As we indicated at the start of this section, anarchists see a free society's productive activity centred around federations of syndicates. This showes that anarchism rejects the idea of isolated communes. Rather, we argue that communes and syndicates would work together in a federal structure. This would, as we argue in section I.3.5, necessitate confederations to help co-ordinate economic activity and, as indicated in section I.3.4, involve extensive links between productive syndicates and the communes they are part of.
The idea that anarchism aims for small, self-sufficient, communes is a Leninist slander. They misrepresent anarchist ideas on this matter, suggesting that anarchists seriously want society based on "small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production." In particular, they point to Kropotkin, arguing that he "looked backwards for change" and "witnessed such communities among Siberian peasants and watchmakers in the Swiss mountains." [Pat Stack, "Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246, November 2000]
While it may be better to cover this issue in section H.2 ("What parts of anarchist theory do Marxists particularly misrepresent?") we discuss it here simply because, firstly, it seems to be a depressingly common assertion and, secondly, it relates directly to what an anarchist society could look like. Hence our discussion of these assertions in this section of the FAQ. Also, it allows us to fill in more of the picture of what a free society could look like.
So what do anarchists make of the assertion that we aim for "small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production"? Simply put, we think it is nonsense (as would be quickly obvious from reading anarchist theory). Indeed, it is hard to know where this particular anarchist "vision" comes from. As Luigi Fabbri noted, in his reply to an identical assertion by the leading Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, "[i]t would be interesting to learn in what anarchist book, pamphlet or programme such an 'ideal' is set out, or even such a hard and fast rule!" ["Anarchy and 'Scientific' Communism", pp. 13-49, The Poverty of Statism, Albert Meltzer (ed.), p. 21]
If we look at, say, Proudhon, we soon see no such argument for "small scale" production. He argued for "the mines, canals, railways [to be] handed over to democratically organised workers' associations . . . We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic social Republic." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 62] Similarly, rather than dismiss the idea of large-scale industry Proudhon argued that "[l]arge industry . . . come to us by big monopoly and big property: it is necessary in the future to make them rise from the [labour] association." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 156] As Vincent correctly summarises:
"On this issue, it is necessary to emphasise that, contrary to the general image given on the secondary literature, Proudhon was not hostile to large industry. Clearly, he objected to many aspects of what these large enterprises had introduced into society. For example, Proudhon strenuously opposed the degrading character of . . . work which required an individual to repeat one minor function continuously. But he was not opposed in principle to large-scale production. What he desired was to humanise such production, to socialise it so that the worker would not be the mere appendage to a machine. Such a humanisation of large industries would result, according to Proudhon, from the introduction of strong workers' associations. These associations would enable the workers to determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed and operated on a day-to-day basis." [Op. Cit., p. 156]
Moreover, Proudhon did not see an anarchist society as one of isolated communities or workplaces. Instead, he saw the need for workplace and community federations to co-ordinate joint activities and interests. Economically, there would be an "agro-industrial federation" would "tend to foster increasing equality, by organising all public services in an economical fashion and in hands other than the state's, through mutualism in credit and insurance . . . guaranteeing the right to work and to education, and an organisation of work which allows each labourer to become a skilled worker and an artist, each wage-earner to become his own master." This would end "industrial and financial feudalism" and "wage-labour or economic servitude." [The Principle of Federation, pp. 70-1]
The need for economic federation was also required due to differences in raw materials, quality of land and so on. Proudhon argued that a portion of income from agricultural produce be paid into a central fund which would be used to make equalisation payments to compensate farmers with less favourably situated or less fertile land. As he put it, economic rent "in agriculture has no other cause than the inequality in the quality of land . . . if anyone has a claim on account of this inequality . . . [it is] the other land workers who hold inferior land. That is why in our scheme for liquidation [of capitalism] we stipulated that every variety of cultivation should pay a proportional contribution, destined to accomplish a balancing of returns among farm workers and an assurance of products." [The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 209]
This vision of a federation of workplaces can also be found in Bakunin's writings. As he put it, the "future organisation of society must proceed from the bottom up only, through free association or federations of the workers, into their associations to begin with, then into communes, regions, nations and, finally, into a great international and universal federation." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 176] Bakunin, like Proudhon, considered that "[i]ntelligent free labour will necessarily be associated labour" as under capitalism the worker "works for others" and her labour is "bereft of liberty, leisure and intelligence." Under anarchism, "the free productive associations" would become "their own masters and the owners of the necessary capital" and "amalgamate among themselves" and "sooner or later" will "expand beyond national frontiers" and "form one vast economic federation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 81-3]
