Communalism and Syndicalism: Organizing the New Working Class

03/03/18

There are important similarities and differences between communalism and syndicalism. Syndicalism proposes the means of radical trade unionism towards the development of at least some kind of socialism (as in common ownership of the means of production). Communalism proposes the means and ends of federated community assemblies with embedded workers’ councils that directly democratically manage the political economy. Both theories and practices advocate for the means and ends of participatory democracy through organization and struggle. They both have different focuses for the prefiguration of that democracy–syndicalism focusing on a general union of workers and the workforce and communalism focusing on the community– and different ideal formal structures of social relations–syndicalism being rooted in radical unionism and often a vision of workers’ councils of some kind and communalism being rooted in communal assemblies as a means and ends.

In many ways syndicalism is to the workplace– production and distribution of goods and services– what communalism is to the community sphere. Syndicalism is an apolitical economic program in the sense that it often seeks to organize and reorganize society along economic lines via workers’ self management rather than on political lines through direct politics. Syndicalism organizes workers–and the reserve army of labor– towards economic action towards a new economic system. Communalism, unlike syndicalism, focuses on building a non statist political sphere– political meaning community and city management. Communalism organizes non-ruling class people throughout a larger community towards any kind of action in harmony with with minimal communalist principles and practices. Communalist principles and practices are rooted in direct democracy, non hierarchy, mutuality, co-federalism, ecology, communal self management, and communistic distribution etc. Communalist assemblies and radical trade unionism can both partake in 1. building directly democratic non hierarchical institutions 2. Mutual aid networks and meeting people’s needs 3. Periodic and sustained direct action and 4. Public education.

Unions can put their resources towards communalist assemblies as pointed out in Koloktronis’s brilliant essay on municipalist-syndicalism. Kolokotronis points out that unions have money, can help with finding meeting spaces, can help set up effective communication systems, can help with canvassing, and more. Kolokotronis calls on the importance of internal struggles within unions to become internally democratic as well as the importance of unions shifting towards a long term goal of community democracy. All of the above recommendations for a union/communalist synthesis are sound–even though there are many inhibiting factors. However, there are important ways that communalist organizing can benefit workplace organizing and unionism. Community assemblies can form and catalyze community solidarity networks. These solidarity networks can put pressure on any particular business from the outside. A combination between the internal pressure of workers flexing their labor power and community pressure external to workforces flexing people power–if done well in a coordinated way– can increase the overall effectiveness of any action against any capitalist power while strengthening regional anti capitalist action. Solidarity networks do not have the withheld labor power of strikes, but they decrease liability for many people to get involved in actions and can help add community power behind particular working class action–from strike support, to boycotts, to education campaigns, to capacity for various actions etc. Furthermore, this community assembly/solidarity network/union alliance gives community assemblies a class struggle character further cementing a class abolitionist ethos to community assemblies. Block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, workplace by workplace, solidarity networks attached to community assemblies in tandem with unions can help build a network that fuels working class action and furthers communalist and syndicalist organizing as more and more people join the solidarity networks, connected communal assemblies, unions, alternative institutions, mutual aid projects, popular education events, and direct actions.

Capitalism organizes spatially and temporally and not just at the workplace. Community assemblies, and federations of community assemblies, can organize spatially and temporally to counter all ruling class action and to build horizontalist institutions. Solidarity networks and direct action collectives, as part of or connected to community assemblies, can give large scale community support for any particular direct action that happens throughout a city (or even region)– whether it is at the point of extraction, production, distribution, etc. Solidarity networks connected to community assemblies can help with everything from fights against landlord abuse, to fights against wage theft, to shutting down banks, to ecological direct actions, to adding support behind a union action, to opposing business as usual etc. They are an organization that can create a variety of content. Community assemblies and solidarity networks can also serve as a bridge between abstract ideals and abstract root problems and concrete ways to oppose hierarchy within a locality– a connection that goes back forth between generality and particularity and particularity and generality. Solidarity networks also bridge oppositional and reconstructive politics given that they usually use direct action towards mutual aid. Solidarity Networks can also potentially create tenants’ assemblies, block assemblies, and neighborhood assemblies through the process of organizing direct action campaigns. 

