Revisiting Kropotkin: Mutual Aid in the Time of Coronavirus

(Pictured: Volunteers in Washington help prepare food packages for people made suddenly unemployed by the pandemic. EPA/Erik S Lesser)

By Ruth Kinna and Thomas Swann

Republished from The Conversation.

Empty supermarket shelves and panicked government briefings have become the defining images of the coronavirus crisis. But the community response, however, may well be a more enduring feature. The virus and the enforcement of social isolation have sparked uncertainty and anxiety. But a range of local volunteer-run mutual aid networks have also emerged.

Many of the people involved in these groups know that the term “mutual aid” was made famous by the 19th-century anarchist Peter Kropotkin. He used it to attack Social Darwinists who described nature as a competitive fight between self-interested individuals. “Survival of the fittest” became their catch phrase and was used to describe antagonistic relationships between people, races and states. This way of thinking normalised aggression as a natural response to scarcity.

In the present context, the implication is that scrapping for the last bottle of hand sanitiser or roll of toilet paper is a programmed, inevitable response. If only the strongest survive, then others should be seen as rivals or even enemies and we are right to take all necessary measures to preserve ourselves against them.

Although Kropotkin accepted that competition was a factor determining biological fitness, his argument was that cooperation – or mutual aid – was as significant.

As an ethical idea, mutual aid describes the efforts people make to help others without seeking reward. It thrives in local, voluntary organisation. The Lifeboat Association, initiated in the UK by William Hillary to support the foundation of a national institution to save victims of shipwrecks, was an example of the ethical self-organising that Kropotkin had in mind.

Hillary appealed to the king in 1825 to support his project, explaining that his aim was to aid “people and vessels of every nation, whether in peace or in war”. His cause was at once “individual, national, and universal”. He imagined that the establishment of a British association would inspire the foundation of sister organisations across the world.

Kropotkin liked the Lifeboat Association because it relied on “cooperation … enthusiasm … local knowledge”. It rescued anyone in need and because it depended on local action, it could be replicated easily elsewhere. It was a template for global networking to build solidarity.

Working together in a time of crisis

This is the spirit we see in the support networks emerging as people confront the coronavirus pandemic. Neighbours helping neighbours. Those who are able to leave their homes are collecting prescriptions and essential supplies for the vulnerable. Groups networking across towns and cities are pooling resources so that no one is left without.

Community support has always been a core aspect of human social life. Research looking at the way people go about their different everyday tasks shows that far more time than we might imagine is spent on unpaid community support. Mutual aid and cooperation – such as neighbours looking after each other’s children or helping each other fix their cars – run through society. It is a mistake to think that the prospect of profit motivates our behaviour.

A statue of Peter Kropotkin in the Kropotkin House Museum, Dmitrov, Russia. Ruth Kenna, Author provided

Mutual aid is often seen in times of crisis or horrible catastrophe – for example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the US and the Grenfell fire in London. Its emergence now bears out Kropotkin’s observations about the capacity for everyday solidarity. The question he would ask is: how can we expand these practices to rethink our social organisation?

Kropotkin described the Lifeboat Association as “perfectly spontaneous”. This did not mean that he thought it was unplanned. It meant that it was not forced by law. Trust and practice were essential to Kropotkin’s vision of the world remade through cooperation and respect for local self-determination.

With resources stretched to their limits, governments all over the world are relying on mutual aid networks to help those most at risk by shopping for those in isolation or sending virtual messages of support to prevent demoralisation.

Perhaps, then, we can start to think about how to preserve community-based organisation in the post-coronavirus world.

There is a significant difference between the politics of mutual aid and neo-liberal projects intended to privatise government services. Kropotkin did not want to see responsibility for government services devolved to big corporations or cash strapped volunteers. His aim was to attack existing power structures. Mutual aid thrives in conditions of equality and it is a necessary part of an anarchist drive towards decentralised federation.

If business-as-usual austerity returns after the crisis, the fertile ground of mutual aid may well dry up. The maintenance and extension of basic income, in contrast, may help preserve and promote grassroots social change in the longer term.

Lessons of Rojava and Histories of Abolition

By Brendan McQuade

Originally published at Marxist sociology blog.

The Rojava Revolution is one of the most important revolutionary struggle of recent years. In the context of civil war and great power intrigue, the Kurdish movement evolved into a multi-ethnic and non-sectarian autonomous administration that governs approximately two million people in Northeastern Syria. These liberated areas have produced important experiments in direct democracy, cooperative and ecological development, and community self-defense and conflict resolution.

The Revolution is also the liberatory counterpoint to the Islamic State. In 2014 and 2015, Rojava’s militias received international attention for breaking the Islamic State’s siege of the city of Kobani and creating an evacuation corridor for some 50,000 Yazidis who were fleeing the Islamic State. Given the Syrian Civil War is also a climate conflict, the great political question of the 21st century may well be the socialism of Rojava or the barbarism of the Islamic State.

It’s no surprise the Rojava Revolution has been a point of inspiration for radicals across the world and, particularly, abolitionists and others on the libertarian-left. In their manifesto, Burn Down the American Plantation, the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, an anarchist organization with chapters in Philadelphia, New York Chicago, New Haven, and California’s Inland Empire, considers Rojava to be a blueprint for organization elsewhere: “The Rojava Revolution, the anti-state revolution in northern Syria, provides us with a successful example of the strategies of organization and resistance we need to apply in the US today.”

It’s also no surprise that the Rojava Revolution may soon be over. The revolution developed in a power vacuum created when Assad government unilaterally withdrew from the Kurdish regions in Northeast Syria to focus on the developing civil war in Western Syria. The United States made a pragmatic alliance with Rojava during the campaign against the Islamic State but what that support meant going forward was never clear. Turkey, Syria’s neighbor to the north, is keen to both see Assad out and the Kurdish movement crushed. Between Turkey and the Trump administration, it was only a matter of time before the precarious balance of political forces shifted against Rojava. In October 2019, the US withdrew troops from Syria, clearing the way for Turkish invasion. This threat, in turn, forced Rojava to reconcile with Damascus for short term survival. What this means for the future of the Revolution is far from clear but it’s hard to feel encouraged.

What does this tragedy mean for our understanding of political struggle today? Does the seeming twilight of the Rojava Revolution mean that it is just another failed one? The Rojava Revolution could not defend itself against the state. It’s unclear how similar strategies could prevail in the United States, where the openings for the type of democratic autonomy seen Rojava are much smaller (or perhaps fundamentally different).

These questions, I contend, can only be answered if we confront them on the level of political strategy and opportunity, rather than political philosophy and identity. Abolitionists and anti-authoritarians are right to be inspired by example of Rojava but translating the lessons of the Revolution to a wildly different political context like the United States is no simple task. To better understand the Rojava Revolution, I return to the fundamentals of historical materialism. My recent article published Social Justice, “Histories of Abolition, Critiques of Security,” considers Rojava in relation to the debates abolition in the nascent US left: the rejection of abolition as fanciful and its defense as an area of non-reformist reformism in the struggle for 21st century socialism and strategy of insurrection. The impasse between a rejection of abolition and the tired revolution/reform binary can be resolved by returning to fundamentals of historical materialism, and particularly, W.E.B. Du Bois’ analysis of “abolition democracy” in his seminal work, Black Reconstruction.

Histories of Abolition

Abolition democracy refers to the social forces that led the “Reconstruction of Democracy” after the Civil War. It was revolutionary experiment made possible, first, by the direct action of black workers, a General Strike, and, later, advanced through continual mobilization (including armed self-defense) and the non-reformist reforms of Radical Reconstruction. While the antislavery struggle provided the political content of abolition democracy, this revolutionary project existed in precarious conditions, the temporary alignment of black workers, middle class abolitionists represented in Congress by the Radical Republicans, and, eventually, northern industrialists and poor southern whites. It was a revolutionary moment that was never fully consolidated and, as result, its gains were rolled back.

Despite this seeming failure, the moment held a deeper significance that middle class Abolitionists (and many subsequent scholars) largely missed. Abolition democracy challenged the fundamental class relations upon which historical capitalism stood: a racially stratified global division of labor, which, starting the in the sixteenth century, tied Europe, West Africa, and the Americas together in a capitalist world-economy. Black workers were the most devalued and exploited laborers, what Du Bois called “the foundation stone not only of Southern social structure but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying and selling on a world-scale.”

By striking at the root of global capitalism, the American Civil War that produced the cataclysm and change that created the possibility for radical change. This possibility was lost because the Abolitionists never confronted capital and the labor movement never embraced abolition. When politics shifted, the temporary class alliances that enabled radical reconstruction gave way to what Du Bois called a “counter-revolution” or “dictatorship of property.”

On a more general level, Du Bois establishes the need to understand abolition in relation to the (1) social relations and (2) historical processes that define a particular historical moment, while also considering (3) social movement clusters that were contesting these relations of forces. In Black Reconstruction, then, Du Bois analyzes the abolition democracy in relation (1) the class composition of the antebellum United States, (2) the consolidation of an industrial economy, and (3) the interaction of the budding labor movement with the anti-slavery actions of black workers and Abolitionists.

In this way, Black Reconstruction offers a different understanding of abolition, beyond the tired revolution-reform binary. As an analytic and organizing concept, abolition democracy becomes the liberatory politics embedded within struggles of historically-specific mobilizations of popular forces. It is the struggle for freedom from violent regulation and subjectification. Du Bois shows that it is organically tied up with the related fights to secure conditions for social reproduction, distribute the social product, shape shared institutions, and set collective priorities. In other words, abolition—or socialism, for that matter—is not a political program we can define in the abstract and implement. It is a process of liberation tied to broader clusters of emancipatory movements as they emerge and exist within specific historical moments. The question, then, is not revolution or reform but who is fighting for abolition—or socialism—what does that even mean in the contemporary United States and what will it take to win.

Du Bois provides a historical materialist understanding of abolition as interplay of disruptive direct action and incremental change within a historically informed understanding of a particular social struggle. This holistic approach highlights the specific social relations that constitute the exploitative and oppressive social formations in which we live. In this way, Du Bois can provide the necessary perspective to ask what kind of interventions could be “non-reformist,” while also creating space to understand direct action and insurrection in terms of political strategy, rather than philosophy.

