Economics

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Syndicalist
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Critique of Capitalism

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Syndicalist

The Economics of Freedom

This pamphlet has been written by a group of people in the Solidarity Federation. We are actively involved in taking direct action for a better world. However, we are also interested in what this better world might be like and how it might work. In the current world of US-led terror against terror, corporate cronyism and corruption, and widening global and class inequality, we all want and deserve better. The Solidarity Federation is the British section of the anarcho-syndicalist global movement. Anarcho-syndicalism is about direct democracy – democracy from the bottom up – no party politicians, corporate managers or union leaders. Direct democracy means decisions are made by all those present. Hence, we cannot be prescriptive about what a future, decent economy might work like. It will be decided by the people there at the time. Hopefully, it will happen soon, and everyone will be involved. However, in the meantime, it is rather a cop-out to simply say, “we’ll sort that out later” and then, fall back on abstract principles or vague concepts. So, we thought it would be useful to develop a detailed model (but not a straightjacket) of how it could work. This is the result.
Pamphlet text

The Experience of Co-operative Societies in Rojava

TEV DEM – the Movement for a Democratic Society – is a broad-based organisation playing a key role in guiding the development of Rojava’s innovative society. Its Economic Committee has published the following statement about the role, scale and rules of co-operatives which are playing an increasing part in Rojava’s social economy.

ANARCHIST ECONOMICS; The economics of the Sppanish Libertarianarian Collectives 1936-39 by Abraham Guillen – Download

Spain has a particular historic significance for the world anarchist movement. The extent and breadth of publications on the Spanish Civil War and the Revolution of 1936-9 is ever expanding. Nevertheless, little has been written on the economics of that revolution, in which hundreds of collectives were established by the revolutionary working class in city and country, acting on inspiration from the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), the anarcho-syndicalist union.

In this pamphlet the author examines the adoption ofthe ideas of the C.N.T. and looks at some of the anarchistcollectives created in 1936. He assesses the success ofthese experiments which constituted a way of life forthousands of people for up to three years, and draws con-clusions on the day to day improvements that were produced.

The collectives, as well as being a tribute to the tenacity and clarity of the ideas of the anarchist movement, canalso be taken as another confirmation that anarchistideas are often taken up by non-revolutionary workers intimes of upheaval and with the prospect of a more egali-tarian society. Now, just as in 1936, these ideas are essential if we are to rid ourselves of capitalism and create a truly free society.

Collectives in the Spanish Revolution – by Gaston Leval (2018 Updated & Improved Edition) – Download

A new, updated, and improved edition of a classic of anarcho-syndicalist economics — a detailed eyewitness and analysis of the successes and struggles of a libertarian socialist economy

Can anarchism work? People ask the question with reference to all sorts of things, but a common enough one is economics. The failure of the Soviet-style planned economies, in particular, is a dismissal of the idea that socialism of any kind (particularly the stateless variety) could ever work. How would anti-authoritarian socialists run an economy on the scale of a region or country?

The answer, it turns out, can be found in this book — not a work of abstract theory, but a masterpiece of economic and political history written by an eyewitness to the events described.

Gaston Leval, a French syndicalist writer, went to Spain during the civil war to defend the nascent socialist Republic against fascists. Once there, he realized that the war was about more than that — behind the front lines, particularly in territory controlled by the anarcho-syndicalist Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), a real social revolution of the sort dreamed of for a century was taking place. In some ways, it was what the syndicalists had always talked about — a democratically run trade union learns how to run industry by running itself, then simply takes over industry and runs it along democratic lines. Yet the experiments made necessary by the conditions of war led to unexpected developments. It wasn’t that the syndicalists went authoritarian; to the contrary, the pressures of the immediate situation led the libertarian socialists, communists, and anarchists in the CNT-FAI to consult with the locals and one another, debate, and experiment in a manner that produced bold new policies unheard of in Europe before (and, for the most part, since).

