position is reversed; the rabbit has reached his burrow and is inside panting, whilst the dog is sitting outside panting. The rabbit is now happy because it is safe, and therefore no longer afraid. The dog is unhappy because his hope has not been realised. Here we have the two kinds of happiness of which each one of us is capable - happiness based on the escape from danger, and happiness based on the fulfillment of a hope, which is the only true happiness."[30]



I leave it to the reader as an exercise in triviality to decide which of these two types of happiness is emphasised by communism. While on the subject of analogies, I'd like to indulge in one of my own. Generally speaking there are two kinds of cats: the "lap cat" and the "mouser." The former leads a peaceful existence, leaving granny's lap only long enough to make a discreet trip to its sandbox and to lap up a saucer of milk. The latter lives by catching mice in the farmer's barn and never goes near the inside of the farm house. The former is normally fat and lazy; the latter skinny and alert. Despite the lap cat's easier life, the mouser wouldn't exchange places with him if he could, while the lap cat COULDN'T exchange places if he would. Here we have two cats - perhaps even from the same litter - with two completely different attitudes toward life. The one expects a clean sandbox and food twice a day - and he is rarely disappointed. The other has to work for a living, but generally finds the reward worth while. "Now what has this got to do with the subject at hand?" I hear you cry. Just this: the communists would make "lap cats" of us all. "But what's so bad about that?" you may ask. To which I would have to reply (passing over the stinky problem of WHO will change the sandbox), "Have you ever tried to 'domesticate' a mouser?"



Communism, in its quest for a tranquil, tensionless world, inevitably harks back to the Middle Ages. Scratch a communist and chances are pretty good you'll find a mediaevalist underneath. Paul Goodman, for example, derives his ideal "community of scholars" from Bologna and Paris models based in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [31] Erich Fromm writes longingly of "the sense of security which was characteristic of man in the Middle Ages....In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralised whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a knight, and not AN INDIVIDUAL who HAPPENED to have this or that occupation. The social order was conceived as a natural order, and being a definite part of it gave man a feeling of security and of belonging. There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition. [32] Kropotkin goes even further than Fromm. I'd like to examine his position in some detail because I think it is very instructive of how the communist mentality works. In perhaps his best-known book, "Mutual Aid," Kropotkin devotes two of its eight chapters to glorifying the Middle Ages, which he boldly claim were one of "the two greatest periods of [mankind's] history."[33] (The other one being ancient Greece. He doesn't say how he reconciles this with the fact that Greece was based firmly on a foundation of slavery). "No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries...but, unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce." [34] I wonder why? Could it be that everyone was having such a good time that no one found time to record it? Kropotkin writes of the mediaeval cities as "centres of liberty and enlightenment." [35] The mediaeval guilds, he says, answered "a deeply inrooted want of human nature," [36] calling them "organisations for maintaining justice." [37] Let's see what Kropotkin means here by "justice": "If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren MUST come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren MUST keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him - a great affair in those times of pestilences [Kropotkin must have been dozing to admit this in his Utopia] - and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they MUST provide for his children....If a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused of aggression, OR REALLY WAS THE AGGRESSOR, they HAD to support him....They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation; they all paid it....Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of mediaeval life." [38] (My emphasis)



And such is Kropotkin's conception of "justice," which could better be described as a warped sense of solidarity. He goes on to say, "It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify."[39] "We see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the 'mystery' of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation - even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organised on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support." [40] It was such "unity of thought" which Kropotkin thinks "can but excite our admiration." [41]



But where did the common labourer fit into all this? Kropotkin makes the remarkable generalisation that "at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect." [42] As proof he cites the "glorious donations" [43] the workers gave to the cathedrals. These, he says, "bear testimony of their relative well-being." [44] (Just as the Taj Mahal bears testimony of the relative well-being of the people of India, no doubt). "Many aspirations of our modern radicals were already realised in the Middle Ages [and] much of what is described now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact." [45]