Neither can such a vision be attributed to Kropotkin. While, of course, supporting decentralisation of power and decision making as did Proudhon and Bakunin, he did not reject the necessity of federations to co-ordinate activity. As he put it, the "commune of tomorrow will know that it cannot admit any higher authority; above it there can only be the interests of the Federation, freely accepted by itself as well as the other communes . . . The Commune will know that it must break the State and replace it by the Federation." For anarchists the commune "no longer means a territorial agglomeration; it is rather a generic name, a synonym for the grouping of equals which knows neither frontiers nor walls . . . Each group in the Commune will necessarily be drawn towards similar groups in other communes; they will come together and the links that federate them will be as solid as those that attach them to their fellow citizens." [Words of a Rebel, p. 83 and p. 88]
Nor did he see an anarchist society as one with an economy based purely around the small commune or community. He took the basic unit of a free society as one "large enough to dispose of a certain variety of natural resources — it may be a nation, or rather a region — produces and itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured produce." Such a region would "find the best means of combining agriculture with manufacture — the work in the field with a decentralised industry." Moreover, he recognised that the "geographical distribution of industries in a given country depends . . . to a great extent upon a complexus of natural conditions; it is obvious that there are spots which are best suited for the development of certain industries . . . The[se] industries always find some advantages in being grouped, to some extent, according to the natural features of separate regions." [Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, p. 26, p. 27 and pp. 154-5]
Kropotkin stressed that agriculture "cannot develop without the aid of machinery and the use of a perfect machinery cannot be generalised without industrial surroundings. . . . The village smith would not do." Thus he supported the integration of agriculture and industry, with "the factory and workshop at the gates of your fields and gardens." These factories would be "airy and hygienic, and consequently economical, factories in which human life is of more account than machinery and the making of extra profits." A "variety of agricultural, industrial and intellectual pursuits are combined in each community" to ensure "the greatest sum total of well-being." He thought that "large establishments" would still exist, but these would be "better placed at certain spots indicated by Nature." He stressed that it "would be a great mistake to imagine industry ought to return to its hand-work stage in order to be combined with agriculture. Whenever a saving of human labour can be obtained by means of a machine, the machine is welcome and will be resorted to; and there is hardly one single branch of industry into which machinery work could not be introduced with great advantage, at least at some of the stages of the manufacture . . . The machine will supersede hand-work in the manufacture of plain goods. But at the same time, hand-work very probably will extend its domain in the artistic finishing of many things which are now made entirely in the factory." [Op. Cit., p. 156, p. 197, p. 18, pp. 154-5 and pp. 151-2]
Clearly Kropotkin was not opposed to large-scale industry as such. As he put it, "if we analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of them the co-operation of hundred, even thousands, of workers gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The great iron works and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic steamers cannot be built in village factories." However, he stressed that this is objective necessity was not the case in many other industries and centralised production existed in these purely to allow capitalists "to hold command of the market." Once we consider the "moral and physical advantages which man would derive from dividing his work between field and the workshop" we must automatically evaluate the structure of modern industry with the criteria of what is best for the worker (and society and the environment) rather than what was best for capitalist profits and power. [Op. Cit., p. 153]
Clearly, Leninist summaries of Kropotkin's ideas on this subject are nonsense. Rather than seeing "small-scale" production as the basis of his vision of a free society, he saw production as being geared around the economic unit of a nation or region ("Each region will become its own producer and its own consumer of manufactured goods . . . [and] its own producer and consumer of agricultural produce." [Op. Cit., p. 40]). Industry would come to the village "not in its present shape of a capitalist factory" but "in the shape of a socially organised industrial production, with the full aid of machinery and technical knowledge." [Op. Cit., p. 151]
Industry would be decentralised and integrated with agriculture and based around communes, but these communes would be part of a federation and so production would be based around meeting the needs of these federations. A system of rational decentralisation would be the basis of Kropotkin's communist-anarchism, with productive activity and a free society's workplaces geared to the appropriate level. For those forms of industry which would be best organised on a large-scale would continue to be so organised, but for those whose current (i.e. capitalist) structure had no objective need to be centralised would be broken up to allow the transformation of work for the benefit of both workers and society.
Thus we would see a system of workplaces geared to local and district needs complementing larger factories which would meet regional and wider needs. Kropotkin was at pains to show that such a system would be economical, stressing that "[t]his is why the 'concentration' so much spoken of is often nothing but an amalgamation of capitalists for the purpose of dominating the market, not for cheapening the technical process." [Op. Cit., p. 154] In other words, that the structure of modern industry was skewed by the needs of capitalist profit and power and so it cannot be assumed that what is "efficient" under a capitalist criteria is necessarily the best for a free society.