 

Syndicalism and communalism are at odds with each other in some regards: mainly (but not only) due to disagreements about strategy and where primary organizing effort should be placed. Communalists want to develop communalist means towards communalist ends and see that as a keystone strategy to be developed. Whereas communalism does not essentially focus on organizing at the workplace–a great place to critique and expand upon communalist praxis– syndicalism sees workplace organizing and actions as the main way towards socialism. Despite communalism’s specificities in terms of being a horizontalist community assembly movement, communalism can organize oppositional and reconstructive politics at the points of reproduction of daily life, extraction, production, distribution, and community life. Gains for the working class and humanity more broadly have not just made through unions workplace actions and strikes but also thorough community assemblies, direct action collectives mutual aid collectives, affinity groups, specific issue social movement groups, etc. through things like occupations, expropriations, riots, sabotage, community self defense, marches, rallies, popular education, etc.   

There are also common enough disagreements between syndicalists and communalists about what a conception of socialism should look like. Many syndicalists advocate for a mere workers’ self management model or a more complex council model which would place productive property in collective hands, but in a way that is still relatively private compared to a communal economy. Under communal property relations, the means of production needed for communes to reproduce themselves are directly in the hands of communes with workers’ councils embedded within the communal councils. The minimal practices and froms of communalism filter particular decisions affecting the commune through communal assemblies which are then implemented by participatory workers’ councils. Furthermore, communalism looks at needs and desires as the basis for production. Many syndicalists see syndicalism as a means towards needs based distribution (but not all). Some syndicalists even see syndicalism as what makes sense as the primary strategy towards a communalist society.

Under a communalist mode of production, community members collaborate in assemblies that discusses qualitative city management in particularities and as a whole–which includes but is not exhausted by quantitative economic matters. Embedded workers’ councils then self manage decisions within the policies and limits set by communal councils. The communalist mode of production is a political economy that integrates reproduction of daily life, production, consumption, distribution, economics, and politics into the horizontal commune. Mere council models of socialism advocate for the means of production to be divided among different groups within communities in such a way where the locus of policy for the economy is within particular workplaces rather than community assemblies.

 

The lower common denominators of communalism and syndicalism create a broad libertarian socialist alliance that has enough substance to meaningfully work in tandem on joint projects and actions. However, despite such agreements, there are also important incompatibilities between the two given that communalism is in favor of the communalization of economics and the prefiguration thereof via communal assemblies whereas syndicalism aims to develop some kind of socialism via radical unionism and workplace organizing.

 

Underlying libertarian socialism is an ethics of self management and freedom on every scale. Self management on every level requires communal self management. Communal self management requires communal ownership of means of production needed for communes to reproduce themselves. For communal assembly structures to be developed as ends, they also need to be developed as means. Therefore communalism is the logical extension of self-governance on every scale and mere socialism without communalism is a relative negation of such self-governance on every scale compared to communalism. The lack of communal self management under socialization of property without communalization of property is incompatible with communalism. However, syndicalist means can be put towards communalist ends, and communalist means can help syndicalist actions and joint projects to develop at least libertarian socialist conditions through libertarian socialist means. Such solidarity can happen without either losing their distinctions. However, communalism makes sense as a means AND an ends to be developed (and the major means towards communalist ends), whereas syndicalism makes sense as A means among many to be developed towards socialist and more specifically communalist ends.

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Endnotes:

1. Municipalist Syndicalism: Organizing the New Working Class by Alexander Kolokotronis (https://roarmag.org/essays/municipalist-syndicalism-alex-kolokotronis/)
2. Anarcho Syndicalism: Theory and Practice by Rudolf Rocker (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rudolf-rocker-anarchosyndicalism)
3. The Communalist Project by Murray Bookchin (http://social-ecology.org/wp/2002/09/harbinger-vol-3-no-1-the-communalist-project/)

Comparing and Contrasting Bookchin and Kropotkin

12/28/17

Kropotkin is often heralded as the most important classical anarchist theorist. Bookchin–influenced heavily by Kropotkin– is one of the most seminal theorists in post-classical anarchist period of anarchism. Kropotkin and Bookchin advocate for very similar yet distinct prescriptions of a good society. They have similarities of anti-statism, anti-capitalism, anti-hierarchical praxis more broadly, socialization and communalization of land, the means of production, distribution, and consumption, more specifically communist forms of distribution according to ability and need. They even both emphasize the necessity of communal forms as well as an emphasis on technology and achieving a post scarcity society by organizing finitude in a way to make it so there is more than enough for everyone economically. Despite Bookchin’s departure from anarchism towards the end of his life, communalism draws ”from anarchism” a “commitment to antistatism and confederalism, as well as its recognition that hierarchy is a basic problem that can be overcome only by a libertarian socialist society,” (Bookchin 2007). Many of the most important substantial analyses of problems and solutions are consistent between classical anarcho communism of Kropotkin and the non-anarchist yet libertarian communist communalism of Bookchin–so many that there are more similarities between them than there are between Kropotkin and many neo-anarchists.

