Am I Really an Anarchist?

Anarchism is defined in relation to ‘the state’. Anarchists oppose the state. I examine ideas about the state coming from Marx and Weber, founders of sociology. The state as it appears in class societies throughout history. Why the state is a slightly different kettle of fish in late capitalism. Is there any reason to expect reforms enacted by the state to solve current problems? If we had a revolution to a non-monetary gift economy, would a state be useful? The argument that a state would be impossible in such a society. What version of territorial organisation might work. 

Transcript

11: Anarchism, the State and the Gift Economy
 
Terry Leahy 2023

This chapter was prompted by a friend who had been listening to my podcast series. He was saying, if the state is so difficult to get rid of why not accept the inevitable? Learn to live with the state and get reforms using the state. So, this chapter is intended to consider all that. I will begin by looking at two views of the state that are from foundational sociological authors. Not in chronological order!

Weber’s definition of the State

Weber is associated with the mainstream definition of ‘the state’ in the social sciences:

a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.  

The term ‘legitimate’ is a puzzle. It suggests that a state only exists when the whole of society endorses the coercive actions of the state. I doubt whether all ‘states’ are in fact ‘legitimate’ in that sense. It seems unlikely that the slaves of ancient Rome saw the Roman state as ‘legitimate’. If we are aiming to describe society as it is, Weber’s definition should be revised. A state is an organisation that has an effective monopoly of force. The state can ultimately win in any violent conflict with another part of society. I also take it that Weber means that this monopoly is held by only some people within the territory. We would not call it a state if everyone had legitimate use of physical force. 

Marx and Engels on the State

Let us now turn to Marx’s ideas on ‘the state’. Marx and Engels take for granted the ideas that inform Weber’s later definition. The state is a special body in the population that commands a monopoly of force. In a well-known passage of the Manifesto, they have this to say:

The bourgeoisie … has at last, conquered for itself in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. 

The ‘executive’ is a body that makes plans for the whole class — that manages the affairs of the bourgeoisie. They can do this because they have the ‘political’ power vested in the state. The power to coercively enact these plans. We should remember that this was written in 1848, a time when only members of the upper classes had any political representation. In Marx’s Paris Manuscripts, ‘political’ power follows from the alienation of people’s innate sociable nature. Within class society, conflict is an inevitable effect of economic structures. These structures force people into antagonistic conflict, stifling more sociable instincts. To enable social life to continue, the state intervenes to control violence. It does this on behalf of the ruling class. To enforce the exploitation of the subordinate class, whether slaves, serfs or wage workers. These central ideas are also elaborated in Engels’ later book on the origin of the state.

This analysis informs the description of the coming communist revolution. Because the proletariat needs to overthrow the bourgeoisie, it must come to dominate the bourgeoisie – becoming a ruling class. This is the definition of ‘political’ and implies a state – because the proletariat achieves a monopoly of force to control and defeat the bourgeoisie.

The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organized as a ruling class. 

In so far as the proletariat takes the means of production from the bourgeoisie by force, they constitute a state. A body that controls a subordinate class. Marx and Engels conclude by predicting the demise of the state once the bourgeoisie have been defeated. The proletariat ‘sweeps away’ the exploitation of labour. Doing this, it sweeps away ‘the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms.’ There is no exploitation — so no ruling class and no subordinate class. The state, an organ of class power, can no longer exist. 

What takes its place? Here Marx and Engels are a bit vague. The public power ‘will lose its political character.’ In other words, the organisation of society by the public will not enforce the domination of one class over another. Instead, ‘we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the free development of all.’  An anarchist might find nothing objectionable in all this. So long as we are using the definitions that Marx and Engels use themselves. Anarchists might well agree that ‘the state’ is a body that employs coercion to maintain the power of a ruling class. They would then agree that the revolution must defeat that state power. They would agree that the vast body of the population, the proletariat, would use coercive power, when necessary, to take the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist class. They would likewise agree that once this process had been completed, no class would coercively control another and organize society through that. 

Where they would differ is that they would not use the term ‘state’ to refer to the coercive power of the proletariat — organized to take control of the means of production. Consequently, they would not see the ‘conquest’ of the state as ‘seizing’ the state for the proletariat. Instead, they might talk about ‘defeating’ the state. Appropriating the means of production by force. Setting up an association to run society. Both versions of this are committed to some idea of a ‘transition’ — a period in which the proletariat is taking over the means of production. It is starting to sound like the supposed difference between Marxists and anarchists is a mere verbal quibble. 

If the difference between Marxists and anarchists is not here, where is it? The logical place to look next is the detail about what this period of transition might look like. ‘Democratic Socialists’ draw heavily on what Marx and Engels say about this in their Manifesto and in The Critique of the Gotha Programme. Summarizing this. The working class is organized into municipalities and work councils. They elect delegates to a national government. This central government runs an army to suppress the capitalist class and appropriate the means of production. The representatives decide on an economic and industrial plan. A monopoly over distribution enables the government to implement their plan. Distributing to workers who are executing it. The government sets wages and prices and distributes the products of the nationalized industries. Wages are paid relative to hours worked. While this may seem like wage labour, it is not — because there is no extraction of surplus value by a ruling class. It could be a mistake to regard this payment as money. It is just a certificate that allows the worker to withdraw products from a government store. But clearly it is a universal quantitative measure of value. It is paid proportionally to hours worked and can be used to buy things according to ‘prices’ set by government. 

