Appendix 2 : 
The Anarchist Method: An Experimental Approach to Post-Capitalist Economies
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Author : Abbey Volcano

Author : Anthony J. Nocella II

Author : Caroline K. Kaltefleiter

Author : Iain McKay

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Wayne Price



There are various opinions on the question of what a libertarian socialist
economy would look like. By “libertarian socialism,” I include
anarchism and libertarian Marxism, as well as related tendencies such as
guild socialism and parecon—views which advocate a free, cooperative,
self-managed, nonstatist economy once capitalism has been overthrown.
Before directly discussing these programs, alternate visions of communal
commonwealths, it is important to decide on the appropriate method.
Historically, two methods have predominated, which I will call the
utopian-moral approach and the Marxist-determinist approach (neither of
these terms is meant to be pejorative). I will propose a third approach,
which has been called the “method of anarchism” (or “of anarchy”).



The utopian-moral method goes back to the earliest development of
socialism, before either Marxism or Bakuninist anarchism developed. It was
the method of Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Fourier, Cabet, and later of
Proudhon. A thinker starts with a set of moral values by which the present
society may be condemned. Then the author moves on to envision social
institutions which could embody these values. (These writers, pioneers of
socialism, communism, and anarchism, did not call themselves
“utopians,” but saw themselves as “scientific” thinkers.)



A current example of utopian-moral methods is the program of “parecon”
(short for “participatory economics”), originally developed by Michael
Albert and Robin Hahnel.[410] Typically, in the first section of Albert’s
book, Parecon, he poses the key question, “What are our preferred values
regarding economic outcomes and how do particular economic institutions
further or inhibit them?”[411] He works out a set of desirable values and
then considers how an economy could be organized to carry them out.



The advantages of this method should be apparent. What Albert wants and why
he wants it is transparent. It may be fairly argued for or against.
Pareconists offer a yardstick by which to judge potential economies, as
well as real ones, so that radicals do not claim to be for freedom but
accept some totalitarian monstrosity.



However, there are also problems with the utopian-moral method. Various
thinkers start with more or less the same values (e.g., freedom,
cooperation, equality, democracy/self-management, and the development of
each person’s potentialities). Yet they propose quite different models of
a new economy. How to decide among these models?



Also it could be argued that it is authoritarian for radicals today to make
decisions about how other people will organize their lives in the future.
The more precise and concrete the model, the more this is a problem. Not
surprisingly, quite a number of historic utopian models were very
undemocratic in structure (speaking of Owen, Fourier, Cabet, and
Saint-Simon). This is not true of the parecon model, but a modern version
is in B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two (1976), an imagined socialist commune
with a dictatorship by behavioral psychologists.



Finally there is a problem in that the utopian approach starts from values
rather than from an analysis of how capitalist society functions. There is
really no necessary connection between any particular model and the
dynamics of capitalism (besides the moral critique). The visions of the
possible futures do not point to any strategies for getting to these
futures. Since they propose a drastic change in society, they may be seen
as implying a social revolution. But it is certainly possible to adopt some
utopian model and believe that it can be reached by gradual changes, such
as building various alternative institutions until capitalism can be
peacefully replaced—that is, by following a gradual, pacifistic, and
reformist strategy. A program that does not say whether to be revolutionary
or reformist is not much of a guide to action.



The main alternate method has been that of Marxist-determinism. Marx and
Engels valued the preceding “utopian socialists” for various things,
such as their criticism of capitalism and some of their proposals. But the
original Marxists claimed that another method was needed. It was, they
thought, necessary to analyze how capitalism was developing, including its
main drive mechanism: the capital-labor relationship in production. This
provided the basis of a strategy: the working-class revolution. It
indicated the emergence of a new society out of that revolution. This
relationship was their main interest. Marx and Engels only mentioned the
nature of the new society in passing remarks, scattered throughout their
writings—such as a few paragraphs in Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha
Program.”[412]



In this work, Marx discussed the nature of communism, including at first
paying workers with labor credits and later providing goods freely upon
need. Yet such ideas were not advocated nor made as speculation, but stated
as factual predictions. This is what would happen, he was saying; human
choice seemed to be irrelevant. The goal of Marx and Engels was not to
implement a new social system. It was to see that the working class
overthrew the capitalist class and took power for itself. Once this
happened, the historical process would take care of further social
development.



