The Society of the Future: Anarchic Communism

The global economic crisis, a symptom of the death of capitalist society

The same thing happens to social forms as to human beings: they are born with difficulty, struggling with numerous obstacles and threats; they grow and develop until they reach a certain limit, and, from this limit, they begin to decline, grow old and die.

This limit of development is determined in all living beings by the use of the food that is assimilated, as if to say by the decrease in consumption and old age begins as soon as there begins to be an inability to use or destroy the food ingested.

This is precisely what is happening to capitalist society. It had its greatest peak and splendor in industrialism, in the dominance of the machine and in the contribution of technology. It was able to produce all articles in enormous quantities, at incredible prices, and increasingly ignoring the work of the worker. This growth had a limit, which we are now reaching: that articles were produced in greater quantities than the market could swallow, and that there was a surplus of labor, to such an extent that the unemployed formed veritable armies of the hungry in all the nations of industrial progress.

There is a surplus of goods: 8 million sacks of wheat must be burned in North America to support market prices. Coffee is burned in Brazil, in the hearth of the locomotives. Factories are closed, mining operations are paralyzed. And the number of workers forced into unemployment in the world is estimated at 30 million. Capitalism, without having succeeded in putting into practice all the mechanical progress that technology allows today, without having squeezed all the juice out of the rationalization of work, and without Science having given itself the improvement that it promises to give, capitalism, I repeat, is suffocating; It declares itself incapable of continuing to increase and reduce production costs, and of continuing to allow life for all of humanity. If it is to continue to live, it must be as a decaying organism, renouncing progress and condemning an army of millions of creatures to hunger.

Its obvious contradictions condemn it to death: the more the sexes, the more hunger there is. It prohibits contraception in all nations for fear of a population decline, and it closes borders, has more and more unemployed, and dreams of a world slaughter that will free them from excess population. And it renounces political progress, the democratization of governments, and the liberalization of states, after having prostituted democracy and freedom, throwing itself into the arms of the Dictatorship by increasing the tyranny of the State and condemning the people to a degrading slavery with fascism.

The class consciousness of the proletariat, a symptom of the life of the society that is born

Whenever a being or a living form begins to disintegrate in order to die or disappear, there is germination and birth of the new form or the new being that is to replace it, because, in nature, nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed and used, matter, like energy.

Philosophy was the first to say to the worker: "You are a man deprived of all rights, because at birth you found all the heritage of Nature distributed; you are a slave of the organization of the State that watches with its Institutions so that you do not rebel; you are an exploited being, squeezed like a lemon in the hands of capitalism, to which it is thrown when it does not give juice." But it is life, the dire circumstances that he lives today, and the historical experience that he goes through, which tell him in a voice more convincing than that of philosophy, that he is a bound and exploited being who has nothing to lose, and that he has everything to conquer. The State monopolizes in its hands all the power taken from individuals and is sustained by the force of salaried servants, renegade brothers of their class. It keeps them in ignorance, with the opium of religion, or with that of secular education. It excites their stupefying patriotism, to launch them into warlike massacres. Everything is cemented on their class meekness, on their secular candor, on their great gullibility as a fool predestined for all deceptions. It is thus, in this state of degrading servility, that Capitalism takes them to enrich itself with their sweat, and to exploit them in a refined way.

The emancipatory movement of the proletariat, directed by philosophy, by the ideological conceptions of a new society, was born in the most hostile circumstances and has had to resist the most furious attacks, and overcome the most seductive deviations and deceptions. Politicians, with their opposition programmes, full of the most dazzling promises, have sterilised many efforts and wasted time in chattering tournaments and careerist races, which inevitably end with the charlatan being elevated to the shoulders of the gullible voter. By dint of disappointments and of following all the wrong paths, he is gradually managing to orient himself and find the right direction.

The fight is on

A capitalist society, which clings to dictatorial forms of State, and which sees itself sinking more and more into economic crisis, into the inability to level the economy. And a proletariat that is increasingly awakened and increasingly insurgent, that tries to demolish the old building, to establish on its ruins a regime of greater justice and social equity, more rational, and more humane. A decisive struggle, between that which refuses to die and defends itself with all the cruelty of its organized violence, and that which struggles to come to life by freeing itself from the rubble in which it is intended to drown. In Nature, the new has always triumphed over the old; the nascent and indeterminate over the decrepit and finished. One does not have to be a prophet to predict the future.

The right to enjoy social wealth for a few, at the cost of hunger and deprivation for the majority, can only be based on force. The economic chaos of Capitalism, which worships gold, sacrificing the life and health of man, can only persist if it is built on the Caesarian state institution. The modern slavery that weighs on the proletariat can only be affirmed in the rigidity of the State organization.

Putting ourselves in front of all the redeemers, dissenting from the concert of flattering voices, Anarchism presents the State as the fundamental cause of the exploitation of the worker, and as the fundamental cause of human unhappiness.