This picture of the transition is implicit in a great range of detailed proposals. For example, in the Manifesto.

A heavy progressive income tax. 
Implying a monetary economy. 
Abolition of property in land.
A first step in taking over the means of production. Nationalisation. Rents from land to be used for public purposes. 
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies. 
In other words, conscription of the proletariat by their state.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State. 
Gradual appropriation of the means of production as state property.
The improvement of the soil in accordance with a common plan.
Centralized state planning.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the State … a national bank with … an exclusive monopoly.
The proletarian state directs the economy through credit.
Centralize all means of production in the hands of the State.
The summary of what is intended. 

In chapter five I have explained what I think is problematic in this. The unintended consequences of attempts to implement this programme. How these attempts fall short — if the aim is to create a classless society. But here, what I am interested in is what anarchists make of this program. Also, what they propose as an alternative.

Bakunin on the State

Bakunin is one of the early anarchists. His writings have had a huge influence. The conflict between Bakunin and Marx split the early socialist movement in the middle of the nineteenth century. A key concern is that the state implies a despotism, a top-down command structure. Even if representatives are elected.  A republican state can also be despotic.

Because under the pretext of representing the will of all it will bear down on the will and free impulse of each of its members with all the weight of its collective power. 

Bakunin envisages the implementation of the transition described in the Communist Manifesto as a new mode of production. A new form of dominion and exploitation run by a technocratic ruling class. This government,

not content with governing and administering the masses politically, will also administer them economically, by taking over the production and fair sharing of wealth, agriculture, the establishment and development of factories, the organization and control of trade, and lastly the injection of capital into production by a single banker, the State. All of this will require vast knowledge and lot of heads brimful of brains. It will be the reign of the scientific mind, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. This will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real or bogus learning, and the world will be divided into a dominant science-based minority and vast, ignorant majority. 

A barracks regime for the proletariat, in which a standardized mass of men and women workers would wake, sleep, work and live by rote; a regime of privilege for the able and clever. 

So, what is Bakunin’s alternative? There are four key points. A bottom-up federation of associations plans the economy. There is no state, no organisation that commands obedience. Violence must be used to defend the revolution — but there is no standing army, no authorized (legitimate) coercion. Autonomous money-making cooperatives constitute the economy.  These key points raise a number of issues. 

1. A federation of collectives.

A federation of autonomous collectives will organize society. 

The political and economic organization of society must therefore not flow downwards from high to low, and outwards, from centre to circumference, as it does today … but upwards and inwards, on the principle of free association and free federation. 

The language here maintains the metaphor of centre/periphery and high/low. Not a distributed network but a central clearing house. The federation stands in place of the state that has been abolished. Autonomous social units send representatives to a federated think tank, that then works out the ‘political and economic organisation of society’. Implying one of two possibilities. That people obey these decisions because the federation has legitimacy as a duly constituted authority — and can ensure compliance. Or that their decisions are so finely tuned to the wishes of the representatives that no part of society wishes anything different. 

While Bakunin stipulates the ‘absolute freedom of individual, productive association and commune’, it is hard to square this with the detail. To organize a complex society, the federation must impose various laws, commanding through sanctions. The detail implies a monetary economy. The federation uses its financial power to secure compliance. 

The [provincial] parliament will modify provincial legislation in terms of both the respective rights and duties of individual associations and communes, and of the forfeits to which each shall be liable in the event of infractions of the laws it establishes. The communal legislatures, however, will retain the right to deviate from provincial legislation on secondary but never on essential matters. 

Having your cake and eating it too. Much of what the provincial and national federations will legislate is necessary to running a monetary economy — while ensuring social justice. It is difficult to see much leeway in the following. The parliament will decide the commune’s share of national and provincial taxation. The federation will ensure equality in a child’s maintenance, upbringing, and education. Implying federation funding. The federation will prevent people from exercising a right of inheritance – meaning that the federation will confiscate family wealth. Everyone will get equal development of their faculties and a job to enable that. Also implying funding and regulation. In the longer-term Bakunin envisages a global expansion for the federation. Free productive associations will:

… expand beyond national frontiers. They will form one vast economic federation, with a parliament informed by precise, detailed statistics on a world scale … and will both offer and demand to control, decide and distribute the output of world industry among the various countries so that there will no longer … be commercial or industrial crises. 

In other words, the global federation will take over distribution and the allocation of capital to industry. Accordingly, the associations (cooperatives) will lose their power to make these decisions. 

2. Absolute freedom of action – no state command.

A second theme is that after the revolution people, associations (cooperatives) and communes (municipalities) are totally free to follow their own decisions. People are slaves if they must obey the decisions of a state. Instead, after the revolution:

All individuals, associations, communes, provinces, regions and nations have the absolute right to dispose of their own fate, associate or not associate, ally with whomever they please and break off alliances. 