In State and Revolution, Lenin regarded himself as praising Marx when he
wrote, “Marx treated the question of communism in the same way as a
naturalist would treat the question of the development of, say, a new
biological variety, once he knew that it had originated in such and such a
way and was changing in such and such a definite direction…. It has never
entered the head of any socialist to ‘promise’ that the higher phase of
the development of communism will arrive; …[it is a] forecast that it
will arrive.”[413]



The Marxist-determinist method also has distinct advantages. It is tied to
an economic theory. It has an analysis of what forces are moving in the
direction of a new society and what ones are blocking them. It leads to a
strategy that identifies a specific change agent (the working class,
leading other oppressed groups). There are strands of autonomist Marxism
which interpret Marxism in a libertarian, anti-statist fashion which
overlaps with class struggle anarchism.



On the other hand, like a naturalist’s study of an organism’s
development, there is no moral standard, just a “forecast” (even
though, in fact, Marx’s work is saturated with moral passion; but this is
not the system). So when Marxist-led revolutions produce state-capitalist
totalitarianisms that murder tens of millions of workers and peasants, very
many Marxists support this as the result of the historical process which
has created “actually existing socialism.” Marx and Engels would
undoubtedly have been horrified by what developed in the Soviet Union and
other so-called communist countries. But a method without a moral standard
made it difficult for Marxists to not support these states.



Both the utopian-moral and Marxist-determinist methods have advantages and
weaknesses. Let me suggest an alternate approach to post-capitalist,
post-revolutionary economic models. This has been raised by anarchists in
the past. It starts from the doubt that every region and national culture
will choose the same version of libertarian socialist society. It is
unlikely that every industry, from the production of steel to the education
of children, could be managed in precisely the same manner.



Kropotkin proposed a flexible society based on voluntary associations.
These would create “an interwoven network, composed of an infinite
variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local,
regional, national, and international—temporary or more or less
permanent—for all possible purposes: production, consumption and
exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements…and so on.”[414]



Perhaps the clearest statement of this flexible and experimental anarchist
method was made by Errico Malatesta, the great Italian anarchist
(1853–1932). To Malatesta, after a revolution, “probably every possible
form of possession and utilization of the means of production and all ways
of distribution of produce will be tried out at the same time in one or
many regions, and they will combine and be modified in various ways until
experience will indicate which form, or forms, is or are, the most
suitable… So long as one prevents the constitution and consolidation of
new privilege, there will be time to find the best solutions.”[415]
Malatesta continued, “For my part, I do not believe there is ‘one
solution’ to the social problems, but a thousand different and changing
solutions in the same way as social existence is different and varied in
time and space.”[416]



We cannot assume, he argued, that, even when the workers have agreed to
overthrow capitalism, they would agree to create immediately a fully
anarchist-communist society. What if small farmers insist on being paid for
their crops in money? They may give up this opinion once it is obvious that
industry will provide them with goods, but first they must not be coerced
into giving up their crops under conditions they reject. In any case a
compulsory libertarian communism is a contradiction in terms, as he pointed
out.



“After the revolution, that is, after the defeat of the existing powers
and the overwhelming victory of the forces of insurrection, what then? It
is then that gradualism really comes into operation. We shall have to study
all the practical problems of life: production, exchange, the means of
communication, relations between anarchist groupings and those living under
some kind of authority... And in every problem [anarchists] should prefer
the solutions which not only are economically superior but which satisfy
the need for justice and freedom and leave the way open for future
improvements.”[417]



Whatever solutions are tried, he is saying, they must be nonexploitative
and nonoppressive. They must “prevent the constitution and consolidation
of new privilege” and “leave the way open for future improvements.”
It is precisely this flexibility, pluralism, and experimentalism which
characterizes anarchism in Malatesta’s view and makes it a superior
approach to the problems of life after capitalism.



