J.5 What alternative social organisations do anarchists create?

Anarchism is all about "do it yourself": people helping each other out in order to secure a good society to live within and to protect, extend and enrich their personal freedom. As such anarchists are keenly aware of the importance of building alternatives to both capitalism and the state in the here and now. Only by creating practical alternatives can we show that anarchism is a viable possibility and train ourselves in the techniques and responsibilities of freedom:

"If we put into practice the principles of libertarian communism within our organisations, the more advanced and prepared we will be on that day when we come to adopt it completely." [C.N.T. member, quoted by Graham Kelsey, Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 79]

This idea (to quote the IWW) of "building a new world in the shell of the old" is a long standing one in anarchism. Proudhon during the 1848 revolution "propose[d] that a provisional committee be set up" in Paris and "liaise with similar committees" elsewhere in France. This would be "a body representative of the proletariat . . ., imperium in imperio [a state within the state], in opposition to the bourgeois representatives." He proclaimed to working class people that "a new society be founded in the heart of the old society" for "the government can do nothing for you. But you can do everything for yourselves." [Property is Theft!, pp. 321-2] This was echoed by Bakunin (see section H.2.8) while for revolutionary syndicalists the aim was "to constitute within the bourgeois State a veritable socialist (economic and anarchic) State." [Fernand Pelloutier, quoted by Jeremy Jennings, Syndicalism in France, p. 22] By so doing we help create the environment within which individuals can manage their own affairs and develop their abilities to do so. In other words, we create "schools of anarchism" which lay the foundations for a better society as well as promoting and supporting social struggle against the current system. Make no mistake, the alternatives we discuss in this section are not an alternative to direct action and the need for social struggle - they are an expression of social struggle and a form of direct action. They are the framework by which social struggle can build and strengthen the anarchist tendencies within capitalist society which will ultimately replace it.

Therefore it is wrong to think that libertarians are indifferent to making life more bearable, even more enjoyable, under capitalism. A free society will not just appear from nowhere, it will be created by individuals and communities with a long history of social struggle and organisation. For as Wilheim Reich so correctly pointed out:

"Quite obviously, a society that is to consist of 'free individuals,' to constitute a 'free community' and to administer itself, i.e. to 'govern itself,' cannot be suddenly created by decrees. It has to evolve organically." [The Mass Psychology of Fascism, p. 241]

It is this organic evolution that anarchists promote when they create libertarian alternatives within capitalist society. These alternatives (be they workplace or community unions, co-operatives, mutual banks, and so on) are marked by certain common features such as being self-managed, being based upon equality, decentralised and working with other groups and associations within a confederal network based upon mutual aid and solidarity. In other words, they are anarchist in both spirit and structure and so create a practical bridge between now and the future free society.

Anarchists consider the building of alternatives as a key aspect of their activity under capitalism. This is because they, like all forms of direct action, are "schools of anarchy" and also because they make the transition to a free society easier. "Through the organisations set up for the defence of their interests," in Malatesta's words, "the workers develop an awareness of the oppression they suffer and the antagonism that divides them from the bosses and as a result begin to aspire to a better life, become accustomed to collective struggle and solidarity and win those improvements that are possible within the capitalist and state regime." [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 95] By creating viable examples of "anarchy in action" we can show that our ideas are practical and convince people that they are not utopian. Therefore this section of the FAQ will indicate the alternatives anarchists support and why we support them.

The approach anarchists take to this activity could be termed "social unionism" -- the collective action of groups to change certain aspects (and, ultimately, all aspects) of their lives. This takes many different forms in many different areas (some of which, not all, are discussed here) -- but they share the same basic aspects of collective direct action, self-organisation, self-management, solidarity and mutual aid. These are a means "of raising the morale of the workers, accustom them to free initiative and solidarity in a struggle for the good of everyone and render them capable of imagining, desiring and putting into practice an anarchist life." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 28] Kropotkin summed up the anarchist perspective well when he argued that working class people had "to form their own organisations for a direct struggle against capitalism" and to "take possession of the necessaries for production, and to control production." [Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 359] As historian J. Romero Maura correctly summarised, the "anarchist revolution, when it came, would be essentially brought about by the working class. Revolutionaries needed to gather great strength and must beware of underestimating the strength of reaction" and so anarchists "logically decided that revolutionaries had better organise along the lines of labour organisations." ["The Spanish case", pp. 60-83, Anarchism Today, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 66]

As will quickly become obvious in this discussion (as if it had not been so before!) anarchists are firm supporters of "self-help," an expression that has been sadly corrupted (like freedom) by the right in recent times. Like freedom, self-help should be saved from the clutches of the right who have no real claim to that expression. Indeed, anarchism was created from and based itself upon working class self-help -- for what other interpretation can be gathered from Proudhon's 1848 statement that "the proletariat must emancipate itself"? [Property is Theft!, p. 306] So Anarchists have great faith in the abilities of working class people to work out for themselves what their problems are and act to solve them.

Anarchist support and promotion of alternatives is a key aspect of this process of self-liberation, and so a key aspect of anarchism. While strikes, boycotts, and other forms of high profile direct action may be more "sexy" than the long and hard task of creating and building social alternatives, these are the nuts and bolts of creating a new world as well as the infrastructure which supports the other activities. These alternatives involve both combative organisations (such as community and workplace unions) as well as more defensive and supportive ones (such as co-operatives and mutual banks). Both have their part to play in the class struggle, although the combative ones are the most important in creating the spirit of revolt and the possibility of creating an anarchist society.

We must also stress that anarchists look to organic tendencies within social struggle as the basis of any alternatives we try to create. As Kropotkin put it, anarchism is based "on an analysis of tendencies of an evolution that is already going on in society, and on induction therefrom as to the future." It is "representative . . . of the creative, instructive power of the people themselves who aimed at developing institutions of common law in order to protect them from the power-seeking minority." Anarchism bases itself on those tendencies that are created by the self-activity of working class people and while developing within capitalism are in opposition to it -- such tendencies are expressed in organisational form as unions and other forms of workplace struggle, co-operatives (both productive and credit), libertarian schools, and so on. For anarchism was "born among the people -- in the struggles of real life and not in the philosopher's studio" and owes its "origin to the constructive, creative activity of the people . . . and to a protest -- a revolt against the external force which had thrust itself upon" social institutions. [Anarchism, p. 158, p. 147, p. 150 and p. 149] This "creative activity" is expressed in the organisations created in the class struggle by working people, some of which we discuss in this section of the FAQ. Therefore, the alternatives anarchists support should not be viewed in isolation of social struggle and working class resistance to hierarchy -- the reverse in fact, as these alternatives are almost always expressions of that struggle.

Lastly, we should note we do not list all the forms of organisation anarchists create. For example, we have ignored solidarity groups (for workers on strike or in defence of struggles in other countries) and organisations which are created to campaign against or for certain issues or reforms. Anarchists are in favour of such organisations and work within them to spread anarchist ideas, tactics and organisational forms. However, these interest groups (while very useful) do not provide a framework for lasting change as do the ones we highlight below (see section J.1.4 for more details on anarchist opinions on such "single issue" campaigns). We have also ignored what have been called "intentional communities." This is when a group of individuals squat or buy land and other resources within capitalism and create their own anarchist commune in it. Most anarchists reject this idea as capitalism and the state must be fought, not ignored. In addition, due to their small size, they are rarely viable experiments in communal living and nearly always fail after a short time (for a good summary of Kropotkin's attitude to such communities, which can be taken as typical, see Graham Purchase's Evolution & Revolution [pp. 122-125]). Dropping out will not stop capitalism and the state and while such communities may try to ignore the system, they will find that the system will not ignore them -- they will come under competitive and ecological pressures from capitalism whether they like it or not assuming they avoid direct political interference.

So the alternatives we discuss here are attempts to create anarchist alternatives within capitalism and which aim to change it (either by revolutionary or evolutionary means). They are based upon challenging capitalism and the state, not ignoring them by dropping out. Only by a process of direct action and building alternatives which are relevant to our daily lives can we revolutionise and change both ourselves and society.

Community unionism is our term for the process of creating participatory communities (called "communes" in classical anarchism) within the current society in order to transform it.

Basically, a community union is the creation of interested members of a community who decide to form an organisation to fight against injustice and for improvements locally. It is a forum by which inhabitants can raise issues that affect themselves and others and provide a means of solving these problems. As such, it is a means of directly involving local people in the life of their own communities and collectively solving the problems facing them as both individuals and as part of a wider society. In this way, local people take part in deciding what affects them and their community and create a self-managed "dual power" to the local and national state. They also, by taking part in self-managed community assemblies, develop their ability to participate and manage their own affairs, so showing that the state is unnecessary and harmful to their interests. Politics, therefore, is not separated into a specialised activity that only certain people do (i.e. politicians). Instead, it becomes communalised and part of everyday life and in the hands of all.