As for the material achievements of the Middle Ages, Kropotkin can't find a superlative super enough to describe them - but he tries: "The very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls [i] which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain ....[He displays a bit of 'boldness of imagination' himself (to be quite charitable) when he goes on to say:] Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic [sic] changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years." [46]



Just what were these "magic changes" of which Kropotkin is so proud? He lists about a dozen.[47] Among them are: printing (neglecting to inform us that the Gutenberg press was invented in the middle of the 15th century, sometime after the mediaeval cities "degenerated into centralised states"); steelmaking (neglecting to inform us that steelmaking had been mentioned in the works of Homer and was used continuously since that time); glassmaking (neglecting to inform us that the Encyclopaedia Britannica - to which he contributed numerous articles - devotes to the Middle Ages all of two sentences of a 27 page article on the history of glassmaking); the telescope (neglecting to inform us that it wasn't even invented until 1608); gunpowder and the compass (neglecting to inform us that the Chinese lay earlier claims to both of these inventions); algebra (neglecting to inform us that algebra was in common use in ancient Babylonia and that, although being introduced to mediaeval Europe by the Arabs, no important contributions were made by Europeans until the Renaissance); the decimal system (neglecting to inform us that the Hindus invented the system about a thousand years before it gained any ground in Europe in the 17th century); calendar reform (neglecting to inform us that although Roger Bacon suggested such reform to the Pope in the 13th century, no action was taken until 300 years later under the reign of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582); chemistry (neglecting to inform us of an earlier work of his where he said chemistry was "entirely a product of our [19th] century." [48]) Indeed the only things he mentions as products of the Middle Ages which stand up under scrutiny are counterpoint and, paradoxically, the mechanical clock. To top it all off, he then has the gall to cite Galileo and Copernicus as being "direct descendents" of mediaeval science [49] - somehow managing to ignore the fact that Galileo spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest for supporting the Copernican theory, thanks to that grand mediaeval institution, the Inquisition.



You may be wondering why the people of the Middle Ages let such a Utopia slip through their fingers. Kropotkin cites foreign invasions - notably those of the Mongols, Turks, and Moors [50] - but makes it quite clear that the "greatest and most fatal error of most cities was to base their wealth upon commerce and industry." [51] So here we have it laid bare for all to see: Kropotkin's ideal community would not only return us to the dark ages, but would take away the one thing that could bring us back - commerce and industry.



Rudolf Rocker, the darling of the anarcho-syndicalists, similarly eulogises the Middle Ages. He, too, felt that mediaeval man led a "rich life" [52] which gave "wings to his spirit and prevent[ed] his mental stagnation." [53] But unlike Kropotkin - who chalked up mediaeval solidarity to man's innate "nature" - Rocker (correctly) explains these "fraternal associations" by means of a most unanarchistic concept - Christianity:



"Mediaeval man felt himself to be bound up with a single, uniform culture, a member of a great community extending over all countries, in whose bosom all people found their place. It was the community of Christendom which included all the scattered units of the Christian world and spiritually unified them....The deeper the concept of Christianity took root in men, the easier they overcame all barriers between themselves and others, and the stronger lived in them the consciousness that all belonged to one great community and strove toward a common goal." [54]



So we see that the glue that held these idyllic mediaeval communities together was not Kropotkin's "mutual aid," but rather Christian mysticism. Rocker was perceptive enough to see this; Kropotkin apparently was not. But what both of these men failed to see was that mysticism is the necessary glue of ANY communist society. The mystical Garden of Eden is the ultimate goal of every church of the communist religion. Unfortunately, as every good Christian will tell you, the only way you can stay in the Garden of Eden is to abstain from the "tree of knowledge." Communists are apparently willing to pay this price. Individualists are not. It is communism's intention to carry religion to its ultimate absurdity: it would sacrifice man on the cross of altruism for the sake of - Man.



