The Transition to the Gift Economy

How would we actually get from where we are now to a gift economy? There is a range of possible strategies and options. A popular revolution supported by the armed forces. An act of parliament following a landslide election victory. A multiplicity of grassroots initiatives gradually link together and begin to operate without money as the capitalist economy crumbles. 

Transcript

7: Transition to the gift economy
 
Terry Leahy 2023

This chapter is about the transition to the gift economy. Chapter four explains the idea of the gift economy, and this chapter is about the process of transition. What we have today is a very complex networked economic system. It's global in dimensions and people depend upon it. Predictability — knowing you can expect to get something you need, or being sure that you won’t — depends upon the way market forces work out. Do you have enough money to pay for it? We are very dependent for our livelihoods on the market economy. A gift economy has no money and works on agreements between voluntary collectives of producers and consumers. We must move to that with the least possible disruption. We do not want people dying in the streets because they are unable to access food, water, and heating — currently supplied through market transactions. It's very hard to say how all of this is going to work out. A certain amount of unpredictability and disruption could well be unavoidable. Clearly, we're at a situation now where business as usual is massively disruptive and will become more and more disruptive. Because of that, people will be prepared to take risks up to a point. This chapter is about mapping out a plausible transition. Recognizing the unpredictability of all this, lining up a variety of pathways, rather than recommending the ‘one right way’.  

Faced with these questions a lot of people are sceptical about whether a revolution to replace capitalism is even possible. How could we ever overthrow the capitalist class? My comment is that the world has seen lots of successful revolutions. The problem is not — having a revolution and taking over. The real problem is what happens next. Are you able to nail down a classless society? To create a sustained egalitarian social order. And, of course, the prognosis is not looking particularly good as far as that's concerned. A recent depressing example is Venezuela. They got the popular support and the necessary armed force. But the ambitious project of utopian social change withered away, with some version of class society being maintained. With most of the population disillusioned and dragging their feet. The other chapters of this book have more to say about those issues. For now, I am concentrating on the process of achieving a revolution to create the gift economy. 

I am going to suggest that there are two broad types of transition that we might consider. The one that seems most obvious is transition by revolution. The institutions of the capitalist economy are dramatically abolished and replaced with the institutions of the non-monetary gift economy. The second broad type is a transition by accretion. There is a symbolic continuity with aspects of the existing capitalist economy and a real structural break. The various symbols of the capitalist economy still seem to operate. Even money and the market. But the real content, the capitalist content, has been eviscerated. This is a very tricky argument to make. I'm not entirely convinced this pathway could work. But I think it's worth explaining because it informs the way a lot of people think about these issues.

Prefiguring projects

Before I get into this discussion, I want to introduce some concepts that are useful in conceiving a transition to the gift economy. The idea of ‘prefiguring’ is that you start to build institutions and practices now that create examples for a post-capitalist future. This prefiguring shows what you want to do, a propaganda exercise. It practices and deepens the culture on which a future society will depend. This prefiguring also helps those who are participating to live better now. To escape from some aspects of the market economy. I am going to talk about two kinds of prefiguring institutions. I will call the first ‘hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism’ because they include aspects of the current capitalist market economy as well as features of a future gift economy. I will talk of the second sort of prefiguring institutions as ‘temporary autonomous zones’ — referring to Hakim Bey, an anarchist writer from the nineties. 

Hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism

A hybrid depends in various ways on the market economy. For example, it could use money, offer goods or services on the market, or pay wages. To give an example, we could consider a local community NGO operating in the global south. It’s a community-controlled sustainability outreach, and educational organization. The people of local villages have organised small face to face democratic assemblies. These assemblies elect representatives to direct their NGO and appoint professional staff. The NGO gets international donations and pays the staff. It also uses this money to buy equipment they need. For example, building materials to construct their centre, a car to visit local communities, laptops, and phone services. Much of this works within the market economy — wage labour for the professional staff, ownership of the community centre as property, the purchase of commodities necessary to the work, the wage labour of the donors from the rich countries.  

The other aspect of any hybrid is an ethical practice that departs from the usual operation of a capitalist firm. Some aspect of the gift economy. Looking after people or the planet. Participatory democratic control. The gift rather than market exchange. For example, the NGO in the global south facilitates community control through assemblies of local village communities. These organize applications to the NGO for assistance, and elect community representatives to the NGO board. The NGO enables workers’ control through planning meetings that include the professional workers and community representatives. Just like what we would expect in a gift economy. The aim of the organisation is not to make a profit, like a capitalist firm. Instead, the organisation has two aims. One is to help local villagers to achieve food security. Caring for people. The other is making sure that this is achieved through a sustainable agriculture. Caring for the planet. These aims are shared by the donors from the rich countries. They are spending their money to express their affection and solidarity. An ethical practice consistent with the gift economy. The NGO’s strategies for food security are also departures from the market economy. Household food provision. Access to food without payment.