Abolition, Socialism and Political Strategy

This approach undermines some of the common slogans made about nature of structural violence today. Mass incarceration is not the New Jim Crow nor is it a direct a simple outgrowth of slavery. What Angela Davis terms “the prison of slavery and the slavery of prison” are different arrangements. Slavery, convict leasing, and Jim Crow were systems to marshal and mobilize labor. Mass incarceration is a system to warehouse surplus populations. These differences, moreover, speak to tremendous structural transformations in the world-economy and the American state. If we want to be politically effective, we, unlike abolitionists of the 1860s, must appreciate the specificities of our moment.

This means acknowledging that, as Julia Sudbury does, “the slavery-prison analogy tends to erase the presence of non-black prisoners.” It means recognizing that an exclusive focus on anti-black racism threatens to dismiss the experiences of Latinx and indigenous people with imprisonment, policing, and state violence. It means admitting that the incarceration rate for white people in the United States, while much lower than that of historically marginalized groups, is still grotesque in comparison with the rest of the world. In the words of Angela Davis, it means understanding that the prison “has become a receptacle for all those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery,” while also recognizing that “this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asian and white prisoners.” It means it thinking about revolutionary strategy in way that appreciates the historical forces that create our moment, without being unthinkingly tied to anachronistic ideas and strategies that today may be ineffective.

Most importantly, this perspective allows us to situate powerful moments of revolutionary breakthrough in their historical context and derive the appropriate conclusions from them. In this regard, we should not dismiss the way Burn Down the American Plantation highlights the experience of Rojava Revolution. Rather, we should understand the social processes and social relations that surround this important event, namely the collapse of the state during Syria Civil War and the trajectory of the Kurdish Movement.

Contextualizing the Rojava Revolution in this manner is not the same as dismissing its relevance. Instead, it allows us to usefully interpret its lessons from the vantage point of particular time and place. Recognizing that the Rojava Revolution took place amidst civil war and state collapse raises doubts about the applicability of the model in areas where the state is strong. Burn Down the American Plantation advocates “placing self-defense at the center of our revolutionary movement” and calls on existing anti-fascist groups and cop watches to model themselves on the self-defense forces of Rojava Revolution. Specifically, the manifesto calls on these organizations to “Develop…the capacity to begin launching offensive actions against fascists and the regime.” This advocacy for armed insurrection is misguided. It fails to appreciate the conditions that made Rojava possible, while also neglecting to mention the awesome coercive powers of the American state and the weakness of the nascent American left.

Moreover, contextualizing Rojava gives us the possibility of translating the lessons of the Revolution into our context. The continually high numbers of “police involved shootings” in the United States, the breakthrough of white supremacist movements, the escalating confrontations at protests, and mounting incidents of political violence all underscore the urgent need to community self-defense in this political moment. This is need is structural as evinced by the recent emergence of armed left formations in the United States like the Socialist Relief Association and the Red Guards of the Party for Socialism and Liberation that joined older groups like Red Neck Revolt.

More generally, there is a budding muncipalist movement in the United States that, in part, draws on some of the same intellectual currents that also inform Rojava. In this United States, this movement is best exemplified by Jackson-Kush Plan associated with Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Cooperation Jackson. The plan has three pillars building cooperative economy, creating participatory structures at the city level, networking progressive political leaders. Moreover, this electoral road to libertarian socialism at the city level has already delivered some concrete results. In 2013, Jackson, Mississippi elected Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who campaigned on the promises of to implement the Jackson Plan. Although Lumumba died less than year into office, his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, successfully won the mayoral race in June 2017. Already, the new administration pursuing an economic development strategy based around promoting cooperative businesses and putting in place a participatory process, empowering popular assemblies organized by to develop a budget proposal/

Notably, however, Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s young administration has been remarkably conventional when it comes to criminal justice. While the Mayor Lumumba has repeatedly drawn the link between crime and poverty, he’s also pledged to be “tough on crime.” Moreover, the new administration has maintained conventional police force and made no moves toward instituting community control of the police. Here, in a city where political power is held by radical administration, the self-defense experiments of the Rojava Revolution may make an instructive example, albeit not a simple blueprint. If grassroots alternatives to police existed in Jackson, could it pressure Lumumba to adopt more radical positions like community control of police or—better—disband the police department and replace it with community controlled self-defense forces and restorative justice bodies? The point here is not outline a political platform or provide a detailed analysis of contemporary attempts to create municipal socialism in Jackson but rather to demonstrate the way the holistic and historical conception of abolition advanced by Du Bois expands our expands our political parameters, allowing us to both make sense our current conditions and relate them to other powerful instances of abolitionist organizing.

Taken together, this approach to abolition allows us to both learn for the past and appreciate how previous struggles shaped the specificities of the present moment. If abolition can be usefully described as the liberatory politics immanent within the historically specific social struggles, one should be able to find abolitionist tendencies, abolitionist demands, abolitionist practices, and abolitionist institutions in most emancipatory movements. This approach can allow us to consider these moments relationally and learn the historical lessons of other moments of “abolition democracy.” This is how we learn what it takes to get free.

Brendan McQuade is an assistant professor at University of Southern Maine and author of Pacifying the Homeland. This commentary is adapted from a longer article published in Social Justice.

Peter Kropotkin's Anarchist Critique of Capitalism

By Jon Bekken

Peter Kropotkin devoted a major part of his prolific anarchist writings to two related themes: examining the actual workings of capitalist economies and developing the broad outlines of an anarchist-communist society. Kropotkin was not satisfied to merely assert that a free society was possible, he sought to show how such a society could be constructed from the materials at hand - realizing that a revolutionary movement that failed to consider the problems of production and distribution would quickly collapse. This installment outlines Kropotkin's critique of capitalist political economy.

Economic Doctrine

For Kropotkin, the purpose of political economy was to study society's needs and the means available (either currently in use, or which could be developed with present knowledge) to meet them.

"It should try to analyze how far the present means are expedient and satisfactory … [and] should concern itself with the discovery of means for the satisfaction of these needs with the smallest possible waste of labor and with the greatest benefit to mankind in general." [1]

It was this task that Kropotkin took on.

Rather than engage in the abstract theorizing that dominated, then as now, the field, he carried out detailed studies of the agricultural and industrial techniques practical in his day (whether they were in general use or not) and their capacity to meet human needs.

Unlike most economists, Kropotkin insisted on subjecting economic theories to the same rigorous inquiry he would apply to any "scientific" theory:

"When certain economists tell us that "in a perfectly free market the price of commodities is measured by the amount of labor socially necessary for their production," we do not take this assertion on faith …. We not only find most of these so-called laws grossly erroneous, but maintain also that those who believe in them will themselves become convinced of their error as soon as they come to see the necessity of verifying the[m] … by quantitative investigation."

While there certainly was a relationship between the price of commodities and the amount of labor necessary for their production, Kropotkin argued, they were by no means proportional to one another (as the Labor Theory of Value would imply). Nor had socialist economists troubled themselves to investigate whether or not the theory was true by actually gathering data to test the alleged relationship. Anyone who took the trouble to engage in such an investigation would quickly learn that the theory was false. We need only consider the price of oil or gold to realize that these prices are set not by the amount of labor power required to extract and process them, but rather by external market and social conditions. Most so-called economic laws, Kropotkin concluded, were mere suppositions. And although socialist economists "criticize some of these deductions … it has not yet been original enough to find a path of its own." [2]

Thus, when Marx argued against Proudhon that all products exchanged at (or, at least, fluctuated around) their labor value, he was implicitly arguing for what has been called the Iron Law of Wages (though Marx later refuted himself by conceding that union activity could decrease the level of exploitation). The Socialist Party of Great Britain and similar tendencies are wholly correct when they maintain that a Marxian analysis requires that all commodities- including labor power-are valued under capitalism at the cost of their reproduction, which in turn is determined by the most-productive available methods. (Thus a shirt that takes 60 minutes to make by hand or five minutes to make by machine sells for the same price on the world market.)

There is, of course, an element of truth to this-which is why the theory was widely accepted by the labor movement. But, as we shall see, it mistakes an association for a causal relationship. The commodity theory of labor would indicate that only by increasing productivity can workers make possible an improved standard of living, and only through socialist revolution can those possible improvements be actually realized. (Otherwise, the benefits merely accrue to the capitalists and their underlings.)

This doctrine leads inevitably to the conclusion that wage struggles are essentially a waste of time and energy (though workers, through hundreds of years of struggle, have proved the opposite), and that the only alternative to competing against each other into ever-greater immiseration is a state-managed, planned economy which can determine labor values and ensure their equitable distribution. But this doctrine is wholly false. I turn, below, to Kropotkin's proof that wage levels have nothing to do with the cost of reproduction. But the essential point is that wage levels, like the price of all commodities, are set not by their cost of production or the amount of labor they require, but by the relative economic, military and social power held by the respective parties. Monopolies, cartels, police clubs, prisons, labor organization, co-operative associations-these and other power relationships skew the relative "value" of commodities, or at least of the price that can be gotten for them. (And it really matters very little whether a canteloupe has a theoretical, labor-derived value of 25 cents if all the stores charge a dollar.)

Capitalism Not Productive

Like most socialists, Kropotkin initially assumed that an abundance of goods was being produced-and thus that the primary problem facing socialists was arranging their distribution. But when Malatesta suggested that this could not be true, Kropotkin investigated the matter, and found that (quoting Malatesta):

"this accumulation of products could not possibly exist, because the bosses normally only allow for the production of what they can sell at a profit … Some countries were continually threatened by shortages."

In fact, there was only enough food on hand in most major cities to sustain the population for a few days. Yet upon further investigation, Kropotkin established that the shortages, economic crises and general distress endemic to his age (and which continue to this day) did not result, as was widely believed, from overpopulation, poor soil, or other such material causes. Rather, they resulted from a failure to utilize the means already at hand to meet society's needs. [3]

Kropotkin presented his findings in Fields, Factories and Workshops- an anarchist classic that proved that people using then-existing technologies could meet all their needs with just a few months of labor per year. Space precludes anything more than the briefest summary of a volume with which every anarchist should have long since made themselves familiar.

He demonstrated that the technical means then existed to produce abundant and healthful food with relatively little effort or expense (a vision quite distinct from today's factory farms-the precursors of which already existed, but which, he noted, destroyed the soil for generations to come, as well as displacing people who might otherwise derive a comfortable living from the land). Contrary to many economists, Kropotkin argued for decentralizing agriculture and industry, noting that huge industrial establishments were both less common than generally believed, and established less to realize largely dubious economies of scale than to facilitate managerial control. The doctrine of national specialization or competitive advantage±then coming into prominence, and which has since been used as an excuse to ravish "third world" economies-was demonstrably harmful to the interests of the population. (As is well known to peasants compelled to grow coffee beans and sugar cane on land that could otherwise feed their families.) If the debilitating influences of capitalist control and ignorance could be ended, abundance for all was well within reach.