The libertarian socialist economy was built with freedom and equality as its core principles; from these principles, different localities launched their own experiments in socialist economics, yet also coordinated with one another and copied the more successful ones. The end result was staggering and sounds like science fiction: peasants were granted their own plots of land in a bourgeois revolution, but then voluntarily integrated into a socialist economy through positive incentives; powerful and democratic collectives were established that governed industry within municipalities and coordinated relations between them; attempts were made to socialize money and (with mixed success) to abolish it; universal provision of basic needs (including, for the first time ever, health care and education) and a family stipend became standard across anarchist Spain; small businesses were voluntarily vertically integrated with others in the same industry to form worker-controlled companies with larger, cleaner facilities, more efficient processes, and greater leisure time for workers; and industry and agriculture alike came under democratic control, with experiments in both elected/recallable managers and totally flat structures. Remarkably, the result of these experiments was not to crash the economy, but to bolster it — both agricultural and industrial output grew as a result of anarchist rulerlessness and libertarian socialism.

Leval knew when he started that the Republic was going to lose the war — in no small part due to the abandonment of the Revolution by Western liberal democracies and the backstabbing of the USSR — so he set out to record what he was seeing so it could be preserved for future generations of libertarian socialists. The resulting book was only published years later, but draws on detailed notes he took at the time with direct access to the historical records and account books of the revolutionaries. The result is a thoroughly researched book packed with both direct observations and statistical data — and a must-read for any libertarian socialist who wants to take seriously the challenges involved in establishing an economy truly run by and for ordinary working people.

Mutualist

ALLiance: Advocates of Freed Markets Should Embrace Anti-Capitalism by Gary Chartier – Download
Freed-market advocates should embrace “anti-capitalism” in order to encapsulate and highlight their full-blown commitment to freedom and their rejection of phony alternatives that use talk of freedom to conceal acquiescence in exclusion, subordination, and deprivation.

Calculation: History of an Idea by Roderick Long – Download

Or how an argument against the workability of authoritarian socialism became an argument against the workability of capitalism.

Healthcare – A Crisis of Artificial Scarcity by Kevin Carson

In healthcare, subsidies to the most costly and high-tech forms of medicine crowd out cheaper and decentralized alternatives, so that cheaper forms of treatment–even when perfectly adequate from the consumer’s standpoint–become less and less available. There are powerful institutional pressures for ever more radical monopoly. At the commanding heights of the centralized state and centralized corporate economy–so interlocked as to be barely distinguishable–problems are analyzed and solutions prescribed from the perspective of those who benefit from radical monopoly.

Markets Not Capitalism – An Introduction by Charles W. Johnson, Gary Chartier

An introduction to Market Anarchism, a theory of exchange based on individual agency and interaction rather than socio-economic privilege.

Socialist Ends Market Means by Gary Chartier

‘Framing Left Libertarianism: A First Pass’, ‘The Left in Left Libertarian’, ‘Socialism’ for Left Liberty’, ‘Socialism Revisited’,’State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree and Wherein They Differ Regarding Health-Care Reform’

State Socialism and Anarchism by Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin R. Tucker was born in Massachusetts in 1854, educated in a Quaker school, and raised in the radical intellectual environment of the Boston area at the time. He found himself drawn into anarchism as a young man and became a journalist and editor. After working for just over a decade at the Boston Daily Globe, he founded the journal Liberty, which became one of the most prominent outlets for anarchism in the Gilded Age.

The Free Market As Full Communism by Kevin Carson – Download

As surprising as it might seem, there’s a strong parallel between this free market vision of abundance and the Marxist vision of full communism… Much as capitalist production started out in tiny islands inside the larger feudal economy and later became the core of a new, dominant social formation, commons-based peer production is the core around which the post-capitalist economy will eventually crystallize.

The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand by Kevin A Carson

Corporate Capitalism as a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege

The Many Monopolies by Charles Johnson

We might say—with apologies to Shulamith Firestone—that the political economy of state capitalism is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear to be a superficial set of interventions, a problem that can be solved by a few legal reforms, perhaps the elimination of the occasional bailout or export subsidy, while preserving intact the basic recognizable patterns of the corporate economy. But there is something deeper, and more pervasive, at stake. A fully freed market means liberating essential command posts in the economy from State control, to be reclaimed for market and social entrepreneurship. The market that would emerge would look profoundly different from anything we have now.