As the next few chapters will show, hybrids come in a great variety of forms. One more example. A community supported agriculture farm run by a workers’ cooperative. The aim of the members of the cooperative is to run a successful market enterprise and to get a wage income. But along with this, this they want to relieve the alienation of wage labour. So, they are setting up a cooperative where they make decisions, without a boss in control, creaming off the profits. Their aim is to get a market income but also to look after the environment. Using agroecology and permaculture, growing food sustainably. Selling food locally and reducing food miles. Their customers have similar mixed aims. To buy good food at reasonable prices. To buy food that has been grown sustainably and produced locally. 

Initiatives supported by governments can also be hybrids. The tax system takes a portion of the social product. In the best-case scenario, citizens vote to decide how to allocate their taxes. Initiatives can be directed to propping up the market system. But also, in some cases, to undermining it. Or at least to supplementing the market in ways that could fit with a gift economy. Government support for an NGO through a grant. Allowing an organisation to survive despite market pressures. The most common example in rich countries is funding for community arts. Government intervention to ameliorate environmental damage. Acts against air pollution. Subsidies for renewable energy. Payments to adopt organic agriculture. Payments for wildlife refuges on farms. Sewerage. Public ownership of national parks, railways, health systems. Funding for community services run by not-for-profit charitable NGOs.

None of these government initiatives are an unmixed blessing. The use of money and wage labour to make the initiative happen. A paid police force protecting public assets. Attempts to make these hybrids a facsimile of a capitalist firm. Indeed, a lot of these initiatives are necessary to maintain the conditions for profitable business. Taxing citizens where the market will not go. Public education, roads, and bridges. At the same time, this is a shifting terrain. Governments can end up promoting the ethical values and practices of a gift economy. These initiatives, typical of many governments, point to an alternative economy. Or at least they can be seen in that light. 

Taken in their many forms, hybrids enable a practice that survives capitalism but also alleviates it to some extent. While one or two hybrids make little difference to the dominance of the capitalist regime, a multiplicity of hybrids can undermine it. 

Temporary autonomous zone

Another prefiguring strategy is to set up organisations that attempt to avoid participation in the market and the state. To carve off a bit of economic life outside of the market, to escape state control. Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson) talks about two kinds of situations like this — the ‘temporary autonomous’ zone and ‘immediatism’. 

A ‘temporary autonomous zone’ (TAZ) occurs when an anarchist polity seizes a part of a state’s territory. His term ‘temporary’ suggests there is no intention to hold this territory forever. Despite this, some of the best examples are rebellions which the state eventually defeated.

Let us look at the Hungarian uprising of 1956 in some detail. A TAZ before it was crushed by the Soviet Union. Huge popular demonstrations demanding workers’ control started the uprising. As people assembled at the radio station, police fired on the crowd. Workers in the arms factories distributed weapons. Most of the police and armed forces surrendered to the crowds. A statue of Stalin was pulled down. A revolutionary council of students and workers was formed and remained in session. The Soviet Union sent tanks to crush the rebellion and fighting in the streets broke out. Some Russian tanks joined the uprising. Workers occupied their workplaces and formed councils. Among other things, these councils demanded workers’ management. Delegates linked up to form Revolutionary Councils. White collar workers, peasants and soldiers joined industrial workers. Peasants supplied the rebels with food. Peasants who had been coerced into state-run farming ‘collectives’ redistributed the land or continued as collectives, while deposing their managers. A newly formed council of free trade unions demanded workers’ management, free elections, and wage increases. A general strike paralysed all but essential services. In a second assault, the Soviets sent 5,000 tanks and pulverised the working-class heartlands of Hungarian cities. Up to 50,000 Hungarians died and the Stalinist bureaucracy was restored.

One could see the early success of the Spanish anarchist movement in the revolution of 1936 as starting a TAZ. An anarchist federation of trade unions and popular assemblies took over Catalonia, a province of Spain. More recently the Zapatistas are well understood as a TAZ, taking over most of the Chiapas province of Mexico in 1994. Running an alternative government and economy. There is also the uprising in southern Albania in 1997. Beginning as a revolt against government corruption, the state ceased to operate. Decisions were taken by popular assemblies in the towns. Armed gangs defended the uprising. Eventually the UN stepped in to restore state control. 