Reorganisation of each region, taking as its starting point the absolute freedom of individual, productive association and commune. 

How can this be reconciled with the vision of the federation I have explained? The federation has many tasks to maintain an egalitarian and supportive society. Much of this work requires control over money — taxation, funding for social services, redistribution, the allocation of capital. While people may see the necessity for all this in the abstract, they are unlikely to welcome it when it disadvantages their own household, cooperative, or municipality. This is a post-revolutionary culture where ‘command’ is not legitimate. Where these constituting local organs are free to do the opposite of what the federation asks. How can this organisation of the economy, along with the sanctions required to manage that organisation, work in that context? Or considered from the opposite angle. How can these bodies be free to do what they will — while the federation can impose ‘forfeits’ — if they break federation laws?

3. No standing army or police force.

The next key point is the organisation of armed force. As explained, a State relies on armed force to ensure compliance. A police force and a standing army. The anarchist federation does not intend to command — so neither of these organisations are required. On the other hand, armed force will be necessary to make a revolution. 

So, the revolution is to begin with the ‘abolition’ of central administration, state bureaucracies, ‘standing armies and State police’.  While there will be no standing army ‘every able-bodied citizen must, if necessary, become a soldier in defence of his home or liberty’.  The revolution itself will not be peaceful. Instead, a war of ‘extermination’ is inevitable. The duty of the revolutionary is to ‘sacrifice his repose, his well-being, his vanity, personal ambition and often his personal interests’.  So, the revolutionary volunteers to fight the necessary battles to defeat the ruling class. This certainly endorses the use of force to seize the means of production. It is not clear whether force may also be used after the revolution. But perhaps this is implied. The statement that communal legislatures retain the right to deviate from provincial legislation except on essential matters suggests sanctions. What if we had an anarchist federation today? How would a national federation respond to a communal legislature that decided to instal a nuclear reactor? I am guessing that this would be regarded as an essential matter. If necessary, armed force would be used to block the project. 

Ultimately, I doubt whether a lot of typical anarchist statements represent the difference between anarchist and statist socialists effectively. In those statements anarchism means that everyone is free to do what they like — without fear of coercion. I do not think that is a workable program. I would instead put it like this. In an anarchist society there is no special body of the population invested with the authority to monopolize the use of force. Moreover, there is no special body with the capacity to monopolize the use of force. While this is a good broad brushstrokes picture of the intention of Bakunin’s view of the state, the fine print suggests something else. A federation that does have effective powers of coercion.

4. Market cooperatives are the economic units.

So now I come to the last key point. This is a move which very much defines the difference between Marx and the anarchists. Marx envisages a transitional stage to full communism. In the transition the state owns the means of production, employs workers, and makes decisions about distribution. Bakunin by contrast intends that during the revolution, ordinary workers take over the means of production and run each unit as a cooperative. A market economy. Each association sells products and pays wages to the members of their cooperative. This is the anarchist programme for post-capitalism, as Bakunin sees it. Usually, this seems so obvious to Bakunin that it is assumed. He reveals this context as he comments on more detailed matters. 

Bakunin usually describes these work collectives as ‘productive associations’ . He is aware of workers’ cooperatives, banks of mutual aid, workers’ credit unions, and trade unions being established in England. He celebrates these as footsteps on the path to the revolution. 

He recognizes the necessity for the post-capitalist federation to step in to enforce contracts. 

… associations legally recognized as collective bodies will … have the right to bring charges against all individuals, whether members or outsiders, as well as all other regular associations defaulting on commitments to them. 

For example, if you pay another cooperative to supply a carton of spare parts and they never arrive, you could charge them with breaking their contract. It is unclear how the federation establishes this legal process and imposes sanctions. But what is very clear is that we have a competitive market economy, and the economic units are legally registered cooperatives. The federation is supervising and enforcing the proper use of money — ensuring through legal sanctions that money means something.  

There will be no coercion to force people to enter these cooperatives. They can continue as sole traders. So why would people become cooperative members? Because:

It would miraculously increase the productive energies of each associate member … who will earn a great deal more in less time and with far less trouble. 

In other words, for exactly the same reasons the capitalist class replaced the cottage weavers with factory employees. More monetary value per worker. This reveals much about the assumed economic context. The workers in any cooperative depend on sales to earn a living. So, they are as vulnerable as any capitalist employee to market competition. Their cooperative must seek the highest possible profit — or risk going out of business. The ‘freedom’ of the worker is the freedom to do what the market requires. 

Describing the anarchist programme for the revolution, he advocates the establishment of a market economy of cooperatives in somewhat confusing terms:

Confiscation of all productive capital and means of production on behalf of workers’ associations, who are to put them to collective use. 

Here, he means taking control of these means of production and running them as market collectives. The means of production are to be used collectively – in other words, by collectives — to make money. 

