[continued from Libertarian Communism pt. 1]
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
1 Treats the people as a juvenile, incapable of organizing or governing itself without supervision.
2 All powers reside in the state: in the economy, in education, in administration of justice, in the interpretation of law, in the creation of wealth and in the organization of all functions.
3 The state is sovereign, all force (army, police, courts, jails) being centered in its grasp. The people are undefended, unarmed- which does not stop them being dubbed “sovereign” in the democracies.
4 People are grouped according to their political, religious or social beliefs, which is to say to a minimum degree insofar as these are the issues upon which people differ and vary most.
5 The state, which is a tiny minority, claims to have a greater acumen, ability and wisdom than the various social groupings. “One head knows better than all the rest put together.”
6 In laying down a fixed norm for all time (its constitution or code) the state deforms the future and mutilates life, which is many-sided and constantly changing.
UNION ORGANIZATION
1 Regards each professional collectivity as fit to to organize its own affairs. Regards supervision as unnecessary and the state as redundant.
2 Initiative passes to the professional organizations. Control of education to the teachers. Control of health services to workers in those services. Control of communications to technicians and workers meeting in assembly, while control of production belongs to the Federation of Unions.
3 Power returns to whence it came in that each group will give it to its members; and it no longer being accumulated, each individual will have their share and the assembly will have whatever everyone grants it.
4 People are brought together by common occupation and by common needs in the union, and, so far as the free municipality is concerned, by locality and shared interests. This way, things in common are maximized.
5 With its own profession, the assembly comprises the maximum acumen, ability and wisdom. Everyone together knows better then a single person, however learned.
6 Under union organization the guidelines to be followed will be reviewed continually in the light of circumstances.
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
7 The state abrogates everything to itself. The people have nothing to do, except to pay up, be obedient, produce and kow-tow to the supreme will of the person in control. The state says: “Give me power and I will make you happy.”
8 Society is divided into two antagonistic castes: those who issue orders, and those who obey.
9 Only fictional, paper rights are granted: freedom, sovereignty, autonomy etc. in order to feed the sacred flame of political illusion.
10 The progress and evolution of society leads the state through despotic and absolutist forms towards its collapse. Fascism is a belated solution, as is socialism. The state disguises and conceals its privileges only to end up losing them little by little as individual and class consciousness develops.
11 Where organization is politically based, hierarchy becomes accentuated towards the apex. Above the people one has-the town council: above that, the county council: higher still, the governor and even further up, the government.
UNION ORGANIZATION
7 In the absence of the intermediaries and redeemers each individual has to see to their own affairs and get used to managing without go-betweens, thereby ridding themselves of a habit acquired through a century after century of political education.
8 Every citizen refuses to be just a producer and nothing more. Administrative posts will be temporary, with no exemption from productive labor. Such posts would be constantly dependent upon the decisions reached by the Assemblies.
9 The basic freedom, which is economic freedom, is put into practice. Democracy, that is, government of the people by the people, will be a reality. Federalism will be real, with recognition given to the utmost autonomy and independence of municipality and every productive entity.
10 The evolution of professional collectivities leads them to ever greater perfection and growth. They have moved on from defending the selfish economic interests of the individual to training that will equip them to accept responsibility for their role in society.
11 Where organization has an economic basis, hierarchy works from the bottom upwards. The decisions of a committee may be over-ruled by a plenum; a plenum’s decisions by the assembly and and the assembly’s decisions may be over-ruled by the people.
Wealth and labour
There are two things to be shared out among the population of a nation: the wealth, or produce for the consumption of the entire populace, and the labour required to produce it. That would be a fair, equitable solution. And a rational one, too. But in capitalist society the wealth goes to one sector, a sector which does not labour, while the work is heaped upon another whose needs, in matters of consumption, are not met. That is, we have a situation precisely the reverse of what one finds in nature, which always supplies more sustenance and more blood to the member or organ which does the work.
The wealth is estimated to stand at an annual yield of some 25,000 million pesatas annually [1935 ] . Were it distributed properly it would mean that Spain’s entire population, some 24 million inhabitants, would be comfortably off, with a little over 1,000 pesatas each per annum. Thus, a family of five would have an annual income of 5,000 pesetas- a situation which would leave everyone in comparative comfort, economically speaking.