For Kropotkin, anarchists ought to create anarchist specific organizations, organize federations of affinity groups for direct actions, build revolutionary communes, and participate in radical trade unionism. Kropotkin prescribes worker internationals and refers to worker internationals as waging a “direct…battle of labor against capital- not through parliament but directly by the means that are generally available to all workers,” (Kropotkin 2014, 466). Direct action is action that is not mediated by hierarchy, but it is always mediated by various factors– often mediated by organization of some kind or another. Kropotkin prescribes fluid federated affinity group models (Kropotkin 2014, 475), and Kropotkin advocates for what is commonly referred to as a spokescouncil model between them, as well as decision making power at the lowest level. Kropotkin also calls for a general strike from below which is then transformed–if possible– into mass expropriation and armed struggle (Kropotkin 2014, 477). Kropotkin put communes as relatively central to his political prescriptions and says that “it will be the communes, utterly independent and released from the oversight of the state, which will, alone, be able to provide the requisite context for revolution and the wherewithal for its accomplishment, (Kropotkin 2014, 593). Kropotkin also prescribes syndicalism as a form of “direct struggle of Labor against Capital on the economic field.” (Kropotkin 2014, 403). Kropotkin also notes the limits of trade unionism while prescribing  that anarchists modify trade unions along anarchistic lines through getting involved within trade unions (Kropotkin 2014, 391).

Bookchin’s core strategy involves the creation of horizontalist democratic community assemblies as a means to create the ends of horizontalist democratic community assemblies. Such a strategy is a non hierarchical dual power that 1. Meets people’s needs 2. Decentralizes and communalizes power and 3. Builds the new world in the shell of the old uniting people on horizontalist democratic terms of practice in the community sphere 4. Builds committees and other collectives and organizes mutualistically with them 5. Participates in sustained direct action 6. Participates in sustained mutual aid. 7. Participates in political education 8. Participates in building quantity of people to add to various projects 9. builds capacity quantity wise for people to participate in various qualities of actions and alternative institutions and infrastructure builds that are not otherwise possible with less people and less organization. 10. Organizes non ruling class people broadly. Just because Bookchin emphasized communal assembly forms, does not mean that Bookchin reduced the means and ends of society to such forms.

One critique leveled against Bookchin is that Bookchin is exclusively for communal forms. Although Bookchin advocates for, and fleshes out, communal forms more so than most anarchists, Bookchin does not reduce a process of revolution to such communal forms. Even towards the end of his life–as Bookchin started to more fully emphasize the importance of horizontal communal democracy– Bookchin advocated for increased activity and organization in trade union movements. Bookchin even advocated that workers should make trade union internationals to deal with excesses of capitalism and as a way to keep left tendencies around. Bookchin was instrumental in recovering the affinity group model and spreading it to radicals and environmental direct action groups in the USA and abroad. Despite Bookchin’s (at times overly harsh) critique of syndicalism, Bookchin was a member of the IWW. Bookchin was also a fan of study groups. The PKK–which has been influenced by social ecology and Bookchin’s ideas more recently even though it used to be a more Leninist organization– started as a study group and became a revolutionary organization that helped fuel the revolution in Rojava. Bookchin also advocated for creating what Bea Bookchin has called “building blocks” of a revolution which include but are by no means limited to cooperatives and other kinds of people-powered infrastructure. Bookchin also advocated a kind of anti electoral electoralism through 1. Running candidates on a libertarian socialist platform 2. In favor of abolishing their own position 3. That act as a delegate of popular assemblies bounded by a libertarian socialist platform (that includes a minimum program of non reformist reforms and steps in a good direction) 4. Giving popular assemblies binding power 6. Hollowing out the state of its military and police power and 7. Using the political season for popular education (Bookchin 1992). Bookchin also participated in and was in favor of issue specific social movements such as the anti-nuclear movement work he did with the Clamshell Alliance and others as well as the anti-Racist work he did with CORE. Between affinity groups, unionism, study groups, community controlled cooperatives (Bookchin 1992), popular education via study groups, dialogue, and writing, issue specific social movements and anti electoral electoralism, it is clear that Bookchin does not reduce tactics of a revolution to communal assemblies. At least a part of Bookchin’s critique of the above forms and strategies is the insufficiency of such strategies–not the lack of necessity/desirability of the above. However, Bookchin claims that there are specific ethical and strategic features of communal assemblies and is in favor of communal assemblies as keystone revolutionary forms in relation to a broader ecosystem of bottom institutions and liberatory social movements. Furthermore, Bookchin is in favor of co-federated horizontalist communal assemblies as the kind of governance structure that should exist post revolution.