The State

It is about something more than the Government of a nation. It does not matter what name it is called. Whether it is a monarchy or a republic, whether it is a dictatorship or a democracy, the State is a complex Institution rooted in the life of a nation, which has its grip on all human activities, in order to make people believe that nothing can be done without its mediation. It has a Constitution in which all citizen rights are conditioned and at the whim of whoever is in charge. Codes that have a penalty for each kind of individual overstepping of the boundaries, which punish everything that may undermine the powers of power. A judiciary charged with administering this farce of Justice. Prisons to lock up those who dare to act on their own account, or rebel against the statutes. A police force, armed forces, gunmen and paid riflemen who, like executioners, kill and mistreat when ordered to do so. And finally, an army that works for peace by preparing for war, and that is a school of brutalization for all useful citizens.

The citizen must avoid doing everything that the State prohibits, and comply with everything that the State commands. This is what order consists of. There is no activity that is not catalogued and squared. All of its rights are written with this tagline "except in the case that the authority considers it...", which is equivalent not to affirming and guaranteeing a right, but to denying it.

The individual is a slave to this framework. Within it he remains without initiative, without freedom, without voice and without reason. The State protects him when he wants to resign himself to starving, and when he wants to legally exploit people in need.

To bait him into the game and accommodate him to its tyranny, it offers him from time to time the Illusion of choosing the rulers, the arbiters of this Institution. Every citizen can become rich, if he wins the lottery. Everyone can be powerful, if they manage to be elected to power. This is what democracy is all about. For many years, the discontented and disinherited have placed their hope in improving their condition by changing government. There are even those who place their hope in the conquest of the State, in which the State Communists are no different from the fascists. A subject of Mussolini lives as chained as a subject of Stalin. The doctrine is the same: Mussolini offers the maximum rigidity of the State to chain the proletariat by killing its rebellions. Lenin uses the same dictatorship against Capitalism, but the proletariat is also chained. What triumphs in both cases is the State. What is stifled, in both cases as well, is individual freedom.

The solution for the proletariat, slave of the State and exploited by Capital, lies in the anarchist direction: in the abolition of the State. Only in this direction can it emancipate itself and free itself.

Because the evil of the State does not depend on the individuals who rule it, nor the evil of money on the men who possess it. In power, all men are equally hateful and despotic. In the possession of wealth, all are voracious and insatiable, all forget the sufferings of the hungry. Like alcohol, they are a poison for man, to whom they do not give any virtue, nor confer any excellence, but, on the contrary, they suck out his brain, making him lose his simplicity and his dignity as a human being.

What unites men is what they have in common

The community of housing, food and affection is the origin of family unity. The community of residence and interests unites the neighbours of a town and those who profess the same trade. The community of country unites the inhabitants of the same territory, those who speak the same language or have the same connection to the climate.

On the contrary, what separates men is private property, yours and mine. Between brothers, the possession of an object or the division of the patrimony. Between neighbours, rival properties. Between nationals, different customs or different climates. And the greater the disunity, and the more intense the hatred, the more pronounced the imbalance, and the more unjust the distribution of a thing. The private property of natural goods or those created by man is, therefore, a deep cause of animosity, and of war to the death, when it reaches the proportions of irritating inequality that we lament today. The same thing happens with the distribution of Power, which is accumulated in excess in some, to the detriment of those who are left defenseless. And the same thing also happens with the distribution of knowledge, which is concentrated in some, in those who have an academic degree, to the detriment and at the expense of those who could not receive anything.

Social peace, the peaceful and spontaneous coexistence to which man aspires, can only be achieved by making the enjoyment of wealth, Power and Knowledge as common as possible. For this enjoyment to be common, it is necessary that no one possesses it to the detriment or diminution of another, but that everyone has access to the part that they need or like to take advantage of.

This is what Communism is all about, the one we call libertarian or anarchist, to differentiate it from socialist or state Communism, which in Russia has not put Capital, Power or Knowledge in common, three things of which the Bolshevik State has made a monopoly, leaving the worker with the obligation to work, pay and feed the parasites.

Human brotherhood can only be based on the community of interests and the common possession of natural goods, and the common bearing of the burden of work.

The aspirations of man

Man carries within himself an insatiable desire for well-being, freedom and Knowledge. It is the impulse that leads to incessant progress and moves him to the most strenuous actions.

Welfare, which lies in the possibility of satisfying the needs of one's body, freeing oneself from the burden of work and the discomforts of life.

Freedom to dispose of oneself, within the margin that Nature leaves free, without encountering a barrier or a whim of one's fellow men.

Hunger for knowledge, to penetrate the mysteries of Nature and the conquests of Science. These three aspirations are denied to the proletariat, and in this order, they constitute the incentive for its emancipation. First, the right to live, to satisfy the most pressing needs. Then the right to dispose of one's life, of one's initiative, and to be able to order, without pressure from anyone, one's own affairs. Finally, to complete these conquests with Knowledge. For all individuals, the order of preference is not the same, but varies from one to another, according to their character or their way of being. From those who, in exchange for eating, sacrifice their freedom, being at ease in the barracks or in prison or in the service of the State, to those who prefer freedom above all, renouncing comfort and well-being.