But since, under the capitalist system, capital is expected to yield interest at the rate of six per cent per annum, and authority has to be matched by income, so that some individuals have an income of some millions of pesetas a year, there have to be whole families whose income is less than half of the sum due to each individual as their share.
The issue of pesetas and how to share them out would not arise under a libertarian communist set-up. Only products would be dealt with and these would no longer be changeable into pesetas, could not be accumulated, and would be shared out among everyone in proportion to their needs.
The other thing needing to be shared out is the work. And here again one can see the same unfair and rebellion-making inequality today. In order for some to spend their lives lazing around, others have to sweat eight hours of the day, if not ten or fourteen.
Now since some seven million workers are engaged in producing the wealth and this means they have to work an average of eight hours a day, if the fourteen million able-bodied citizens were to work it would mean a mere four hours’ work each day by each person.
This is the clear and simple object lesson which can be deduced from a good and fair distribution. This is the utopia that the anarchist wishes to bring about.
The economic potential of our country
As one might expect, the introduction of libertarian communism in our country, alone of the nations of Europe, will bring with it the hostility of the capitalist nations. Using the defense of its subjects’ interests as its pretext, bourgeois imperialism will attempt to intervene by force of arms to crush our system at its birth. Armed intervention on the part of one single or several isolated powers would mean the unleashing of a world war. So as to avert the threat of social revolution in their own countries, the capitalist nations would prefer the underhand ploy of financing a mercenary army as they did in Russia, which would reply upon whatever redoubts of reaction may survive.
The memory of similar struggles and kindred situations in our people’s history gives us confidence in the battle for our independence, and the topographical conditions supplied by our land. If the people do make the most of the resources of our countryside, and thereby arrive at a more comfortable standard of living, then they will be in the staunchest defender of libertarian communism.
Another threat is the danger of blockade of our coast by the warships of the capitalist nations as a result of which we would be forced to rely on our own resources alone. Given the length of our coastline such a blockade would be easily evaded. But the possibility remains, so we have to pose this question in advance.
Do we produce enough ourselves to be in a position to manage completely without imports.
Let us see. Present figures will not be wholly applicable to the future situation, for they bear not so much on our import needs as on what is profitable to import, not always the same thing. Thus coal, for instance, could be mined from the abundant seams in our own subsoil, yet we import it from England because compared with our own, English coal is competitively priced. And this year Argentinian wheat was imported even though there was no need for this, since there was wheat aplenty in Andalusia.
Statistics show that we are self-sufficient where agricultural produce is concerned: we export large quantities of olive oil, oranges, rice, vegetables, potatoes, almonds, wines and fruits. We are self-sufficient in cereals, regardless of the fact that we import maize. And we have more than enough metal to meet our needs.
But we are dependent upon imports for petroleum and its by products (gasoline, heavy oils, lubricants, etc.), for rubber, cotton and wood-pulp. Given that it is crucial to transportation, the lack of petroleum might prove a serious handicap to the furtherance of our economy. Consequently, in the event of a blockade being imposed, it would be vital that we pour all our energies into sinking new wells in search of petroleum, which have yet to be located, though it is believed to be present. Petroleum may be obtained by distilling soft coal and lignite, both of which we have in adundance in this country. This industry already exists and would have to be intensified so as to meet our needs. We could eke out our gasoline supply by mixing it with 30% to 50% of alcohol, a mixture which gives excellent results in all motors. The alcohol supply would be inexhaustible, for it may be obtained from rice, wheat, potatoes, molasses, grapes, wood, etc.
As for rubber, it would have to be produced synthetically, as its being done in Germany already.
Cotton is already harvested in our country, especially in Andalusia, with huge success and, judging by: its steady rise in output it will soon be enough to meet our requirements as a nation. It might be planted instead of vines and olives, two products whose yields are surplus to our needs.
The timber industry could be expanded to meet our needs in that line, with a corresponding intensification of our reafforestation programme.
The eucalyptus and the timber pine are the best sources of wood-pulp.
But aside from production as it stands at present there are gounds for optimism when one remembers the potential Spain has for production. It is what one might consider a country yet to be colonized, a country which has not even brought forth a tenth part of its total resources.