Bookchin and Kropotkin distinguish government and statecraft in different ways. For Bookchin a state is a form of hierarchical political governance rooted in institutionalized top down command. As Bookchin points out, “every state, although necessarily a form of government, is a force for class repression and control,” (Bookchin 2007). Government for Bookchin–as he defined later on in his life– is some form of governing which is not necessarily hierarchical nor non hierarchical. As Bookchin states, “Every institutionalized association that constitutes a system for handling public affairs—with or without the presence of a state—is necessarily a government,”(Bookchin 2007). Such governing could take the form of non-hierarchical communal assemblies, or workers’ councils, or take the form of a republic, or a monarchy, etc. For Kropotkin, government is the decision making body of a state, and the state is the enforcer of such decisions. Kropotkin at times refers to his ideal form of society as self-government, and at other times as the abolition of government. Those two different notions of government are not incompatible if by government Kropotkin means hierarchical government and if by self-government Kropotkin means non-hierarchical government. Kropotkin wants a revolution that is “not just communalist, but communist,” with the goal of “abolishing government by proxy”. Such prescriptions are consistent with the core ethos and praxis of Bookchin’s communalism.

For Bookchin, the communalization of the economy means that the means of production and land needed for communes at various scales to reproduce themselves are placed under the hands of horizontal democratic community control, with embedded worker’s councils. As Bookchin says the economy should be placed under “management by the community as part of a politics of public self management,” (Bookchin 2005). The participatory communal assemblies (at different scales linked co-federally) through needs, desires, and deliberation (bounded by non-hierarchical bounds) create policy that embedded participatory committees implement through self management within the bounds of the policy created from below by the communal assemblies. This is done through communalizing property that could be used to “militate against a publicly controlled economy,” (Bookchin 2005); that is property that if owned non communally would privatize policy over and above the commune privatizing the means of existence, production, and politics instead of  placing “the material means of life into communal forms of distribution,” (Bookchin 2005). Within such bounds–and due to such bounds– of communal self management, all would have the rights to access to the means of existence, the means of artistic expression, the means of science, the means of philosophy, the means of luxury, and a common sphere where the fruits of production are accessed freely by people according to their needs and desires.

For Kropotkin, “communalization of social capital must be accomplished everywhere where this becomes possible and as soon as the possibility emerges,” (Kropotkin 2014, 500) and further states that such communalization should happen whether or not people agree with it, that is “without inquiring whether the whole or the greater part of Europe or a particular country is ready to accept the ideas of collectivism” (Kropotkin 2014, 500). Such a worldview is de facto stating that communalisation ought to be a rule in regards to the minimal standards of relating to one another whether people want it or not. For Kropotkin, Free agreement of collectives and individuals should exist within the boundaries of communalization. whether or not people are ready to accept such standards. This does not mean Kropotkin is not for gaining popular support and as much popular support as possible. In fact he prescribes getting as close to that as possible, as soon as possible, as part of the process of creating ripe conditions to enable communalization of property.

