"People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take." - Emma Goldman
Before explaining the finer details, it’s best to start off with a simple definition of anarcho-communism:
Anarchist Communism is a political ideology aiming for the creation of a communist society using decentralized, horizontal power structures to prefigurate and organize a revolution that will grant social ownership of the means of production to all and the redistribution of goods from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
There’s many parts to this definition, so let’s go through them one-by-one.
A communist society is best described by three core principles. Firstly, statelessness. Under the anarchist definition, the state is best defined as a hierarchical institution that holds a monopoly over law determination and the legitimate use of violence within a partial-group in a given territory. What this means is that the state has the ability to determine what is legal and illegal, and therefore, is able to determine what kind of violence (such as police killings) are legal too.
The second principle of communism is moneylessness. There is no currency under a communist society, as not only is it unneeded, but currency is simply an artificial value that doesn’t always correlate to the actual labor put into a given item. They also have the ability to be collected and stockpiled in order to gain status within society, which would disrupt the aim for total equality under communism. Instead of currency, anarchists offer solutions like the library economy, where common goods are shared rather than gatekept, and it is built up by the community rather than mass produced.
The third and final principle is classlessness. Your class is determined by your relationship to your means of production, or in other terms, the decision-making in your workplace. While the main two classes are the proletarians and the bourgeoisie (the workers who do not own their means versus the minority class who own the means of others), there are many sections between them to describe the different natures and conditions of each class. Under communism, there would be no distinction between people in this way. All people are given their share of decision-making within their workplaces.
With these three core features: stateless, moneyless, and classless, the end goal of a communist world is one of absolute equality, and where no person can hold institutional power over another.
Power is the ability for one to enact their own will. A common misconception about anarchism, that usually comes from rhetorical phrases, is that anarchism seeks to “abolish power”. In reality, power is not able to be “abolished”, since any interaction between two people will have some sort of power dynamic, whether it be as friends arguing or as a teacher to a student.
A power structure is the amalgamation of individual power into larger social structures. For example, under a perfect absolute monarchy, there would be a single person with power in the society, since that sole individual would be the only person with the ability to act on their will, whilst everyone else would be serving under the orders or power of the monarch. Anarchists believe in the opposite, instead advocating for decentralized power structures, which means that power is not withheld by a minority of people, but is instead spread out to where all people have equal power, or equal ability to enact their own will. This is also referred to as a horizontal power structure since if it were to be visualized as some kind of chart, it would be a completely flat plane, over a more triangular-shape that is seen under capitalism.
So, why do anarchists oppose the state? Well first, it is important to define what anarchists view the state as. For a lot of anarchists, a modified version of the definition created by Max Weber is used, which defines the state as: The minority-power power structure which holds a monopoly over the legitimate use of force or a monopoly over law determination. Legitimacy in this case is the legitimacy of the government as seen by the people. If a government is unable to be seen as legitimate or listened to, then it simply does not hold any of the control to be meaningfully called a state. A good example that shows the extent to which “state” can be referred to can be found in the terrorist group, ISIS. While the organization did undeniably have control in some areas, its borders and legitimacy was always up in the air, since it was in the middle of an armed conflict. Therefore, it cannot be a state. However, the territory of South Ossetia, despite being near universally unrecognized, does hold legitimacy in the eyes of the people of the land, therefore, it is a state.
Anyways, the state, as a “minority-power power structure”, works within the interests of a vastly small percentage of individuals. Sometimes this minority are the capitalists and outside bourgeoisie, who blast the state full of funds in order to keep their hegemony, and sometimes it is the state’s own leaders who play this role, which we see under state capitalism, like in the USSR. No matter which type of ruling class is in charge, the fact of the matter remains the same: As long as the people are complacent, then it will hand out nothing to the masses. Anarchists disagree wholeheartedly with this form of power structure, it is in every way unjust, unequal, and also against the natural instincts of humanity, which history has shown to be communal (See: Mutual Aid: A Factor Of Evolution).
Prefiguration could be described as one of, if not, the most important concept within anarchism. Prefiguration is the idea that we should build the organizations that anarchists would want in the future, now. It is building the new within the shell of the old, and it serves as the core idea for anarchist organization. Mutual aid groups are the best example of prefiguration. These groups are voluntary networks of the free sharing of goods, knowledge, or anything that can be given from one person to another. Most of the time, at least in the case of anarchist groups, they serve as food distribution and economic aid networks to help uplift everyone within the groups. After a revolution, these groups would not be disbanded, but rather expanded, so that goods can be distributed to all throughout the society. Anarchist unions and cooperatives are also prefigurative, since after a revolution, they would evolve to be the bedrock of worker management.
Anarchists are also advocates for revolution over reformism. The critique of reformism from anarchists does align closely with critiques against the state, however it does branch off into new territory with the question of “Why don’t anarchists use the state to achieve their goals?”. To put it simply, those who are in charge of the state exist in fundamentally different circumstances than the average person and, more importantly, hold much more power over the masses. Because of these differences, a person with governmental power will act not within the interests of the masses, but in the interest of themself, and contingently, the interests of the bourgeoisie. Sometimes these interests do happen to align, which can be seen in social democracies. However, this alignment only exists once the conditions of capitalism eventually turn sour, which is inevitable. Once the masses are content with the new conditions, they will slowly erode or become the new status quo, like how the New Deal-era programs in the United States were eroded over time, with the only exceptions being the most popular programs like Social Security. These conflicting interests make it impossible for a state to transition to anarchism, no matter how well the interests of the people in charge are. Any appearance of “progress” would instead be moderate reforms that fall short of actually producing some sort of communism or anarchism.
The means of production are the needed land, resources, machinery, and processes to produce goods. In an example of a factory, the means of production would be any tools, any machines, the raw materials, etcetera. Under anarchist communism, these resources would be available to all, rather than being owned by a few people like under capitalism. All workers would be able to participate in the decision making of their workplaces.
Some capitalists will claim that private ownership is necessary in order to keep production going, and that under socialized means, people would simply choose not to work. This argument severely underestimates and misunderstands humanity and why people act. One of the misunderstandings is survival, sure, and there is no reason to believe that an anarchist commune would simply stop producing food. The second is the natural curiosity and pursuit of goals that is inherent to humanity. When given the opportunity and given stable conditions of life, humans will always pick the path of curiosity, and this natural curiosity serves as the bedrock for anarchist production.
”From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” is a slogan coming from Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme. The premise of it is that a communist society will be producing an abundance of necessities because of the motivations of the society, which therefore can be distributed to all. This is something all communists drive to achieve, but anarchists specifically have many of their own ideas on how distribution would work. As I mentioned before when discussing prefiguration, mutual aid groups that are distributing food would be continued from their existence under capitalism and expanded with new access to resources. However, for non-necessities, many anarchists are supporters of library economies. In the same way that a library’s books are lended, the resources and goods of a community are owned by a community, and are lended out rather than truly owned by anyone. It is then the job of the entire community to maintain the condition of goods, creating community responsibility over individual responsibility.
While I didn’t go over literally every aspect of anarchism, I believe this summarization goes over the main gist of it, whilst also going over common misconceptions. It should also be noted that my use of “many anarchists” and “some anarchists” rather than saying just “anarchists” is intentional. There are many different kinds of anarchism, and this essay was really leaning into my interpretation and beliefs. If there’s any other questions, well, you probably got to this site through some one of my social medias. Which, in that case, DM me! I may add a Forms thing for questions here some time, but it’s not my main priority for now.
Selected Works
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