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I'd like to end my diatribe against communism by quoting another one. This is what one prophetic Frenchman, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, had to say about communism eight years before the "Communist Manifesto" appeared like a spectre to haunt Europe - and like a good French wine, his words seem to have improved with age:



"Communism - or association in a simple form - is the necessary object and original aspiration of the social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilisation. In this state of society, - which the jurists have called 'negative communism', - man draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism - negative as long as man does not produce - tends to become positive and organic through the development of labour and industry. But it is then that the sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of society, communism is the first species of slavery....The disadvantages of communism are so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned communism by an irrevocable decree. The authorities and examples cited in its favour disprove it. The communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports and to war, Even J. J. Rousseau - confounding communism and equality - has said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries ....The greatest danger to which society is exposed today is that of another shipwreck on this rock. Singularly enough, systematic communism - the deliberate negation of property - is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories. The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute property, labour, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective, however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce small communities within the large one, and consequently private property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the lazy though this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man - casting aside his personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections - humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune! Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong.* Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated property, etc. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, - they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labour, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task. Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labour when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgement, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words. Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labour and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort." [55]



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* See footnote on page 5.

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Tomorrow Ken Knudsen's essay continues with a section entitled "Revolution: the Road to Freedom"? Back to category overview Back to news overview Older News Newer News