As would be imagined, like the participatory communities that would exist in an anarchist society (see section I.5), the community union would be based upon a mass assembly of its members. Here would be discussed the issues that affect the membership and how to solve them. Thus issues like rent increases, school closures, rising cost of living, taxation, cuts and state-imposed "reforms" to the nature and quality of public services, utilities and resources, repressive laws and so on could be debated and action taken to combat them. Like the communes of a future anarchy, these community unions would be confederated with other unions in different areas in order to co-ordinate joint activity and solve common problems. These confederations would be based upon self-management, mandated and recallable delegates and the creation of administrative action committees to see that the memberships decisions are carried out.

The community union could also raise funds for strikes and other social protests, organise pickets, boycotts and generally aid others in struggle. By organising their own forms of direct action (such as tax and rent strikes, environmental protests and so on) they can weaken the state while building an self-managed infrastructure of co-operatives to replace the useful functions the state or capitalist firms currently provide. So, in addition to organising resistance to the state and capitalist firms, these community unions could play an important role in creating an alternative economy within capitalism. For example, such unions could have a mutual bank or credit union associated with them which could allow funds to be gathered for the creation of self-managed co-operatives and social services and centres. In this way a communalised co-operative sector could develop, along with a communal confederation of community unions and their co-operative banks.

Such community unions have been formed in many different countries in recent years to fight against numerous attacks on the working class. In the late 1980s and early 1990s groups were created in neighbourhoods across Britain to organise non-payment of the Conservative government's Community Charge (popularly known as the poll tax, this tax was independent of income and was based on the electoral register). Federations of these groups were created to co-ordinate the struggle and pool resources and, in the end, ensured that the government withdrew the hated tax and helped push Thatcher out of government. In Ireland, groups were formed to defeat the privatisation of the water industry by a similar non-payment campaign in the mid-1990s.

However, few of these groups have been taken as part of a wider strategy to empower the local community but the few that have indicate the potential of such a strategy. This potential can be seen from two examples of libertarian community organising in Europe, one in Italy and another in Spain, while the neighbourhood assemblies in Argentina show that such popular self-government can and does develop spontaneously in struggle.

In Southern Italy, anarchists organised a very successful Municipal Federation of the Base (FMB) in Spezzano Albanese. This organisation, in the words of one activist, is "an alternative to the power of the town hall" and provides a "glimpse of what a future libertarian society could be." Its aim is "the bringing together of all interests within the district. In intervening at a municipal level, we become involved not only in the world of work but also the life of the community . . . the FMB make counter proposals [to Town Hall decisions], which aren't presented to the Council but proposed for discussion in the area to raise people's level of consciousness. Whether they like it or not the Town Hall is obliged to take account of these proposals." In addition, the FMB also supports co-operatives within it, so creating a communalised, self-managed economic sector within capitalism. Such a development helps to reduce the problems facing isolated co-operatives in a capitalist economy -- see section J.5.11 -- and was actively done in order to "seek to bring together all the currents, all the problems and contradictions, to seek solutions" to such problems facing co-operatives. ["Community Organising in Southern Italy", pp. 16-19, Black Flag, no. 210, p. 17 and p. 18]

Elsewhere in Europe, the long, hard work of the C.N.T. in Spain has also resulted in mass village assemblies being created in the Puerto Real area, near Cadiz. These community assemblies came about to support an industrial struggle by shipyard workers. One C.N.T. member explains: "Every Thursday of every week, in the towns and villages in the area, we had all-village assemblies where anyone connected with the particular issue [of the rationalisation of the shipyards], whether they were actually workers in the shipyard itself, or women or children or grandparents, could go along . . . and actually vote and take part in the decision making process of what was going to take place." With such popular input and support, the shipyard workers won their struggle. However, the assembly continued after the strike and "managed to link together twelve different organisations within the local area that are all interested in fighting . . . various aspects" of capitalism including health, taxation, economic, ecological and cultural issues. Moreover, the struggle "created a structure which was very different from the kind of structure of political parties, where the decisions are made at the top and they filter down. What we managed to do in Puerto Real was make decisions at the base and take them upwards." [Anarcho-Syndicalism in Puerto Real: from shipyard resistance to direct democracy and community control, p. 6]

More recently, the December 2001 revolt against neo-liberalism in Argentina saw hundreds of neighbourhood assemblies created across the country. These quickly federated into inter-barrial assemblies to co-ordinate struggles. The assemblies occupied buildings, created communal projects like popular kitchens, community centres, day-care centres and built links with occupied workplaces. As one participant put it: "The initial vocabulary was simply: Let's do things for ourselves, and do them right. Let's decide for ourselves. Let's decide democratically, and if we do, then let's explicitly agree that we're all equals here, that there are no bosses . . . We lead ourselves. We lead together. We lead and decide amongst ourselves . . . no one invented it . . . It just happened. We met one another on the corner and decided, enough! . . . Let's invent new organisational forms and reinvent society." Another notes that this was people who "begin to solve problems themselves, without turning to the institutions that caused the problems in the first place." The neighbourhood assemblies ended a system in which "we elected people to make our decisions for us . . . now we will make our own decisions." While the "anarchist movement has been talking about these ideas for years" the movement took them up "from necessity." [Marina Sitrin (ed.), Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, p. 41 and pp. 38-9]

The idea of community organising has long existed within anarchism. Kropotkin pointed to the directly democratic assemblies of Paris during the French Revolution These were "constituted as so many mediums of popular administration, it remained of the people, and this is what made the revolutionary power of these organisations." This ensured that the local revolutionary councils "which sprang from the popular movement was not separated from the people." In this popular self-organisation "the masses, accustoming themselves to act without receiving orders from the national representatives, were practising what was described later on as Direct Self-Government." These assemblies federated to co-ordinate joint activity but it was based on their permanence: "that is, the possibility of calling the general assembly whenever it was wanted by the members of the section and of discussing everything in the general assembly." In short, "the Commune of Paris was not to be a governed State, but a people governing itself directly -- when possible -- without intermediaries, without masters" and so "the principles of anarchism . . . had their origin, not in theoretic speculations, but in the deeds of the Great French Revolution." This "laid the foundations of a new, free, social organisation" and Kropotkin predicted that "the libertarians would no doubt do the same to-day." [Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 201, p. 203, pp. 210-1, p. 210, p. 204 and p. 206]

In Chile during 1925 "a grass roots movement of great significance emerged," the tenant leagues (ligas do arrendatarios). The movement pledged to pay half their rent beginning the 1st of February, 1925, at huge public rallies (it should also be noted that "Anarchist labour unionists had formed previous ligas do arrendatarios in 1907 and 1914."). The tenants leagues were organised by ward and federated into a city-wide council. It was a vast organisation, with 12,000 tenants in just one ward of Santiago alone. The movement also "press[ed] for a law which would legally recognise the lower rents they had begun paying . . . the leagues voted to declare a general strike . . . should a rent law not be passed." The government gave in, although the landlords tried to get around it and, in response, on April 8th "the anarchists in Santiago led a general strike in support of the universal rent reduction of 50 percent." Official figures showed that rents "fell sharply during 1915, due in part to the rent strikes" and for the anarchists "the tenant league movement had been the first step toward a new social order in Chile." [Peter DeShazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile 1902-1927, p. 223, p. 327, p. 223, p. 225 and p. 226] As one Anarchist newspaper put it:

"This movement since its first moments had been essentially revolutionary. The tactics of direct action were preached by libertarians with highly successful results, because they managed to instil in the working classes the idea that if landlords would not accept the 50 percent lowering of rents, they should pay nothing at all. In libertarian terms, this is the same as taking possession of common property. It completes the first stage of what will become a social revolution." [quoted by DeShazo, Op. Cit., p. 226]

A similar concern for community organising and struggle was expressed in Spain. While the collectives during the revolution are well known, the CNT had long organised in the community and around non-workplace issues. As well as neighbourhood based defence committees to organise and co-ordinate struggles and insurrections, the CNT organised various community based struggles. The most famous example of this must be the rent strikes during the early 1930s in Barcelona. In 1931, the CNT's Construction Union organised a "Economic Defence Commission" to organise against high rents and lack of affordable housing. Its basic demand was for a 40% rent decrease but it also addressed unemployment and the cost of food. The campaign was launched by a mass meeting on May 1st, 1931. A series of meetings were held in the various working class neighbourhoods of Barcelona and in surrounding suburbs. This culminated in a mass meeting held at the Palace of Fine Arts on July 5th which raised a series of demands for the movement. By July, 45,000 people were taking part in the rent strike and this rose to over 100,000 by August. As well as refusing to pay rent, families were placed back into their homes from which they had been evicted. The movement spread to a number of the outlying towns which set up their own Economic Defence Commissions. The local groups co-ordinated their actions out of CNT union halls or local libertarian community centres. The movement faced increased state repression but in many parts of Barcelona landlords had been forced to come to terms with their tenants, agreeing to reduced rents rather than facing the prospect of having no income for an extended period or the landlord simply agreed to forget the unpaid rents from the period of the rent strike. [Nick Rider, "The Practice of Direct Action: the Barcelona rent strike of 1931", For Anarchism, David Goodway (ed.), pp. 79-105] As Abel Paz summarised:

"Unemployed workers did not receive or ask for state aid . . . The workers' first response to the economic crisis was the rent, gas, and electricity strike in mid-1933, which the CNT and FAI's Economic Defence Committee had been laying the foundations for since 1931. Likewise, house, street, and neighbourhood groups began to turn out en masse to stop evictions and other coercive acts ordered by the landlords (always with police support). The people were constantly mobilised. Women and youngsters were particularly active; it was they who challenged the police and stopped the endless evictions." [Durruti in the Spanish Revolution, p. 308]

In Gijon, the CNT "reinforced its populist image by . . . its direct consumer campaigns. Some of these were organised through the federation's Anti-Unemployment Committee, which sponsored numerous rallies and marches in favour of 'bread and work.' While they focused on the issue of jobs, they also addressed more general concerns about the cost of living for poor families. In a May 1933 rally, for example, demonstrators asked that families of unemployed workers not be evicted from their homes, even if they fell behind on the rent." The "organisers made the connections between home and work and tried to draw the entire family into the struggle." However, the CNT's "most concerted attempt to bring in the larger community was the formation of a new syndicate, in the spring of 1932, for the Defence of Public Interests (SDIP). In contrast to a conventional union, which comprised groups of workers, the SDIP was organised through neighbourhood committees. Its specific purpose was to enforce a generous renters' rights law of December 1931 that had not been vigorously implemented. Following anarchosyndicalist strategy, the SDIP utilised various forms of direct action, from rent strikes, to mass demonstrations, to the reversal of evictions." This last action involved the local SDIP group going to a home, breaking the judge's official eviction seal and carrying the furniture back in from the street. They left their own sign: "opened by order of the CNT." The CNT's direct action strategies "helped keep political discourse in the street, and encouraged people to pursue the same extra-legal channels of activism that they had developed under the monarchy." [Pamela Beth Radcliff, From mobilization to civil war, pp. 287-288 and p. 289]

In these ways, grassroots movements from below were created, with direct democracy and participation becoming an inherent part of a local political culture of resistance, with people deciding things for themselves directly and without hierarchy. Such developments are the embryonic structures of a world based around participation and self-management, with a strong and dynamic community life. For, as Martin Buber argued, "[t]he more a human group lets itself be represented in the management of its common affairs . . . the less communal life there is in it and the more impoverished it becomes as a community." [Paths in Utopia, p. 133]

Anarchist support and encouragement of community unionism, by creating the means for communal self-management, helps to enrich the community as well as creating the organisational forms required to resist the state and capitalism. In this way we build the anti-state which will (hopefully) replace the state. Moreover, the combination of community unionism with workplace assemblies (as in Puerto Real), provides a mutual support network which can be very effective in helping winning struggles. For example, in Glasgow, Scotland in 1916, a massive rent strike was finally won when workers came out in strike in support of the rent strikers who been arrested for non-payment. Such developments indicate that Isaac Puente was correct:

"Libertarian Communism is a society organised without the state and without private ownership. And there is no need to invent anything or conjure up some new organisation for the purpose. The centres about which life in the future will be organised are already with us in the society of today: the free union and the free municipality [or Commune].

"The union: in it combine spontaneously the workers from factories and all places of collective exploitation.

"And the free municipality: an assembly . . . where, again in spontaneity, inhabitants . . . combine together, and which points the way to the solution of problems in social life . . .

"Both kinds of organisation, run on federal and democratic principles, will be sovereign in their decision making, without being beholden to any higher body, their only obligation being to federate one with another as dictated by the economic requirement for liaison and communications bodies organised in industrial federations.

"The union and the free municipality will assume the collective or common ownership of everything which is under private ownership at present [but collectively used] and will regulate production and consumption (in a word, the economy) in each locality.

"The very bringing together of the two terms (communism and libertarian) is indicative in itself of the fusion of two ideas: one of them is collectivist, tending to bring about harmony in the whole through the contributions and co-operation of individuals, without undermining their independence in any way; while the other is individualist, seeking to reassure the individual that his independence will be respected." [Libertarian Communism, pp. 6-7]

The combination of community unionism, along with industrial unionism (see next section), will be the key to creating an anarchist society. Community unionism, by creating the free commune within the state, allows us to become accustomed to managing our own affairs and seeing that an injury to one is an injury to all. In this way a social power is created in opposition to the state. The town council may still be in the hands of politicians, but neither they nor the central government would be able to move without worrying about what the people's reaction might be, as expressed and organised in their community assemblies and federations.

Simply because it is effective in resisting capitalist exploitation and winning reforms, ending capitalist oppression and expresses our ideas on how industry will be organised in an anarchist society. For workers "have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once become thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing could withstand them; they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labour disturbances which show themselves here and there." [Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 116] Industrial unionism is simply libertarian workplace organisation and is the best way of organising and exercising this power.

Before discussing why anarchists support industrial unionism, we must point out that the type of unionism anarchists support has very little in common with that associated with reformist unions like the TUC in Britain or the AFL-CIO in the USA (see next section). In such unions, as Alexander Berkman pointed out, the "rank and file have little say. They have delegated their power to leaders, and these have become the boss . . . Once you do that, the power you have delegated will be used against you and your interests every time." [What is Anarchism?, p. 205] Reformist unions, even if they do organise by industry rather than by trade or craft, are top-heavy and bureaucratic. Thus they are organised in the same manner as capitalist firms or the state -- and like both of these, the officials at the top have different interests than those at the bottom. Little wonder anarchists oppose such forms of unionism as being counter to the interests of their members. The long history of union officials betraying their members is proof enough of this.

Anarchists propose a different kind of workplace organisation, one that is organised in a different manner than the mainstream unions. We will call this new kind of organisation "industrial unionism" (although perhaps industrial syndicalism, or just syndicalism, might be a better name for it). Some anarchists (particularly communist-anarchists) reject calling these workplace organisations "unions" and instead prefer such terms as workplace resistance groups, workplace assemblies and workers councils. No matter what they are called, all class struggle anarchists support the same organisational structure we are going to outline. It is purely for convenience that we term this industrial unionism.

An industrial union is a union which organises all workers in a given workplace and so regardless of their actual trade everyone would be in the one union. On a building site, for example, brick-layers, plumbers, carpenters and so on would all be a member of the Building Workers Union. Each trade may have its own sections within the union (so that plumbers can discuss issues relating to their trade for example) but the core decision making focus would be an assembly of all workers employed in a workplace. As they all have the same employer, the same exploiter, it is logical for them to have the same union.

It is organised by the guiding principle that workers should directly control their own organisations and struggles. It is based upon workplace assemblies because workers have "tremendous power" as the "creator of all wealth" but "the strength of the worker is not in the union meeting-hall; it is in the shop and factory, in the mill and mine. It is there that he [or she] must organise; there, on the job." It is there that workers "decide the matters at issue and carry their decisions out through the shop committees" (whose members are "under the direction and supervision of the workers" and can be "recalled at will"). These committees are "associated locally, regionally and nationally" to produce "a power tremendous in its scope and potentialities." [Berkman, Op. Cit., pp. 205-6] This confederation is usually organised on two directions, between different workplaces in the same industry as well as between different workplaces in the same locality.

So industrial unionism is different from ordinary trade unionism (usually called business unionism by anarchists and syndicalists as it treats the union's job purely as the seller of its members' labour power). It is based on unions managed directly by the rank and file membership rather than by elected officials and bureaucrats. The industrial union is not based on where the worker lives (as is the case with many trade unions). Instead, the union is based and run from the workplace. It is there that union meetings are held, where workers are exploited and oppressed and where their economic power lies. Industrial unionism is based on local branch autonomy, with each branch managing its own affairs. No union officials have the power to declare strikes "unofficial" as every strike is decided upon by the membership is automatically "official" simply because the branch decided it in a mass meeting.

Power in such an organisation would be decentralised into the hands of the membership, as expressed in local workplace assemblies. To co-ordinate strikes and other forms of action, these autonomous branches are part of a federal structure. The mass meeting in the workplace mandates delegates to express the wishes of the membership at "labour councils" and "industrial federations." The labour council ("Brouse du Travail", in French) is the federation of all workplace branches of all industries in a geographical area (say, for example, in a city or region) and it has the tasks of, among other things, education, propaganda and the promotion of solidarity between the different workplaces in its area. Due to the fact it combines all workers into one organisation, regardless of industry or union, the labour council plays a key role in increasing class consciousness and solidarity. The industrial federation organises all workplaces in the same industry so ensuring that workers in one part of the country or world are not producing goods so that the bosses "can supply the market and lose nothing by the strike". So these federations are "organised not by craft or trade but by industries, so that the whole industry -- and if necessary the whole working class -- could strike as one man." If that were done "would any strike be lost?" [Berkman, Op. Cit., p. 82] In practice, of course, the activities of these dual federations would overlap: labour councils would support an industry wide strike or action while industrial unions would support action conducted by its member unions called by labour councils.