A more localized and slightly more peaceful example is the Zone à Défendre (de Notre Dame des Landes) in France. Protestors occupied the area designated for a new airport, beginning their takeover of 1650 hectares in 2007. They have set up a local economy without money. Farmers whose land was to be taken for the airport squatted on their farms and were joined by activists, who resisted the destruction of farm buildings and squatting constructions. A demonstration attended by 40,000 repelled the police and the occupiers constructed a small village with a community bar, a kitchen, a blacksmith workshop and residential quarters. They started up joint projects such as a community bakery and community gardens. In 2018, the French president shelved the plans for an airport. Again, attempts were made to remove the squatters, including police attacks with tear gas and stun grenades. Negotiations with authorities followed a stalemate on the ground. Many projects initiated in the occupation have sought legal recognition. In a way an exemplar of the temporary autonomous zone, in so far as its autonomy was only maintained for thirteen years. 

Another essay by Hakim Bey explains a similar concept, ‘immediatism’. The idea of immediatism is that people come together as a voluntary club, engaging in some common project — not mediated by money or by media. It could be something as low key as a sewing bee making patchwork quilts. A voluntary working bee, set up to help a household with their food gardening – what is referred to as a ‘permablitz’. The ‘good karma’ network that invites people to go online to find out how they might help someone in the network. Organisations such as this are in fact quite common. They are rarely seen as ‘political’ or as prefiguring a new system. 

I think it is fair to use the term ‘temporary autonomous zone’ for both these concepts. They are essentially the same, the scale is the only difference. Autonomous zones suggest a whole territory reconfigured while immediatism carves off a bit of social space in the interstices of capitalist society. In either case, initiatives like this are a ‘propaganda of the deed’, giving people a glimpse of what a utopia might look like. 

Prefiguring initiatives are conceived differently within the two strategies for transition. Within the strategy of revolution, these prefiguring institutions prepare for the revolution. In the strategy of accretion, prefiguring institutions proliferate and link up. Without any decisive revolutionary break, they grow to constitute a post capitalist gift economy.

Transition by revolution

What I define as a transition by revolution does not have to be violent or illegal, though of course it could be both. The main thing is the relatively sudden switch from the market capitalist economy to the gift economy. Parliament could even authorize a revolution. You get majority support for the Greens parties in several representative democracies. They come to power and finally work out that the market economy is the central problem. They invite people to take over their workplaces. To begin making compacts to run the economy, leaving money out of the picture. It would still be a revolution — a dramatic and decisive break. The party in power would be saying, ‘Come on, we are going to make a complete break and money will mean nothing. You might as well put it in your bottom drawer.’ 

Alternatively, a revolution could take the form which is more familiar. Massive assemblies on the streets in every urban centre. Such a huge majority makes it obvious that the status quo cannot continue. The police and the army refuse to follow orders. The powers that be negotiate a surrender. 

If we are talking about a transition to a gift economy the following days might go like this. 

Let us call this day after the success of the revolution, day two. On day two, most employed people should come to work as they usually do, in their usual jobs. When they get to work, they form a committee. A democratic mini assembly of all the people they usually work closely with. Units of twenty people. If the workplace is a larger concern, they might also elect representatives to go to an assembly of the whole firm. 

At this point these assemblies are faced by a key question. Is what we usually do in our work useful to the community at large? Like growing wheat or repairing a bus. Or at least necessary right now to meet immediate needs. Like stacking a supermarket shelf. Or is it a task that has no relevance to an economy without money and the market? Like working in a bank or an advertising agency. 

The aim would be for people to continue the useful parts of their work, at least in the short run. So as not to disrupt things too much. This would apply even in workplaces where the work was contributing to damage but was necessary to maintain services in the short run. For example, if you were repairing petrol cars, you might go on doing that — while teams of voluntary transport workers set up something more sustainable. 

If your team decided their work was not necessary, they might dissolve their firm. Workers in the firm would volunteer their help to another collective, supplying workers to more useful projects. As teams of workers left these industries, they would provide a floating labour force to relieve the pressure on those who are now overworked — for example nurses in hospitals. Or to supply workers for new projects to retrofit the economy to be sustainable. To work out where and how to volunteer, this cohort of ex-workers would take advice from media organisations — exposing gaps and taking advice from peak bodies for hospitals, schools, agriculture, housing, public transport and so on. 

A first task for these working collectives would be to set up arrangements to resource supplies and distribute their production. At the present time, the administrators who handle these relationships contract supply and distribution through market arrangements. These monetary contracts would be replaced by negotiated agreements. The farmer would negotiate with the transport company, the transport company with the packing company, the packing company with the supermarket, the supermarket with the local community. In this transition period, many of the more useful parts of the existing market economy might be maintained on a voluntary basis. Contracts would become compacts. 

A lot of people who are working now are doing jobs that may be useful, but they are not the jobs they would prefer. To avoid disruption, they could stay in their jobs and train a new volunteer to take over. Any job that was hated by all and sundry could be eliminated (for example grinding artificial stone bench tops) or rostered (taking out the rubbish). 