“Only anarchy points the way along which they can find, by trial and
error, that solution which best satisfies the dictates of science as well
as the needs and wishes of everybody. How will children be educated? We
don’t know. So what will happen? Parents, pedagogues and all who are
concerned with the future of the young generation will come together, will
discuss, will agree or divide according to the views they hold, and will
put into practice the methods which they think are the best. And with
practice that method which in fact is the best will in the end be adopted.
And similarly with all problems which present themselves.”[418]



Others have pointed to the experimental approach as central to the
anarchist program. For example, Paul Goodman, the most prominent anarchist
of the ’60s, wrote: “I am not proposing a system.... It is improbable
that there could be a single appropriate style of organization or economy
to fit all the functions of society...”[419] Or, as Kropotkin put it, an
anarchist “society would represent nothing immutable.… Harmony
would…result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of
equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this
adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy
a special protection from the state.”[420]

Issues Raised by Differing Models of Post-Capitalism



There are a number of problems that post-capitalist visions have to address
and the ways that they address these issues are what differentiate them.
The approach I have raised does not insist on any one answer to each issue,
but suggests that different answers may be tried in different regions at
different times. However, the answers proposed by different models provide
us with ideas of possible responses to these problems. That is, the
utopian-moral and Marxist-determinist models may be treated as “thought
experiments,” providing suggestions that may be experimented with.



A key problem is the method of coordination in the post-capitalist economy.
Three answers have been proposed: a market, central planning, and some sort
of noncentralized planning.



First, there has been proposed what might be called “decentralized market
socialism.” It would be for an economy of democratically managed producer
(worker-run) cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, family farms, municipal
enterprises, and very small businesses that would compete in a market. Such
a model has been advocated by various reform socialists who are concerned
with the failures of state-managed economies.[421] It has been advocated by
Right Greens, Catholic distributionists, nonsocialist decentralists, and
others.[422] The Yugoslavian economy under Tito had something like this
(under the overall dictatorship of the Communist Party).



In theory such a system would not be capitalist, because there is no
capitalist class that owns the means of production and there is no
proletariat that sells its ability to work to a separate capitalist class.
But, however democratic each enterprise, the population cannot be said to
actually manage the overall economy in a democratic way. It would really be
run by the uncontrollable forces of the market. There are bound to be
business cycles, unemployment, and a distinction between more prosperous
and poorer enterprises and regions (effects which were seen in
“communist” Yugoslavia).



An alternative would be some degree of central planning, as Marx seems to
have assumed. In a nonstatist society, the central authority would be
answerable to an association of popular councils and assemblies.[423]
Castoriadis imagined that there could be a central “plan factory,”
which would create an overall plan.[424] Somehow, he believed, this could
be consistent with libertarian socialism of self-managing workers’
councils. Anarcho-syndicalists and guild socialists have also tended toward
a centralized economy, managed by democratic unions. All sorts of
representative institutions can be proposed for democratic central
planning, although they all have the difficulty of important decisions
being made outside of the direct control of the working population.



The third suggestion is that of a democratically planned, but not
centralized, cooperative economy, “the idea that production could be
directly coupled to individual and social need through democratic
assemblies (or cybernetic networks) of workers and consumers.”[425]
Parecon is a model of such a nonmarket, noncentralized system. Planning
would be carried out through cycles of back-and-forth negotiations among
producer and consumer councils using the Internet.



In a pluralist, experimental, post-capitalist world, different regions
might experiment with different types of economic coordination. Regions
might try out mixtures of different models. For example, even in the
parecon model there is an element of central planning in the
“facilitation boards,” which help to smooth along the planning process.
Even in decentralized market socialism, presumably there would be some sort
of overall regulation, as there is under capitalism, if not by a state then
by some communal agency. Takis Fotopoulis proposes “a stateless,
moneyless, and marketless economy” but one which includes “an
artificial market” for a “non-basic needs sector…that balances demand
and supply.”[426]



A related issue is the size of the economic unit. While economic planning
by capitalist states is on a national basis, revolutionary
socialist-anarchists generally regard this as inappropriate to a
post-capitalist economy. As internationalists, we are aware that the world
is being knit together by imperialist globalization. At the same time we
know that much of this worldwide centralization is not due to technical
needs but to the need of capitalists to control natural resources, to
dominate world markets, and to exploit the poorest workers in order to make
the biggest profits. To end the rule of states and bureaucracies,
anarchists want as much as possible of local, face-to-face democracy. This
requires a degree of economic decentralization. Indeed, any sort of
economic planning would be easier, and easier to make democratic, the
smaller the units. Finally it would also be easier to keep production and
consumption in balance with nature, the smaller the units are.[427]