However, industrial unionism should not be confused with a closed shop situation where workers are forced to join a union when they become a wage slave in a workplace. While anarchists do desire to see all workers unite in one organisation, it is vitally important that workers can leave a union and join another. The closed shop only empowers union bureaucrats and gives them even more power to control (and/or ignore) their members. As anarchist unionism has no bureaucrats, there is no need for the closed shop and its voluntary nature is essential in order to ensure that a union be subject to "exit" as well as "voice" for it to be responsive to its members wishes. As Albert Meltzer argued, the closed shop means that "the [trade union] leadership becomes all-powerful since once it exerts its right to expel a member, that person is not only out of the union, but out of a job." Anarcho-syndicalism, therefore, "rejects the closed shop and relies on voluntary membership, and so avoids any leadership or bureaucracy." [Anarchism: Arguments for and against, p. 56] Without voluntary membership even the most libertarian union may become bureaucratic and unresponsive to the needs of its members and the class struggle (also see Tom Wetzel's excellent article "The Origins of the Union Shop", [Ideas & Action no. 11]). Needless to say, if the union membership refuses to work with non-union members then that is a different situation. Then this is an issue of free association (as free association clearly implies the right not to associate). This issue rarely arises and most syndicalist unions operate in workplaces with other unions (the exceptions arise, as happened frequently in Spanish labour history with the Marxist UGT, when the other union scabs when workers are on strike).

In industrial unionism, the membership, assembled in their place of work, are the ones to decide when to strike, when to pay strike pay, what tactics to use, what demands to make, what issues to fight over and whether an action is "official" or "unofficial". In this way the rank and file is in control of their union and, by confederating with other assemblies, they co-ordinate their forces with their fellow workers. As syndicalist activist Tom Brown made clear:

"The basis of the Syndicate is the mass meeting of workers assembled at their place of work . . . The meeting elects its factory committee and delegates. The factory Syndicate is federated to all other such committees in the locality . . . In the other direction, the factory, let us say engineering factory, is affiliated to the District Federation of Engineers. In turn the District Federation is affiliated to the National Federation of Engineers . . . Then, each industrial federation is affiliated to the National Federation of Labour . . . how the members of such committees are elected is most important. They are, first of all, not representatives like Members of Parliament who air their own views; they are delegates who carry the message of the workers who elect them. They do not tell the workers what the 'official' policy is; the workers tell them.

"Delegates are subject to instant recall by the persons who elected them. None may sit for longer than two successive years, and four years must elapse before his [or her] next nomination. Very few will receive wages as delegates, and then only the district rate of wages for the industry . . .

"It will be seen that in the Syndicate the members control the organisation -- not the bureaucrats controlling the members. In a trade union the higher up the pyramid a man is the more power he wields; in a Syndicate the higher he is the less power he has.

"The factory Syndicate has full autonomy over its own affairs." [Syndicalism, pp. 35-36]

Such federalism exists to co-ordinate struggle, to ensure that solidarity becomes more than a word written on banners. We are sure that many radicals will argue that such decentralised, confederal organisations would produce confusion and disunity. However, anarchists maintain that the statist, centralised form of organisation of the trades unions would produce indifference instead of involvement, heartlessness instead of solidarity, uniformity instead of unity, and elites instead of equality. The centralised form of organisation has been tried and tried again -- it has always failed. This is why the industrial union rejects centralisation, for it "takes control too far away from the place of struggle to be effective on the workers' side." [Brown, Op. Cit., p. 34] Centralisation leads to disempowerment, which in turn leads to indifference, not solidarity. Rudolf Rocker reminds us of the evil effects of centralism when he wrote:

"For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of organisation, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in social life for the maintenance of political and social equilibrium. But for a movement whose very existence depends on prompt action at any favourable moment and on the independent thought and action of its supporters, centralism could but be a curse by weakening its power of decision and systematically repressing all immediate action. If, for example, as was the case in Germany, every local strike had first to be approved by the Central, which was often hundreds of miles away and was not usually in a position to pass a correct judgement on the local conditions, one cannot wonder that the inertia of the apparatus of organisation renders a quick attack quite impossible, and there thus arises a state of affairs where the energetic and intellectually alert groups no longer serve as patterns for the less active, but are condemned by these to inactivity, inevitably bringing the whole movement to stagnation. Organisation is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic of all bureaucracies." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 61]

Centralised unions ensure that it is the highest level of union officialdom which decides when workers are allowed to strike. Instead of those affected acting, "the dispute must be reported to the district office of the union (and in some cases to an area office) then to head office, then back again . . . The worker is not allowed any direct approach to, or control of the problem." [Brown, Op. Cit., p. 34] The end result is that "through the innate conservatism of officialdom" officials in centralised unions "ordinarily use their great powers to prevent strikes or to drive their unions' members back to work after they have struck in concert with other workers." The notion that a centralised organisation will be more radical "has not developed in practice" and the key problem "is due not to the autonomy of the unions, but to the lack of it." [Earl C. Ford and William Z. Foster, Syndicalism, p. 38] So the industrial union "is based on the principles of Federalism, on free combination from below upwards, putting the right of self-determination . . . above everything else" and so rejects centralism as an "artificial organisation from above downwards which turns over the affairs of everybody in a lump to a small minority" and is "always attended by barren official routine" as well as "lifeless discipline and bureaucratic ossification." [Rocker, Op. Cit., p. 60]

This implies that as well as being decentralised and organised from the bottom up, the industrial union differs from the normal trade union by having no full-time officials. All union business is conducted by elected fellow workers who do their union activities after work or, if it has to be done during work hours, they get the wages they lost while on union business. In this way no bureaucracy of well paid officials is created and all union militants remain in direct contact with their fellow workers. Given that it is their wages, working conditions and so on that are affected by their union activity they have a real interest in making the union an effective organisation and ensuring that it reflects the interests of the rank and file. In addition, all part-time union "officials" are elected, mandated and recallable delegates. If the fellow worker who is elected to the local labour council or other union committee is not reflecting the opinions of those who mandated him or her then the union assembly can countermand their decision, recall them and replace them with someone who will reflect these decisions. In short, "the Syndicalist stands firmly by these things -- mass meetings, delegates not bosses, the right of recall . . . Syndicalism is organised from the bottom upwards . . . all power comes from below and is controlled from below. This is a revolutionary principle." [Brown, Op. Cit., p. 85]

As can be seen, industrial unionism reflects anarchist ideas of organisation -- it is organised from the bottom up, it is decentralised and based upon federation and it is directly managed by its members in mass assemblies. It is anarchism applied to industry and the needs of the class struggle. By supporting such forms of organisation, anarchists are not only seeing "anarchy in action", they are forming effective tools which can win the class war. By organising in this manner, workers are building the framework of a co-operative society within capitalism:

"the syndicate . . . has for its purpose the defence of the interests of the producers within existing society and the preparing for and the practical carrying out of the reconstruction of social life . . . It has, therefore, a double purpose: 1. As the fighting organisation of the workers against their employers to enforce the demands of the workers for the safeguarding of their standard of living; 2. As the school for the intellectual training of the workers to make them acquainted with the technical management of production and economic life in general, so that when a revolutionary situation arises they will be capable of taking the socio-economic organism into their own hands and remaking it according to Socialist principles." [Rocker, Op. Cit., pp. 56-7]

So "[a]t the same time that syndicalism exerts this unrelenting pressure on capitalism, it tries to build the new social order within the old. The unions and the 'labour councils' are not merely means of struggle and instruments of social revolution; they are also the very structure around which to build a free society. The workers are to be educated in the job of destroying the old propertied order and in the task of reconstructing a stateless, libertarian society. The two go together." [Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 121] The industrial union is seen as prefiguring the future society, a society which (like the union) is decentralised and self-managed in all aspects.

Given the fact that workers wages have been stagnating (or, at best, falling behind productivity increases) across the world as the trade unions have been weakened and marginalised (partly because of their own tactics, structure and politics) it is clear that there exists a great need for working people to organise to defend themselves. The centralised, top-down trade unions we are accustomed to have proved themselves incapable of effective struggle (and, indeed, the number of times they have sabotaged such struggle are countless -- a result not of "bad" leaders but of the way these unions organise and their role within capitalism). Hence anarchists support industrial unionism as an effective alternative to the malaise of official trade unionism. How anarchists aim to encourage such new forms of workplace organisation and struggle will be discussed in section J.5.4.