This is about a first stage of implementing the gift economy. I have been trying to work out how we might do this without causing shortages, queues and worse. In the longer term, we would see bodies set up to make deeper changes. For example, very large urban centres are unsustainable. If you bring foods to the city from long distances, the energy demands for transport become hard to manage with renewables. As well, we are running out of phosphates for agricultural fertilizers, sourced by mining phosphate deposits. It makes more sense to source phosphates from manure. But transporting human manure from urban areas to distant agricultural sites is energy intensive. Localising agriculture is the long-term solution. We could have rural towns linked by rail, with trains powered by renewables. Each town would be surrounded by a local farming zone, with donkey carts bringing produce into the town. To create a reconstruction of urban life on this model would take time. Teams of builders could offer urbanites the opportunity to demolish their city houses and move to the country. The urbanites themselves could assist with the building work under the guidance of skilled trade workers. Other teams would be building new rail lines, to link rural towns and replace the long-distance road system. 

In the context of settler colonial countries like Australia, Canada or the United States, this transition in settlement patterns would have to be worked out in consultation with the Indigenous people. The people whose land has been stolen. 

Against a staged transition

So, in this previous section I gave an account of the way a revolutionary transition to the gift economy might work. Now I want to explain why I have outlined that scenario and not something more gradual. The way I put it, the non-monetary economy begins on day two. It may seem that this is a bit drastic. Why not continue to use money to smooth the transition? Paying for an environmental retrofit. Paying social welfare to those who are out of a job. Making sure that people can put food on their table. Paying the armed forces to consolidate the revolution. 

My view is that going for a staged transition after the revolution is a mistake. To explain this, I will look at two case studies. The Russian revolution of 1917 and the Spanish revolution of 1936. Neither of these revolutions aimed at a non-monetary gift economy. But they certainly aimed at a classless society. With ordinary people taking control of politics and the economy. Their stories can help us to understand what can go wrong.

Revolutions generally begin with an effervescent popular participation. Hannah Arendt in On Revolution makes the point that in ‘every genuine revolution’ throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ‘spontaneous organs of the people’ appeared to enable participatory control of public affairs. Sticking to European examples, she mentions the sociétiés révolutionnaires of the Paris commune in 1870, the Soviets of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the räte of the German uprising of 1918-1919, the councils of the Hungarian rebellion of 1956. These organisations sprang up outside of any revolutionary party and were entirely unexpected. For example, in Hungary 1956:
The most disparate kinds of councils … neighbourhood councils that emerged in all residential districts, so-called revolutionary councils that grew out of fighting together in the streets, councils of writers and artists, born in the coffee houses of Budapest, students’ and youth councils at the universities, workers’ councils in the factories, councils in the army, among civil servants, and so on.  
As Arendt notes, none of these exciting takeovers lasted to create a truly participatory democracy. To show what can happen next, I will consider my two key examples.

The Russian Revolution

The Russian revolution commenced in February of 1917. Initially the Mensheviks were in government. Peasants took control of large estates and big commercial farms. Workers’ committees started to take over industrial workplaces. The factory committees sometimes came to agreements with the owners, sharing power. In other cases, workers’ committees took complete managerial control, expropriating the owners. Some owners closed their factories to prevent a workers’ committee taking control. In October of 1917 a second revolutionary surge saw the Bolshevik party (the Communist party) take government. Initially they supported the factory committees as an expropriation of the capitalist class. Even in nationalized industries, they recognized them as legitimate bodies of oversight. Congresses of the workers’ committees were set up to coordinate their actions nationally. 

As the factory committees gained more and more purchase, the Bolshevik leadership worried that these committees were hindering management by the state, the proper organ of workers’ power. They were worried that independent market-based cooperatives would put their own interests first. The party managed to get support from the Trade Unions — organisations that had pre-dated the revolution. Through a set of party resolutions and government decrees, the Bolsheviks established the unions as the legitimate organizers of ‘workers’ control’. In the trade union congresses, representatives of the workers’ committees were a minority, Bolshevik loyalists the majority. Gradually, the party subordinated the trade unions to ‘Vesenka’, the government department organizing the economy. Where the membership had voted in someone who supported workers’ power, the party replaced them with party loyalists. 

Under the control of Vesenka, committees to run industry included a minority of worker representatives (mainly from the trade unions) with a majority of government members and technical experts. During the civil war, the party nationalized most industry. The plan of industrial production was to come from above. The party implemented ‘one man management.’ Leaving the workers’ committees and the trade unions to discipline the workers and encourage commitment. These developments were contested by a faction of the party known as the ‘Workers’ Opposition’. The leaders of the party negotiated deals that would give this left faction some tokens of acknowledgement — while maintaining their own policies. Later they expelled them and closed their newspapers. 