"All this has been proved … despite the innumerable obstacles always thrown in the way of every innovative mind …. For thousands of years … to grow one's own food was the burden, almost the curse, or mankind. But it need be so no longer … To grow the yearly food of a family, under rational conditions of culture, requires so little labor that it might almost be done as a mere change from other pursuits … And again, you will be struck to see with what facility and in how short a time your needs of dress and of thousands of articles of luxury can be satisfied, when production is carried on for satisfying real needs rather than for satisfying shareholders …" [4]

And yet, everywhere workers lived in misery. Contrary to the teachings of every economic school, Kropotkin argued that overproduction was far from a problem:

"Far from producing more than is needed to assure material riches, we do not produce enough …. If certain economists delight in writing treatises on over-production. and in explaining each industrial crisis by this cause, they would be much at a loss if called upon to name a single article produced by France in greater quantities than are necessary to satisfy the needs of the whole population …. What economists call over-production is but a production that is above the purchasing power of the worker, who is reduced to poverty by capital and State …" [5]

Only exploiters, he concluded, were in abundant supply. Today, 94 years later, there may well be overproduction of some goods (nuclear weapons, toxic chemicals, and products that must almost immediately be replaced)-but it is just as obscene today to talk of, for example, an overproduction crisis in agriculture when millions face immediate starvation.

Thus, rather than celebrating capitalism's development of society's productive capacity, as Marxists do, Kropotkin demonstrated that capitalism resulted in chronic underproduction and deprivation. Capitalists not only do not equitably distribute the fruits of our production, the entire development of technology is distorted by their short-term profit calculations. Employers faced with the possibility of new labor-saving technologies, for example, often move to drive down labor costs rather than invest in developing the means of production (their historic role, according to Marx). The Social Revolution, then, would not merely expropriate the means of production developed by the capitalists-it would be forced to rapidly develop those means in order to meet even the most basic social needs.

Fortunately, the means for doing so have long been in place, and workers are more than capable of meeting the challenge.

Wage Slavery

Like all socialists, Kropotkin recognized the self-evident truth that workers work for the employing class because they are forced to-without their weekly wages they and their families must starve.

"Whence come the fortunes of the rich[?] A little thought would suffice to show that these fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer any destitute there will no longer be any rich to exploit them …" [7]

If people had the means to support themselves-if they were capable of meeting their daily needs without hiring out their labor-no one would consent to work for wages that must inevitably be (if the capitalist is to derive any profit) a mere fraction of the value of the goods they produce. Even an independent artisan, the labor aristocracy of Kropotkin's day, could not hope to do better than to support his family and put together an (almost certainly inadequate) pittance for his old age, should he rely on his own effort and diligence:

"Assuredly this is not how great fortunes are made. But suppose our shoemaker … takes an apprentice, the child of some poor wretch who will think himself lucky if in five years time his son has learned the trade and is able to earn his living. …

Meanwhile our shoemaker does not lose by him; and if trade is brisk he soon takes a second, and then a third … If he is keen enough and mean enough, his journeymen and apprentices will bring him in nearly a pound a day over and above the product of his own toil … He will gradually become rich … That is what people call "being economical and having frugal temperate habits."

At bottom it is nothing more nor less than grinding the face of the poor." [8]

Today, to be sure, workers have after a hundred years succeeded in improving their condition-and the apprentice system, already declining in Kropotkin's time, has all but disappeared. But saving one's earnings is no more the route to real wealth than it ever was-at best workers can hope to buy a house, afford some time off from the hated job, and put a little money aside for retirement or hard times. To become wealthy, in economic term, requires exploitation-either directly, from workers' labor, or indirectly, by exploiting workers' need for the necessities of life.

Under capitalism, "the harder a man works the less he is paid." But the solution to this manifest injustice could not be found in reversing this equation-in payment according to the service each renders to society. For who is to determine the value of another's service?

"We know what reply we shall get … The bourgeois economists-and Marx too-will be quoted … to prove that the scale of wages has its raison d'etre, since the "labor power" of the engineer will have cost society more than the "labor power" of the laborer …

[But] the employer who pays the engineer twenty times more than the laborer makes the following simple reckoning: if the engineer can save him a hundred thousand francs a year on his production costs, he will pay the. engineer twenty thousand. And when he sees a foreman, able to drive the workers and save ten thousand francs in wages, he loses no time in offering him two or three thousand .. He parts with a thousand francs where he counts on gaining ten thousand, and this in essence is the capitalist system.

So let no one come up with this talk about production costs of the labor force, and tell us that a student who has cheerfully spent his youth at a university has a "right" to a salary ten times that of a miner's son who has been wasting away down a mine from the age of eleven." [9]

Wage differentials, whether under capitalism or in some future "socialist" society, must be condemned as unjust. Nor is it possible to determine a "just wage" based on an individual's contribution (even if such a system could be tolerated on ethical grounds, which it cannot). [10]

Production is Social

Production is not carried out by isolated individuals whose economic contribution can be isolated from that of each other worker so that its value can be determined. To illustrate this, Kropotkin turned to coal mining. (At that time, miners worked either individually or in gangs at the coal face, and were paid piece rate. In today's coal mines, of course, the issue of individual production would never arise.)

"One man controls the lift, continually rushing the cage from level to level so that men and coal may be moved about. If he relaxes his concentration for an instant the apparatus will be destroyed, many men killed, and work brought to a standstill. If he loses as little as three seconds at each movement of the lever, production will be reduced by 20 tons a day or more.

Well, is it he who renders the greatest service in the mine? Or is it perhaps that boy who from below signals to him when it is time to raise the cage to the surface? Is it instead the miner who is risking his life at every moment of the day … Or again is it the engineer who would miss the coal seam and have the miners dig into stone if he made the smallest error in his calculations? …

All the workers engaged in the mine contribute within the limits of their powers, their knowledge … and their skill to mine coal. And all we can say is that everybody has the right to live, to satisfy their needs, and even their fantasies, once the most pressing needs of all have been satisfied. But how can one estimate their labors?" [ll]

Obviously you can't-no one but a Marxist would attempt such an absurdity. And yet we still have not identified everyone who contributes to the production of that coal.

What of the construction workers who built the railways to the pit head, without which the coal would sit useless. What of the farmers, who raise the food the coal miners eat? What of those who build the machines that will bum the coal-without which coal is merely a rather useless dirt.

There was a time, Kropotkin concedes, when a family could support itself by agricultural pursuits, supplemented with a few domestic trades, and consider the com they raised and the cloth they weaved as products of their own, and no one else's, labor.

Even then such a view was not quite correct:

"there were forests cleared and roads built by common efforts … But now, in the extremely interwoven state of industry of which each branch supports all others, such an individualistic view can be held no more.

If the iron trade and the cotton industry of this country have reached so high a degree of development, they have done so owing to the parallel growth of thousands of other industries, great and small; to the extension of the railway system; to an increase of knowledge … and, above all, to the world trade which has itself grown up …

The Italians who died from cholera in digging the Suez Canal … have contributed as much towards the enrichment of this country as the British girl who is prematurely growing old in serving a machine at Manchester… How can we pretend to estimate the exact part of each of them in the riches accumulated around us?" [12]

And if there is no individual production, then how can private ownership of property be justified? Just as it is impossible to argue that anyone person created a lump of coal or a bolt of cloth, so it is impossible to justify private ownership of buildings or land. Homes, after all, are not built by their owners. Their construction is a cooperative endeavor involving innumerable workers in forestry, timber yards, brickyards, etc.

Moreover-and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring-the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it.

"Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town … which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful." [13]

Like the ground they stand upon, buildings are a common heritage.

"For instance, take the town of Paris-a creation of so many centuries, a product of the genius of a whole nation … How could one maintain to an inhabitant of that town who works every day to embellish it, to purify it, to nourish it, to make it a center of thought and art-how could one assert before one who produces this wealth that the palaces adorning the streets of Paris belong in all justice to those who are the legal proprietors today …. It is by spoliation that they hold these riches!" [14]

That this remains so can readily be seen by examining the value of today's office buildings and shopping complexes. Without even the slightest improvements their value rise so long as the local economy prospers. But no sum of money invested in maintenance or beautification is sufficient to maintain their value when the local economy fails. For their value is not derived from the money invested, or from the bricks and mortar (and plastic, steel and cement) of which they are constructed. Not even the labor of the workers who build and maintain these modem temples to capital determines their value. Their value, in the final analysis, depends almost entirely upon the wealth and prosperity of the greater society. The most luxurious hotel built in a dying city will soon fade with its surroundings, while the meanest hovel increases in value as surrounding properties are developed.

We enrich each other-not only spiritually, but materially as well-as we work, contemplate and play together; and without the efforts of society as a whole, no one prospers.

Private Ownership Absurd

Private ownership, then, is not merely unjust±it is absurd. As early as 1873, when he was only beginning to become active in revolutionary circles, Kropotkin recognized that true equality was impossible under capitalism.

"It is desirable that a person beginning to work not enslave himself, not yield part of his labor, his strength, his independence … to private individuals whose arbitrariness always will determine how great that part should be, then it is necessary that private persons control neither the instruments of labor … nor the … earth … nor the means of existence during work … Thus we arrive at the elimination, in that future society whose realization we desire, of any personal property …" [16]

All property, no matter how it was created, must become the property of all, available to all who contribute to society through their labor. This was, and remains, necessary not only on grounds of social justice, but because all production is necessarily social.

Production for Needs

Kropotkin refused to separate his analysis of what was from what could be. He insisted on asking not merely if the present economic order worked on its own terms but whether:

"the means now in use for satisfying human needs, under the present system of … production for profits, [was] really economical?

Do they really lead to economy in the expenditure of human forces. Or are they not mere wasteful survivals from a past that was plunged into darkness, ignorance and oppression, and never took into consideration the economical and social value of the human being?" [16]

The "economical and social value of the human being," for Kropotkin, was the key to anarchist economics-to the building of a free society.

This was republished from Anarcho-Syndicalist Review .

Notes

[1] "Modern Science and Anarchism," p. 180. In: R. Baldwin (ed.), Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (Dover. 1970).