Market Anarchy #1, All Power To The Soviets: Confiscation and the Homestead Principle by Murry Rothbard – Download

Written during Rothbard’s leftist stage, it sees the founder of ‘anarcho-capitalism’ defending the expropriation of workplaces and schools by workers and students.

Market Anarchy #2, ‘Capitalistic’ Anarchism? The Individual and The Communist by Rosa Slobodinsky, Voltairine de Cleyre

Two market anarchists, Rosa and Voltairine, write a hypothetical dialogue around markets and the use of ‘capitalist’ as an accusation for their beliefs.

Market Anarchy #3, Community Watch, Protection Firms, & Popular Courts by Murray Rothbard

Defense services on the free market.

Market Anarchy #4, Mutual Aid: Medical Insurance That Worked — Until Government Fixed It by Roderick Long

A history of medical cooperatives in America. ALTERNATIVE VERSION

Market Anarchy #5, Fuck Neoliberalism, Fuck Borders: An Anarchist Look at World Trade by BAD Press

Market Anarchy #6, Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty by Charles Johnson

Anarchist Economics

An old mutualist zine from many decades ago.

Anarchist Ends Market Means by Emmi Bevensee

Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis by Kevin Carson

But if both facets of our understanding of the present system (that corporate capitalism is exploitative; and that its exploitation depends solely on the state) were sincerely held by libertarians of left and right, it could serve as the basis for an alliance against state capitalism. The Left must be made to understand that their proper grievance is not against private property (properly understood), or markets (in the sense of free exchange between equal, unprivileged producers), but with the state. The Right must be made to understand the extent to which Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and GM are parasitic outgrowths of the state, and not products of “good old American know-how” or “elbow grease.” If both sides are sincerely motivated primarily by an oppostion to statist coercion, rather than a reflexive sympathy for big business or aversion to market exchange, the potential exists for coexistence on the basis of something like Voltairine de Cleyre’s “anarchism without adjectives.

Communal Property: A Libertarian Analysis by Kevin Carson

Historically, the village commune and open field system were, almost universally, the dominant property model in societies which, so far in human history, came closest to approximating the libertarian ideal of statelessness and voluntary association: the neolithic village societies between the agricultural revolution and the rise of the state..

Cost Plus: The Waste Production Economy by Kevin Carson

Desktop Manufacturing: A Homebrew Industrial Revolution by Kevin Carson

As small businesses close their doors and corporations lay off thousands, the unemployed will of necessity shift their focus from finding a new formal job to fashioning new livelihoods…

Just A Downturn: The Decline And Fall Of Sloanist Mass Production by Kevin Carson

The current economic crisis is not a cyclical downturn but a permanent structural shift — away from the state-subsidized Sloanist mass production and towards an economy of relocalized manufacturing.

Moloch Mass Production Economy by Kevin Carson

How were existing institutional interests able to thwart the revolutionary potential of electrical power, and diverty neotechnic technologies into paleotechnic channels?

Society After State Capitalism by Kevin Carson

Past examples and current experiments in creating resilient local communities are especially promising building blocks for a post-corporate society.

State Socialism and Anarchism by Benjamin Tucker

The Ethics of Labor Struggle: A Free Market Perspective by Kevin Carson

The Historical Origins of Mutualism by Shawn Wilbur, others

Part of the longer Mutualist FAQ

We Are All Degrowthers, We Are All Ecomodernists by Kevin Carson

The problem is compounded by the fact that both advocates of degrowth and its ecomodernist critics often fail to clearly define, in the course of debate, just what they mean respectively by the terms “growth” and “degrowth.” It’s easier by far to pick up on what emotional associations those terms carry for them.

What Is Mutualism by Clarence Lee Swartz