A creeping state control. The end of the participatory democracy. But what enabled the Bolsheviks state to do this? The workers controlled the factories after the revolution. Why did they put up with this? 

Before the revolution, these factories sold produce on the market. The aim of the workers’ committees was to take over and run these plants as cooperatives, selling goods to pay wages. However, this was quite difficult in the circumstances. The disruptions of the revolution, war with Germany and the civil war meant that firms often shut down. Preventing other factories from depending on what they produced. Later the capitalist powers banned exports to Russian industry, closing more factories. Even if a factory was producing and getting sales, it was difficult for their workers to buy food. The middle peasants who had gained land during the revolution were reluctant to sell their crops. They were not interested in the low prices being offered by the government. They hoarded grain or sowed less acreage. There was little point in growing and selling grain when they could buy nothing from a damaged industrial sector. Industrial workers jumped ship — going back to the country, where they had more chance of getting a meal.

Those who remained ended up depending on food supplied by the government. There was a system of food ration cards. The government deprived workers’ committee activists of their ration cards. Later, when the government nationalized most industry, the government used monetary incentives to impose their control on the factories. Wage incentives operated through piece work payment and bonuses. Paying more to those who produced more. The trade unions excluded oppositional elements. Ultimately, the government command of the economy was backed by armed force. The Bolsheviks were supplying the armed forces with food requisitioned from the peasants. It was armed bands, licenced by the party, that seized these supplies. It was the army under Trotsky that crushed the democratic rebellion in Petrograd. 

The theory of workers’ management promoted by the anarcho-syndicalist minority at the time, was this. Workers would occupy nationalized firms and private enterprises. They would run them as cooperatives — selling goods on the market. To coordinate the economy, these autonomous committees would federate and make resolutions on prices, wages, production, and the like. A democratic process. This approach was implicit in the actions of the workers’ committees at the time. Recent anarchist writers also endorse it. For example, Maurice Brinton, writing in 1970 for the Solidarity group in the UK. In that analysis, this solution was stymied by the Bolshevik party. 

In my view, the market system was the framework for the revival of class society under new managers. The people occupy the factories and farms. The factory workers envisage a classless society based in market cooperatives. In the aftermath of the revolution this dream cannot be realized. The market fails. The industrial workers cannot produce goods, sell them, and buy food. The state steps into the gap. It coerces a surplus from the peasants. Replacing peasant self-government with state power. It uses the food surplus to provision the army and paramilitary gangs. Control of food gives the state immense leverage with the urban workers. Step by step the state takes over the factories. A new ruling class replaces the old one. Throughout all this, there is a combination of monetary controls and direct coercion. For example, food is forcibly requisitioned from the peasants at a price below market prices. A kind of tax. Workers in nationalized industries get ration cards but also wages. The soldiers get a wage and can buy the food that the state has requisitioned.

From the perspective of the gift economy, what was absent was any plan to run the economy without money. Making deals between factory workers and peasant farmers — exchanging produce by making agreements to supply and receive. 

The Spanish Revolution

In Spain the revolution of 1936 followed the election of a leftist government. Local occupations accompanied the election and challenged the capitalist class. In response, Franco organized an army coup against the democratic government. While the Fascists took over some parts of Spain, the democratic government held out in other areas. Seizing their opportunity, the anarchist organisations and the local people occupied industries and took over farming land in much of Spain, expropriating capitalist landlords and business owners. Replacing state authority with localized self-management. The whole province of Catalonia fell to this anarchist push. In the first days, local committees distributed essential supplies free of charge. In the longer term a patchwork of different arrangements organized economic life.

In some rural areas, collectives ran farms and operated a local gift economy. They allocated food to their communities according to need. Surplus production was sold, and the money paid for goods from outside the community. Also distributed without charge — according to need. In other areas, a local money was devised. In the urban areas, workers occupied government services and took over many private firms. These co-operatives paid wages, charging customers, or getting government funding. For example, before the uprising there were 1,100 hairdressing salons in Barcelona. The assistants were on very low wages, and shops were not well maintained. The revolution intended a 40-hour week and a 15% pay rise. Many shops would not have been able to afford to meet these goals. So, all shops joined the union. They cut the number of shops to 235 and re-vamped them. All workers were paid the same, with wages increased by 40%. A collectivisation via the umbrella anarchist union.  