But, not only would distribution according to need hurt the consumer, it would be grossly unfair to the productive worker who actually makes the goods or performs the necessary services. Suppose, for example, that hardworking farmer Brown goes to the communal warehouse with a load of freshly dug potatoes. While there Brown decides he needs a new pair of boots. Unfortunately there are only a few pairs in stock since Jones the shoemaker quit his job - preferring to spend his days living off Brown's potatoes and writing sonnets about the good life. So boots are rationed. The boot commissar agrees that Brown's boots are pretty shabby but, he points out, Smith the astrologer is in even greater need. Could Brown come back in a month or so when BOTH soles have worn through? Brown walks away in disgust, resolved never again to sweat over his potato patch.Even today people are beginning to complain about the injustices of the (relatively mild) welfare state. Theodore Roszak writes that in British schools there has been a "strong trend away from the sciences over the past four years" and that people are showing "annoyed concern" and "loudly observing that the country is not spending its money to produce poets and Egyptologists - and then demanding a sharp cut in university grants and stipends."[27] If people are upset NOW at the number of poets and Egyptologists that they are supporting, what would it be like if EVERYONE could simply take up his favourite hobby as his chosen profession? I suspect it wouldn't be long before our professional chess players and mountain climbers found the warehouse stocks dwindling to nothing. Social unrest would surely increase in direct proportion to the height of the trash piling up on the doorsteps and the subsequent yearning for the "good old days" would bring about the inevitable counter-revolution. Such would be the fate of the anarchist-communist utopia.* * * * *Peter Kropotkin opens his chapter on "Consumption and Production" in "The Conquest of Bread" with the following words:When I first came upon these words, I must admit I was rather surprised. "What have we here," I thought, "is the prince of anarchist-communism actually going to come out in favour of the consumer?" It didn't take long to find out that he wasn't. Most communists try very hard to ignore the fact that the sole purpose of production is consumption. But not Kropotkin; he first recognises the fact - and THEN he ignores it. It's only a matter of three pages before he gets his head back into the sand and talks of "how to reorganise PRODUCTION so as to really satisfy all needs." [My emphasis]Under communism it is not the consumer that counts; it is the producer. The consumer is looked upon with scorn - a loathsome, if necessary, evil. The worker, on the other hand, is depicted as all that is good and heroic. It is not by accident that the hammer and sickle find themselves as the symbols of the Russian "workers' paradise." Can you honestly imagine a communist society raising the banner of bread and butter and declaring the advent of the "consumers' paradise"? If you can, your imagination is much more vivid than mine.But that's exactly what individualist-anarchists would do. Instead of the communist's "workers' control" (i.e. a producers' democracy), we advocate a consumers' democracy. Both democracies - like all democracies - would in fact be dictatorships. The question for anarchists is which dictatorship is the least oppressive? The answer should be obvious. But, judging from the ratio of communists to individualists in the anarchist movement, apparently it's not. So perhaps I'd better explain.The workers in some given industry decide that item A should no longer be produced and decide instead to manufacture item B. Now consumer X, who never liked item A anyway, couldn't care less; but poor Y feels his life will never be the same without A. What can Y do? He's just a lone consumer and consumers have no rights in this society. But maybe other Y's agree with him. A survey is taken and it is shown that only 3% of all consumers regret the passing of A. But can't some compromise be arrived at? How about letting just one tiny factory make A's? Perhaps the workers agree to this accommodation. Perhaps not. In any case the workers' decision is final. There is no appeal. The Y's are totally at the mercy of the workers and if the decision is adverse, they'll just have to swallow hard and hope that next week item C isn't taken away as well. So much for the producers' dictatorship.Let's now take a look at the consumers' dictatorship. Consumers are finicky people - they want the best possible product at the lowest possible price. To achieve this end they will use ruthless means. The fact that producer X asks more for his product than Y asks for his similar product is all that the consumer needs to know. He will mercilessly buy Y's over X's. The extenuating circumstances matter little to him. X may have ten children and a mother-in-law to feed. The consumer still buys from Y. Such is the nature of the consumers' dictatorship over the producer.Now there is a fundamental difference between these two dictatorships. In the one the worker says to the consumer, "I will produce what I want and if you don't like it you can lump it." In the other the consumer says to the worker, "You will produce what I want and if you don't I will take my business elsewhere." It doesn't take the sensitive antennae of an anarchist to see which of these two statements is the more authoritarian. The first leaves no room for argument; there are no exceptions, no loopholes for the dissident consumer to crawl through. The second, on the other hand, leaves a loophole so big that it is limited only by the worker's imagination and abilities. If a producer is not doing as well as his competitor, there's a reason for it. He may not be suited for that particular work, in which case he will change jobs. He may be charging too much for his goods or services, in which case he will have to lower his costs, profits, and/or overhead to meet the competition. But one thing should be made clear: each worker is also a consumer and what the individual looses in his role as producer by having to cut his costs down to the competitive market level, he makes up in his role as consumer by being able to buy at the lowest possible prices.