This context informs everything Bakunin has to say about the federation. No wonder the federation needs to tax, needs to supply social services, needs to enforce contracts. The economy is a market monetary economy. Each enterprise competes to hang on to its place — and may fail. Throwing the members of the cooperative into poverty. The federation must intervene to mediate this competition, to enforce the rules of the market game, to back up the monetary system, to supply public services. But, on the other hand, anarchist principles dictate that there is no state to enforce these sanctions, the forfeits, the taxes, the charges in court. Really?

Kropotkin

Kropotkin is the first well known anarchist writer to promote a non-monetary post-capitalism. He describes his vision as ‘communism’. In many ways, it is identical to Marx’s vision of a post-transitional fully realized communism. His major departure from Marxism is that he has no time for a transitional stage. Kropotkin, like the other anarchist founders, does not envisage a statist transitional period – a dictatorship of the proletariat with state ownership. It is typical of Kropotkin to talk about the ‘abolition of the wage system’ rather than the abolition of money . Nevertheless, everything he says about this shows that he does not intend to continue with money . In a clear break with Bakunin, Kropotkin sees market cooperatives as prefiguring experiments. Not as a model for the constituting units of the post-capitalist society. 

Kropotkin creates his own ‘communist’ position as a close analogy to Marx’s vision of ‘communism’. Communism is common ownership and allocation based on need. The arrangement that Kropotkin rejects is Marx’s transitional stage — after the revolution but before communism. In that model, the state (as a collective) allocates goods and services through a wage related to hours of work. Kropotkin refers to this model as ‘collectivist’. For both Marx and Kropotkin, the possibility of ‘communist’ distribution is the abundance that modern industry permits. Accordingly, the dispute between communist and collectivist may end up being couched as follows.  Have we got to that point where we can produce so much that it is possible to allocate according to need? Clearly Kropotkin, writing in 1892, thinks we have.

Okay, so what is Kropotkin’s vision of anarchist communism? 

1. All means of production, including housing, land and even clothing, are owned in common. 

private individuals should control neither the instruments of labor (tools, machines, factories), nor the places of cultivation of raw materials (the earth), nor the raw materials previously stored up, nor the means of storing and transporting them to particular places (the means of communication, warehouses, and so on), nor the means of existence during work (the supplies of the means of subsistence and housing). 

2. People choose what do from any field of work that is considered necessary. They bind themselves to work five hours a day between the ages of 20 and 50. Leaving another five hours for tasks not deemed necessary.  Because the workers themselves organize production, they make sure their work is enjoyable, avoiding boring work and extreme divisions of labour  . 

men, women, and children will gladly turn to the labour of the fields, when it is no longer a slavish drudgery, but has become pleasure, a festival, a renewal of health and joy. 

3. Modern technology allows us to produce a more than sufficient abundance. 

it is … certain that mankind in general, aided by the creatures of steel and iron which it already possesses, could already procure an existence of wealth and ease for every one of its members.  

Distribution is egalitarian. So, frivolous over consumption by a minority does not deprive the rest of us. 

4. Distribution is according to need. 

no stint or limit to what the community possesses in abundance but equal sharing and dividing of those commodities which are scarce or apt to run short. If this or that article of consumption runs short, and has to be doled out, to those who have most need most should be given. 

Kropotkin refutes the argument that distribution ought to be allocated in proportion to hours of work. All products are the outcome of the work of a vast multiplicity of producers. It is impossible to quantify these various inputs. So, by what right does any one person claim a certain proportion of the ownership? In cases where there is more than enough to go around, people will just take what they want from a common stock. A scarce resource will go to those with greatest need. Or be parcelled out in equal shares. After the revolution, these forms of distribution will be implemented by parties of volunteers, handling different parts of production and distribution. For example, a collective manufacturing ploughs for peasant farmers. The same principles of distribution apply to agricultural land, factories and housing. They are to be allocated equally and according to need.

5. There is no state and no state enforcement. An anarchist society is one in which people are never motivated by fear of coercion.

Enough on that topic already. 

Kropotkin and the gift economy

The gift economy, as I have described it in earlier chapters, may be viewed as a detailed scenario of how Kropotkin’s anarchist communism could work. Many of Kropotkin’s examples fit the concept of the gift economy quite exactly. The people who go out to sea in lifeboats to rescue mariners. They do not expect compensation from those they rescue. They do not ask first, ‘Can you pay me for this service?’ The gift is for those in need, and it is calibrated exactly to their need. 

Kropotkin considers the problem of food provision immediately after the revolution. After previous revolutions in France, the peasants stopped selling their grain. Even though the revolutionary authorities threatened to execute them. The peasants did not trust the currency. The urban workers starved. Kropotkin suggests this solution. Voluntary work committees will make agreements to supply the peasants directly with what they need. To organize production to cater to the real needs of the peasants — for tools, machinery, clothing. The peasants will just come in to the workshops to collect their requirements. In return, the peasants will agree to supply the grain the workers need.  To supplement this arrangement, parties of urban volunteers will take over land around the cities. Land that the rich now use for their parks. They will turn this land over to agriculture. 