Murray Bookchin argues that the leadership of the anarchist federation/trade union (CNT/FAI) started to dominate these urban collectives. 
Initially, nearly the entire economy in CNT/FAI areas had been taken over by committees elected from among the workers and were loosely coordinated by higher union committees. As time went on, this system was increasingly tightened. The higher committee began to pre-empt the initiative of the lower, although their decisions still had to be ratified by the workers of the facilities involved. The effect of this process was to centralize the economy of CNT/FAI areas in the hands of the union. 
After the participation of anarchist leaders in the Catalonia and Madrid governments, larger firms in Catalonia were ‘socialized’. An elected committee appointed a manager. That manager was supervised by a government controller. Real decision-making power fell to the government. Factory councils had little influence. The ‘Collectivisation Decree’ of October 1936 established a ‘General Council for Industry’ with wide powers. 
Formulating a general program of work for the industry, orientating the Council of Enterprises in its tasks … the regulation of total output in the industry, and of internal and foreign markets; to propose changes in methods of production; to negotiate banking and credit facilities.  
Tendencies in the Spanish anarchist movement had prefigured these developments. Santillan had argued for a central planning authority to coordinate production.  With input from the anarchist trade unions. 

This centralisation was enabled by the economic context. The anarchist leadership had entered a coalition government with the Soviet backed socialists and the liberals. The central Madrid government controlled the gold reserves. Given the hostility to the revolution, Spanish factories had to buy supplies from other countries with gold. The now ‘nationalized’ industries were forced to accept government control to get access. A government dominated by Soviet backed communists deprived the anarchist collectives of resources. In the ‘May Days’ of 1937, the central government fought the anarchists in Catalonia, taking over the industries that had been occupied by workers. The anarchist armed wing was drafted into a Republican army. Organized in typical military fashion — a chain of command. Franco defeated the Republic, a dictatorship lasting for 36 years. 

This was a complex situation. Looking at its second stage, after the May days. The government nationalizes the workplaces and ends workers’ control. In the nationalized industries, the government controls workers through their control of the money supply. This nationalisation followed the capture of the Republican government by Soviet agents — by Stalin. The Republican police and army defeat the anarchists in Catalonia. 

But more interesting is the first stage of this process. According to Bookchin, it was the CNT/FAI, the national anarchist union and federation, that first undermined the participatory democracy established in the revolution. The story of the hairdressers may give us some clues. To undo the chaos and inequity of capitalist hairdressing, the anarchist union steps in. Equalizing wages and conditions across all the barber shops. This appears to be a democratic process and makes sense in the circumstances. Yet, the effect is to prevent hairdressing cooperatives from operating as independent firms in competition. Turning hairdressing into a facsimile of a government department. A bureaucratic elite takes control. Worker’s control becomes workers’ consultation as their union makes rules for every hairdressing salon. The dream of independent market cooperatives controlled by their workers also vanishes as market competition is replaced by bureaucratic coordination and equalization. 

The perils of a monetary transition

The long-term failure of all these inspiring revolutionary moments is at least partly down to their failure to abolish money. A participatory takeover of the means of production cannot be achieved within a monetary economy. The market economy provides an opportunity for the state and social class to re-establish. It vitiates any attempt at participatory governance.

The gift economy and the state

For the sake of a simple narrative let us assume that in representative democracies parliament (or some version of that) is the basic organ of the state. Parliament makes laws and then the police, and if necessary, the army enforce them. The police and the army must do what parliament tells them to do. Because they're in the police force or the army as a job. If they do not do what parliament says, then they'll lose their job. They'll be sacked. But why do they need a job? The same reason as anyone else. To get money. Why do they need to get money? To get access to the goods and services they need to run their lives. 

After the gift economy revolution. People are being supplied by gifts. The workers in the various collectives are making their own decisions about where to distribute their gifts. You do not need a ‘job’ — because you do not need money. So, there is no body of people, needing a job and keen to sign up as a police force or army. Ready to take orders and do what they are told — regardless of whether they agree with those orders or not. Consequently, parliament can no longer operate as a state. It cannot maintain a monopoly of armed force, instructing it’s armed wing to carry out its orders.

All states depend on alienated labour. People do not have ownership of the means of production and must obey orders in their working lives — to get access to goods and services. The army and the police are just examples of the condition of every member of the subordinated classes in a class society. If you get rid of alienated labour, you get rid of the state. A body that can centrally control the use of force and rule a whole society.
This is the basic argument to show why a ‘state’ could never exist in a gift economy. This argument has implications for parliament, and implications for the use of armed force. 

So, let’s look at it first in relation to parliament. 

The state vanishes

A first alternative is that the whole operation of government could vanish and be replaced by networked decision making. There's no need for the political process. There's just networked agreements and compacts. Normally these agreements are worked out between the producer collectives involved. However, if something affects lots of different communities, they might arrange a joint meeting. A temporary talking shop. These could be international if the issue warranted that. 