Traditionally anarchists have sought to balance national and international
association with the need for local community by advocating federations and
networks. There can be no hard-and-fast rule about how centralized or
decentralized an economy has to be. As Paul Goodman put it, “We are in a
period of excessive centralization.... In many functions this style is
economically inefficient, technologically unnecessary, and humanly
damaging. Therefore we might adopt a political maxim: to decentralize
where, how, and how much [as] is expedient. But where, how, and how much
are empirical questions. They require research and experiment.”[428]



Murray Bookchin advocated an economy based on communist communes similar to
the Israeli kibbutzim. This was part of his “libertarian municipalist”
model.[429] Another version is raised by Fotopoulos[430] and it is also
discussed as “Scheme II” in Goodman and Goodman.[431] The community as
a whole would be an enterprise and, through its town meetings, would make
decisions about economic planning. This would not prevent communities from
forming federations on a regional, national, and international level. They
could coordinate their plans and exchange goods, services, and ideas.



Parecon has its own twist on this issue. Workplaces would be managed by
workers’ councils. Consumption would be organized through consumers’
community councils. These are relatively small, face-to-face groupings. But
the unit which is covered by the final plan is primarily the nation (which,
in the case of the United States, if it still existed, would be much of a
continent). In fact, Albert specifically rejects “green bioregionalism”
and any notion of prioritizing small institutions or local
“self-sufficiency.”[432] (Actually decentralists do not advocate
complete community self-sufficiency, but enough dependence on local and
regional resources to be relatively self-reliant, within broader
federations and networks).



The issue of size is directly related to that of technology. Just as is
true of economic institutions, so productive technology would have to be
flexible, pluralistic, and experimental. Machinery and the methodology of
production have been organized by the processes of capitalism (and
militarism) to serve its interests. Technology would have to be completely
reorganized and redeveloped over time to meet the needs of a new society.
Immediately after a revolution, the workers will need to begin to rework
the process of production (machinery included) to do away with the
distinction between order givers and order takers, to produce useful goods,
to be in balance with the ecology, and to make a decentralized but
productive economy possible.[433]



Just how these will be done would require a great deal of rethinking and
trial and error.[434] The parecon model does not include any
reconsideration of technology, but does call for the reorganization of work
to create “balanced job complexes.” Occupations would be broken down
and reconfigured so that individual jobs would include both interesting and
boring tasks, both decision-making and tedious aspects. (This has been
described by Marxists and anarchists as the abolition of the division of
labor between mental and manual labor).



This approach is distinct from either the technophobes, who want to reject
all technology beyond that of hunter-gatherer society, and those who accept
modern technology as capitalism has created it. Both these views overlook
how flexible technology might be in a totally different society.



Another key question facing a post-capitalist economic economy is that of
reward for work. There have been proposals for paying workers for their
work in some sort of money or credit, which is used to acquire goods and
services. Pareconists propose paying workers for the “intensity” and
“duration” of their labor, that is, how hard and how long they work, as
judged by coworkers. In Walden Two, the ruling psychologists were able to
increase or decrease the amount of credits earned for any particular job to
motivate members to do unpleasant tasks.[435]



By contrast, in a fully communist economy, work would be done only for the
pleasure of doing it, or because people feel a duty, or because of social
pressure (people do not want their neighbors to call them “lazy bums”).
Consumption will be a right, based only on human need and unrelated to
effort. Kropotkin is usually understood as advocating such a communist
system after a revolution. Bookchin also proposed going straight to a free
communist economy.



Various thinkers have proposed a split system. Almost every socialist
system, including parecon, provides free goods for children, the ill, and
retired older adults. Fotopoulos advocates a basic needs sector and a
non–basic needs sector, the first to be treated as free communism and the
second as having goods to be earned through work.[436] Similarly Paul and
Percival Goodman propose dividing the economy into a basic economy, which
provides a guaranteed minimum subsistence (food, clothing, shelter, medical
care, and transportation), and a separate economy to take care of
everything else.[437] Even if the non–basic needs sector was market-like,
there would be no reserve army of the unemployed, since everyone would have
at least the guaranteed minimum to live on.