[2] "Modem Science and Anarchism," pp. 177-79.

[3] Errico Malatesta, "Peter Kropotkin-Recollections and Criticisms." In: V. Richards (ed.), Malatesta: Life & Ideas. Freedom Press, 1977, p. 266. Malatesta went on to argue that Kropotkin's revised view was also wildly optimistic in its assessment of what could be realized. History, however has confirmed that agriculture can indeed produce much greater yields than was generally believed at the time-yields that in fact exceed those Kropotkin discussed.

[4] Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow edited by Colin Ward. Freedom Press, 1985, pp 194-97. (This is an abridged and annotated version of Kropotkin's second edition, eliminating whole chapters of statistical data eclipsed in the 91 years since this work first saw print.)

[5] "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal," pp. 126-27. In: Baldwin.

[7] "Expropriation," p. 162. In: M. Miller (ed, Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution. (MIT Press, 1970)

[8] ibid. p. 166.

[9] "The Wage System," pp. 101, 99. In: V. Richards (ed.), Why Work? Arguments for the Leisure Society. (Freedom Press, 1983)

[10] Many Marxists, and even some who consider themselves anarcho-syndicalists, continue to argue for maintaining the wage system in such a guise. Their arguments will be presented, and refuted, in the next installment. '

[12] "Anarchist Communism: 'Its Basis and Principles," p. 57. In: Baldwin.

[13] "Expropriation," p. 197. In: Miller.

[14] "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal," p. 125.

[16] Fields, Factories and Workshops, p. 193.

[16]

Fields, Factories and Workshops, p. 193.

The Chasm: On State Socialists and Anarchists (An Interview)

By Brenan Daniels

Below is an interview I had with both Tom Wetzel and two members of the Facebook page Anarchist Memes discussing the history between state socialists and anarchists, with the above individuals representing an anarchistic view of the situation. Part 2 will discuss the same idea from the view of state socialists.

It is well known that there was a split between Marxists and anarchists at the First International. However, how were relations between Marxists and anarchists before the split and how did this split affect relations generally speaking?

JA: Despite the first international or the Hague conference a decade later or even Krondstadt, the attack on Makhno's forces or the '37 may-fighting in Spain...I think the overall tone and relationship between anarchists and Marxists has been one of comradery and socialist kinship.

That said, I think that anarchists are well aware of the fact that Marxism is not homogeneous - not least because anarchists (in my observation) tend to have been Marxists first before adopting anarchism. The tendency is not to hold all of Marxism responsible for the opinions and actions of "tankies". We are aware that the POUM fought with the CNT in the aforementioned may-days, we are aware of the Pannekoeks', Luxemburgs and Lukacs's within Marxism and hold these people and Marxists like them in high-esteem.

OM: I would generally say, that as soon as these two tendency formed from early Socialism, there were elements of both hostility and cooperation. The problem is that, historically, there has been a tendency by some Marxist currents (Leninism and its Maoist/Stalinist derivatives) to prefer a reactionary victory over the victory of a competing leftist tendency in any given conflict. With other tendencies of Marxism though, like Left or Council Communism, the relationship was much more harmonious and cooperative, as mentioned by [JA]. Today, both of these histories seem to inform Marxist-Anarchist relationships in varying measure, while I see the current resurgence of ultra-authoritarian Marxist tendencies seen among young activists today as a problem.

Wetzel: The label anarchism wasn't really used by the libertarian socialists in the International Workingmen's Association. Bakunin referred to his politics as "revolutionary socialism." The main disagreement was over Marx's advocacy of building labor political parties "to win the battle of democracy" (as he put it) through gaining government power. This was the beginning of the party-based strategy that has always been central to Marxism.

The libertarian socialists put the emphasis on building mass union organizations, and their potentially revolutionary role. Thus, the libertarian socialists in the first international were in many ways precursors of the type of revolutionary strategy that was called syndicalism in the early 20th century. Marx's statement "The emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves" was strongly endorsed by the syndicalist militants of the 20 th century. Libertarian socialists have been influenced as well by Marx's analysis of how capitalism works.

In the US, it is known that anarchists and state socialists supported labor in their fight against capital, but how close was the relationship between the two groups at this time?

JA: The relationship between anarchists and Marxists in the United States has been overwhelming close, intertwined, and copacetic. Marxists and anarchists in the late 19th century and early 20th century shared common-causes and worked closely with one another - often co-mingling in abstractly socialist organizations like the knights of labor or the IWW (which is still welcoming to both anarchists and Marxists alike) and/or coming out to protest/agitate/strike etc. in defense of workers, marginalized, or imprisoned and/or executed Marxist/anarchist comrades.

OM: Not being from the US, I can add little to the situation there. In Germany, many radical leftists ID only as vaguely "radical left" without identifying fully with either Marxism or Anarchism, though.

Wetzel: In the period from early 1900s to World War 1, the growing revolutionary syndicalist movement of that era was influenced by both Marxist and anarchist ideas. There were a number of cases where Marxist and anarchist groups cooperated in building highly democratic worker organizations. In the IWW in the USA Marxists associated with the left wing of the Socialist Party cooperated with anarcho-syndicalists like Jack Walsh and Carlo Tresca. The important factory council movement in Turin Italy in 1919-20 was developed as a joint project of Antonio Gramsci's Socialist Party group and the Turin Libertarian Group. This was an independent shop stewards council movement based on stop work assemblies in Fiat and other factories. The councils were developed independently of the bureaucracy of the CGL (Socialist Party trade union).

This Marxist-syndicalist alliance was broken with the development of the Communist International in the early '20s. The Leninist parties insisted on working towards party hegemony in labor movements. Although the American Communist Party continued to adapt and use many syndicalist tactics and ideas in their organizing in the '20s and early '30s (such as elected negotiating committees, agitation around the flat incompatibility of working class and employing class interests), they were not opposed to top-down forms of labor organization in their ideology, and this became obvious after the turn of the Communist Parties to the Popular Front approach in 1936.

Talk about the situation between anarchists during World War 1 as it doesn't seem that that is too much discussed.

JA: WWI for anarchists was marked by controversy, activity, and suppression. Throughout Europe and the US, anti-war anarchists were incarcerated en-mass and hounded endlessly. Pushed further underground, many escalated their militancy (i.e. Galleaninists in the US who actively bombed targets and assassinated officials), while others waged free-speech fights and took part in all manner of anti-war and anti-capitalist activism. The rule that anarchists opposed the war was excepted by notable anarchist luminaries such as Kropotkin - and in turn, this support was denounced by others (and the majority) i.e. Goldman, Berkman, Malatesta.

OM: The rather marginal German Anarchist groups were heavily oppressed by the state, so they devoted relatively little time to internal controversy. Activities in general declined markedly, with military authorities often sending known Anarchists, along with other radical leftists, on suicide missions during WWI. Additionally, Anarchists lacked ideas and strategies for dealing with the war, being driven by events rather than taking on an active role.

Wetzel: Let's take each country separately. During the Russian revolution there were a variety of anarchist and libertarian socialist groups. Two groups that worked in an alliance during the revolution were the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries-Maximalist and the Russian Anarcho-Syndicalist Confederation. For example at the time of the October revolution the alliance between these two groups controlled the important soviet in Kronstadt and provided armed sailors to overthrow the Provisional Government. The October 1917 revolution occurred when the Soviet Congress took power and overthrew the unelected Provisional Government.

All the anarchist and libertarian socialist groups supported this move. However, the Bolsheviks got the Soviet Congress to let them centralize power in a new state via the Council of People's Commissars. The syndicalists and maximalists opposed this but continued to give "critical support" to the revolution because they believed they would be able to still organize for their view in the factory committees, soviets and unions. By 1921 however the militants of these groups were in prison and they were completely suppressed. Between 1918 and 1920 the Communist government also eliminated the last elements of worker collective control in industry and converted the soviets into rubber stamps of the party…including the overthrow of soviet elections that went against them.

The syndicalists and libertarian socialists of the '20s and '30s came to understand that Bolshevik policies and program had led to the creation of a new ruling class in Russia, based on the party and state bureaucracy…the industrial managers, elite planners, military officers, and the power of the party bureaucracy. The working class, in their view, continued to be an exploited and subordinated class.

In Spain the anarcho-syndicalist labor organization, CNT, was the majority union, especially in the industrialized regions of Catalonia and Valencia which contained 80 percent of Spain's manufacturing. Because of the long history of anti-labor violence and repression in Spain, both the CNT and the UGT (union shared by the Socialist and Communist parties) had armed groups. CNT had an organized system of clandestine armed cells in Catalonia, used for protecting workers in strikes. When the army attempted to seize power to crush the labor movement in July 1936, this clandestine armed organization smashed the army in Catalonia. CNT then built its own "proletarian army" with about 100,000 members and UGT built an armed militia also. Under cover of this armed power, the workers of Catalonia and other areas proceeded to engage in the most widespread direct worker seizure of capitalist property that has ever occurred…almost the whole of the economy in northeast Spain. Both the CNT and UGT farm labor unions had a revolutionary program and proceeded to collectivize millions of acres of farm land, creating more than two thousand collectivized village communities.

CNT proposed to replace the Republican state with a joint defense council of the UGT and CNT unions and a unified militia. They also proposed that the entire economy should be socialized under worker management. This was veto'd by the state socialists…the Socialist and Communist Parties. This was based on the Communist's naïve view that somehow they could get the capitalist "democracies" to let the anti-fascist forces buy weapons even though it was clear that a proletarian revolution was underway. So if they "respected government legality" this would protect the "international legitimacy" of the Spanish Republic. This didn't work.

The Communists in Spain pursued a strategy of trying to get control of the state through control of the police and army. After street fighting between CNT armed defense organizations and police in Barcelona in May 1937, the Communists were able to consolidate power in the national state and in 1938 began to nationalize the worker-managed industries, moving to create a managerialist type of bureaucratic class as they did in Eastern Europe after World War 2.

Various anarchist tendencies in the CNT also contributed to this result. At the outset of the revolution anarchists and syndicalists in the CNT were divided over the question of consolidating political or society-wide power. Some thought the decentralized and uncoordinated system of local committees was enough.