We have incalculable supplies of electricity, in which we are second only to Switzerland. And the building of reservoirs and irrigation canals is virtually virgin territory. We do not even cultivate one half of our arable land, estimated at 50 million hectares. Our arable land needs to be improved: our cultivation must be intensified and farm machinery must be introduced throughout. A system whereby everyone works together would allow production to be increased once the farm machinery, that at present is available only to the hiers of the wealthy landowner, is made available to all the holdings in a municipality.
Matching production to consumption is something that has yet to be attempted. We have more than enough land. But apart from land we have more human energy than we need, which means production potential.
Far from being a problem for the libertarian communist system, the surplus of human energy will, instead, be the guarantee of its success. If there is a surplus of workers it follows logically that this means that less work is demanded of us and we have two courses open to us. Either we cut the working day or we increase production.
The surplus labor power means it may be possible for us to reduce the individual’s working day, meet the increase in work (construction of reservoirs and canals, reafforestation work, increased cultivation, an increase in metal production and exploitation of hydroelectric power and the step up production in a given industry.
Thanks to the organization of shift work it will be easier to make the best use of staff to increase production from a factory or to double its daily production figures without increasing the amount of machinery. The present employees already looked upon as skillful will be split into two shifts, one working after the other with each shift taking on so many apprentices.
In this manner even in the most inadequate industries production can be doubled without any need to give a thought to the establishment of new factories and without any need to improve or increase machinery.
Consequently, it can be shown that our country can be self-sufficient and thereby withstand the rigors of several years of blockade. Once we are beset by real necessity, then the solutions which we, no specialists, have been able to improvise in an impromptu way, will be improved upon, as adversity stimulates our creative urges and ingenuity.
One cannot leave everything to improvisation but neither can its help in critical circumstances be dismissed out of hand, for it is precisely at such times that we are at our most resourceful.
Implementation
Libertarian communism is based on organizations that already exist, thanks to which economic life in the cities and villages can be carried on in the light of the particular needs of each locality. Those organisms are the union and the free municipality. The union brings individuals together, grouping them according to the nature of their work or daily contact through the same. First, it groups the workers of a factory, workshop or firm together, this being the smallest cell enjoying autonomy with regard to whatever concerns it alone. Along with kindred cells, these make up a section within the industrial or departmental union. There is a general trades union to cope with those workers who have not sufficient numbers to constitute a union of their own. The local unions federate with one another, forming the local federation, composed of the committee elected by the unions, of the plenum of all the committees, and of the general assembly that, in the last analysis, holds supreme sovereignty.
The free municipality is the assembly of the workers in a very small locality, village or hamlet, enjoying sovereign powers with regard to all local issues. As an institution with ancient origins it can, despite dilution by political institutions, recover its ancient sovereignty and take charge of the organization of local life.
The national economy is the result of the coordination of the various localities that go to make up the nation. When each locality has its economy in good order and well administered, the whole has to be a harmonious arrangement and the nation perfectly at peace with itself. The thing is not that perfection should be superimposed from on high, but that it should flourish at grassroots level, so that it is a spontaneous growth and not a forced bloom. Just as agreement between individuals can be reached through contact between them, harmony between the localities will be achieved in similar fashion; through the circumstantial, periodic contacts in plenums and congresses and the lasting, ongoing contact set up by the industrial federations whose special brief this will be.
Let us take a separate look at organization in the countryside, in the cities, and the organization of the economy as a whole.
In the countryside
It is in the countryside that the implementation of libertarian communism present fewest complications, for it merely requires the activation of the free municipality.
The free municipality, or commune, is all the residents of a village of hamlet meeting in an assembly (council) with full powers to administer and order local affairs, primarily production and distribution.
Today the council is not a free agent, being regarded as a minor entity, and its decisions can be overruled by the corporation, county council or government, three parasitic institutions which live off its back.
In the free municipality the entire territory within its jurisdiction will be under common ownership and not just part of the municipal territory as is the case today; the hills, trees and meadows; arable land; working animals and animals reared for meat, buildings, machinery and farm implements; and the surplus materials, and produce accumulated or placed in storage by the inhabitants.