One last point. We noted that many anarchists, particularly communist-anarchists, consider unions, even anarchosyndicalist ones, as having a strong reformist tendency (as discussed in section J.3.9). However, all anarchists recognise the importance of autonomous class struggle and the need for organisations to help fight that struggle. Thus anarchist-communists, instead of trying to organise industrial unions, apply the ideas of industrial unionism to workplace struggles. They would agree with the need to organise all workers into a mass assembly and to have elected, recallable administration committees to carry out the strikers wishes. This means that while such anarchists do not call their practical ideas "anarcho-syndicalism" nor the workplace assemblies they desire to create "unions," they are extremely similar in nature and so we can discuss both using the term "industrial unionism". The key difference is that many (if not most) anarcho-communists consider that permanent workplace organisations that aim to organise all workers would become reformist. Because of this they also see the need for anarchists to organise as anarchists in order to spread the anarchist message within them and keep their revolutionary aspects at the forefront.

Spontaneously created organisations of workers in struggle play an important role in both communist-anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist theory. Since both advocate that it is the workers, using their own organisations who will control their own struggles (and, eventually, their own revolution) in their own interests, not a vanguard party of elite political theorists, this is unsurprising. It matters little if the specific organisations are revolutionary industrial unions, factory committees, workers councils, or other labour formations. The important thing is that they are created and run by workers themselves. Meanwhile, anarchists are industrial guerrillas waging class war at the point of production in order to win improvements in the here and now and strengthen tendencies towards anarchism by showing that direct action and libertarian organisation is effective and can win partial expropriations of capitalist and state power. So while there are slight differences in terminology and practice, all anarchists would support the ideas of industrial organisation and struggle we have outlined above.

As noted in the last section, anarchists desire to create organisations in the workplace radically different from the existing unions. The question now arises, what attitude do anarchists take to trade unions?

Before answering that question, we must stress that anarchists, no matter how hostile to trade unions as bureaucratic, reformist institutions, are in favour of working class struggle. This means that when trade union members or other workers are on strike anarchists will support them (unless the strike is reactionary -- for example, no anarchist would support a strike which is racist in nature). This is because anarchists consider it basic to their politics that you do not scab and you do not crawl. So, when reading anarchist criticisms of trade unions do not for an instant think we do not support industrial struggles -- we do, we are just very critical of the unions that are sometimes involved.

So, what do anarchists think of the trade unions?

For the most part, one could call the typical anarchist opinion toward them as one of "hostile support." It is hostile insofar as anarchists are well aware of how bureaucratic these unions are and how they continually betray their members. Given that they are usually little more than "business" organisations, trying to sell their members labour-power for the best deal possible, it is unsurprising that they are bureaucratic and that the interests of the bureaucracy are at odds with those of its membership. However, our attitude is "supportive" in that even the worse trade union represents an attempt at working class solidarity and self-help, even if the organisation is now far removed from the initial protests and ideas that set the union up. For a worker to join a trade union means recognising, to some degree, that he or she has different interests from their boss ("If the interests of labour and capital are the same, why the union?" [Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism?, p. 76]).

There is no way to explain the survival of unions other than the fact that there are different class interests and workers have understood that to promote their own interests they have to organise collectively. No amount of conservatism, bureaucracy or backwardness within the unions can obliterate this. The very existence of trade unions testifies to the existence of some level of basic class consciousness and the recognition that workers and capitalists do not have the same interests. Claims by trade union officials that the interests of workers and bosses are the same theoretically disarms both the union and its members and so weakens their struggles (after all, if bosses and workers have similar interests then any conflict is bad and the decisions of the boss must be in workers' interests!). That kind of nonsense is best left to the apologists of capitalism (see section F.3.2).

It is no surprise, then, that "the existing political and economic power . . . not only suspected every labour organisation of aiming to improve the condition of its members within the limits of the wage system, but they also looked upon the trade union as the deadly enemy of wage-slavery -- and they were right. Every labour organisation of sincere character must needs wage war upon the existing economic conditions, since the continuation of the same is synonymous with the exploitation and enslavement of labour." [Max Baginski, "Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement", pp. 297-306, Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth, Peter Glassgold (ed.), pp. 302-3] Thus anarchist viewpoints on this issue reflect the contradictory nature of trade unions -- on the one hand they are products of workers' struggle, but on the other they are bureaucratic, unresponsive, centralised and their full-time officials have no real interest in fighting against wage labour as it would put them out of a job. Indeed, the very nature of trade unionism ensures that the interests of the union (i.e. the full-time officials) come into conflict with the people they claim to represent.

This occurs because trade unions, in order to get recognition from a company, must be able to promise industrial peace. They need to enforce the contracts they sign with the bosses, even if this goes against the will of their members. Thus trade unions become a third force in industry, somewhere between management and the workers and pursuing its own interests. This need to enforce contracts soon ensures that the union becomes top-down and centralised -- otherwise their members would violate the union's agreements. They have to be able to control their members -- which usually means stopping them fighting the boss -- if they are to have anything to bargain with at the negotiation table. This may sound odd, but the point is that the union official has to sell the employer labour discipline and freedom from unofficial strikes as part of their side of the bargain otherwise the employer will ignore them.

The nature of trade unionism, then, is to take power away from the membership and centralise it into the hands of officials at the top of the organisation. Thus union officials sell out their members because of the role trade unions play within society, not because they are nasty individuals (although some are). They behave as they do because they have too much power and, being full-time and highly paid, are unaccountable, in any real way, to their members. Power -- and wealth -- corrupts, no matter who you are (see Chapter XI of Alexander Berkman's What is Anarchism? for an excellent introduction to anarchist viewpoints on trade unions).

While, in normal times, most workers will not really question the nature of the trade union bureaucracy, this changes when workers face some threat. Then they are brought face to face with the fact that the trade union has interests separate from theirs. Hence we see trade unions agreeing to wage cuts, redundancies and so on -- after all, the full-time trade union official's job is not on the line! But, of course, while such a policy is in the short term interests of the officials, in the longer term it goes against their interests -- who wants to join a union which rolls over and presents no effective resistance to employers? Sadly trade union bureaucracy seems to afflict all who enter it with short-sightedness -- although the chickens do, finally, come home to roost, as the bureaucrats of the AFL, TUC and other trade unions are finding out in this era of global capital and falling membership. So while the activities of trade union leaders may seem crazy and short-sighted, these activities are forced upon them by their position and role within society -- which explains why they are so commonplace and why even radical leaders end up doing exactly the same thing in time.

However, few anarchists would call upon members of a trade union to tear-up their membership cards. While some anarchists have nothing but contempt (and rightly so) for trade unions (and so do not work within them -- but will support trade union members in struggle), the majority of anarchists take a more pragmatic viewpoint. If no alternative syndicalist union exists, anarchists will work within the existing unions (perhaps becoming shop-stewards -- few anarchists would agree to be elected to positions above this in any trade union, particularly if the post were full-time), spreading the anarchist message and trying to create a libertarian undercurrent which would hopefully blossom into a more anarchistic labour movement. So most anarchists "support" the trade unions only until we have created a viable libertarian alternative. Thus we will become trade union members while trying to spread anarchist ideas within and outwith them. This means that anarchists are flexible in terms of our activity in the unions. For example, many IWW members were "two-carders" which meant they were also in the local AFL branch in their place of work and turned to the IWW when the AFL hierarchy refused to back strikes or other forms of direct action.

Anarchist activity within trade unions reflects our ideas on hierarchy and its corrupting effects. We reject the response of left-wing social democrats, Stalinists and mainstream Trotskyists to the problem of trade union betrayal, which is to try and elect 'better' officials. They see the problem primarily in terms of the individuals who hold the posts so ignoring the fact that individuals are shaped by the environment they live in and the role they play in society. Thus even the most left-wing and progressive individual will become a bureaucrat if they are placed within a bureaucracy.

We must note that the problem of corruption does not spring from the high-wages officials are paid (although this is a factor), but from the power they have over their members (which partly expresses itself in high pay). Any claim that electing "radical" full-time officials who refuse to take the high wages associated with the position will be better, is false. The hierarchical nature of the trade union structure has to be changed, not side-effects of it. As the left has no problem with hierarchy as such, this explains why they support this form of "reform." They do not actually want to undercut whatever dependency the members have on leadership, they want to replace the leaders with "better" ones (i.e. themselves or members of their party) and so endlessly call upon the trade union bureaucracy to act for its members. In this way, they hope, trade unionists will see the need to support a "better" leadership -- namely themselves. Anarchists, in stark contrast, think that the problem is not that the leadership of the trade unions is weak, right-wing or does not act but that the union's membership follows them. Thus anarchists aim at undercutting reliance on leaders (be they left or right) by encouraging self-activity by the rank and file and awareness that hierarchical leadership as such is bad, not individual leaders. Anarchists encourage rank and file self-activity, not endless calls for trade union bureaucrats to act for us (as is unfortunately far too common on the left).

Instead of "reform" from above (which is doomed to failure), anarchists work at the bottom and attempt to empower the rank and file of the trade unions. It is self-evident that the more power, initiative and control that lies on the shop floor, the less the bureaucracy has. Thus anarchists work within and outwith the trade unions in order to increase the power of workers where it actually lies: at the point of production. This is usually done by creating networks of activists who spread anarchist ideas to their fellow workers (see next section). Hence Malatesta:

"The anarchists within the unions should strive to ensure that they remain open to all workers of whatever opinion or party on the sole condition that there is solidarity in the struggle against the bosses. They should oppose the corporatist spirit and any attempt to monopolise labour or organisation. They should prevent the Unions from becoming the tools of the politicians for electoral or other authoritarian ends; they should preach and practice direct action, decentralisation, autonomy and free initiative. They should strive to help members learn how to participate directly in the life of the organisation and to do without leaders and permanent officials.