It is by cultivating all three, as well as the feeling of one's own dignity, which is nothing other than self-overestimation, that the individual's rebellion is accentuated and he is encouraged to rise up against the State and against the capitalist society that relies on it.

Summarizing

To increase the maximum, as much as there should be in common among men, is what constitutes COMMUNISM. It is to belittle it, not to say to prostitute it, to want to reduce it to a manger, as Bolshevism has done. The conquest of the State is a false path, because it represents its negation, and because ultimately it is the State that conquers, that perverts well-intentioned men with the seduction of command, something that intoxicates like alcohol. Power must be common, so that each one can protect his own freedom in it. COMMUNISM, to be able to call itself such, must be called ANARCHIST. This was also understood by those who, when introducing it in Russia, claimed that they were going towards Anarchy, and excused the Dictatorship as provisional, something that all tyrants were always careful to say.

Outline of a communist-libertarian society

This is based on the individual jealously guarding his independence. He has all rights, because no Constitution, nor any code guarantees them. He will associate with others, because man is by nature a sociable being and because he will find advantages in collective life. In isolation no individual can produce everything he needs, nor be self-sufficient. Robinson was forced to be. Man wants to free himself from work, which has always been imposed on the slave. The modern slave must be the machine. Communal work is less unpleasant, more bearable than isolated work; it is better accepted, because no one is freed from it; it produces more because aptitudes are completed and deficiencies are neutralized.

Man associates freely, because he does so by his own stimulus, with those he sees fit to do so: to produce what is necessary; to deliberate on matters that are common; to carry out educational or cultural activities; to develop enterprises of initiative of any kind.

The more things they have or enjoy in common, the greater the union between individuals. By having the same residence, the same lands and natural resources, and by sharing identical needs, men will associate with the intimacy that comes from daily coexistence, in each locality, constituting the municipality or the free Commune, which has its collective expression in the Assembly, in the general meeting, where all have the same voice and the same prerogatives, where opinions are expressed and views are weighed. This is a spontaneous and deep-rooted institution, common to all peoples, despite the disfigurement imposed on it by politics and by the interference of the State. Just as within the Commune, each individual retains his independence and autonomy to order as he pleases what is exclusively his responsibility, the locality federates with others, according to the same vital requirement, the same felt need, without the need for any coercion to impose it, and also preserves, because no external power compromises it, its autonomy and local independence. This is how the provinces or regional and county confederations are formed, imposed in the first place by economic imperatives: for the production of basic necessities and for their distribution.

The local association neutralizes human inequalities, compensating the lazy with the active, the strong with the weak, and the glutton with the sober, making possible the generalization of an average type of well-being within each locality. The federation of localities compensates with the abundant contribution of some localities, the scarcity or hardship of others, generalizing in the nation an average type of well-being, without the inequalities imposed by the terrain or the climate.

Another powerful associative impulse is the identity of work, the community of trade and professional concerns, which is what constitutes the Trade Unions today. Within cities with a large population, the local association will be formed by smaller groups of industry, branch or trade, which will be important in the collective organization of the economy.

In order for man to associate, to understand each other, and to work in a concerted manner for a general welfare, in which the individual must participate advantageously, the pressure of an authority is not necessary, nor the sanction of a Code. Just as an International Code is not necessary for all nations to cooperate in the rescue of Nobile's expedition, lost in the North Pole, nor is it necessary for a law to impose it for a being to throw himself into the water, risking his life, to save another being that he does not even know.

Human society is possible, because man is a sociable animal. The State is nothing more than a superimposed wart that can be amputated without any cataclysm occurring, and producing an unimaginable relief to the society that suffers from it. If man is accessible to persuasion, there is no reason to impose violence on him. Violence is only necessary when reason does not count, and when, as now, it is necessary for some to conform to work so that others may enjoy and some to renounce everything, so that others may lack nothing.

Laws - even those who enjoy them recognize this - do not create customs. It is the other way around, it is customs that, through tacit recognition, gain the force of laws. It happens with this, as with the health of man. Today, in front of an example of a farmer who lives healthy at eighty years old, without having needed a doctor, no one will claim that Medicine is the guarantee of health, but as soon as, with the passage of time, and judging by the path we are on, Health has become involved in all our actions, it will come to be said that men live healthy thanks to the solicitous care of doctors.

A society spontaneously formed, starting from the free individual, ready to defend his independence from any authoritarian threat, but also ready, and there is no contradiction in this, to postpone it in the face of collective convenience. There is no contradiction, just as there is none between the most deeply rooted instincts in man, between selfishness, which is the instinct of conservation of the individual, and altruism, which is the instinct of conservation of the species. It is precisely selfishness that makes us sociable, when it is protected by the collective, and altruism that now makes us rise up against capitalist society.

To go so far as to say what the new society will be like would be to boast of a novelistic imagination that I do not have, or to trace a course for the free organization of life, something that I cannot pretend as an anarchist, respectful of spontaneity and free initiative. As is said of children by educators who respect their personality, an anarchic society will be what it should be if we take care to prevent it from being ruined.

Spain, which seems to be the nation best prepared to begin to live libertarian Communism, is ready to lead by example.