A minority wanted the CNT to take power in the regions where it could. This is what they did, under support of Buenaventura Durruti's large militia organization, in eastern Aragon in September 1936. The economy was coordinated via a regional congress of delegates and the village assemblies elected a defense council to replace the old state authority. But they failed to do this in Catalonia and Valencia which were the core industrial regions of Spain. Durruti thought they could negotiate with Francisco Largo Caballero (prime minister and head of the UGT and left wing of the Socialist Party) for an acceptable solution if they held their ground and went as far as they could in consolidating working class power.

Some anarchists in the CNT were confused about the concept of "power". Based on what happened in the Russian revolution, they thought of "taking power" as meaning that some new bureaucratic group would hold top down managerial power in some state. But "taking power" could also be interpreted as collectivizing power, via things like worker delegate congresses and coordinating councils. This would depend upon accountability to the masses via the base assemblies in the workplaces and neighborhoods. By rejecting the solution of building worker political power via workers councils in Catalonia, they found themselves forced into the hopeless situation of participating in the Popular Front government, where they were essentially captive to the socialist parties with their Popular Front strategy.

During World War 2, what was the situation in Spain and Russia, respectively, in which anarchists and state socialists found themselves on the same side or against one another? How did anarchists threaten the cause of state socialists or vice versa? How does this affect present relations?

JA: I don't think the present is affected by the internecine socialist fighting in Spain or during WWII. These historical episodes and the debates that still take-place about them, are not (as far as I can tell) having any negative impact per Marxist/anarchist coordination. Backing up a bit, I say internecine because Trotskyists and anarchists during this period often shared a similar fate and fought/died together - in Spain and Greece most notably.

Wetzel: I think there are several essential strategic goals that the radical left needs to work at:

First, there needs to be a revival of disruptive, collective strike actions by workers. Strikes are very important because workers have the power to shut down the flow of profits to employers, or shut down operation of government agencies. Doing this helps to change the mindset and outlook within the working class because it changes the situation from one where people confront their employers as powerless individuals to a situation where people can think in terms of "we". Strikes are learning experiences because people will learn how they confront all the institutions of the society - the media, the courts, the police, the union bureaucrats, the politicians. It develops "class consciousness" because people tend to think more in terms of "us" versus "them".

Workplace organizing is also important because the workforce has become much more diverse than in an earlier era and thus building mass worker unions with a democratic character means working to build bridges across the various differences in the working class and taking account of the different ways that groups in the working class are oppressed. This is another way in which a revived era of mass worker struggle would change the labor movement.

Rebuilding a real labor movement is not going to be an easy or simple task, partly because the inherited American unions are so intensely bureaucratized and controlled from the top. Back in the '30s radicals generally understood workers have to control their own unions. I think that rebuilding an effective labor movement is going to require building new unions outside the inherited bureaucratic unions of the AFL-CIO.

It's also more likely that working people will become more identified with unionism, if they are not so limited as they've been in their aims and not so controlled by staff and paid officers from HQ but are more authentically organizations workers form and run themselves. There have been various periods in the past where workers in the USA built organizations from below like this on a large scale, as during 1915-21 and 1933-35.

Secondly, and related to my first point, we need ways for working at training and supporting people who make the commitment to stick at the project of rebuilding worker organization and action. This would mean forms of public education outside academia developed by and for working class people. In rebuilding the "militant minority" in the workplace we're laying the groundwork for the radical left to once again have an actual presence and influence in the working class.

Third, for a long time there has been a general understanding by many on the left that fragmentation is a serious weakness. This takes various forms, such as single issue movements, or separation into a myriad of different kinds of movements - climate justice, Black Lives Matters, immigrant rights, tenant movement, each union focusing narrowly on its struggles with its employer, and so on,.

From a strategic point of view, I think we need to think in terms of developing a coalescing of forces into a kind of class front or working class social movement alliance. But I tend to think of this as a grassroots, horizontal kind of linkage, not via bureaucracies of unions and non-profits. This would be reflected in movements supporting the aims and struggles of other movements. There is some of this going on, but it will need to develop further.

It seems that due to the right wing onslaught in the 70s and 80s that much of the left has retreated to the academy. What are your thoughts on this and can it be reversed?

JA: I agree with your premise that the left has retreated to the academia and inward after defeats in the 60's and 70's. I don't know that this will be reversed any-time soon, but I am optimistic. I sense the youth of today are more politicized and enlightened than my generation (generation x), and that gives me hope. As well, the uptick in anti-fascist militancy (unfortunately, an uptick in fascism concomitantly) and propaganda-of-the-deed of late also gives me a sense (although, perhaps it's inflated or a product of my social-bubble) that an episode marked by a more tangible praxis is nigh.

OM: I would agree that there has been a retreat into the academy, but shortly followed by another retreat into subculturalism. With regards to reversal: Where I live, academic Anarchism has largely died out already (except for a few people in deep cover), while the subculture is slowly drying out due to self-isolation and increasing, self-imposed irrelevance. At the same time, I see a lot of discontent with Capitalism and popular demands for alternatives. At least theoretically, we should be able to build on this for a resurgence.

How is anarchism making a comeback today?

JA: Relative to our recent marginalization, I think so. My sense is that more people of know what it is and/or have some sympathy for it.

OM: If us Anarchists can get it together enough to publicly propose viable and attractive alternatives, I consider a comeback not only possible, but actually likely. The demand is there, but we need to deliver. For this, we need to abandon subculturalism and academic obscurantism and actually work in a more strategic and popularly appealing fashion.

How is state socialism making a comeback today?

Wetzel: With the Bernie Sanders campaign the concept of "democratic socialism" was widely popularized. This refers to a social-democratic perspective that doesn't really aim at replacing capitalism with a new socialist economy, but aims to use elections of people to state office to create laws and programs to restrict the predatory behavior of corporations and provide some benefits that would be of benefit to the masses, such as Medicare for All health insurance.

In Europe the old social democratic or socialist parties have been rotted out by commitment to neo-liberalism and austerity. This has led to either new left parties or things like change of leadership in the UK Labour Party, with an aim to pushing back against austerity and rebuilding support for the stronger social-democratic policies that were characteristic of Europe in the post-World War 2 era.

But this isn't really a comeback for the concept of socialism as state-management of the economy or centralized state planning. To the extent that "democratic socialists" or electoral socialists think beyond capitalism at all, they tend to think in terms of building worker cooperatives which would still operate in a market economy. So market socialism, in one form of another, has become the dominant vision for many socialists.

Can anarchists and state socialists ever work together? It seems that that would be so since they agree on so much.

JA: We excel in cooperation where specific issues are concerned...police violence or some local outrage etc. - what I think is difficult is getting socialists abstractly, together under a big umbrella that can connect our groupuscules up and harness our collective potential.

OM: In my experience, cooperation with anti-authoritarian Marxists (like leftcoms) is possible and productive, having participated myself in this. With the more authoritarian variants, only partial/punctual cooperation, usually on defensive issues like anti-fascism, seems practical.

Wetzel: They could work together I think in practical organizing projects such as building unions or cooperatives or tenant organizations or climate justice protests, etc. There have been state socialists as members in syndicalist unions like the IWW for example.

However, there may still be disagreements or conflicts in these areas. These disagreements are likely to happen over the question of how mass organizations are to be run. Libertarian socialists want mass organizations to be self-managed, that is, they want them to be controlled in a direct way by the rank-and-file members. They would oppose concentrating power in an executive body. Social-democrats and Leninists are likely to still favor some strategy of "boring from within" - changing leadership - in the inherited unions, rather than building independent worker committees, and grassroots unions apart from the inherited labor bureaucracy.

Dialogue might suggest areas where there can be agreement in relation to some goals or programs. But there is still the fundamental difference in how libertarian socialists and Leninists (and other state socialists) think about what socialism is. Workers self-management - and complete worker mastery of production -- is, in the libertarian socialist view, a necessary condition for working class liberation from the class system. It's not adequate to limit this to simply control of a coop or individual workplace but has to be generalized and coordinated throughout the economy, from a libertarian socialist point of view.

There is the related problem of how we view working class political power or society wide power. Even if libertarian socialists would support particular reforms in the context of the present system (such as Medicare for All in USA), in the end the old state has to be dismantled for the working class to be freed from its subordinate class position. That's because the state is based on top-down structures of managerial control that have the boss/worker relation of subordination built in. The state represents the concentrated defense of a system of class domination and exploitation, and the forms of inequality tied in with this. So working class political power would have to be based on some form of delegate democracy consistent with worker self-management everywhere and be accountable to the masses at the base, through workplace and neighborhood assemblies.

A form of direct communal power by the masses (via neighborhood and workplace assemblies) is also going to be essential to have a solution to the present worsening environmental crisis. The people need to obtain a very direct control over what gets put into the atmosphere and water through the economic system. So we can think of the socialist goal as having both a worker control and communal control dimension. But both require replacing the present hierarchical institutions - corporations and state - that dominate society.

Historically socialists have often defined socialism as democratic worker and community control over the political economy. Libertarian and state socialists have differed in working out the details.

From Chiapas to Rojava: The Rise of a New Revolutionary Paradigm

By CIC

" Power to the people" can only be put into practice when the power
exercised by social elites is dissolved into the people.

- Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism

The largely unknown until recently Kurdish city of Kobane managed to attract the attention of the world with its fierce resistance [i] against the invasion of the Islamic State and became an international symbol, compared to the defence of Madrid and Stalingrad. The bravery and heroism of the People's Defence Units and the Women's Defence Units (YPG and YPJ) were praised by a large spectrum of groups and individuals - anarchists, leftists, liberals and even right-wingers expressed sympathy and admiration for the men and women of Kobane in their historical battle against what was often seen as IS "fascism." The mainstream media was forced to break the silence over the Kurdish autonomy and soon numerous articles and news stories were broadcasted and published, often depicting the "toughness" and determination of the Kurdish fighters with a certain dose of exotisation, of course. However, this attention was very often selective and partial - the very essence of the political project in Rojava (Western Kurdistan) was left aside and the media preferred to present the resistance in Kobane as some weird exception to the supposed barbarism of the Middle East. Without surprise, the red star, shining on the victorious flags of the YPG/J was not a pleasing image in the eyes of the Western powers and their media. The autonomous cantons of Rojava represent a home-grown solution to the conflicts in the Middle East, encompassing grassroots democracy, ethnic, social and gender rights and all this in rejection both of IS terror but also of liberal democracy and capitalist economy . Although the West preferred to stay silent on this issue, this ideological foundation is the key for understanding the spirit that wrote the Kobane epopee and fascinated the world, as the Kurdish activist and academic, Dilar Dirik, claimed recently[ii].