*-----------------------------------* The usual objection raised to a "consumers' democracy" is that capitalists have used similar catch phrases in order to justify capitalism and keep the workers in a subjugated position. Individualists sustain this objection but point out that capitalists are being inconsistent by not practicing what they preach. If they did, they would no longer be in a position of privilege, living off the labour of others. This point is made clear in the section on capitalism later in this article.------------------------------------* * * * *Let us turn our attention now to the various philosophies used by communists to justify their social system. The exponents of any social change invariably claim that people will be "happier" under their system than they now are under the status quo. The big metaphysical question then becomes, "What is happiness?" Up until recently the communists - materialists par excellence - used to say it was material well-being. The main gripe they had against capitalism was that the workers were NECESSARILY in a state of increasing poverty. Bakunin, echoing Marx, said that "the situation of the proletariat...by virtue of inevitable economic law, must and will become worse every year." [29] But since World War II this pillar of communist thought has become increasingly shaky - particularly in the United States where "hard hats" are now pulling in salaries upwards of four quid an hour. This fact has created such acute embarrassment among the faithful that many communists are now seeking a new definition of happiness which has nothing to do with material comfort.Very often what they do in discarding the Marxist happiness albatross is to saddle themselves with a Freudian one.* The new definition of happiness our neo-Freudian communists arrive at is usually derived from what Otto Fenichel called the "Nirvana principle." The essence of this theory is that both life-enhancing behaviour (e.g. sexual intercourse, eating) and life-inhibiting behaviour (e.g. war, suicide) are alternative ways of escaping from tension. Thus Freud's life instinct and death instinct find their common ground in Nirvana where happiness means a secure and carefree existence. This sounds to me very much like the Christian conception of heaven. But with communism, unlike heaven, you don't have to give up your life to get in - just your humanity.----------------------------------------------* Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing are among the latest gurus of the libertarian left. And it's not uncommon in anarchist circles to hear a few sympathetic words about Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilisation," despite the author's totalitarian tendencies.-----------------------------------------------Homer Lane used to have a little anecdote which illustrates the point I'm trying to make about the communist idea of happiness:"A dog and a rabbit are running down a field. Both apparently are doing the same thing, running and using their capacity to the full. Really there is a great difference between them. Their motives are different. One is happy, the other unhappy. The dog is happy because he is trying to do something with the hope of achieving it. The rabbit is unhappy because he is afraid. A few minutes later the position is reversed; the rabbit has reached his burrow and is inside panting, whilst the dog is sitting outside panting. The rabbit is now happy because it is safe, and therefore no longer afraid. The dog is unhappy because his hope has not been realised. Here we have the two kinds of happiness of which each one of us is capable - happiness based on the escape from danger, and happiness based on the fulfillment of a hope, which is the only true happiness."[30]I leave it to the reader as an exercise in triviality to decide which of these two types of happiness is emphasised by communism. While on the subject of analogies, I'd like to indulge in one of my own. Generally speaking there are two kinds of cats: the "lap cat" and the "mouser." The former leads a peaceful existence, leaving granny's lap only long enough to make a discreet trip to its sandbox and to lap up a saucer of milk. The latter lives by catching mice in the farmer's barn and never goes near the inside of the farm house. The former is normally fat and lazy; the latter skinny and alert. Despite the lap cat's easier life, the mouser wouldn't exchange places with him if he could, while the lap cat COULDN'T exchange places if he would. Here we have two cats - perhaps even from the same litter - with two completely different attitudes toward life. The one expects a clean sandbox and food twice a day - and he is rarely disappointed. The other has to work for a living, but generally finds the reward worth while. "Now what has this got to do with the subject at hand?" I hear you cry. Just this: the communists would make "lap cats" of us all. "But what's so bad about that?" you may ask. To which I would have to reply (passing over the stinky problem of WHO will change the sandbox), "Have you ever tried to 'domesticate' a mouser?"Communism, in its quest for a tranquil, tensionless world, inevitably harks back to the Middle Ages. Scratch a communist and chances are pretty good you'll find a mediaevalist underneath. Paul Goodman, for example, derives his ideal "community of scholars" from Bologna and Paris models based in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [31] Erich Fromm writes longingly of "the sense of security which was characteristic of man in the Middle Ages....In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralised whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a knight, and not AN INDIVIDUAL who HAPPENED to have this or that occupation. The social order was conceived as a natural order, and being a definite part of it gave man a feeling of security and of belonging. There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition. [32] Kropotkin goes even further than Fromm. I'd like to examine his position in some detail because I think it is very instructive of how the communist mentality works. In perhaps his best-known book, "Mutual Aid," Kropotkin devotes two of its eight chapters to glorifying the Middle Ages, which he boldly claim were one of "the two greatest periods of [mankind's] history."