Parliament but not as we know it

A second alternative could be that parliament and some sort of representative democracy still happens. So, there is a consensus that there will be voluntary clubs charged by the community with organising elections. The members of these clubs are supplied with their daily needs by gifts, just like everybody else. They organize voting, count votes, and send elected representatives to parliament. Likewise supplied by gifts, just like everyone else. Most people vote, seeing it as a civic duty. So, how do the votes of parliament count in a gift economy? Ultimately, what parliament decides is just advice. There's no coercive power in it. It represents what it is — the viewpoint of a majority of representatives who were elected by the members of the community, just that. Economic units may take that advice on board, or they might not. In the end, they are still in charge of their own affairs.  

So, a voluntary network, an NGO, replaces the state. It’s not appropriate to continue calling it ‘a state.’ Because it cannot enforce decisions with a paid police force or army. Nevertheless, it is an important advisory body. Many people get really worried by the idea that a gift economy could not have a state. That everything would be out of control. For these people, this ‘talking shop parliament’ proposal may be attractive. In a later chapter I will consider the approach taken by the Zapatistas in Mexico. 

The use of armed force

Now let’s look at the use of armed force to enforce the social rules that are worked out within a gift economy. As I have explained in the chapter on the gift economy, it is unlikely that armed force completely vanishes. Voluntary enforcer clubs would protect the community when required. They would be like any other voluntary club of the gift economy. The community would provide for their members with gifts, exactly as for other citizens. Their role would be to assist local community organisations to deal with problems of violence. They would know that their continued good standing depended on community support. Currently, police and armies are paid by a central state and can act without the support of the local community. In the gift economy, enforcer clubs depend for their material well-being on the communities that they represent. Not that different to a martial arts club, with community supervision. Communities might decide to roster this function, by lot, with rotations of training followed by working in the community. I am assuming that the vast majority of the police and the armed forces would join the revolution and help to set up a system of community enforcement. Handing their weapons to local community bodies. In a later chapter I will look at how the Zapatistas manage all this.

Transition by accretion

The idea of a transition by accretion is that the move to a gift economy does not happen through a relatively sudden revolution but through small gains within the context of the capitalist market economy. These small gains link up and eventually what we end up with can no longer be described as ‘capitalism’.  As I said earlier on, I'm not totally convinced that this can work, but it's important to talk about it. 

The strategy of transition by accretion is an idea popularized by three well known authors from the social sciences. Eric Olin Wright (sociology) and Julie Katherine Gibson-Graham (human geography — in fact two authors). Wright talks about ‘real utopias.’ He provides criteria for distinguishing real utopias from standard capitalist firms. In a similar vein, Gibson-Graham talks about ‘the community economy.’ Community economy organisations are not capitalist because they are not run by owners who are exploiting their employees. They work ethically to care for people and the planet. These authors envisage the transition as a deepening and extension of non-capitalist market entities. Ethical businesses, cooperatives, NGOs, and government-funded citizen initiatives. They envisage a final post-capitalist economy as a market economy regulated by a democratic state. 

I do not find this marketized post-capitalist vision or this marketized transition scenario likely. If a substantial number of firms do manage to behave in these non-market ways, they will end the power of money and the market. As explained above, I call these alternative market arrangements ‘hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism’. The aim of hybrids is to care for people and the planet. And where necessary, to sidestep the market to enable this practice. If hybrids became widespread and linked up, the effect would be to undermine the market and the power of the state. The same with autonomous zones where the departure from the market is even more extreme. An avalanche of hybrids and autonomous zones would destroy the market and the state with that. For me, that is the most likely scenario for a transition by accretion. 


So, this is my version of system change transition by accretion. We have a pre-revolutionary situation where more and more economic units are hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism. Temporary autonomous zones also take over large parts of the economy. Community gardens, food donations, free bike repair workshops. Transition by accretion takes effect when this avalanche of hybrids and autonomous zones undermines the market. For example, if you're in a cooperative that is distributing products according to need, rather than ability to pay top dollar, you are undermining the logic of money. The discourse of buying cheap and selling dear. If this kind of behaviour becomes widespread, then money ceases to have much meaning. The strategy of transition through accretion is that this happens more and more. To the point where money becomes merely symbolic. The parties to an agreement hand over money to signal the finalisation of the deal. But the real deal is going on in the negotiating rooms, working out the compact to supply and receive. Owning money does not give you predictable access to the things that other people are producing. So, the African village has only got $800. But they can still buy $2,000 worth of steel. Along with that, top-down state control becomes increasingly difficult. The state pays the police force and the army to implement their decisions. But now, with an avalanche of hybrids, these forces are also receiving gifts and negotiating compacts with other community bodies. Getting a large part of their income as goods and services, rather than as money.

