Transcript Economics for Democratic Socialism Drexel University Spring Quarter 2009 Libertarian Socialism? • Not everyone who hates the government loves capitalism. • P.-J.

Economics for Democratic
Socialism
Drexel University
Spring Quarter 2009
Libertarian Socialism?
• Not everyone who hates the
government loves capitalism.
• P.-J. Proudhon, known as a
founder of anarchism, said
“Property is Theft.”
• The idea is that capitalist
property is exploitative, and
cannot exist without a strong
state to enforce it.
• (Proudhon was also notoriously
antisemetic).
Anarchism 1
• Anarchism advocates the abolition of all domination of one
person by another, including government.
• There may be some disagreement about timing.
– Philosophic anarchists expect government eventually to
be eliminated.
– Revolutionary anarchists say: now.
• A fairly common argument (from Proudhon) is that once
artificial restraints such as government are removed,
natural human solidarity will emerge.
• There seems to be no basis in experience for this romantic
view.
Anarchism 2
• Anarchist tendencies have emerged from a number
of political movements:
– American abolitionism: Garrison
– Individualist anarchism: Benjamin Tucker
• The Russian Terrorist Party
– Anarcho-Communism: Bakunin, Kropotkin
• Labor Unions
– Anarcho-syndicalism
• Anarchists reject majority rule because the
minority is dominated by the majority.
Anarcho-Communism
• The synthesis of anarchism and communism is based on
the idea that small-scale local communities would control
nonhuman means of production, on a basis of consensus,
and that larger-scale organization would be coordinated by
agreement or, if necessary, markets. (Kropotkin: The
Conquest of Bread)
• This may be said to be utopian in the sense of Martin
Buber: proposals for social organization as if human
aspiration were a determinant. (Paths in Utopia)
• Labor Zionism -- a highly successful collectivist
movement, in many ways -- was strongly influenced by
Anarcho-Communism.
Anarcho-Synicalism
• The Anarcho-Syndicalists advocated that labor unions take
over control of production and build up a new state by
their federation.
• Some anarcho-syndicalists envisioned society as
constituted from the bottom up by a very complex system
of voluntary organizations. (Giovanni Baldelli, Social
Anarchism)
• A related tendency, Guild Socialism, advocated something
like a return to the structure of the medieval city, with the
unions transforming themselves into guilds and
constituting a state (and an economic plan) from the
bottom up. (G. D. H. Cole, Guild Socialism Restated).
Individualist Anarchism
• American individualist anarchism was not procapitalist.
• Tucker attacked government measures to suppress
labor unions in his time and defended the labor
unions as voluntary associations of individual
workers.
• Thus individualist anarchism was closer to
anarcho-syndicalism than to the anarchocapitalism that emerged from free-market thinking
in the 1960’s.
Libertarian
• The word “libertarian” was synonymous with
anarcho-communism about 1858-1960. (JOSEPH
DEJACQUE, Le Libertaire, New York, 18581862)
• In about 1960, extreme free-market conservative
coined the word for the first time (so far as they
knew) for their own tendency.
• Needless to say, anarchists are more than a little
bitter about this act of theft.
Anarchism 3
•
In a very few instances, anarchist groups
have found themselves in control of
territory in the context of civil war.
1. The Makhnovchina in the Ukraine.
2. Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War.
•
They did make some compromises,
arguably unavoidable in wartime, but lost
anyway.
Minarchist Libertarian Socialism
• One useful idea from free-market “libertarians” is the
distinction of anarchism and minarchism.
• A minarchist is a libertarian whose aim is to reduce
domination or command relations to their least practical
extent, rather than doing away with them.
• (The least practical extent could still be pretty
comprehensive, but that’s not what minarchists suppose.)
• One strategy is to have many “power centers,” each limited
and balanced by the others.
• In practice, anarcho-syndicalists and social anarchists seem
minarchist, rather than strictly anarchist.
A Sketch of Guild Socialism 1
• In a local community, the workers in various activities
organize themselves into guilds to administer their
production, and the guilds into a guild congress.
• Those who produce public goods are grouped as the “civil
guilds.”
• Councils are formed for other functions, such as health,
cultural, collective (public utilities) and consumers’
cooperative societies.
• “It follows that there must be, in the Society,as many
separately elected groups of representatives as there are
distinct essential groups of functions to be performed.”
A Sketch of Guild Socialism 2
• These groupings are federated to form the local commune
and they send representatives to a communal council.
• At the same time, the local guilds for coal mining, leatherworking, wind-power generation, and so on, are federated
into regional, national and perhaps international guilds for
these purposes.
• Similarly, health councils, cultural councils, consumers’
coops, and so on have their own regional, national, and
perhaps international federations.
• The regional or national commune is simultaneously a
federation of the communes at the next lower level and the
guilds and functional federations at its own level.
A Sketch
of Guild
Socialism 3
Supply and Demand
• The Guilds Congress concerns itself with “the adjustment
of supply and demand.”
• Prices and targets of production are determined by
negotiation among the various guilds and councils.
• In case of impasses, decisions are arbitrated by the next,
more inclusive council.
• For example, if the auto production guild and the steel
guild disagree on prices and production targets for steel,
the issue would be arbitrated by the Communal Council.
• In this way, in effect, the Guilds Congress generates an
“economic plan” by negotiation.
Anarchism
• “The civic services are funded by direct transfers
between the industrial and civic guilds.” (Again,
by negotiation).
• Thus, no taxation of individuals.
• Since individuals are not taxed, the commune is
indeed not a state as Schumpeter uses the term.
(Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 169)
Markets?
• Cole, writing before 1920, did not envision a role
for markets.
• Indeed, he wanted no material incentives for
production, the workers being put “on their honor
to do their best.”
• However, markets could play a big role, especially
if enterprises were free to determine their outputs
locally, while prices were negotiated at the level of
the national commune.
Assessment 1
• The dispersion of power into many groups might secure
the greatest possible individual liberty consistent with
equality and more or less efficient production.
• Perhaps there would be a practical approximation of
"unanimous direct democracy" or of equity in the sense of
non-envy.
• But can we be sure of these things?
• If negotiation is costly, the approximation to efficiency
might be rather poor. There would be a lot of negotiation.
Assessment 2
• There are real-world precedents. It seems that medieval
city-states were (at least in some cases) composed by their
guilds somewhat in this way.
• However, this picture is postrevolutionary.
• Precisely because it envisions the reconstitution of the state
“from below,” it presupposes that the capitalist state no
longer exists.
• Unless we suffer a quite general social collapse (which
God forbid!) it seems unlikely to be relevant.
Summary
• Capitalism and liberty march together only on the town
square, not on the highway.
• For one (older) sort of libertarian, capitalism requires stateenforced property, and so a strong state; both should be
rejected.
• However, the rejection of all compulsory organization
poses problems for predictably efficient use of resources.
• Some compromises seem inevitable.
• Guild socialism provides one instance of a carefully
thought-out set of compromises.