Free Association (Communism and Anarchism)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Free association (also referred to as “free association of producers”) means in Marxist theory a relationship between individuals when there is no state , nation, social class or authority and there is no longer any private ownership of the means of production . The term is used by anarchists as well as Marxists and is often explained as a defining characteristic of a “fully developed” communist society.

theory

As soon as private ownership of land and means of production is abolished, people would no longer be able to be “robbed” due to inability to access the means of production. They would be able to associate freely (without social and existential material pressure), to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence. In this way they could meet their individual and creative needs and wishes independently of the state (sovereign), nation (forced collective), and capital (domination and servitude).

A proletarian is someone who has no ownership of land or means of production. In order to survive, he is therefore forced to sell the only thing he has, namely his labor , to the owners of the means of production (exchange of goods), who can use it to "blackmail" him. The existence of individuals who are "deprived" of private property and thus of their livelihood allows owners and capitalists to acquire labor power in free exchange without having to pass on the so-called surplus value to the proletarians. That is why capital increases. In return, the proletarian is paid wages for his work . This in turn guarantees the survival of the proletarians ( wage slavery ). The relationship between proletarians and owners of the means of production is a compulsory union in which the proletarian is doubly free to sell his labor to the respective owner (employer) in order to be able to survive. By selling his production capacity in exchange for the wages that ensure his survival, the proletarian determines his practical activities according to the will of the buyer (the owner), thus becoming alienated from his own actions and products, he is thus in a relationship of domination Exploitation. Free association would be the form of society that would be created if private property were abolished so that people could freely dispose of the means of production, which would bring about the end of class society. This means that humans would neither be owners nor proletarians - nor would there be a state (class society would be abolished), but only freely associated individuals.

The abolition of private property through a free association of producers is the original goal of socialism (communists as well as anarchists): this goal is identified with the words "anarchy" and "communism" themselves. However, the development of the various currents meant that some have almost given up on the goal or it has taken a back seat in view of the various other problems they had to face, while other so-called Social Democrats over time believed that free association should limit all challenges to the "status quo".

anarchism

Most famous symbol of anarchism

Anarchists claim that free association must take place immediately in the struggle of the proletariat, for a new society and against the ruling class ( direct action ). So they are calling for a social revolution to abolish the state, private property and the classes immediately in the here and now. They identify the state as the main guarantor of private property and the maintenance of class society, which guarantees privilege and injustice (through the apparatus of repression: police, justice). Therefore the abolition of the state - in order to make violence impossible - is their main goal in order to finally be able to restore free association, the takeover of the state in the state capitalism of the Marxists can inevitably only lead to slavery and brutality. When it comes to free association, there is a difference between collectivist anarchists and anarchist communists : the collectivist anarchists ( Michail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, for example) argue that it is free association with which society will function, so the maxim "Each according to his deeds". In contrast, the anarcho-communists (such as Peter Kropotkin , Carlo Cafiero and Errico Malatesta ) argue that free association should apply as the maxim: "Everyone according to their abilities, everyone according to their needs" ( solidarity economy ). Anarchist communists claim to collectivists who demand post-work pay that the people involved are subject to a corporation that is higher than them in order to compare the various jobs for which they are paid, and that this corporation could inevitably create a new state or ruling class again ( wage slavery ), but that is exactly what all anarchists fight against. They also argue that when a work is done it is necessary and important that there should be no quantitative aspects between them in order to compare with each other and that everything that is produced has something essential to the contribution of all past and contemporary Includes generations as a whole. Therefore, there are no fair criteria to be able to compare a job with others and to evaluate it, since in an egalitarian structure all people give their share equally. For the anarcho-communists, free association is only possible through the abolition of money and the market, along with the abolition of the state.

Marxism

Marxist state capitalists and Marxist-style communists generally differ from anarchists in that they claim that there must necessarily be an intermediate stage of transition between capitalist society and free association. There are big differences between the various Marxist theories. The Marxist positions on this transitional phase range from "temporarily handing over the expansion of the means of production to state ownership until this state would then supposedly wither itself" to the clearly defined statement that the state apparatus should not be run by the workers but should be destroyed. Hence, there were three basic tendencies in Marx's writings: democratic socialism , Leninism and libertarian Marxism . Democratic socialism (e.g. Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky ) argued that the introduction of free association could be carried out step by step through reforms, by elected representatives in a democratic state ( social democracy ), which also never happened in reality " communist “states, see the history of the SPD , which has long since abandoned this goal.

Leninists and Trotskyists argued that only after reforms, which they would make even after taking power by a coup d'état, would it be possible to bring about a political revolution (The Spanish Revolution in 1936, however, proved the exact opposite. It was not cared about Parliament and the municipalities; all production goods were taken over into collective self-government ). The content of the reforms, however, both that of democratic socialism and that of Leninism, would include the transfer of private property into the hands of the state, which would prevent the rest of society from having access to the means of production, a state capitalist regime should be established, Incidentally, just like in private capitalism, only in state capitalism with the so-called “ dictatorship of the proletariat ” instead of the dictatorship of the corporations as in private capitalism . But this nationalized capital would be used here (so it was claimed) to fight the bourgeoisie in order to guarantee free association at some point in the distant future. Until then, society must be managed in the form of the centralized hierarchical order, i.e. the state. Libertarian Marxists (e.g. Anton Pannekoek , Otto Rühle , Herman Gorter and Rosa Luxemburg ) only asserted in general that the state cannot be directed in the direction of free association because it always acts within the framework of capitalist society itself, which is towards it a state capitalism would lead (ie capitalism where private property will come into full state ownership and managed by the ruling class of party officials, which leads this state again), state capitalism is trying to stay indefinitely at the once-won power, and so this will never lead to a free association (see Soviet Union , People's Republic of China , Cuba , North Korea ). Most libertarian Marxists claim that free association can only be achieved through the direct action of the workers themselves, who are then supposed to establish them through workers' councils (run under grassroots democracy ) to appropriate the means of production and the abolition of the state in a social one To make a revolution.