Kropotkin was well aware that modern industry was shaped "to suit the temporary interests of the few — by no means those of the nation." [Op. Cit., p. 147] Therefore he made a clear division between economic tendencies which existed to aid the capitalist to dominate the market and enhance their profits and power and those which indicated a different kind of future. He placed the tendency of industry to spread across the world, to decentralise itself into all nations and regions, as a tendency of the second kind (one often swallowed up by the first, of course). As such, he looked at and analysed existing society and its tendencies. Therefore it cannot be said that Kropotkin based this analysis on "look[ing] backwards for change." Indeed, the opposite was obviously the case. He continually stressed that "the present tendency of humanity is to have the greatest possible variety of industries gathering in each country." [Op. Cit., pp. 25-6]
Kropotkin backed this claim, as all the claims in his work, with extensive empirical evidence and research. In other words, he clearly looked to the present for change, charting tendencies within modern society which pointed in a libertarian direction and backing up his arguments with extensive and recent research. To state otherwise simply shows an unfamiliarity with Kropotkin's work.
The obvious implication of Leninist comments arguments against anarchist ideas on industrial transformation after a revolution is that they think that a socialist society will basically be the same as capitalism, using the technology, industrial structure and industry developed under class society without change. After all, did Lenin not argue that "Socialism is nothing but the next step forward from state capitalist monopoly . . . Socialism is merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people"? [The Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid it, p. 37] Needless to say, capitalist industry, as Kropotkin was aware, has not developed neutrally nor purely because of technical needs. Rather it has been distorted by the twin requirements to maintain capitalist profits and power. The one of the first tasks of a social revolution will be to transform the industrial structure, not keep it as it is. You cannot use capitalist means for socialist ends. As Alexander Berkman correctly argued:
"The role of industrial decentralisation in the revolution is unfortunately too little appreciated. . . Most people are still in the thraldom of the Marxian dogma that centralisation is 'more efficient and economical.' They close their eyes to the fact that the alleged 'economy' is achieved at the cost of the workers' limb and life, that the 'efficiency' degrades him to a mere industrial cog, deadens his soul, kills his body. Furthermore, in a system of centralisation the administration of industry becomes constantly merged in fewer hands, producing a powerful bureaucracy of industrial overlords. It would indeed be the sheerest irony if the revolution were to aim at such a result. It would mean the creation of a new master class." [The ABC of Anarchism, pp. 80-1]
In other words, it would be a new bureaucracy exploiting and oppressing those who do the actual work — as in private capitalism — simply because capitalist economic structures are designed to empower the few over the many. Like the capitalist state, they cannot be used by the working class to achieve their liberation (they are not created for the mass participation that real socialism requires, quite the reverse in fact!). While we will "inherent" an industrial structure from capitalism it would be the greatest possible error to leave it unchanged and an even worse one to accelerate the processes by which capitalists maintain and increase their power (i.e. centralisation and concentration) in the name of "socialism."
One last factor should be mentioned with regards to the issue of decentralising production. Kropotkin, as well as thinking that "a country with no large factories to bring steel to a finished condition is doomed to be backward in all other industries," also saw that a society in revolution would be thrust back on its own resources as "[i]nternational commerce will come to a standstill" and the economy would be "paralysed." This would force a revolutionary people if "cut off from the world for a year or two by the supporters of middle-class rule" to "provide for itself, and to reorganise its production, so as satisfy its own needs. If it fails to do so, it is death. If it succeeds, it will revolutionise the economic life of the country." This would involve "the necessity of cultivating the soil, of combining agricultural production with industrial production in the suburbs of [cities] and its environs." Thus the danger of the initial isolation of a revolution was a factor in Kropotkin's ideas on this issue. [The Conquest of Bread, p. 190, p. 191, p. 192 and p. 191]
We are sorry to have laboured this point, but this issue is one which arises with depressing frequency in Marxist accounts of anarchism. It is best that we indicate that those who make the claim that anarchists seek "small scale" production geared for "small autonomous communities" simply show their ignorance of the source material. In actually, anarchists see production as being geared to whatever makes most social, economic and ecological sense. Some production and workplaces will be geared to the local commune, some will be geared to the district federation, some to the regional federation, and so on. It is for this reason anarchists support the federation of workers' associations as the means of combining local autonomy with the needs for co-ordination and joint activity. To claim otherwise is simply to misrepresent anarchist theory.