As the battles for every street and corner of the city were intensifying, Kobane managed to captivate the imagination of the left and specifically of the libertarian left as a symbol of resistance and struggle and soon it was placed on the pantheon of some of the most emblematic battles for humanity, such as the defence of Madrid against the fascists in the 1930s. It was not by accident that the Turkish Marxist-Leninist group MLKP, which joined the YPG/J in/on the battlefield, raised the flag of the Spanish republic over the ruins of the city in the day of its liberation and called for the formation of International Brigades[iii], following the example of the Spanish revolution. It was not the battle for Kobane itself, but the libertarian essence of the cantons of Rojava, the implementation of grassroots direct democracy, the participation of women and different ethnic groups into the autonomous government that gave ground to the comparisons with the Spanish revolution. Another association was mentioned briefly in several articles - the revolution in Rojava and its autonomous government were compared to the Zapatistas and their autonomy in the south of Mexico. The importance of this comparison might be crucial in order to understand the paradigm of the revolutionary struggle in Kurdistan and what it means for those who believe another world is possible.

The Zapatista movement is probably one of the most symbolic and influential elements of the revolutionary imaginary in the world after the fall of the state-socialist regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the morning of January 1, 1994, an unknown guerrilla force, composed of indigenous Mayas, took over the main towns of the southern-most Mexican state - Chiapas. The military operation was carried out with strategic brilliance and combined with the innovative back then use of the internet to spread the message of the revolutionaries, it echoed around the globe to inspire international solidarity and the emergence of the Alter-Globalisation movement. The Zapatistas rebelled against neoliberal capitalism and the social and cultural genocide of the indigenous population in Mexico. Ya Basta, Enough is enough, was their war cry that emerged from the night of "500 years of oppression", as the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle stated. The Zapatistas rose up in arms when global capital was celebrating the "end of history" and the idea of social revolution seemed to be a romantic anachronism that belonged to the past. The Zapatista Army for National Liberation was forced out of the cities in twelve days of intense battles with the federal army but it turned out that the deep horizontal organisation in the indigenous communities could not be eradicated by any military intervention or terror. The masked spokesperson of the rebel army, Subcomandante Marcos, challenged the notion of historical vanguard as opposed to revolution from below, which does not aim to take power but to abolish it and this concept became central to the most mass anti-capitalist movements since - from Seattle and Genoa to the Syntagma and Puerta del Sol occupations and even the Occupy Movement.

Where are the similarities with the Rojavan revolution?

From Marxism-Leninism to Autonomy - a shared historical trajectory

The roots of the democratic autonomy in Rojava can be understood only through the history of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK), the organisation, which has been central to the Kurdish liberation movement since its creation in 1978. The PKK was established as a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organisation in Northern Kurdistan, part of the Turkish state, combining the ideologies of national and social liberation. It grew to a substantial guerrilla force under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan and managed to challenge the second biggest army in NATO in a conflict that claimed the lives of more than forty thousand people. The Turkish state displaced hundreds of thousands and reportedly used torture, assassination and rape against the civilian population but did not manage to break the backbone of the Kurdish resistance. Since its inception, PKK has expanded its influence both in Turkey and in the other parts of Kurdistan. The leading political force in the Rojavan revolution - the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is affiliated with it through the Kurdistan Communities' Union, KCK, the umbrella organisation that encompasses various revolutionary and political groups sharing the ideas of the PKK. The ideology, which unites the different civil and revolutionary groups in the KCK is called democratic confederalism and is based on the ideas of the US anarchist Murray Bookchin, who argued in favour of a non-hierarchal society based on social-ecology, libertarian municipalism, and direct democracy.

Although the Zapatistas are famous for their autonomous government and rejection of the notion of historical vanguard, the roots of the organisation were also related to Marxism-Leninism and just like in the case of the PKK, the idea of self-governance and revolution from below were a product of a long historical evolution. The EZLN was founded in 1983 by a group of urban guerrillas, predominantly Marxist-Leninists, who decided to start a revolutionary cell among the indigenous population in Chiapas, organise a guerrilla force and take power through guerrilla warfare. Soon they realised that their ideological dogma was not applicable to the indigenous realities and started learning from the communal traditions of governance of the indigenous people. Thus, Zapatismo was born as a fusion between Marxism and the experience and knowledge of the native population that has been resisting both against the Spanish and later the Mexican state.

This shared ideological trajectory demonstrates a historical turn in the understanding of revolutionary process. The Zapatista uprising and establishment of the autonomy in Chiapas marked a break with traditional guerrilla strategies, inspired predominantly by the Cuban revolution, this was made more than clear in the letter EZLN spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, wrote to the Basque liberation organisation ETA:

"I shit on all revolutionary vanguards on this planet. [iv]"

It was not the vanguard to lead the people now; it was the people themselves to build the revolution from below and sustain it as such. This is the logic PKK has been shifting towards in the last decade under the influence of Murray Bookchin and this shift demonstrates an evolution of the organisation from movement for the people to a movement of the people.

Cantons and Caracoles - freedom here and now

Probably the most important similarity between the revolution in Rojava and the one in Chiapas is the social and political reorganisation that is taking place in both places that is based on the libertarian ideology of the two organisations.

The Zapatista autonomy in its current form originates from the failure of the peace negotiations with the Mexican government after the uprising in 1994. During the peace negotiations the rebels demanded the government to adhere to the accords of San Andres, which give the indigenous people the right to autonomy, self-determination, education, justice and political organisation, based on their tradition as well as communal control over the land and the resources of the areas that belong to them. These accords were never implemented by the government and in 2001 president Fox backed an edited version that was voted for in congress but did not meet the demands of the Zapatistas and the other groups in resistance. This event was labelled as "treason" and it provoked the EZLN to declare two years later the creation of the five rebel zones, centred in five Caracoles (or snails in English) that serve as administrative centres. The name Caracoles came to show the revolutionary concept of the Zapatistas - we are doing it ourselves, we learn in the process and we advance, slowly, but we advance. The Caracoles[v] include three levels of autonomous government - community, municipality and Council of the Good Government. The first two are based on grassroots assemblies whereas the Councils of the Good Government are elected but with the intention to get as many people as possible to participate in the Government over the years through a principle of rotation. The autonomy has its own educational system, healthcare and justice, as well as cooperatives, producing coffee, cattle, handcrafts etc.

We learn as we make things, we did not know about autonomy and that we were going to build something like it. But we learn and improve things and learn from the struggle - told me my Zapatista guardian Armando, when I visited the autonomous territory at the end of 2013. Freedom could only be practiced here and now and revolution was a process of constantly challenging the status-quo and building alternatives to it.

The Rojavan cantons indeed resemble the autonomy in Chiapas. They were proclaimed by the dominant PYD in 2013 and function through the established popular assemblies and democratic councils. Women participate equally in the decision-making and are represented in all elected positions, which are always shared by a man and a woman. All ethnic groups are represented in the government and its institutions. Healthcare and education are also guaranteed by the system of democratic confederalism and recently the first Rojavan university, the Masepotamia Academy, opened it's doors with plans to challenge the hierarchical structure of education, and to provide a different approach to learning.

Just as it is in the case with the Zapatistas, the Revolution in Rojava envisions itself as a solution to the problems in the whole country, not as an expression of separatist tendencies. This genuine democratic system, as claimed by the delegation of academics from Europe and North America [vi], that visited Rojava recently, points to a different future of the Middle East, based on direct participation, women's emancipation and ethnic peace.

Women's revolution

Gender has always been central to the Zapatista revolution. The situation of women before the spread of the organization and the adoption of women's liberation as central to the struggle, was marked by exploitation, marginalization, forced marriages, physical violence and discrimination. This is why Marcos claims that the first uprising was not the one in 1994 but the adoption of the Womens' Revolutionary Law in 1993, setting the framework for gender equality and justice and guaranteeing the rights of the women in the rebel territory to personal autonomy, emancipation and dignity. Today women participate in all levels of government and have their own cooperatives and economic structures to guarantee their economic independence. Women were and still form a large part of the ranks of the Zapatista guerilla force and take high positions in its commandment. The takeover of San Cristobal de las Casas, the most important city the Zapatista troops captured during the uprising in 1994, was also commanded by women, headed by comandanta Ramona, who was also the first Zapatista to be sent to Mexico city to represent the movement.

It is not difficult to compare the mass involvement of indigenous women in Chiapas in the Zapatista ranks to the participation of women in the defense of Kobane and in the YPJ - the Women's Protection Units, both depicted in a sensationalist manner[vii] by the Western media in the last months. However, their bravery and determination in the war against ISIS is a product of a long tradition of women participation in the armed struggle for social liberation in Kurdistan. Women have played a central role in the PKK and this is undoubtedly connected with the importance of gender in the Kurdish struggle. The Rojava revolution has a strong emphasis on women's liberation as indispensable for the true liberation of society. The theoretical framework that puts the dismantling of patriarchy at the heart of the struggle is called "jineology", a concept developed by Abdullah Ocalan. The application of this concept has resulted in an unseen empowerment of women not only in the context of the Middle East but also in the context of western liberal feminism. The women's assemblies, cooperative structures and women's militias are the heart of the revolution, which is considered incomplete if it does not destroy the patriarchal structure of society, which is one of the fundamentals of capitalism. Janet Biehl, an independent writer and artist, wrote after her recent visit to Rojava that women in the Kurdish revolution have the ideological role of the proletariat in the XXth century revolutions.

The ecology of freedom

The Ecology of Freedom is probably the most important among Bookchin's works and his concept of social ecology has been adopted by the revolutionaries in Rojava. His idea that "the very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human" links patriarchy, environmental destruction and capitalism and points at their abolition as the only way to a just society. Such a holistic approach has been advocated and implemented by the Zapatistas as well. Sustainability has also been an important point of emphasis, especially after the creation of the caracoles in 2003. The autonomous government has been trying to recuperate ancestral knowledge, related to the sustainable use of the land and combine it with other agro-ecological practices. This logic is not only a matter of improving the living conditions in the communities and avoiding the use of agrochemicals, it is a rejection of the whole notion that large-scale industrial agriculture is superior to the 'primitive' way the indigenous people work the land and as such it is a powerful defiance of the logic of neoliberalism.