"They must, in short, remain anarchists, remain always in close touch with anarchists and remember that the workers' organisation is not the end but just one of the means, however important, of preparing the way for the achievement of anarchism." [The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 26-7]

As part of this activity anarchists promote the ideas of Industrial Unionism we highlighted in the last section -- namely direct workers control of struggle via workplace assemblies and recallable committees -- during times of struggle. However, anarchists are aware that economic struggle (and trade unionism as such) "cannot be an end in itself, since the struggle must also be waged at a political level to distinguish the role of the State." [Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p, 115] Thus, as well as encouraging worker self-organisation and self-activity, anarchist groups also seek to politicise struggles and those involved in them. Only this process of self-activity and political discussion between equals within social struggles can ensure the process of working class self-liberation and the creation of new, more libertarian, forms of workplace organisation.

The result of such activity may be a new form of workplace organisation (either workplace assemblies or an anarcho-syndicalist union) or a reformed, more democratic version of the existing trade union (although few anarchists believe that the current trade unions can be reformed). Either way, the aim is to get as many members of the current labour movement to become anarchists as possible or, at the very least, take a more libertarian and radical approach to their unions and workplace struggle.

Industrial networks are the means by which revolutionary industrial unions and other forms of libertarian workplace organisation can be created. The idea of Industrial Networks originated with the British section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association in the late 1980s. It was developed as a means of promoting libertarian ideas within the workplace, so creating the basis on which a workplace movement based upon the ideas of industrial unionism (see section J.5.2) could grow and expand.

The idea is very simple. An Industrial Network is a federation of militants in a given industry who support the ideas of anarchism and/or anarcho-syndicalism, namely direct action, solidarity and organisation from the bottom up (the difference between purely anarchist networks and anarcho-syndicalist ones will be highlighted later). It would "initially be a political grouping in the economic sphere, aiming to build a less reactive but positive organisation within the industry. The long term aim . . . is, obviously, the creation of an anarcho-syndicalist union." [Winning the Class War, p. 18]

The Industrial Network would be an organisation of groups of libertarians within a workplace united on an industrial basis. They would pull their resources together to fund a regular bulletin and other forms of propaganda which they would distribute within their workplaces. These bulletins and leaflets would raise and discuss issues related to work, how to fight back and win as well as placing workplace issues in a social and political context. This propaganda would present anarchist ideas of workplace organisation and resistance as well as general anarchist ideas and analysis. In this way anarchist ideas and tactics would be able to get a wider hearing and anarchists can have an input as anarchists into workplace struggles.

Traditionally, many syndicalists and anarcho-syndicalists advocated the One Big Union strategy, the aim of which was to organise all workers into one organisation representing the whole working class. Today, however, most anarcho-syndicalists, like other revolutionary anarchists, advocate workers assemblies for decision making during struggles which are open to all workers (union members or not) as they recognise that they face dual unionism (which means there are more than one union within a given workplace or country). This was the case historically, in all countries with a large syndicalist union movement there were also socialist unions. Therefore most anarcho-syndicalists do not expect to ever get a majority of the working class into a revolutionary union before a revolutionary situation develops. In addition, revolutionary unions do not simply appear, they develop from previous struggles and require a lot of work and experience of which the Industrial Networks are but one aspect. The most significant revolutionary unions (such as the IWW, USI and CNT) were originally formed by unions and union militants with substantial experience of struggle behind them, some of whom were part of existing trade union bodies.

Thus industrial networks are intended to deal with the actual situation that confronts us, and provide a strategy for moving from our present reality toward our ultimate goals. The role of the anarchist group or syndicalist union would be to call workplace assemblies and their federation into councils, argue for direct workers control of struggle by these mass assemblies, promote direct action and solidarity, put across anarchist ideas and politics and keep things on the boil, so to speak. When one has only a handful of anarchists and syndicalists in a workplace or scattered across several workplaces there is a clear need for developing ways for these fellow workers to effectively act in union, rather than be isolated and relegated to more general agitation. A handful of anarchists cannot meaningfully call a general strike but we can agitate around specific industrial issues and organise our fellow workers to do something about them. Through such campaigns we demonstrate the advantages of rank-and-file unionism and direct action, show our fellow workers that our ideas are not mere abstract theory but can be implemented here and now, attract new members and supporters, and further develop our capacity to develop revolutionary unions in our workplaces. Thus the creation of Industrial Networks and the calling for workplace assemblies is a recognition of where we are now -- with anarchist ideas very much in the minority. Calling for workers assemblies is not an anarchist tactic per se, we must add, but a working class one developed and used plenty of times by workers in struggle (indeed, it was how the current trade unions were created). It also puts the onus on the reformist unions by appealing directly to their members as workers and exposing their bureaucrat organisations and reformist politics by creating an effective alternative to them.

A few anarchists reject the idea of Industrial Networks and instead support the idea of "rank and file" groups which aim to put pressure on the current trade unions to become more militant and democratic. Some even think that such groups can be used to reform the trade-unions into libertarian, revolutionary organisations -- called "boring from within" -- but most reject this as utopian, viewing the trade union bureaucracy as unreformable as the state's (and it is likely that rather than change the trade union, "boring from within" would change the syndicalists by watering down their ideas). Moreover, opponents of "rank and file" groups argue that they direct time and energy away from practical and constructive activity and instead waste them "[b]y constantly arguing for changes to the union structure . . . the need for the leadership to be more accountable, etc., [and so] they not only [offer] false hope but [channel] energy and discontent away from the real problem -- the social democratic nature of reformist trade unions." [Op. Cit., p. 11]

Supporters of the "rank and file" approach fear that the Industrial Networks will isolate anarchists from the mass of trade union members by creating tiny "pure" syndicalist groups. Such a claim is rejected by supporters of Industrial Networks who argue that rather than being isolated from the majority of trade unionists they would be in contact with them where it counts, in the workplace and in struggle rather than in trade union meetings which many workers do not even attend:

"We have no intention of isolating ourselves from the many workers who make up the rest of the rank and file membership of the unions. We recognise that a large proportion of trade union members are only nominally so as the main activity of social democratic unions is outside the workplace . . . We aim to unite and not divide workers.

"It has been argued that social democratic unions will not tolerate this kind of activity, and that we would be all expelled and thus isolated. So be it. We, however, don't think that this will happen until . . . workplace militants had found a voice independent of the trade unions and so they become less useful to us anyway. Our aim is not to support social democracy, but to show it up as irrelevant to the working class." [Op. Cit., p. 19]

Whatever the merits and disadvantages of both approaches are, it seems likely that the activity of both will overlap in practice with Industrial Networks operating within trade union branches and "rank and file" groups providing alternative structures for struggle.

As noted above, there is a slight difference between anarcho-syndicalist supporters of Industrial Networks and communist-anarchist ones. This is to do with how they see the function and aim of these networks. In the short run, both agree that such networks should agitate in their industry and call mass assemblies to organise resistance to capitalist exploitation and oppression. They disagree on who can join the network groups and what their medium term aims should be. Anarcho-syndicalists aim for the Industrial Networks to be the focal point for the building of permanent syndicalist unions and so aim for the Industrial Networks to be open to all workers who accept the general aims of the organisation. Anarcho-communists, however, view Industrial Networks as a means of increasing anarchist ideas within the working class and are not primarily concerned about building syndicalist unions (while many anarcho-communists would support such a development, some do not). In the long term, they both aim for social revolution and workers' self-management of production.

These anarchists, therefore, see the need for workplace-based branches of an anarchist group along with the need for networks of militant 'rank and file' workers, but reject the idea of something that is one but pretends to be the other. They argue that, far from avoiding the problems of classical anarcho-syndicalism, such networks seem to emphasise one of the worst problems -- namely that of how the organisation remains anarchist but is open to non-anarchists. However, the similarities between the two positions are greater than the differences and so can be summarised together, as we have done here.

Anarchists tend to support most forms of co-operation, including those associated with credit and money. This co-operative banking takes many forms, such as credit unions, LETS schemes and so on. In this section we discuss two main forms of co-operative credit, mutualism and LETS.

Mutualism is the name for the ideas associated with Proudhon and his Bank of the People. Essentially, it is a confederation of credit unions in which working class people pool their funds and savings so allowing credit to be supplied at cost (no interest), so increasing the options available to them. LETS stands for Local Exchange Trading Schemes and is a similar idea in many ways (see Bringing the Economy Home from the Market by Ross V.G. Dobson on LETS). From its start in Canada, LETS has spread across the world and there are now hundreds of schemes involving hundreds of thousands of people.