A similar strategy is suggested for the distribution of clothing after the revolution:

Groups would spring up in every street and quarter to undertake the charge of the clothing. They would make inventories of all that the city possessed, and would find out approximately what were the resources at their disposal. It is more than likely that in the matter of clothing the citizens would adopt the same principle as in the matter of provisions — that is to say, they would offer freely from the common store everything which was to be found in abundance, and dole out whatever was limited in quantity.   

In other words, the authority over distribution would go to a voluntary collective of clothing distributors. Likewise, the food crisis likely to follow a revolution.

The well-intentioned citizens, men and women both, will form themselves into bands of volunteers and address themselves to the task of making a rough general inventory of the contents, of each shop and warehouse. In every block of houses, in every street, in every town ward, bands of volunteers will have been organized. These commissariat volunteers will work in unison and keep in touch with each other. An immense guild of free workers, ready to furnish to each and all the necessary food. Give the people a free hand, and in ten days the food service will be conducted with admirable regularity.  

There is a jump between the broad theoretical position and the examples. Broad overview. The whole population owns everything, and distribution is by need. In the examples. Self-constituted voluntary groups take control of parts of the means of production and distribute what they produce to groups that they themselves nominate. The term ‘gift economy’ captures the spirit of this jump. A slogan that shows how ownership by all and distribution by need might be put into practice. 

The division in anarchist thought 

While anarchists are agreed on the topic of the state, they differ on economic matters. I will call it a split between ‘market anarchism’ and ‘non-market anarchism’. Some recent anarchist texts lean towards market anarchism — while they also acknowledge that anarchists have different opinions on money. Sam Buchanan [1999] defines anarchism in accord with Bakunin’s first and second points. ‘Anarchists see any use of force or coercion, or any constituted authority, as illegitimate. The organisation of society must be by voluntary agreement’ . He endorses the use of money, because it is ‘so fantastically useful that it will always turn up in some form or other. Money only gets dangerous when it is allowed to accumulate and can be used to get power over other people. The only way of stopping this is to change what is socially acceptable’.  Nicolas Walter [1977] describes anarchist federalism like this. ‘Members of such councils would be delegates without any executive authority … the councils would have no central authority, only a simple secretariat’.  He acknowledges a range of options where money is concerned. ‘There might be equal pay for all, or pay according to need, or no pay at all. Some associations might use money for all exchange, some just for large or complex transactions, and some might not use it at all. Goods might be bought, or hired, or rationed, or free.’  Yet the emphasis is on market cooperatives. 

A society organised according to the principle of anarchist mutualism would be one in which communal activities were in effect in the hands of cooperative societies … Economic mutualism may thus be seen as co-operativism minus bureaucracy, or as capitalism minus profit. 

Non-market anarchists in recent times

Market anarchism has not gone without challenge. The example of the Spanish anarchist revolution is hard to ignore. In some rural areas, communities provided goods and services according to need, dispensing with money. In the early days of the revolution in the cities, essentials were supplied without payment. For the most part, anarchists cite these examples to show that anarchists have a variety of perspectives on money, suggesting this is not a defining issue. More recent versions of non-market anarchism come out of anarchist and ultra-left critiques of alienation. While capitalism offered the working-class affluence, it could not relieve alienation. In the fifties, Paul Cardan [first 1959] nominated alienated labour as the central contradiction of current capitalism. In the seventies Murray Bookchin, took up this theme [1971]. They celebrate the revolt against boring work as a revolutionary impulse. 

The Situationists of France in the sixties drew the implications of these writings where money and the market are concerned. If people were free from alienated labour, they would want to be free to distribute their work. In a typical passage, VanEigem [1967] remarks:

The crumbling away of human values under the influence of exchange mechanisms leads to the crumbling of exchange itself … new human relationships must be built on the principle of pure giving. We must discover the pleasure of giving: giving because you have so much. What beautiful potlaches the affluent society will see – whether it likes it or no – when the exuberance of the younger generation discovers the pure gift. The growing passion for stealing books, clothes, food, weapons or jewellery simply for the pleasure of giving them away, gives us a glimpse of what the will to live has in store for consumer society. 

Anarchist takes on anthropology were influential. Stateless societies of the past did not have money and markets. Marcel Mauss [1925] named ‘the gift economy’ as a typical form of non-monetary distribution. Marshall Sahlins [1972] argued that these were the original affluent societies. Hours of work were minimal. Pierre Clastres [1974] claimed stateless societies of the Amazon actively blocked state formation. The role of chiefs was to mediate — to facilitate a consensus. ‘Command’ was unknown, and autonomy expected. 

A later anarchist author in this tradition is Peter Lamborn Wilson [1998]. He celebrates Fourier as a founder of his thinking on post-capitalism. Let’s have work that is also play, ritual and art. He investigates pre-class societies of the archaeological record to confirm Clastres’ ethnographic report. To give one example.

Money originates and emerges in history as debt. But it has a “pre-history” as appropriation. The egalitarian economy of the Gift — which does not know money — can be shattered only by the economy of surplus and scarcity … some few will enjoy surplus, the rest must experience scarcity. Slavery, tribute, and debt are all forms of scarcity. 