The road to Autonomy - the new revolutionary paradigm

The similarities between the system of democratic confederalism that is being developed in Western Kurdistan and the Autonomy in Chiapas go far beyond the few points I have stressed in this article. From slogans such as Ya Basta, adapted in Kurdish as êdî bes e to the grassroots democracy, communal economic structures and participation of women, the similar path the Kurdish movement and the Zapatistas have taken demonstrates a decisive break with the vanguardist notion of Marxism-Leninism and a new approach to revolution, which comes from below and aims at the creation of a free and non-hierarchal society.

Although both movements have received some bitter criticism[viii] from sectarian elements on the left, the very fact that the only major and successful experiments in radical social change originate from non-western, marginalised and colonised groups, comes as a slap in the face to the white and privileged dogmatic "revolutionaries" of the global north who have hardly been successful on challenging oppression in their own countries but tend to believe it is their judgement what is and what is not a real revolution.

The revolutions in Rojava and Chiapas are a powerful example for the world, demonstrating the enormous capacity of grassroots organisation and the importance of communal links as opposed to capitalist social atomisation. Last but not least, Chiapas and Rojava should make many on the left, including some anarchists, trash their colonial mindset and ideological dogmatism.

A world without hierarchy, domination, capitalism and environmental destruction or as the Zapatistas say, the world where many worlds fit, has often been depicted as "utopian" and "unrealistic" by the mainstream media, education and political structures. However, this world is not some future mirage that comes from the books - it is happening here and now and the examples of Zapatistas and Kurds are a powerful weapon to reignite our capacity to imagine a real radical change in society as well as a model we can learn from in our struggles. The red stars that shine over Chiapas and Rojava shed light on the way to liberation and if we need to summarize in one word what brings these two struggles together, it would definitely be Autonomy.​​

Originally published by the Cooperativa Integral Catalana.

Notes

[i] Dicle, Amed (2015) Kobane Victory, How it Unfolded

http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/insight-research/analysis/kobane-victory-how-it-unfolded.html

[ii] Dirik, Dilar (2015) Whi Kobane Did Not Fall
http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/kurdistan/west-kurdistan/why-kobani-did-not-fall.html

[iii] International Brigades Form in Rojava (2014)
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2015/01/international-brigades-form-in-rojava-no-pasaran-video-3100250.html

[iv] Marcos (2003) I Shit on All Revolutionary Vanguards on This Planethttp://roarmag.org/2011/02/i-shit-on-all-the-revolutionary-vanguards-of-this-planet/

[v] Oikonomakis, Leonidas (2013) Zapatistas Celebrate 10 Years of Autonomy With Escuelitahttp://roarmag.org/2013/08/escuelita-zapatista-10-year-autonomy/

[vi] Joint Statement of the Academic Delagation to Rojava
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/joint-statement-of-the-academic-delegation-to-rojava/

[vii] Dirik, Dilar (2014) Western Fascination With "Badass" Kurdish Women
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/10/western-fascination-with-badas-2014102112410527736.html

[viii]

Anarchist Federation Statement on Rojava (2014)
http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/international/435-anarchist-federation-statement-on-rojava-december-2014.html

"Spider Webs for the Rich and Mighty": A Libertarian-Socialist Critique of Criminal Law

By Colin Jenkins

As human societies have developed over the course of history, so too have corollary systems of order. In the most basic sense, the often informal development of customs, norms and ethics become inevitable in spaces where groups of human beings come together to interact with another. However, as the scales of human interaction have grown - from tribes to communities to nation-states - these informal codes of conduct have become formal systems of rule and order which have taken on physical identities in the form of states and governments.

In his influential essay, Politics as Vocation, Max Weber provided one of the most important analyses regarding the sociological development of the state. Weber introduced the concept of rational-legal authority in his attempt to explain the rise and justification of the modern bureaucratic nation-state. As a self-described "bourgeois theorist," Weber provided a strong breakdown of the modern state, tended towards justifying its purpose, and recognized the inherently forceful nature of its existence:

"'Every state is founded on force,' said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of 'state' would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as 'anarchy,' in the specific sense of this word."[1]

Perhaps most crucial was Weber's notion of a "monopoly of violence" for which he viewed as a legitimate power of the state:

"Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the 'right' to use violence."[2]

Weber's justification is predicated upon two important assumptions: (1) that a distinction between authority and coercion exists, and that authority becomes legitimate when "individuals accept and act upon orders that are given to them because they believe that to do so is right;" [3] and (2) that rational-legal authority itself is legitimized, via the political process, by the people under its rule. Despite the questionable nature of these assumptions, Weber's hierarchical structure has come to dominate our world. The formation of criminal law, while not just a modern phenomenon, has provided further justification for rational-legal authority. And the formidable development of modern criminal justice systems equipped with the means to carry out this "monopoly of violence" on a daily basis has assured the maintenance of Weber's state.

These legitimized systems of violence, authority and coercion have reached a point where they are accepted by most without hesitation: a common acceptance that begs to be questioned.

Law as Morality

"Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."

- Assata Shakur

There has been an ongoing, centuries-long societal experiment to equate written laws with morality. The historical development of human societies have made laws necessary for reasons that will be discussed below, and the need to house these laws in justifications centered within authority and domination (also discussed below) have relied on an institutional "rebranding" of these hierarchical relations. One of the main tools in this rebranding process has been the inclusion of morality-based conditioning, which exists everywhere from parenting to public education. This is not a new phenomenon, but yet persists as a main tool in shaping customs and norms which are amenable with living under systems of domination. In his 1886 classic, Law and Authority, Peter Kropotkin touches on this deep conditioning process used to create an obedient population:

"We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the ferule of a law, which regulates every event in life - our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship - that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves.

Indeed, for some thousands of years, those who govern us have done nothing but ring the changes upon "Respect for law, obedience to authority." This is the moral atmosphere in which parents bring up their children, and school only serves to confirm the impression. Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels." [4]

This cultural conditioning seeks to establish widespread consent, or at least the appearance of such, through the construction of an artificial system of morality. As opposed to ethics and morals which are innate attributes of the human race - live and let live, treat others as you would expect to be treated, cooperate and co-exist, etc - these artificial systems of morality have been designed to make "rights" synonymous with things like authority, order and obedience, and "wrongs" as being synonymous with any and all dissent from this established order.

Governments play a major role in this cultural process, and modern systems of liberal democracy aid in this construction. In The Individual, Society, and the State, Emma Goldman sheds light on this phenomenon:

"Political government and the State were a much later development, growing out of the desire of the stronger to take advantage of the weaker, of the few against the many. The State, ecclesiastical and secular, served to give an appearance of legality and right to the wrong done by the few to the many. That appearance of right was necessary the easier to rule the people, because no government can exist without the consent of the people, consent open, tacit or assumed. Constitutionalism and democracy are the modern forms of that alleged consent; the consent being inoculated and indoctrinated by what is called "education," at home, in the church, and in every other phase of life.

That consent is the belief in authority, in the necessity for it. At its base is the doctrine that man is evil, vicious, and too incompetent to know what is good for him. On this all government and oppression is built. God and the State exist and are supported by this dogma." [5]

This artificial notion of morality, and the modern creation of "manufactured consent" via systems of "constitutionalism and democracy," is what Howard Zinn aptly referred to as The Conspiracy of Law. In transitioning the deliverance of authority from the "rule of men" to the "rule of law," according to Zinn, the power brokers have not only created their own sets of "Natural law," but have also made such laws nearly impossible to question:

"The modern era, presumably replacing the arbitrary rule of men with the objective, impartial rule of law, has not brought any fundamental change in the facts of unequal wealth and unequal power. What was done before - exploiting men and women, sending the young to war, putting troublesome people into dungeons - is still done, except that this no longer appears as the arbitrary action of the feudal lord or the king; it is now invested with the authority of neutral, impersonal law. Indeed, because of this impersonality, it becomes possible to do far more injustice to people, with a stronger sanction of legitimacy. The rule of law can be more onerous than the divine right of the king, because it was known that the king was really a man, and even in the Middle Ages it was accepted that the king could not violate natural law. (See Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, Notes 127-134.) A code of law is more easily defied than a flesh and blood monarchy; in the modern era, the positive law takes on the character of natural law."[6]

The repackaging of authority into morality (written law as natural law), and the arbitrary nature of this new authority, also make it nearly impossible to target:

"Under the rule of men, the enemy was identifiable, and so peasant rebellions hunted out the lords, slaves killed plantation owners, and radicals assassinated monarchs. In the era of the corporation and the representative assembly, the enemy is elusive and unidentifiable; even to radicals the attempted assassination of the industrialist Frick by the anarchist Berkman seemed an aberration. In The Grapes of Wrath, the dispossessed farmer aims his gun confusedly at the tractor driver who is knocking down his house, learns that behind him is the banker in Oklahoma City and behind him a banker in New York, and cries out, 'Then who can I shoot?'" [7]

Law as Authority

"As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves."

- Noam Chomsky

The need for written laws is something that is rarely, if ever, questioned. It is a common belief that such laws are necessary, and that "the need for law lies in the history of the human race."[8] In popular college textbooks like Essentials of Criminal Law, this common acceptance is housed in a rationality that can be summarized by the following: 1) People are individuals, and their desires, needs, and wants differ from those of others; 2) These differences cause conflict; 3) When people began to live in groups, communities, and societies, laws became necessary; and 4) Law became necessary as a means of social control, either to alleviate conflicts or to settle them in a manner most advantageous to the group.[9]

When viewed in this manner, laws are presented as a mechanism designed to serve the community for which they are applied. The assumptions for applying them under this rationale are numerous: for example, we must assume that all individuals within a given community/society are allowed equal access to basic necessities; we must assume that all individuals are treated equally under the law; and we must assume that material conditions (or the base economic system for which society rests) allow for free association among all members. Without this foundation, as summarized by these basic assumptions, the justification widely used in support of written laws becomes null and void.

