Here's some ideas cut'n'pasted from wikipedia:
Anarchist communism is a theory of
anarchism which advocates the abolition of the
state,
private property, and
capitalism in favor of
common ownership of the
means of production,
[1][2] direct or
consensus democracy and a horizontal network of
voluntary associations and
workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "from each according to ability, to each according to need"
[
In place of a market,
anarcho-communists, such as those who inhabited some Spanish villages in the 1930s, support a currency-less gift economy where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essentially entitled to consume whatever they want or need as "payment" for their production of goods and services
Consensus democracy is the application of
consensus decision-making to the process of legislation in a
democracy. It is characterised by a decision-making structure which involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to systems where minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote-winning majorities.
[1]
Consensus democracy also features increased citizen participation both in determining the political agenda and in the decision making process itself. Some[
who?] have pointed to developments in
information and communication technology as potential facilitators of such systems.
A
voluntary association or
union (also sometimes called a
voluntary organization,
unincorporated association, or just an
association) is a group of individuals who
voluntarily enter into an agreement to form a body (or
organization) to accomplish a purpose.
A
workers' council is the phenomenon where a single place of work, such as a
factory,
school, or
farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle of temporary and instantly revocable
delegates.
In a system with temporary and instantly revocable delegates, workers deliberate on what is their agenda and what are their needs, and mandate a temporary delegate to divulge and pursue them. The temporary delegates are elected among the workers themselves, can be instantly revoked if they betray their mandate, and are supposed to change frequently. There are no managers and all the decision power and the organization is based on the delegates system. On a larger scale, a group of delegates may in turn elect a higher delegate to pursue their mandate, and so on till the top delegates running the
industrial system of a state. In such a system decision power raises bottom-up from the agendas of the workers themselves, and there is not a decision imposition from the top, as it would happen in the case of a power seizure by a supposedly
revolutionary party
Peter Kropotkin, often seen as the most important theorist of anarchist communism, outlined his economic ideas in
The Conquest of Bread and
Fields, Factories and Workshops. Kropotkin felt that co-operation is more beneficial than competition, arguing in
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that this was illustrated in nature. He advocated the abolition of private property through the "expropriation of the whole of social wealth" by the people themselves,
[22] and for the economy to be co-ordinated through a horizontal network of voluntary associations
[23] where goods are distributed according to the physical needs of the individual, rather than according to labor.
[24] He further argued that these "needs," as society progressed, would not merely be physical needs but "[a]s soon as his material wants are satisfied, other needs, of an artistic character, will thrust themselves forward the more ardently. Aims of life vary with each and every individual; and the more society is civilized, the more will individuality be developed, and the more will desires be varied."
[25]
Imagine a society, comprising a few million inhabitants, engaged in agriculture and a great variety of industries--Paris, for example, with the Department of Seine-et-Oise. Suppose that in this society all children learn to work with their hands as well as with their brains. Admit that all adults, save women, engaged in the education of their children, bind themselves to work 5 hours a day from the age of twenty or twenty-two to forty-five or fifty, and that they follow occupations they have chosen in any one branch of human work considered necessary. Such a society could in return guarantee well-being to all its members; that is to say, a more substantial well-being than that enjoyed to-day by the middle classes. And, moreover, each worker belonging to this society would have at his disposal at least 5 hours a day which he could devote to science, art, and individual needs which do not come under the category of necessities, but will probably do so later on, when man's productivity will have augmented, and those objects will no longer appear luxurious or inaccessible. Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread[30]
Anarcho-communism stresses
egalitarianism and the abolition of
social hierarchy and class distinctions arising from unequal wealth distribution, as well as the abolition of
private property and
money. Replacing these approaches would be collective production and distribution of wealth by means of voluntary association. In anarchist communism, the state and private property would no longer exist. Each individual and group would be free to contribute to production and to satisfy their needs based on their own choice. Systems of production and distribution would be managed by their participants.