Meaning that class society creates scarcity and with it surplus. These are not primordial givens for the human species. In these recent versions of non-market anarchism, the absence of alienated labour implies the absence of money and the state.

The Gift Economy and the State

The first two sections of this chapter have looked at Marxist and anarchist views of the state and post-capitalism. The ‘gift economy’ is a type of non-market anarchism. The promotion of a non-monetary post-capitalism is a tendency given a new emphasis in recent years. Yet its roots go back to some of the authors mentioned above, and especially to Kropotkin. Recent writers with this perspective do not usually describe themselves as anarchists. Mostly, they do not come from the anarchist milieu. The term ‘non-market socialist’ describes their political location well. I use the term ‘gift economy’ as a convenient shorthand, following the Situationists. 

A key insight is the following. Non-market socialists emphasize control of the means of production through voluntary collectives. Operating to provide goods and services to communities directly — without monetary payment. As either gifts or self-provision. Views on the state flow from this central premise. As argued in previous chapters, the state is impossible in a gift economy. This is because every person is being supplied with goods and services by other producer collectives. These other collectives operate independently and have total control of the distribution of their product. A state as defined by Weber means a monopoly of the control of violence. The state must reliably command an army or police force to implement its decisions. In a gift economy no one has any motive to put themselves in that position. To be the willing servant of state directives and wield violence accordingly. Nobody needs a ‘job’ paid in money to access goods and services. Nor are they looking to get a privileged position, supplied with good rations. Vis a vis a broader population of impoverished slaves. We could also say that the state is expected to control, or at least supervise, the economy. This becomes impossible in a gift economy — where producers’ collectives independently make decisions.

From this perspective, anarchist attacks on the state often miss the point. They treat ‘the state’ as a moral problem and look to a moral solution once everyone can see that the state is not required. I look at it more like this. The gift economy is run by voluntary producer collectives, controlling their own distribution, and depending on other voluntary bodies for supplies. Participation becomes a necessity when working groups are constituted by volunteers. Likewise, cooperation and mutual aid, when these voluntary groups coordinate their actions to serve the needs of the community. By contrast, participatory control at the grass roots is impossible for any kind of market economy. Whatever the system of political decision making. In a market economy, whether state socialist or anarchist, the working class must attempt to regulate the market through decisions made by representatives. Using monetary incentives. This top-down control blocks local participatory democracy. By contrast, in a gift economy social justice, economic planning and environmental restraints must come from the independent decisions of voluntary producer collectives. Earlier chapters have explained why this is quite feasible. 

Territorial organisation in a gift economy

Foundational anarchist texts talk about two types of organisations for a post-capitalist society. Workers’ associations and communes. Associations are workers’ cooperatives. In a gift economy these would operate without monetary exchange. Through networks. Associations with a common purpose would no doubt federate to exchange ideas and work out strategies. For example, transport collectives running bus services. These associations would also operate through agreements to supply and receive. To construct chains of production. The second kind of organisation that these foundational texts refer to is a ‘commune’. This term refers to a municipal level territorial organisation, run by assemblies of citizens living in the municipality. What these early anarchist authors envisage is a ‘federation’ constituted by delegates from these communes. In other words, an overarching territorial organisation. Whether such territorial organisations are necessary in a gift economy is debatable. For example, we might think of sewerage as a service that is provided by a local commune and requires that territorial supervision. Alternatively, we might imagine a club of sewerage providers operating in chapters in each locality. Linking up with other associations to supply their needs — pipes, compost bins, cement or whatever. 

In Beyond Money, Anitra Nelson envisages ‘Yenomon’ as one version of what a territorial organisation might look like in a post-market community mode of production.  Yenomon is pretty much like the ‘Twin Oaks’ intentional community that she describes in other writings.  The assembly of Yenomon sets up working committees. They allocate work rosters to ensure that all members are participating fairly. People can choose what work to do, from a list of tasks set up by the assembly. The community ensures fair distribution based on needs. The committees assess the needs of members for goods and services that can be produced locally — almost all of what is necessary. They liaise with other similar communities to source goods constructed outside their own community. 

Nelson makes it clear that this is just one way of organizing a post-money society. There might be a plurality of models operating at once. Her example suggests at least one function for a territorial organisation. That is to ensure fair distribution of their products in the community. For my favourite example, fencing mesh. The association producing fencing mesh would likely have a factory in one community and distribute into a whole bioregion. Rather than distributing mesh to each farming unit across this whole landscape, they might prefer to rely on local communities to undertake that. A local territorial organisation that could assess the needs of each community garden, farm and residential backyard. 

What I would like to consider is what kind of territorial organisation could make sense in a gift economy. The ‘un-state’. As argued above, it could not be a state, with the powers of command that a state can exercise. So how could a territorial organisation operate? I am going to draw from the strategy of the Zapatistas, explained in the previous chapter. Taking some of that into a more general framework. 

We can think of the un-state as a territorially focused gift economy club. The federal un-state helps to facilitate agreements between communities in a whole bioregion. The local municipal un-state helps to facilitate agreements between community members at a more local level. For example, agreements about land use. Agreements about distributing products — after they have been supplied by associations from other communities. These territorial clubs could be stacked in a nested set of federations — municipal, regional, national. Altogether this is the un-state. The municipal level sends representatives to the regional level, which then sends representatives to the national level. We could imagine international meetings to discuss issues relevant to several nations at once.