Consequently the only private property that will exist will be in those things which are necessary to each individual- such as accommodation, clothing, furniture, tools of the trades, the allotment set aside for each inhabitant and minor lifestock or farmyard poultry which they may wish to keep for their consumption or as a hobby.
Everything surplus to requirements can be collected at any time by the municipality, with the prior agreement of the assembly, since everything we accumulate without needing it does not belong to us, for otherwise we are depriving everyone else of it. Nature gives us the right of property over what we need, but we cannot lay claim to anything beyond what we need without committing theft, without usurping the property rights of the collective.
All residents will be equal:
1. They will produce and contribute equally towards the maintenance of the commune, with no differentiation other than on the basis of aptitude (such as age, trade training, etc.).
2. They will take equal part in administrative decision making in the assemblies, and
3. They will have equal rights of consumption in accordance with their needs or, where it is unavoidable, rationing.
Whosoever refuses to work for the community (aside from the children, the sick and the old) will be stripped of their other rights: to deliberate and to consume.
The free municipality will federate with its counterparts in other localities and with the national industrial federations. Each locality will put its surplus produce up for exchange, in return for those things it requires. It will make its own contribution towards works of general interest, such as railroads, highways, reservoirs, waterfalls, reafforestation, and so on.
In return for this co-operation in the general interest in the region or the nation, the members of the free municipality will be able to reap the benefit of public services such as posts, telegraphs, telephones railways and transport; electricity supply grid system with its off-shoots; asylums, hospitals, sanitariums and spas; higher and university education; and articles and products not manufacturered in their locality.
The human energy surplus will be taken up by new work and new productions such as befit the locality, and by sharing out the work among everyone, and reducing the number of hours of work and the length of each worker’s working day.
The villager should not be too bothered by the free municipality, for their ancestors lived in a very similar style. In every village one can find work in common, and communal property to a greater or lesser degree and shared activities (such as collection of fuel or grazing). Also in rural customs there are procedures, ways and means by which a solution may be found to every possible difficulty, and in these procedures the decision is never made by one individual, even should they be elected for the purpose by the others, but through the agreement of everyone.
In the city
In the city, the part of the free municipality is played by local federation. In large centers of population such great organizations may exist in each district. Ultimate sovereignty in the local federation of industrial unions lies with the general assembly of all local producers.
Their mission is to order the economic life of their locality, but especially production and distribution, in the light of the requirements of their own locality and, likewise, the demands of other localities.
In time of revolution, the unions will take collective possession of factories, workshops and workrooms; of lodgings, buildings and lands; of public services and materials and raw materials and raw materials kept in storage.
The producers’ unions will organize distribution, making use of co-operatives or shop and market premises.
A producer’s pass-book, issued by the appropriate union will be indispensable if anyone wishes to enjoy all their rights; in addition to the detailed information concerning consumption such as, for instance, size of family, the number of days and hours worked will also be noted in these pass-books. The only persons exempted from this requirement will be children, the aged and the infirm.
The producer’s pass-book confers a right to all these things:
1. To consume, in accordance either with rationing or with their needs, all products distributed in that locality.
2. To possess, for one’s own use, a suitable home, necessary furniture, a chicken run on the outskirts, or an allotment, or a garden should the collective so decide.
3. To use public services.
4. To take part in the voting on the decisions made in one’s factory, workshop firm, one’s section, union and local federation.
The local federation will attend to the needs of its locality and see to it that the particular industry is developed that it is best suited to, or which the nation has the most urgent need of.
In the General assembly, work will be allocated to the venous unions, who will further allocate to their sections, just as the sections will to workplaces with the constant aim of averting unemployment, of increasing the daily output of a shift of workers in an industry, or of cutting by the amount required the length of the working day.
All pursuits that are not purely economic should be left open to the private initiatives of individuals or groups.
Each union should try to engage in activities that bring benefits to all, especially those activities concerned with protecting the health of the producer and making work more agreeable.
