Nonviolence versus capitalism

Concerning capitalism, anarchism does not have its own separate analysis, but pretty much adopts the Marxist critique. Furthermore, anarchism shares Marxism’s ultimate goal, “communism” in its original sense of a classless society, without a state. Where anarchism dramatically departs from Marxism is in how to achieve a classless society. Since anarchists see the state as a central source of domination, they completely oppose the revolutionary capture of state power by vanguard parties — this is the core of the historical antagonism between Marxists and anarchists — and also reject socialist electoral strategies. Instead, anarchists favour self-management as the means as well as the goal: workers and communities should take control over decisions that affect their lives. In either a gradual expansion or a rapid, revolutionary upsurge in self-management, the existing sources of state and capitalist domination would be superseded. Thus anarchists, like Gandhians, believe that the means should reflect the ends.

How an anarchist economic system would operate has not been given a lot of detailed attention, partly because it is assumed that the system would be set up by those participating in it rather than according to a theorist’s blueprint. One general vision is of free distribution.[7] Self-managed enterprises would produce goods for community needs. These goods would be available to anyone who needs them, without any system of monetary exchange. In order to coordinate production, enterprises would share information. For making higher-level decisions on all issues, the organising principle would be the federation. Each self-managing group would send one or more elected delegates to a delegate body which would make recommendations for the groups to consider. Delegates are bound by their groups’ decisions and can be recalled at any time, unlike representatives who are able to follow their own whims whatever the electorate prefers. The federation structure can have many layers, with delegates from delegate bodies meeting together and so forth. Delegate bodies would not have the power to make binding decisions. The function of federation is coordination, not rule.

It is now possible to consider anarchism according to the five principles of nonviolent economics.

Principle 1: cooperation. With the system of self-management, decisions are made collectively in a participatory fashion. While there can be disagreements and disputes, the basis for economic decision making is cooperation rather than competition.

Principle 2: serving those in need. The system of free distribution is designed to provide for human needs, in accordance with Marx’s principle of “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” (a principle rejected in actual socialist economies in favour of economic reward according to contributions). Unlike sarvodaya, anarchism does not make serving those in need a central moral principle. Instead, satisfying needs is treated more as a pragmatic issue, namely as a sensible goal that ought to be built into the way the economic system works.

Principle 3: satisfying work

. Through self-management, work is organised by the workers. This means that the way work is done can be designed to provide work satisfaction, though of course efficiency and production for human needs are also vital considerations. Work satisfaction might be promoted through job rotation, multiskilling, automation of unpleasant tasks, designing of production systems to offer individual challenge and group interaction, and designing of tasks around individuals’ specific needs, abilities and capacities for learning.

Principle 4: participation. Self-management is a system for direct participation by people in decisions that affect their lives. Participation at higher levels is through delegates and federations, and here there may be difficulties. Although delegates are supposed to have no independent power, and delegates can be changed at any time by the groups that selected them, in practice delegates may gain considerable power. A group is likely to pick more articulate and knowledgeable individuals to be delegates and, with their experience on federated bodies, they are likely to become harder to replace. Further up the federative structure, accountability is more attenuated. Participation is thus strongest at the group level and more problematical at upper federated levels.