The intention of such a territorial organisation is to facilitate compacts on issues that are particularly relevant to a territorial unit. For example, the use of water from a river that runs through a bioregion. 

There is no intention to take the power of distribution away from workers’ associations. There are compacts that are not a concern of the territorial organisations. For example, the train service. The people making rails need to communicate with the people who are laying the rail line, and they need to communicate with the people who are planning the route. These are compacts, which link a chain of production across different territorial units. There are also federations of clubs, which are independent of the relevant territorial organisation. For example, a regional federation of lifesaving clubs. On the other hand, these producer associations would on occasions need to make agreements with territorial units. Let’s assume that the federated railway clubs might like to offer a new service for a set of towns and villages, creating new stations and rail lines. Anybody residing within that region might want to have a say. The regional un-state could be the organization where coordination between the train clubs and the residents could take place. Facilitating an agreement.  

In detail, how might this federated un-state operate? Starting at the municipality. Residents nominate a number of candidates and then vote to elect a selection. In the municipal assembly, the representatives nominate candidates for the regional assembly and so on. Elected representatives are expected to see their role as a duty, rather than an opportunity to dominate. You might elect three times the number of required representatives — and rotate them. Two thirds of their time back in their communities, continuing their usual work and community commitments. One third in office. There would be a right of recall if the elected representatives were not acting in good faith.
 
One role of these territorial organisations at each level is to propose agreements for their territory. The next step is to take their proposal back to their communities and see if there is a consensus. If not, they suggest an alternative and go through the same process. Until finally an agreement is reached. Or not as may be the case.  

Once an agreement is reached, the role of the representatives is to monitor this compact to discover whether it is being implemented. They are not expected to enforce that agreement — they have no authority to do that. If they discover that the agreement is not being implemented, they notify their assembly that there is a problem. The whole process starts again. The assembly attempts to develop a new agreement that everyone's going to be happy with. 

Another role is to respond to a request for an agreement on a particular matter. People in the municipality might approach the un-state and say, ‘Well, we've got a problem with this proposed train line here, and we want to talk about it in our municipality. And come to some agreement that’s going to work for everybody’. 

How is such an un-state supplied? Well, not by taxes enforced by the courts and a police force! That is not how the gift economy works. Instead, the un-state must be supplied like every other club. By donations of goods in kind. So, to give an example of normal process. The people who are in the birdwatching club are supplied by their local communities with food and do their share of the housework and agriculture. Their community is supplied with goods from other communities through chains of production. This is how the birdwatchers receive food, and also cement, wire, binoculars and solar panels. It would be exactly the same with the elected officials of the un-state. They would also be supplied with gifts from the community. Donations produced and distributed by the workers’ associations.

I offer this picture of the un-state to give readers a sense of what the options may be. However, I am not sure that I advocate it. It might be that all the functions of a territorial organisation could be carried out through producer clubs. For example, the railway clubs might approach the residents in a bioregion inviting them to a set of forums to consider their needs and arrive at a consensus about what might work. A form of territorial organisation that is designed for a particular set of issues. Likewise with fencing mesh. The village producer association with the factory could invite communities in their bioregion to set up fencing mesh committees to estimate needs for fencing mesh., A federated bioregional committee could consider these in combination to develop a bioregional plan. After which, the producer association would make and supply fencing mesh according to this plan. 

Conclusions

This chapter has considered three approaches to the state in a post-capitalist society. Marx and Engels make a distinction between the transition and full communism. In the transitional period the state ensures that the working class, through its representatives, controls the means of production, plans what is to be produced and ensures fair distribution. This is a monetary economy. The workers’ state owns the means of production. Planning and distribution is achieved through the state’s control of money. In the market anarchist account, workers’ cooperatives produce and sell goods and services, paying their workers accordingly. The state is absent and there is no authoritative command. This is somewhat difficult to reconcile with another foundational idea in these anarchist texts. That the federation plans production, allocates capital, determines distribution, and restrains competition. A third approach is that of the gift economy. The gift economy approach sees the absence of the state as an effect of the economic arrangements of non-market socialism. With no money, voluntary clubs produce stuff and distribute gifts. In such a context, the State is impossible. On the other hand, some form of territorial organisation could occur. So long as it works like other economic units of the gift economy — as a voluntary club with members supplied by gifts from other clubs. Whether or not an un-state is necessary is a moot point.

References

Black, Bob, Anarchy after Leftism, Columbia Alternative Press, Columbia, 1997.

Bookchin, Murray, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Ramparts Press, Palo Alto, 1971.

Buchanan, Sam, Anarchy: The Transmogrification of Everyday Life, Committee for the Establishment of Civilisation, Wellington, 1999.

Bakunin, Michael, Selected Writings, Arthur Lehning (ed), Jonathan Cape, London, 1973.