This too is an area where different regions might try out different
methods.



This leads to the question of whether to plan for a transitional economy,
whether to expect two or more stages of post-capitalist economic
development. In his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” Marx wrote, “We
are dealing here with a communist society, not as it has developed on its
own foundations, but as it emerges from capitalist society…still stamped
with the birthmarks of the old society.”[438] He distinguished between
this “first phase of communist society” and “a more advanced phase of
communist society.”[439] These are both communism, to Marx, because even
the first phase is a “cooperative society based on common ownership of
the means of production.”[440] (For some reason, Lenin renamed the first
phase “socialism” and only the final phase “communism”).



In Marx’s first phase, people would be rewarded for the number of hours
worked with labor-time certificates which they could exchange for goods
according to how many hours went into making each good. While vastly more
just and equal than capitalism, this still has bourgeois limitations since
workers have unequal capacities and unequal needs. When productivity has
vastly expanded and human abilities are further developed, it will be
possible to advance to the higher stage of communism, which will function
according to the standard, “From each according to their abilities, to
each according to their needs.”



We can add that in poorer, less-industrialized nations, a
post-revolutionary society would not be able to even reach the lower phase
of communism (socialism) by itself. It would, however, be able to take
steps toward socialism by such means as replacing the state with a council
system and replacing corporations with self-managed cooperatives. Yet it
might be unable to abolish money or it may have to make other compromises
with capitalism. Meanwhile it would do all it could to help the revolution
to spread internationally, especially to the industrialized, richer
nations, in order to get economic aid for industrializing in its own way.
(This concept was raised by Lenin and Trotsky;[441] I have “translated”
it into libertarian socialism, so to speak.)



While Marx’s views are well-known, less well-known are the similar views
of Bakunin. According to his close comrade, James Guillaume, Bakunin
believed, “We should, to the greatest extent possible, institute and be
guided by the principle, From each according to his [sic] ability, to each
according to his need. When thanks to the progress of scientific industry
and agriculture, production comes to outstrip consumption…everyone will
draw what he needs from the abundant social reserve of commodities. In the
meantime each community will decide for itself during the transition period
the method they deem best for the distribution of the products of
associated labor.”[442]



Even Kropotkin, author of anarchist-communism, believed that right after a
revolution goods would not be free to all able-bodied adults but would only
be guaranteed to those who were willing to work for a set amount of time.
Only as productivity increased would it be possible to make goods available
to all regardless of labor.[443]



The realism of a transitional approach should be obvious given that we
would indeed be going into a cooperative, nonprofit economy straight from
capitalism. Modern technology is potentially more productive than either
Marx or Bakunin could have imagined. Yet a post-revolutionary generation
would still have to develop the poorer majority of the world in a humane
and ecological fashion. Also, they would have to rebuild the technology and
cities of the industrialized countries in a self-managed and sustainable
way. Therefore, I doubt that there could be an immediate leap into full
communism.



However, the “transitional stage” concept has been used by Marxists to
justify all sorts of horrors, making excuses for Stalinist totalitarianism.
This is not what Bakunin, or even Marx, had in mind. It shows the need for
a vision with moral values to judge a new society.



Neither Marx nor Bakunin/Guillaume proposed a mechanism for going from a
transitional phase to full communism. One possibility might be to use the
idea of a split economy (a basic communism and a non-basic needs sector).
As productivity grows, the free communist sector might be deliberately
expanded, until it gradually includes all (or most) of the economy.



Rather than a series of transitional periods, it may be most productive to
think in terms of an experimental, pluralist, and decentralized society, in
which different parts face the problems caused by the transition out of
capitalism and deal with them in differing ways. A libertarian socialist
society would always be “transitional” in that it would always be
changing, always in transition to a more harmonious, freer, and more
egalitarian society. It would never reach perfection, since that is not a
human goal, but it would continually be changing, refining itself,
readapting to new circumstances in a never-ending spiral of experimental
improvement.



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     Appendix 2 -- Added : January 31, 2021

     Appendix 2 -- Updated : December 13, 2021

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