Both schemes revolve around creating an alternative form of currency and credit within capitalism in order to allow working class people to work outwith the capitalist money system by creating a new circulating medium. In this way, it is hoped, workers would be able to improve their living and working conditions by having a source of community-based (very low interest) credit and so be less dependent on capitalists and the capitalist banking system. Supporters of mutualism considered it as the ideal way of reforming capitalism away for by making credit available to the ordinary worker at very cheap rates, the end of wage slavery could occur as workers would work for themselves by either purchasing the necessary tools required for their work or by buying the capitalists out.

Mutual credit, in short, is a form of credit co-operation, in which individuals pull their resources together in order to benefit themselves as individuals and as part of a community. It has the following key aspects:

-- Co-operation: No-one owns the network. It is controlled by its members democratically.

-- Non-exploitative: No interest is charged on account balances or credit. At most administrative costs are charged, a result of it being commonly owned and managed.

-- Consent: Nothing happens without it, there is no compulsion to trade.

-- Labour-Notes: They use their own type of money as a means of aiding "honest exchange."

It is hoped, by organising credit, working class people will be able to work for themselves and slowly but surely replace capitalism with a co-operative system based upon self-management. While LETS schemes do not have such grand schemes, historically mutualism aimed at working within and transforming capitalism to socialism. At the very least, LETS schemes reduce the power and influence of banks and finance capital within society as mutualism ensures that working people have a viable alternative to such parasites.

These ideas have a long history within the socialist movement, originating in Britain in the early 19th century when Robert Owen and other Socialists raised the idea of labour notes and labour-exchanges as both a means of improving working class conditions within capitalism and of reforming capitalism into a society of confederated, self-governing communities. Such "Equitable Labour Exchanges" were "founded at London and Birmingham in 1832" with "Labour notes and the exchange of small products." [E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 870] Apparently independently of these attempts in Britain at what would later be called mutualism, Proudhon arrived at the same ideas decades later in France: "The People's Bank quite simply embodies the financial and economic aspects of the principle of modern democracy, that is, the sovereignty of the People, and of the republican motto, 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.'" [Selected Writings of P-J Proudhon, p. 75] Similarly, in the USA (partly as a result of Joshua Warren's activities, who got the idea from Robert Owen) there was extensive discussion on labour notes, exchanges and free credit as a means of protecting workers from the evils of capitalism and ensuring their independence and freedom from wage slavery. When Proudhon's works appeared in North America, the basic arguments were well known and they were quickly adopted by radicals there.

Therefore the idea that mutual banking using labour money as a means to improve working class living conditions, even, perhaps, to achieve industrial democracy, self-management and the end of capitalism has a long history in Socialist thought. Unfortunately this aspect of socialism became less important with the rise of Marxism (which called these early socialists "utopian"). Attempts at such credit unions and alternative exchange schemes were generally replaced with attempts to build working class political parties and so constructive socialistic experiments and collective working class self-help was replaced by working within the capitalist state. Fortunately, history has had the last laugh on Marxism with working class people yet again creating anew the ideas of mutualism (as can be seen by the growth of LETS and other schemes of community money).

Mutual credit schemes are important because they are a way to improve working class life under capitalism and ensure that what money we do have is used to benefit ourselves rather than the elite. By organising credit, we retain control over it and so rather than being used to invest in capitalist schemes it can be used for socialist alternatives.

For example, rather than allow the poorest to be at the mercy of loan sharks a community, by organising credit, can ensure its members receive cheap credit. Rather than give capitalist banks bundles of cash to invest in capitalist firms seeking to extract profits from a locality, it can be used to fund a co-operative instead. Rather than invest pension schemes into the stock market and so help undermine workers pay and living standards by increasing rentier power, it can be used to invest in schemes to improve the community and its economy. In short, rather than bolster capitalist power and so control, mutual credit aims to undermine the power of capitalist banks and finance by placing as much money as much possible in working class hands.

This point is important, as the banking system is often considered "neutral" (particularly in capitalist economics). However, as Malatesta correctly argued, it would be "a mistake to believe . . . that the banks are, or are in the main, a means to facilitate exchange; they are a means to speculate on exchange and currencies, to invest capital and to make it produce interest, and to fulfil other typically capitalist operations." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 100] Within capitalism, money is still to a large degree a commodity which is more than a convenient measure of work done in the production of goods and services. It can and does go anywhere in the world where it can get the best return for its owners, and so it tends to drain out of those communities that need it most (why else would a large company invest in a community unless the money it takes out of the area handsomely exceeds that put it?). It is the means by which capitalists can buy the liberty of working people and get them to produce a surplus for them (wealth is, after all, "a power invested in certain individuals by the institutions of society, to compel others to labour for their benefit." [William Godwin, The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin, p. 130]). From this consideration alone, working class control of credit and money is an important part of the class struggle as having access to alternative sources of credit can increase working class options and power.

As we discussed in section B.3.2, credit is also an important form of social control -- people who have to pay their mortgage or visa bill are more pliable, less likely to strike or make other forms of political trouble. Credit also expands the consumption of the masses in the face of stagnant or falling wages so blunting the impact of increasing exploitation. Moreover, as an added bonus, there is a profit to be made as the "rich need a place to earn interest on their surplus funds, and the rest of the population makes a juicy lending target." [Doug Henwood, Wall Street, p. 65]

Little wonder that the state (and the capitalists who run it) is so concerned to keep control of money in its own hands or the hands of its agents. With an increase in mutual credit, interest rates would drop, wealth would stay more in working class communities, and the social power of working people would increase (for people would be more likely to struggle for higher wages and better conditions -- as the fear of debt repayments would be less). By the creation of community-based credit unions that do not put their money into "Capital Markets" or into capitalist Banks working class people can control their own credit, their own retirement funds, and find ways of using money as a means of undermining capitalist power and supporting social struggle and change. In this way working people are controlling more and more of the money supply and using it in ways that will stop capital from using it to oppress and exploit them.

An example of why this can be important can be seen from the existing workers' pension fund system which is invested in the stock market in the hope that workers will receive an adequate pension in their old age. However, the only people actually winning are bankers and big companies. Unsurprisingly, the managers of these pension fund companies are investing in those firms with the highest returns, which are usually those who are downsizing or extracting most surplus value from their workforce (which in turn forces other companies to follow the same strategies to get access to the available funds in order to survive). Basically, if your money is used to downsize your fellow workers or increase the power of capital, then you are not only helping to make things harder for others like you, you are also helping making things worse for yourself. No person is an island, and increasing the clout of capital over the working class is going to affect you directly or indirectly. As such, the whole scheme is counter-productive as it effectively means workers have to experience insecurity, fear of downsizing and stagnating wages during their working lives in order to have slightly more money when they retire (assuming that they are fortunate enough to retire when the stock market is doing well rather than during one of its regular periods of financial instability, of course).

This highlights one of the tricks the capitalists are using against us, namely to get us to buy into the system through our fear of old age. Whether it is going into lifelong debt to buy a home or putting our money in the stock market, we are being encouraged to buy into the system which exploits us and so put its interests above our own. This makes us more easily controlled. We need to get away from living in fear and stop allowing ourselves to be deceived into behaving like "stakeholders" in a Plutocratic system where most shares really are held by an elite. As can be seen from the use of pension funds to buy out firms, increase the size of transnationals and downsize the workforce, such "stakeholding" amounts to sacrificing both the present and the future while others benefit.

The real enemies are not working people who take part in such pension schemes. It is the people in power, those who manage the pension schemes and companies, who are trying to squeeze every last penny out of working people to finance higher profits and stock prices -- which the unemployment and impoverishment of workers on a world-wide scale aids. They control the governments of the world. They are making the "rules" of the current system. Hence the importance of limiting the money they have available, of creating community-based credit unions and mutual risk insurance co-operatives to increase our control over our money which can be used to empower ourselves, aid our struggles and create our own alternatives (see section B.3.2 for more anarchist views on mutual credit and its uses). Money, representing as it does the power of capital and the authority of the boss, is not "neutral" and control over it plays a role in the class struggle. We ignore such issues at our own peril.

The short answer is no, they do not. While the Individualist and Mutualist Anarchists do think that mutual banking is the only sure way of abolishing capitalism, most anarchists do not see it as an end in itself. Few think that capitalism can be reformed away in the manner assumed by Proudhon or Tucker.

In terms of the latter, increased access to credit does not address the relations of production and market power which exist within the economy and so any move for financial transformation has to be part of a broader attack on all forms of capitalist social power in order to be both useful and effective. In short, assuming that Individualist Anarchists do manage to organise a mutual banking scheme it cannot be assumed that as long as firms use wage-labour that any spurt in economic activity will have a long term effect of eliminating exploitation. What is more likely is that an economic crisis would develop as lowering unemployment results in a profits squeeze (as occurred in, say, the 1970s). Without a transformation in the relations of production, the net effect would be the usual capitalist business cycle.