However, supporters of Luxembourg are not fundamentally against short-term participation within the state and the expansion of public property as long as the institution itself exists. This distinguishes them from the anarchists, even if their other positions on the question of carrying out the revolution of all Marxists most closely agree with the anarchists.

socialism

Socialists regard a free agreement as the defining characteristic of developed state socialism . A free agreement would displace the state apparatus ( sovereign state ); under socialism, the role of this agreement would be to direct the processes of production and administration of affairs. This would contradict the state of affairs in non-socialist and capitalist societies, which actually exercise government over the people by means of coercive measures; the free association represents a coordination point for economic activity that satisfies the demand with administrative decision-making processes and the flow of goods and services involved would regulate. Socialists consider this a defining element of mature socialism; but many socialists are of the opinion that such an arrangement can only be a transition phase from economic and social development and that it should follow, like market socialism .

Critical views

The anarchist and communist concept of free association is often referred to as utopia or too abstract to be able to bring about a transformation of society. However, the anarchist concept of mutual aid is being driven by current trends such as B. valued the "free software movement" as a basic principle in the relationship between software developers of free software .

Others respond to this criticism with the assertion that free association is not a utopia, but an emancipatory requirement that necessarily results from the very material state in which the proletariat finds itself (e.g. the deprivation of property ) and a constant social - Fight against the submission and deprivation it causes. And that is exactly what they set against the state, the ruling class, and capital and thus make them their natural opponents. However, the trends that advocate a transition (especially social democracy and Marxism-Leninism) are actually counter-revolutionary , as they want to postpone it to a more or less distant future. So they pushed the free association increasingly into the background, in exchange for the task of wanting to postulate a transition phase .

And how could the proletariat have no interest in its own emancipation if it was postponed to an indefinite future? The search for a “transition” was necessarily a task that was not carried out by the proletariat itself, but only by an intelligentsia or political professionals can and may be carried out. These ideas culminated in Stalinism , and thus found their climax (for example in the so-called socialist countries like Cuba, USSR, China) and the current social democratic parties, in which the concept of free association was practically abandoned. Therefore, the current trends from anarchism and council communism must be derived and understood, on the free association as a practical basis for the fundamental transformation of society at all levels, from the everyday level, the search for a libertarian interpersonal relationship, criticism of the patriarchal family model , criticism of consumption , Criticism of conformist and submissive behavior, criticism of the subject mentality, d. H. Criticism of citizenship on the level of world society as a whole (the struggle against the state and against the ruling class in all countries, the destruction of national borders, support for self-organized struggle of the oppressed, attacks on property, support for wild and undeclared strikes and Supporting autonomous struggles of workers and unemployed around the world).

literature

Since anarchists, as well as some libertarian Marxists (especially the Situationists ) and other libertarian socialists , view free association as an immediate task for the establishment and maintenance of stateless socialism, most theorists of these ideologies have gone into great detail about how it will work differently than most Leninists and democratic socialists, who tend to be more concerned with the “transition of the seizure of power in the state” than with the ultimate goal of “the dissolution of the state”.

classic

Quotes

“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all previous production and traffic relations and for the first time consciously treats all natural prerequisites as creatures of previous human beings, stripping them of their natural growth and subjecting them to the power of the united individuals. Its establishment is therefore essentially economical, the material production of the conditions of this union; it turns the existing conditions into conditions of association. What exists, what communism creates, is the real basis for making everything that exists independently of individuals impossible, provided that what exists is nothing but a product of the previous interactions between individuals themselves. [...] It emerges from all previous developments that the common relationship into which the individuals of a class entered and which was conditioned by their common interests towards a third party was always a community to which these individuals belonged only as average individuals only insofar as they lived in the conditions of existence of their class, a relationship in which they participated not as individuals but as class members. In the case of the community of revolutionary proletarians, on the other hand, who take control of their and all members of society, the opposite is true; the individuals share in it as individuals. "

- Karl Marx : The German Ideology

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Kropotkin: The wage system. 1920. Also available: [1] Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism, New York: Vanguard Press 1929 [2]
  2. ↑ Manifesto of the Communist Party , section "Proletarians and Communists"
  3. ^ Karl Marx: The Civil War in France , first published June 13, 1871
  4. ↑ [3]
  5. ↑ [4]
  6. ^ "Reform or Revolution, Part II", "Chapter VII: Co-operatives, Unions, Democracy", Rosa Luxemburg (1900) [5]
  7. ^ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. On Marxists.org: The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not 'abolished'. It this out.
  8. ^ The free association represents a coordinating entity for economic activity that is concerned with administrative decision-making and the flow of goods and services to satisfy demand.
  9. ^ Misconceptions of Anarchism . flag.blackened.net. Archived from the original on February 6, 1998. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 30, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / flag.blackened.net
  10. ↑ Anarchist Utopia . Brave New World. Retrieved August 30, 2013.
  11. ^ Anarchist response to being called utopian? . Anarchy 101.Retrieved August 30, 2013.
  12. ↑ Marx, MEW 3, 70-74