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Chapter 5 z z believe that a fully communist society would be anarchic, expressed by Marx in the theory of the ‘withering away’ of the state z z agree that human beings have the ultimate capacity to order their affairs without the need for political authority. Nevertheless, anarchism and socialism diverge at a number of points. This occurs most clearly in relation to parliamentary socialism. Anarchists dismiss parliamentary socialism as a contradiction in terms. Not only is it impossible to reform or ‘humanize’ capitalism through the corrupt and corruptingmechanisms of government, but also any expansion in the role and responsibilities of the state can only serve to entrench oppression, albeit in the name of equality and social justice. The bitterest disagreement between collectivist anarchists and Marxists centres on their rival conceptions of the transition from capitalism to communism. Marxists have called for a revolutionary ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. They nevertheless argue that this proletarian state will ‘wither away’ as capitalist class antagonisms abate. In this view, state power is nothing but a reflection of the class system, the state being, in essence, an instrument of class oppression. Anarchists, on the other hand, regard the state as evil and oppressive in its own right: it is, by its very nature, a corrupt and corrupting body.They therefore drawno distinction between bourgeois states and proletarian states. Genuine revolution, for an anarchist, requires not only the overthrowof capitalismbut also the immediate and final overthrowof state power. The state cannot be allowed to ‘wither away’; it must be abolished. Nevertheless, anarcho- collectivism has taken a variety of forms. The most significant of these are: z z mutualism
z z anarcho-syndicalism z z anarcho-communism. Mutualism
The anarchist belief in social solidarity has been used to justify various forms of cooperative behaviour. At one extreme, it has led to a belief in pure communism, but it has also generated the more modest ideas of mutualism , associated with Pierre- Joseph Proudhon. In a sense, Proudhon stood between the individualist and collectivist traditions of anarchism, Proudhon’s ideas sharing much in common with those of US individualists such as Josiah Warren (1798–1874). In What Is Property? ([1840] 1970), Proudhon came up with the famous statement that ‘Property is theft’, and condemned a system of economic exploitation based on the accumulation of capital. Nevertheless, unlike Marx, Proudhon was not opposed to all forms of private property, distinguishing between property and what he called ‘possessions’. In particular, he admired the independence and initiative of small communities of peasants, craftsmen and artisans, especially the watchmakers of Switzerland, who had traditionally managed their affairs on the basis of mutual cooperation. Proudhon therefore sought, through mutualism, to establish a system of property ownership that would avoid exploitation and promote social
harmony. Social interaction in such a system would be voluntary, mutually beneficial and harmonious, thus requiring no regulation or interference by government. Proudhon’s followers tried to put these ideas into practice by setting up mutual credit banks in France and Switzerland, which provided cheap loans for investors and charged a rate of interest only high enough to cover the cost of running the bank, but not so high that it made a profit.
Mutualism: A system of fair and equitable exchange, in which individuals or groups bargain with one another, trading goods and services without profiteering or exploitation.
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