The abolition of
wage labor is central to anarchist communism. With distribution of wealth being based on self-determined needs, people would be free to engage in whatever activities they found most fulfilling and would no longer have to engage in work for which they have neither the temperament nor the aptitude. Anarchist communists argue that there is no valid way of measuring the value of any one person's economic contributions because all wealth is a collective product of current and preceding generations. For instance, one could not measure the value of a factory worker's daily production without taking into account how transportation, food, water, shelter, relaxation, machine efficiency, emotional mood etc. contributed to their production. To truly give numerical economic value to anything, an overwhelming amount of externalities and contributing factors would need to be taken into account – especially current or past labor contributing to the ability to utilize future labor. As Kropotkin put it: "No distinction can be drawn between the work of each man. Measuring the work by its results leads us to absurdity; dividing and measuring them by hours spent on the work also leads us to absurdity. One thing remains: put the needs above the works, and first of all recognize the right to live, and later on, to the comforts of life, for all those who take their share in production.."
[32]
Anarchist communists argue that any economic system based on wage labor and private property requires a coercive state apparatus to enforce
property rights and to maintain unequal economic relationships that inevitably arise from differences in wages or amount of property. They further argue that
markets and systems of currency divide labor into classes and assign arbitrary numerical values to an individual's work and attempt to regulate production, consumption and distribution. They argue that money restricts an individual's ability to consume the products of their labor by limiting their intake with prices and wages. Anarchist communists recognize money as fundamentally quantitative in nature, rather than qualitative.
They believe production should be a qualitative matter, and that consumption and distribution should be self-determined by each individual without arbitrary value assigned to labor, goods and services by others. In place of a market, most anarcho-communists support a currency-less gift economy where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essentially entitled to consume whatever they want or need as "payment" for their production of goods and services. A gift economy does not necessarily involve an immediate return (such as with remuneration); compensation comes in the form of whatever the person decides is of equal value to their products of labor (what is commonly called
bartering). Any limits on production and distribution would be determined by the individuals within the groups involved, rather than by capitalist owners, investors, banks or other artificial market pressures.
Anarchist communists reject the claim that wage labor is necessary because people are by "nature" lazy and selfish. They point out that even the so-called "idle rich" sometimes find useful things to do despite having all their needs satisfied by the labour of others.[
citation needed] Anarcho-communists generally do not agree with the belief in a pre-set 'human nature', arguing that human culture and behavior is very largely determined by
socialization. Many, like Peter Kropotkin, also believe that human evolutionary tendency is for humans to cooperate with each other for mutual benefit and survival instead of existing as lone competitors.
[35]
Anarchist communists support communism as a means for ensuring the greatest freedom and well-being for everyone, rather than only the wealthy and powerful. In this sense, anarchist communism is a profoundly
egalitarian philosophy. Anarchist communists do not think that anyone has the right to be anyone else's master, or 'boss' as this is a concept of capitalism and the state
As a planned economy, albeit a decentralised one, some
criticisms of socialism in general are also applied by some economists to anarchist-communism, in particular the allegation that such an economy would not be as efficient in allocating resources as what Adam Smith terms the
invisible hand of the market, leading to waste and societal decline.
Anarchist communists propose that economic distribution should be based on the maxim "from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs" believing these "abilities" and "needs" should be self-determined.
The example of the Spanish revolution, in which high levels of mobilisation and swift improvements to production were implemented by anarchists, is often cited as an example of an anarchist-communist society which saw high levels of motivation and rapid improvements to both industrial and scientific output.
[41]
Capitalists also argue that the only way to obtain and maintain a communal ownership of property and the means of production is by force, claiming that human beings "naturally" seek to keep the fruits of their labor for personal use and distribution. Anarchist communists counter that such a position is neither fixed in nature
[42] nor unchangeable in practice, citing numerous examples of communal behavior occurring naturally even within capitalist systems.
[43]