Kropotkin states earlier on in the same essay that there would be “expropriation pure and simple of the present holders of the large landed estates, of the instruments of labor, and of capital by the cultivators, the worker’s organizations, and the agricultural and municipal communes.” (Kropotkin 2014, 500). For Kropotkin, the relations of cultivators, worker’s organizations, agricultural and municipal communes are to exist altogether in relation, and the way they relate should be figured out through free agreement and disagreement of collectives and individuals, in such a way that collectives retain self management–therefore necessitating communal self government. One can agree with that prior sentence while still preferring Bookchin’s more specific communalization as a more fleshed out form of freedom ensuring that communes are not privatized. A further argument could be made that communalization, as Bookchin fleshed out, is needed or desirable for communes to retain self management– and for arriving at other developmental ethical criteria.

Kropotkin says that “we can take the liberty of pleasing ourselves and of helping others to please themselves in accordance with our ideas of what is proper,” (Kropotkin 2014. 613). What is evident from all his work is that there should be certain practices through which free initiative ought to flow through– such practices being rooted in libertarian communist principles. Kropotkin also states that “that in all moral teachings and conceptions the obligatory element is based on the recognition of equity by feeling and by reason” (Kropotkin 1968, 175).  Kropotkin is in favor of a moral universalism of a particular kind, and that particular passage is in regards to parsing out of obligatory vs permissible vs. desirable dimensions of moral systems (which includes obligatory vs. supererogatory dimensions of the good). Kropotkin thinks a good moral system should have both obligatory and non-obligatory aspects. Kropotkin’s conception of anarchist principles is that they ought to be minimal standards through which we relate to one another politically, economically, and socially. Kropotkin is in favor of anarchist communist moral imperatives rather than no imperatives.

It is important to note issues of definitional vs substantial disagreements Kropotkin had with laws with and without adjectives. Laws are often associated with the rule of the state. Kropotkin does have substantial differences with Bookchin about law, but Kropotkin is in favor of non hierarchical obligations as opposed to no rules. Kropotkin does critique law without adjectives saying that at best governments and laws “give legal sanctions to revolutionary deeds which have already been carried out,” (Kropotkin 2014, 500). Kropotkin correctly points out that such law “would remain a dead letter if it were not freely put into effect in each commune, in each district, by those who are actually involved” (Kropotkin 2014, 500). Kropotkin claims the written law at best is just stating what already exists de facto, and at worst it is the formalization of statecraft. But the goal of law could be to use the written word to formalize principles into that which ought to be de jure; that which ought to be minimal standards of treatment of people that are meant to sustain beyond periodic informal associations (such as non-hierarchical sets of positive and negative freedoms!). If such anarchist communist principles, which Kropotkin thinks should be minimum standards that particular free initiatives are filtered through, get formalized, then such principles can be explicit rather than just a matter of custom.

In contrast to Kropotkin’s view on law, Bookchin prescribes in The Communalist Project, that revolutionaries “should, in effect, demonstrate a serious commitment to their organization—an organization whose structure is laid out explicitly in a formal constitution and appropriate bylaws. Without a democratically formulated and approved institutional framework whose members and leaders can be held accountable, clearly articulated standards of responsibility cease to exist. Indeed, it is precisely when a membership is no longer responsible to its constitutional and regulatory provisions that authoritarianism develops and eventually leads to the movement’s immolation. Freedom from authoritarianism can best be assured only by the clear, concise, and detailed allocation of power, not by pretensions that power and leadership are forms of “rule” or by libertarian metaphors that conceal their reality. It has been precisely when an organization fails to articulate these regulatory details that the conditions emerge for its degeneration and decay,” (Bookchin 2007). For Bookchin, the formalization of libertarian socialist principles into laws acts as a way of minimizing arbitrary power–a way of institutionalizing libertarian socialist ethics into minimal practices (while holding such laws accountable to ethics and reason). For Bookchin, the ability to rationally cultivate and formalize explicit non hierarchical freedoms, duties, and laws in society is a way of stopping people from arbitrarily creating unwarranted double standards and authoritarianism.

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Endnotes

Bookchin, Murray. Urbanization without Cities: The Rise and Decline of Citizenship. Montréal U.a.: Black Rose Books, 1992.

Bookchin, Murray. “Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy.” Libcom.org. July 2005. https://libcom.org/library/municipalization-murray-bookchin.

Bookchin, Murray. Social Ecology and Communalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007.

Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich. Ethics ; Origin and Development. Authorized Translation from the Russian by Louis S. Friedland and Joseph R. Piroshnikoff. New York: B. Blom, 1968.

Kropotkin, Pëtr Alekseevič, and Iain McKay. Direct Struggle against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014.