For the former, for mutualists like Proudhon, mutual credit was seen as a means of transforming the relations of production (as discussed in section G.4.1, unlike Proudhon, Tucker did not oppose wage-labour and just sought to make it non-exploitative). For Proudhon, mutual credit was seen as the means by which co-operatives could be created to end wage-labour. The organisation of labour would combine with the organisation of credit to end capitalism as workers would fund co-operative firms and their higher efficiency would soon drive capitalist firms out of business. Thus "the Exchange Bank is the organisation of labour's greatest asset” as it allowed "the new form of society to be defined and created among the workers." "To organise credit and circulation is to increase production," Proudhon stressed, "to determine the new shapes of industrial society." So, overtime, co-operative credit would produce co-operative production while associated labour would increase the funds available to associated credit. For Proudhon the "organisation of credit and organisation of labour amount to one and the same" and by recognising this the workers "would soon have wrested alienated capital back again, through their organisation and competition." [Property is Theft!, pp. 17-8]

Bakunin, while he was "convinced that the co-operative will be the preponderant form of social organisation in the future" and could "hardly oppose the creation of co-operatives associations" now as we find them necessary in many respects," argued that Proudhon’s hope for gradual change by means of mutual banking and the higher efficiency of workers’ co-operatives were unlikely to be realised. This was because such claims "do not take into account the vast advantage that the bourgeoisie enjoys against the proletariat through its monopoly on wealth, science, and secular custom, as well as through the approval -- overt or covert but always active -- of States and through the whole organisation of modern society. The fight is too unequal for success reasonably to be expected." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 153 and p. 152] Thus capitalism "does not fear the competition of workers' associations -- neither consumers', producers', nor mutual credit associations -- for the simple reason that workers' organisations, left to their own resources, will never be able to accumulate sufficiently strong aggregations of capital capable of waging an effective struggle against bourgeois capital." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 293]

So, for most anarchists, it is only in combination with other forms of working class self-activity and self-management that mutualist institutions could play an important role in the class struggle. In other words, few anarchists think that mutualist credit or co-operatives are enough in themselves to end capitalism. Revolutionary action is also required -- such as the expropriation of capital by workers associations.

This does not mean anarchists reject co-operation under capitalism. By creating a network of mutual banks to aid in creating co-operatives, union organising drives, supporting strikes (either directly by gifts/loans or funding consumer co-operatives which could supply food and other essentials free or at a reduced cost), mutualism can be used as a means of helping build libertarian alternatives within the capitalist system. Such alternatives, while making life better under the current system, also play a role in overcoming that system by aiding those in struggle. Thus Bakunin:

"let us co-operate in our common enterprise to make our lives a little bit more supportable and less difficult. Let us, wherever possible, establish producer-consumer co-operatives and mutual credit societies which, though under the present economic conditions they cannot in any real or adequate way free us, are nevertheless important inasmuch they train the workers in the practices of managing the economy and plant the precious seeds for the organisation of the future." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 173]

So while few anarchists think that mutualism would be enough in itself, it can play a role in the class struggle. As a compliment to direct action and workplace and community struggle and organisation, mutualism has an important role in working class self-liberation. For example, community unions (see section J.5.1) could create their own mutual banks and money which could be used to fund co-operatives and support social struggle. In this way a healthy communalised co-operative sector could develop within capitalism, overcoming the problems of isolation facing workplace co-operatives (see section J.5.11) as well as providing solidarity for those in struggle.

Mutual banking can be a way of building upon and strengthening the anarchistic social relations within capitalism. For even under capitalism and statism, there exists extensive mutual aid and, indeed, anarchistic and communistic ways of living. For example, communistic arrangements exist within families, between friends and lovers and within anarchist organisations. Mutual credit could be a means of creating a bridge between this alternative (gift) "economy" and capitalism. The mutualist alternative economy would help strength communities and bonds of trust between individuals, and this would increase the scope of the communistic sector as more and more people help each other without the medium of exchange. In other words, mutualism will help the gift economy that exists within capitalism to grow and develop.

One scenario for an updated system of mutual banking would be for a community to begin issuing an alternative currency accepted as money by all individuals within it. Let us call this currency-issuing association a "mutual barter clearinghouse," or just "clearinghouse" for short.

The clearinghouse would have a twofold mandate: first, to extend credit at cost to members; second, to manage the circulation of credit-money within the system, charging only a small service fee (one percent or less) sufficient to cover its costs of operation, including labour costs involved in issuing credit and keeping track of transactions, insuring itself against losses from uncollectable debts, and so forth. Some current experiments in community money use labour time worked as their basis (thus notes would be marked one-hour) while others have notes tied to the value of the state currency (thus, say, a Scottish town would issue pounds assumed to be the same as a British pound note).

The clearinghouse would be organised and function as follows. People could join the clearinghouse by pledging a certain amount of property (including savings) as collateral. On the basis of this pledge, an account would be opened for the new member and credited with a sum of mutual pounds equivalent to some fraction of the assessed value of the property pledged. The new member would agree to repay this amount plus the service fee into their account by a certain date. The mutual pounds could then be transferred through the clearinghouse to the accounts of other members, who have agreed to receive mutual money in payment for all debts or work done.

The opening of this sort of account is, of course, the same as taking out a "loan" in the sense that a commercial bank "lends" by extending credit to a borrower in return for a signed note pledging a certain amount of property as security. The crucial difference is that the clearinghouse does not purport to be "lending" a sum of money that it already has, as is fraudulently claimed by commercial banks. Instead it honestly admits that it is creating new money in the form of credit. New accounts can also be opened simply by telling the clearinghouse that one wants an account and then arranging with other people who already have balances to transfer mutual money into one's account in exchange for goods or services.

Another form of mutual credit are LETS systems. In this a number of people get together to form an association. They create a unit of exchange (which is equal in value to a unit of the national currency usually), choose a name for it and offer each other goods and services priced in these units. These offers and wants are listed in a directory which is circulated periodically to members. Members decide who they wish to trade with and how much trading they wish to do. When a transaction is completed, this is acknowledged with a "cheque" made out by the buyer and given to the seller. These are passed on to the system accounts administration which keeps a record of all transactions and periodically sends members a statement of their accounts. The accounts administration is elected by, and accountable to, the membership and information about balances is available to all members.

Unlike the first system described, members do not have to present property as collateral. Members of a LETS scheme can go into "debt" without it, although "debt" is the wrong word as members are not so much going into debt as committing themselves to do some work within the system in the future and by so doing they are creating spending power. The willingness of members to incur such a commitment could be described as a service to the community as others are free to use the units so created to trade themselves. Indeed, the number of units in existence exactly matches the amount of real wealth being exchanged. The system only works if members are willing to spend. It runs on trust and builds up trust as the system is used.

It is likely that a fully functioning mutual banking system would incorporate aspects of both these systems. The need for collateral may be used when members require very large loans while the LETS system of negative credit as a commitment to future work would be the normal function of the system. If the mutual bank agrees a maximum limit for negative balances, it may agree to take collateral for transactions that exceed this limit. However, it is obvious that any mutual banking system will find the best means of working in the circumstances it finds itself.

Let us consider an example of how business would be transacted using mutual credit within capitalism. There are two possibilities, depending on whether the mutual credit is based upon whether the creditor can provide collateral or not. We will take the case with collateral first.

Suppose that A, an organic farmer, pledges as collateral a certain plot of land that she owns and on which she wishes to build a house. The land is valued at, say, £40,000 in the capitalist market and by pledging the land, A is able to open a credit account at the clearinghouse for, say, £30,000 in mutual money. She does so knowing that there are many other members of the system who are carpenters, electricians, plumbers, hardware suppliers, and so on who are willing to accept mutual pounds in payment for their products or services.

It is easy to see why other subscriber-members, who have also obtained mutual credit and are therefore in debt to the clearinghouse, would be willing to accept such notes in return for their goods and services. They need to collect mutual currency to repay their debts. Why would someone who is not in debt for mutual currency be willing to accept it as money?

To see why, let us suppose that B, an underemployed carpenter, currently has no account at the clearinghouse but that he knows about it and the people who operate and use it. After examining its list of members and becoming familiar with the policies of the new organisation, he is convinced that it does not extend credit frivolously to untrustworthy recipients who are likely to default. He also knows that if he contracts to do the carpentry on A's new house and agrees to be paid for his work in mutual money, he will then be able to use it to buy groceries, clothes, and other goods and services from various people in the community who already belong to the system.

Thus B will be willing, and perhaps even eager (especially if the economy is in recession and regular money is tight) to work for A and receive payment in mutual credit. For he knows that if he is paid, say, £8,000 in mutual money for his labour on A's house, this payment constitutes, in effect, 20 percent of a mortgage on her land, the value of which is represented by her mutual credit. B also understands that A has promised to repay this mortgage by producing new value -- that is, by growing organic fruits and vegetables and selling them to other members of the system -- and that it is this promise to produce new wealth which gives her mutual credit its value as a medium of exchange.

To put this point slightly differently, A's mutual credit can be thought 