[33] (The other one being ancient Greece. He doesn't say how he reconciles this with the fact that Greece was based firmly on a foundation of slavery). "No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries...but, unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce." [34] I wonder why? Could it be that everyone was having such a good time that no one found time to record it? Kropotkin writes of the mediaeval cities as "centres of liberty and enlightenment." [35] The mediaeval guilds, he says, answered "a deeply inrooted want of human nature," [36] calling them "organisations for maintaining justice." [37] Let's see what Kropotkin means here by "justice": "If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren MUST come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren MUST keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him - a great affair in those times of pestilences [Kropotkin must have been dozing to admit this in his Utopia] - and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they MUST provide for his children....If a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused of aggression, OR REALLY WAS THE AGGRESSOR, they HAD to support him....They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation; they all paid it....Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of mediaeval life." [38] (My emphasis)And such is Kropotkin's conception of "justice," which could better be described as a warped sense of solidarity. He goes on to say, "It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify."[39] "We see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the 'mystery' of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation - even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organised on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support." [40] It was such "unity of thought" which Kropotkin thinks "can but excite our admiration." [41]But where did the common labourer fit into all this? Kropotkin makes the remarkable generalisation that "at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect." [42] As proof he cites the "glorious donations" [43] the workers gave to the cathedrals. These, he says, "bear testimony of their relative well-being." [44] (Just as the Taj Mahal bears testimony of the relative well-being of the people of India, no doubt). "Many aspirations of our modern radicals were already realised in the Middle Ages [and] much of what is described now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact." [45]As for the material achievements of the Middle Ages, Kropotkin can't find a superlative super enough to describe them - but he tries: "The very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls [i] which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain ....[He displays a bit of 'boldness of imagination' himself (to be quite charitable) when he goes on to say:] Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic [sic] changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years." [46]Just what were these "magic changes" of which Kropotkin is so proud? He lists about a dozen.[47] Among them are: printing (neglecting to inform us that the Gutenberg press was invented in the middle of the 15th century, sometime after the mediaeval cities "degenerated into centralised states"); steelmaking (neglecting to inform us that steelmaking had been mentioned in the works of Homer and was used continuously since that time); glassmaking (neglecting to inform us that the Encyclopaedia Britannica - to which he contributed numerous articles - devotes to the Middle Ages all of two sentences of a 27 page article on the history of glassmaking); the telescope (neglecting to inform us that it wasn't even invented until 1608); gunpowder and the compass (neglecting to inform us that the Chinese lay earlier claims to both of these inventions); algebra (neglecting to inform us that algebra was in common use in ancient Babylonia and that, although being introduced to mediaeval Europe by the Arabs, no important contributions were made by Europeans until the Renaissance); the decimal system (neglecting to inform us that the Hindus invented the system about a thousand years before it gained any ground in Europe in the 17th century); calendar reform (neglecting to inform us that although Roger Bacon suggested such reform to the Pope in the 13th century, no action was taken until 300 years later under the reign of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582); chemistry (neglecting to inform us of an earlier work of his where he said chemistry was "entirely a product of our [19th] century." [48]) Indeed the only things he mentions as products of the Middle Ages which stand up under scrutiny are counterpoint and, paradoxically, the mechanical clock. To top it all off, he then has the gall to cite Galileo and Copernicus as being "direct descendents" of mediaeval science [49] - somehow managing to ignore the fact that Galileo spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest for supporting the Copernican theory, thanks to that grand mediaeval institution, the Inquisition.You may be wondering why the people of the Middle Ages let such a Utopia slip through their fingers. Kropotkin cites foreign invasions - notably those of the Mongols, Turks, and Moors [50] - but makes it quite clear that the "greatest and most fatal error of most cities was to base their wealth upon commerce and industry." [51] So here we have it laid bare for all to see: Kropotkin's ideal community would not only return us to the dark ages, but would take away the one thing that could bring us back - commerce and industry.Rudolf Rocker, the darling of the anarcho-syndicalists, similarly eulogises the Middle Ages. He, too, felt that mediaeval man led a "rich life" [52] which gave "wings to his spirit and prevent[ed] his mental stagnation." [53] But unlike Kropotkin - who chalked up mediaeval solidarity to man's innate "nature" - Rocker (correctly) explains these "fraternal associations" by means of a most unanarchistic concept - Christianity:So we see that the glue that held these idyllic mediaeval communities together was not Kropotkin's "mutual aid," but rather Christian mysticism. Rocker was perceptive enough to see this; Kropotkin apparently was not. But what both of these men failed to see was that mysticism is the necessary glue of ANY communist society. The mystical Garden of Eden is the ultimate goal of every church of the communist religion. Unfortunately, as every good Christian will tell you, the only way you can stay in the Garden of Eden is to abstain from the "tree of knowledge." Communists are apparently willing to pay this price. Individualists are not. It is communism's intention to carry religion to its ultimate absurdity: it would sacrifice man on the cross of altruism for the sake of - Man.