Therefore, when applied to societies that are shaped by flawed economic systems - systems that disenfranchise members and fail to allow many to fulfill basic needs - laws no longer serve the community, but rather serve the most powerful members of that community. In this instance, laws are transformed from statutes designed to enhance the common good to statutes designed to control the disenfranchised members. When this transformation occurs, laws become weapons of authority, essentially losing their legitimacy within a given community or society. Kropotkin describes this transformation which is based in the need to establish the domination of the minority over the majority:

"The desire to dominate others and impose one's own will upon them; the desire to seize upon the products of the labour of a neighbouring tribe; the desire to surround oneself with comforts without producing anything, whilst slaves provide their master with the means of procuring every sort of pleasure and luxury - these selfish, personal desires give rise to another current of habits and customs. The priest and the warrior, the charlatan who makes a profit out of superstition, and after freeing himself from the fear of the devil, cultivates it in others; and the bully, who procures the invasion and pillage of his neighbours, that he may return laden with booty, and followed by slaves; these two, hand in hand, have succeeded in imposing upon primitive society customs advantageous to both of them, but tending to perpetuate their domination of the masses. Profiting by the indolence, the fears, the inertia of the crowd, and thanks to the continual repetition of the same acts, they have permanently established customs which have become a solid basis for their own domination." [10]

The establishment of authority and domination becomes necessary when a minority section of society decides that it is deserving of owning wealth and land far beyond the purpose of its own use. This development naturally leads to the disenfranchisement of a multitude of members whose size grows in a perpetual manner alongside the constant pursuit of more wealth and land by the elite. As this development continues, laws are reduced to serving this dominant minority. Kropotkin explains:

"But as society became more and more divided into two hostile classes, one seeking to establish its domination, the other struggling to escape, the strife began. Now the conqueror was in a hurry to secure the results of his actions in a permanent form, he tried to place them beyond question, to make them holy and venerable by every means in his power. Law made its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior's club was placed at its service. Its office was to render immutable such customs as were to the advantage of the dominant minority." [11]

As time goes on, these laws become customs that are widely accepted even by the majority-population for which they are designed to control, and to prevent from accessing basic human needs, through violence and coercion. This gradual process has led to the modern justifications given above, all of which ignore the historical process of minority rule via the disenfranchisement of the majority, to the point where the legitimacy of such laws are no longer questioned. As Kropotkin concludes:

"Such was law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day. Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skilful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.

Like individual capital, which was born of fraud and violence, and developed under the auspices of authority, law has no title to the respect of men. Born of violence and superstition, and established in the interests of consumer, priest and rich exploiter, it must be utterly destroyed on the day when the people desire to break their chains."[12]

Criminal Law in a Capitalist System

"Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread."

- Emma Goldman

As with all societies, written laws become the primary mean of maintaining the status quo. The most fundamental purpose of such laws is to create and maintain a minimal degree of stability or at the very least a semblance of stability within certain areas of society. In the modern United States, the status quo has been shaped by a base economic system of capitalism that is characterized by multi-generational poverty, extreme inequality, and high concentrations of wealth and power. Therefore, when applied to this base, criminal laws are essentially statutes that are developed by legislators who either come from or are tied to those concentrations of wealth and power, and are placed upon the at-large population which has already been disenfranchised by the economic system. Because of this, a critical theory of criminal law becomes vital in deconstructing the nature and purpose of such laws.

In his essay Crime Control in Capitalist Society, Richard Quinney provides us with important assertions that must be understood before moving forward with this breakdown:

· American society is based on an advanced capitalist economy.

· The State is organized to serve the interests of the dominant economic class, the capitalist ruling class.

· Criminal law is an instrument of the State and ruling class to maintain and perpetuate the existing social and economic order.

· Crime control in capitalist society is accomplished through a variety of institutions and agencies established and administered by a government elite, representing ruling-class interests, for the purpose of establishing domestic order.

· The contradictions of advanced capitalism - the disjunction between existence and essence require that the subordinate classes remain oppressed by whatever means necessary, especially through the coercion and violence of the legal system.

· Only with the collapse of capitalist society and the creation of a new society, based on socialist principles, will there be a solution of the crime problem.[13]

The process of transforming laws into weapons of authority to be wielded by the wealth and land-owning minority over the disenfranchised majority, as touched on by Kropotkin, has reached its current stage via the promulgation of this "advanced capitalist economy" in the United States. This system, as an economic base, has allowed for the historical continuation of separating the masses from access to basic needs, while also fusing the law-making apparatus (the government) nearly completely with the wealth-owning elite (the former private sector).

When examining criminal justice systems found under capitalism, Marxist gatekeeper theory is invaluable. The most basic application of this Marxian analysis proves helpful in illustrating the positions of those who commit crimes versus those who create and enforce laws. Basic tenets of this theory include:

· Deviance (as determined by the artificial morality described above) is partly the product of unequal power relations and inequality in general.

· Crime, as established by the ruling class (with their own interests in mind) is an understandable response to the situation of poverty and mass disenfranchisement.

· Crime is often the result of offering society demeaning work with little sense of creativity.

· The base (economic system) disenfranchises the working-class majority; the superstructure (government and law creation) serves the ruling-class minority.

· The capitalist class (minority) co-opts the capitalist government to create laws that seek to maintain its power through coercing and controlling the working-class majority.

· "The heart of the capitalist system is the protection of private property, which is, by definition, the cornerstone upon which capitalistic economies function." Thus, written law reflects this fundamental value of property and profit over people. [14]

In the United States, the dominant ideology that espouses "individualism" and "exceptionalism" has been successful in merging manufactured morality and consent to the economic "virtues" of capitalism and patriotism, which are also manufactured in the same ways. Goldman explains the cultural effects of this process:

"This 'rugged individualism' has inevitably resulted in the greatest modern slavery, the crassest class distinctions, driving millions to the breadline. 'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'unAmerican' and evil in the name of that same individualism."[15]

This merger serves to not only fortify the justification for written laws as tools of authority and domination over the majority, but also the unquestioned consent of those (in this case, the alienated working-class majority) being controlled and oppressed by such laws.

In direct contrast to a common belief in the need for law to address "natural" conflict in human societies, it is crucial to recognize the manufactured conflicts created by capitalism. The justification presented in the dominant paradigm possesses two fundamental flaws in this regard: the first of which lies in the view that conflict is in fact "natural" within all human societies; and the second being in the exclusion of material conditions as a factor in creating conflict. In order to be legitimized, this justification must rely on basic assumptions related to material conditions, most specifically the presence of an economic system which allows for equal and broad access to basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, etc. Much like the false assumptions in Weber's analysis of the modern state, any premise that fails to consider the manufactured conflict stemming from the material conditions of a society's mode of production finds itself lacking legitimacy and justification.

In reality, capitalism creates widespread conflict by alienating the majority. Therefore, in such a system, "crime" (especially regarding that which is routinely enforced) represents the actions of people who have become dehumanized, dispossessed, stripped of human creativity, and left without the means to fulfill basic human needs.

Conclusion

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

- Audre Lorde

If human beings are in fact individuals with "different desires, needs, and wants," as described even by the dominant criminological paradigm, then we must question the existence of hierarchical societies based in authority and domination. Such societal arrangements persist and have been accepted as "common sense" despite the inherent contradictions they impose. Within these arrangements, written laws have been identified as "social controls" needed to "alleviate natural conflict" and settle such conflict "in a manner most advantageous to the group (society/community)." However, when applied to societies that have been shaped by flawed economic systems (like capitalism) and historical processes that have led to wealth and land-owning minorities "governing" disenfranchised majorities, laws have taken on a different identity, mainly one that serves as a weapon of unquestioned authority.

Authority, in itself, is not a wholly illegitimate concept. Authority as a measure of competence or expertise may be extremely useful when serving society. However, when it becomes a means of social control, of domination by one over another, its legitimacy should come into question. Mikhail Bakunin perhaps explained this best in his treatise, What is Authority:

"Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the boot-maker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the boot-maker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others." [16]

Because they are constructed for the purpose of controlling the disenfranchised masses of people, modern laws represent authority of the illegitimate kind. Speaking of such laws, the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously proclaimed:

"I recognize none of them: I protest against every order which it may please some power, from pretended necessity, to impose upon my free will. Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the government."[17]

In the modern United States, Proudhon's vision plays out every day. Under capitalism, laws are created by millionaire legislators who are financially supported by billionaire interests, enforced by hired guns of the working class (police), and ruled on by wealthy elites in black robes who are largely detached from their subjects. As capitalism naturally leads to greater concentrations of wealth and power, along with greater numbers of dispossessed citizens, crime and punishment becomes solely directed at the most marginalized of these masses. In the US, this includes the poor, the working poor, and people of color.

This correlation has never been more evident than in the neoliberal era (roughly 1980 until now), which is widely recognized as an intensification of the capitalist system. Since 1980, the total adult correctional population (those in prison/jail and on probation/parole) has increased from two million to seven million.[18] During this time, the prison population itself has increased 470 percent (from 320,000 in 1980) to 1.5 million in 2013.[19] Those scooped up by ruling class "fishing nets" and placed in "steel chains" are disproportionately poor and black.[20]

This scenario that has developed over the course of centuries has delegitimized any attempt to establish state authority, coercion, and its "monopoly of violence" via the criminal justice system. As long as capitalism is used to shape the social relations that are to be monitored and controlled, the state remains as nothing more than a tool to be wielded by the wealth and land-owning minority. And as long as the state remains a coercive extension of these social relations, the notion of criminal law will remain nothing more than a camouflaged totalitarianism designed to keep its boot on the neck of the disenfranchised majority.

References

[1] Weber, Max (1919), "Politics as a Vocation." Accessed online at http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf

[2] Ibid

[3] Best, Shaun (2002), Introduction to Politics and Society (Sage Publications) Accessed online at https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/9547_017533ch2.pdf

[4] Kropotkin, Peter (1886), Law and Authority. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-law-and-authority

[5] Goldman, Emma (1940), The Individual, Society and the State. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-the-individual-society-and-the-state

[6] Zinn, Howard (1971), "The Conspiracy of Law." Appeared in The Rule of Law, edited by Robert Paul Wolff (New York: Simon and Schuster)

[7] Ibid

[8] Chamelin, N. & Thomas, A. (2009) Essentials of Criminal Law, 11th edition (Prentice Hall)

[9] Ibid

[10] Kropotkin (1886)

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] Quinney, Richard (1975), "Crime Control in Capitalist Society: A Critical Philosophy of Legal Order." Appeared in Critical Criminology, edited by Ian Taylor (Routledge)

[14] Covington, Jeanette (2000), Marxist Perspective on Crime. Accessed on November 29, 2015 at http://www.sociology.org.uk/

[15] Goldman (1940)

[16] Bakunin, Mikhail (1871), What is Authority? Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michail-bakunin-what-is-authority

[17] Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1851), General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. Republished by Courier (2013)

[18] Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), US Office of Justice Programs (2014). Accessed online at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf

[19] The Sentencing Project: Research for Advocacy and Reform (2014). Accessed online at http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107

[20] BJS (2014)