The general economic order
Economic pressures compel the individual to co-operate in the economic life of the locality. These same economic pressures ought to be felt by the collectives, obliging them to co-operate in the economic life of the nation. But to accomplish this needs no central council or supreme committee, which carry the seeds of authoritarianism and are the focal points of dictatorship, as well as being nests of bureaucracy. We said that we have no need of an architect or any ordaining authority beyond the mutual agreement between localities. As soon as each and every locality (city, village, or hamlet) has placed its internal life in order, the organisation of the nation will be complete. And there is something else we might add concerning the localities. Once all its individual members are assured that their needs will be met, then the economic life of the municipality or of the federation will also be perfected.
ln biology, for an organism to achieve its proper physiology and normality, each of its cells has to fulfill its function and that requires just one thing: that the blood supply and nervous relationship be assured. We might say the same about a nation. The nation’s life is assured and normal when each locality plays its part and the blood supply which brings it what it lacks and carries away what hampers it has been assured (or, to put it another way, transport is assured) and when localities are in contact with each other and communicating their mutual needs and potentials.
And this is where the national industrial federations came into play, being just the bodies for the elaboration of collectivized services that need to be governed by a nation-wide scheme, such as communications (posts, telephones, telegraphs) and transport (railways, ships, highways, and aircraft).
Above the local organization, there should be no superstructure aside from those local organizations whose special function cannot be performed locally. The sole interpreters of the national will are the congresses and where circumstances demand they shall, temporarily, exercise such sovereignty as may be vested in them by the plebiscite decisions of the assemblies.
Aside from the national federations of transport and communications there may be regional or county federations, such as hydrographical, forestry or electricity federations.
The national federations will hold as common property the roads, railroads, buildings, equipment, machinery and workshops. They will freely offer their services to the localities or to the individuals who co-operate with their particular effort in the national economy; offering their products or their surplus output; striving to produce, as far as possible, more than the needs of the national demand, and making their personal contribution to such labors as those services may have need of.
The mission of the national federations of communications and transport is to bring the localities into touch with one another, building up transport services between producing regions and consuming ones; giving priority to perishables which have to be consumed quickly, goods such as fish, milk, fruit and meat.
Upon the right organization of transport hinge reliable supplies to areas of need and the non-congestion of areas where surpluses are produced.
No single brain nor any bureau of brains can see to this organization. Individuals reach understanding through meeting one another and localities do the same by keeping in touch with one another. A guide or handbook, showing the produce in which each area specializes, will simplify the procurement of supplies, indicating just what may be requested of a given area and just what it has to offer.
Let necessity force individuals to combine their efforts in contributing to the economic life of their locality. And let necessity likewise force collectives to regulate their activities through nationwide interchange; and let the circulatory system (transport) and the nervous system (communications) play their part in the establishment of liaisons between the localities.
Neither the running of the economy nor the freedom of the individual require further complications.
Conclusion
Libertarian communism is an open channel through which society may organize freely and of its own accord, and through which the evolution of society may follow its course without artificial deviations.
It is the most rational of all solutions to the economic question in that it corresponds to an equitable sharing out of production and labor required to achieve a solution. No one must shirk this necessity to join in the comparative effort of production, for it is nature itself which imposes this harsh law of labor upon us in climates where our nourishment does not grow spontaneously.
Economic compulsion is the bond of society. But it is, and must be, the only compulsion which the whole should exercise over the individual. All other activities – cultural, artistic, and scientific – should remain beyond the control of the collective and stay in the hands of those groups keen upon pursuing and encouraging them.
Just as the obligatory working day (i.e. the working day actually necessary given existing technology – Ed.) would not, exhaust the individual’s capacity for work- there will, alongside controlled production, be other, free, spontaneous production – a production inspired by keenness and enthusiasm, a production which will be its own satisfaction; its own reward. In this production will be sown and will germinate the seeds of another society, the new society exalted and propagated by anarchism, and, so far as it meets the needs of society, the economic supervision of individuals by organizations will have been made redundant.
A thousand objections will be raised, most of them so devoid of sense as not to merit refutation. One objection that is often repeated is laziness. Now laziness is the natural product of a particularly favorable climate, for it is there that nature justifies laziness, making the individual indolent.
We recongise the right to be lazy provided that those who seek to exercise that right agree to get along without help from others. We live in a society where the lazy person, the incompetent and the antisocial being are types who prosper and enjoy plenty, power and honors. If such persons agree to renounce all this, there is no obstacle to their remaining, as exhibits in museums or galleries, just as fossilized animals are placed on display today.
-Isaac Puente