* * * * *I'd like to end my diatribe against communism by quoting another one. This is what one prophetic Frenchman, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, had to say about communism eight years before the "Communist Manifesto" appeared like a spectre to haunt Europe - and like a good French wine, his words seem to have improved with age:"Communism - or association in a simple form - is the necessary object and original aspiration of the social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilisation. In this state of society, - which the jurists have called 'negative communism', - man draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism - negative as long as man does not produce - tends to become positive and organic through the development of labour and industry. But it is then that the sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of society, communism is the first species of slavery....The disadvantages of communism are so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned communism by an irrevocable decree. The authorities and examples cited in its favour disprove it. The communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports and to war, Even J. J. Rousseau - confounding communism and equality - has said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries ....The greatest danger to which society is exposed today is that of another shipwreck on this rock. Singularly enough, systematic communism - the deliberate negation of property - is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories. The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute property, labour, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective, however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce small communities within the large one, and consequently private property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the lazy though this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man - casting aside his personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections - humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune! Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong.* Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated property, etc. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, - they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labour, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task. Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labour when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgement, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words. Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labour and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort." [55]----------------------------------------* See footnote on page 5.----------------------------------------Tomorrow Ken Knudsen's essay continues with a section entitled "Revolution: the Road to Freedom"? Printer Friendly Wendy McElroy - Thursday 25 June 2009 - 08:07:48 - Permalink I am delighted to publish an original essay by friend and Voluntaryist Ken Knudson on the intellectual contradiction that is "communist-anarchism" and the tragic debacle of trying to translate the contradiction into reality. Wendymcelroy.com blog should be cited with a link back if the essay is quoted or reprinted. Part I appeared yesterday; published below is Part II. Tomorrow Ken Knudson's essay continues with a section entitled "Revolution: the Road to Freedom"? The author invites comments and feedback menckenfan©gmail.com by Ken KnudsenThe obvious question again arises, "Who is to decide what another man needs?" Anarchists once more must leave that decision up to the individual involved. To do otherwise would be to invite tyranny, for who can better determine a person's needs than the person himself?* But if the individual is to decide for himself what he needs, what is to prevent him from "needing" a yacht and his own private airplane? If you think we've got a consumer society now, what would it be like if everything was free for the needing? You may object that luxuries aren't needs. But that is just begging the question: what is a luxury, after all? To millions of people in the world today food is a luxury. To the English central heating is a luxury, while to the Americans it's a necessity. The Nazi concentration camps painfully demonstrated just how little man actually NEEDS. But is that the criterion communists would use for determining need? I should hope (and think) not. So it seems to me that this posses a definite dilemma for the communist-anarchist: what do you do about unreasonable, irrational, or extravagant "needs"? What about the man who "needs" a new pair of shoes every month? "Nonsense," you may say, "no one needs new shoes that often." Well, how often then? Once a year? Every five years perhaps? And who will decide? Then what about me? I live in Switzerland and I'm crazy about grape jam - but unfortunately the Swiss aren't. I feel that a jam sandwich isn't a jam sandwich unless it's made with GRAPE jam. But tell that to the Swiss! If Switzerland were a communist federation, there wouldn't be a single communal warehouse which would stock grape jam. If I were to go up to the commissar-in-charge-of-jams and ask him to put in a requisition for a few cases, he would think I was nuts. "Grapes are for wine," he'd tell me with infallible logic, "and more people drink wine than eat grape jam." "But I'm a vegetarian," I plead, "and just think of all the money I'm saving the commune by not eating any of that expensive meat." After which he would lecture me on the economics of jam making, tell me that a grape is more valuable in its liquid form, and chastise me for being a throwback to bourgeois decadence.----------------------------------------------------------* I'm reminded here of the tale of the man who decided his mule didn't NEED any food. He set out to demonstrate his theory and almost proved his point when, unfortunately, the beast died. Authoritarian communism runs a similar risk when it attempts to determine the needs of others.-----------------------------------------------------------And what about you, dear reader? Have you no individual idiosyncrasies? Perhaps you've got a thing about marshmallows. What if the workers in the marshmallow factories decide (under workers' control, of course) that marshmallows are bad for your health, too difficult to make, or just simply a capitalist plot? Are you to be denied the culinary delights that only marshmallows can offer, simply because some distant workers get it into their heads that a marshmallowless world would be a better world?