The idea of the strategy of accretion is that there's a tipping point then to system change. These accretions add up. There's a cultural shift. Even being a capitalist, who's just exploiting their money for the sake of making the most profit, becomes stigmatizing. Trendy capitalists start to talk a different logic. Capitalists who are taking their ownership too literally find that no one will do business with them. Or their buildings get taken over by squatters. There could be a symbolic continuity. Where capitalists still appear to own their property, but the community and workers make all actual decisions. The ‘owner’ is a figurehead only. The same thing could happen with parliament. It could become a talking shop. It could not actually enforce anything. 

While I am happy to acknowledge that a transition by accretion is possible, I doubt whether it is likely. The most likely strategy to get rid of capitalism in the end is a revolution. Why do I say this? I can see hybrids and autonomous zones beginning to create an alternative economy. But as they do this, it becomes more and more apparent that the one percent, the capitalist class, owns very significant parts of the economy. For example, mining, steel making, the internet, international shipping, farming land. The most likely outcome is that a revolution (of some sort) would declare these resources public property and start using them as such. 

Preconditions for the transition

Are there any preconditions for a transition to the gift economy to take place? 

It seems likely that developments in civil society must prefigure the gift economy that will follow. Some of these developments will go back decades, or even centuries. Hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism, as well as autonomous zones, large and small. More on this in the following chapters. Likewise, a dense network of local organisation just prior to a revolution. Giving just one example. The Bolivian uprising of 2003 depended on community initiatives that anticipated and enabled the insurrection. 

Closures of streets and highways, neighbourhood councils on every block, volunteer vigils on every corner summoned by megaphones, barricades piled with stones, wire, and tires, independent radio stations broadcasting day and night, people’s guards to prevent looting of stores, and assemblies held in the streets, trade-union offices, and parish churches. 

The global conditions for a turn away from capitalism and class society lie in the failure of the promises that have held capitalism together. The promise of development for the global South. The promise of increasing affluence and more leisure for the global North. The promise of a peaceful life. Instead, neo-liberalism and globalisation have led to wage stagnation, growing inequality, and economic insecurity in the global North. The environmental crisis looms large, and people are blaming big business. The threat of disasters to come undermines the legitimacy of the current order. The promise of development in the global South is compromised by the everyday disasters of climate change. In every part of the globe the local hegemonic elite threatens war. To secure limited supplies of dwindling fossil fuels. To supply what is needed for a transition to renewables — when there really is just not enough to go around. To divert people’s attention from more pressing problems. 

These conditions are ripe for a revolutionary transition. But it seems quite possible that the far right will be able to make use of this discontent and disillusion to take over. To de-rail this trajectory, the left needs to find a feasible and attractive alternative. The gift economy makes sense as that alternative. Democratic socialists and steady state economy enthusiasts are certainly a part of the current resistance to capitalism. At the same time, these perspectives are not gaining traction more broadly. Contributing to the malaise of despair that the far-right exploits. What I look forward to is a breakthrough in which the gift economy suddenly starts to gain huge support from outside the current left. 

Revolutions sometimes happen that are completely unexpected and have not been preceded by a long-term mobilisation and ideological consciousness raising. The gift economy could readily come about like that. Disillusion boils over and the end of money and the market are a consequence. The detailed decisions and minute enforcements that support these institutions vanish.  The conditions of an uprising eliminate their everyday foundations. Looting, occupations, rent strikes, illegal distributions, citizen assemblies, workplace meetings. This activism is so widespread as to confound any attempt to re-constitute the state and money. Instead, this activism becomes organized as a non-monetary economy, with compacts organizing distribution, with voluntary collectives organizing production, with communities running their own affairs, and with meetings to iron out conflicts.

Perhaps more of a worry is that a transition to an egalitarian polity will fade away after initial successes. Class society could re-constitute itself, using the technologies of agricultural surplus to fund a ruling class and their army. Consider the fall of the western Roman Empire. The invading tribes were egalitarian bands led by chiefs — with councils of warriors advising them. The empire they defeated was a class society, with slaves, citizens, the army, the aristocrats, the bureaucracy, and the emperor. But within 400 years, a new form of class society had re-established itself with peasants, knights, lords, clergy, and kings. A patchwork of lordships and small kingdoms. How depressing. 

The best chance of avoiding this fate is a strong feminist movement that is augmented through the revolutionary transition. It is this foundation that is necessary to eliminate the key psychological prerequisites for class society. The precondition we need is one we already have – the feminist movement. To maintain a gift economy after the revolution we need that movement to succeed in abolishing patriarchy, a work in progress at present.

The next set of chapters will consider different kinds of prefiguring institution. Hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism. Temporary autonomous zones, especially the Zapatista territories in Mexico.
 
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