Cardan, Paul, Modern Capitalism and Revolution, Solidarity, London, 1974 [1959].

Clastres, Pierre, Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology, Zone Books, New York, 1987 [1974]. 

CrimethInc (ed), From Democracy to Freedom: The Difference between Government and Self-Determination, CrimethInc ex-Workers' Collective, Salem, Oregon, 2017.

Graeber, David, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Melville House, New York, 2011.

Graeber, David, ‘The New Anarchists’, New Left Review, vol. 13, January-February 2002, pp. 1-21.

Guerin, Daniel, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Mary Klopper (trans), Monthly Review Press, London, 1970.

Habermann, Friederike, Ecomony:UmCare zum Miteinander, Ulrike Helmer-Verlag, Sukzbach, 2016.

Holloway, John, Hope in Hopeless Times, Pluto Press. London, 2022.

Kropotkin, Pëtr, ‘The conquest of bread’, in The Anarchist Library, 15 February 2009 [1892], viewed on 25 November 2023, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread

Kropotkin, Pëtr, ‘The state: Its historic role’, Vernon Richards (trans), in The Anarchist Library, 1 March, 2009 [1896], viewed on 25 November 2023https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-state-its-historic-role

Kropotkin Pëtr, ‘Communism and Anarchy’, Graham Purchase (ed), in The Anarchist Library, 25 February 2009 [1901], viewed on 25 November 2023, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-communism-and-anarchy

Kropotkin, Peter, Peter Kropotkin: Anarchism and Revolution, Freedom Press, London, 1969.

Kropotkin, Pëtr, ‘Fields, Factories and Workshops’, in The Anarchist Library, 11 April 2010 [1898], viewed on 25 November 2023, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-fields-factories-and-workshops-or-industry-combined-with-agriculture-and-brain-w

Lamborn Wilson, Peter, Escape from the Nineteenth Century and Other Essays. Autonomedia, New York, 1998.

Leahy, Terry, Humanist Realism for Sociologists, Routledge, London, 2017.

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12. Conclusions
 
Terry Leahy 2023

This book has been written to explain how system change to a liveable future could actually work. I have been outlining a feasible pathway to a gift economy post-capitalism. Showing how such a post-capitalism might be preferable to other options. But, of course, it would be fanciful to ignore the difficulties we might have in moving in this direction. Class society has been around for at least five thousand years of human history. It seems like a mad dream to imagine a sustainable society that is also a long-term victory over class and the state. While our environmental problems means that system change is inevitable, there is nothing to prevent a new class society rising from the ashes of capitalism.  Pushing the vast bulk of humanity into impoverished slavery. A new feudalism as I have called it.  Class society is a simple mechanism. Cereal agriculture permits an agricultural surplus. A ruling class takes control of the surplus. It pays an army, either in kind or with money. They manage the subordinate class and stave off attacks from other states. What is thoroughly depressing is this. It is unlikely that any of the key requirements of this mechanism will go away, however dire the crisis of current capitalism. We are unlikely to forget how to do cereal agriculture!

Doing without money is a huge part of the gift economy utopia that has been explained here. A new social mechanism to end class and live sustainably cannot use money. Money is not accidentally connected to class society. A class society may operate without money – like the Incas. But money is a useful tool of class societies. It is no accident that the class societies of Eurasia used money. Also, no accident that capitalism, a social order premised on money, is yet another version of class society. Continuing the use of money is guaranteed to re-start class society, whatever the good intentions of a revolution.

The usefulness of money and markets is premised on alienated labour. Money makes it easy to provision an army and raise taxes. An economy based on money sidelines other values – social and environmental. The failure of so many revolutions is partly down to the continuation of money into the post-revolutionary settlement. Monetary economies allowed aspiring elites to take control again, destroying attempts to do things differently. 

In a market every player must make sure that they win monetary exchanges as often as possible. To fail in this is to fail to get the resources you need to make your operation work, to secure your standard of living, your place in market competition — within a hierarchical order defined by money. Money inevitably claims priority. 

Money implies a state. A universal system of valuation requires a centralized enforcement — to make sure the value of money is protected and maintained. 

Money creates inequality. The lesson of the Monopoly game. There are winners and losers in every monetary exchange. Winners are given leverage to win more. 

The market and colonialism go hand in hand. Market competition tempts players to the easy leg up provided by primitive accumulation. Turning nonmarket resources into capital.

The earth cannot afford this system. Money looks past the environment. It cannot do otherwise. The gift economy is the way to combine autonomous creative work, distribution by the producers, high-tech production, care of the environment, gender equality, cultural diversity, and participatory governance.

One of the common objections to a project like this book is that we have had enough of utopias. Utopias make a mad assumption that all humans are basically the same and that a one size fits all solution can work. There is an implied imperialism, crushing diversity. I have a few comments on that. 

One is that money imposes a uniformity on societies. Competition between producers tends to produce a universal price on commodities, as Amin points out. At the same time, as explained here, it creates inequality, a gradation of ownership and income, quantified in money. 

This brings me to my second point. The gift economy is a global society that encourages and permits diversity. People are producing goods and services that fit their own cultural understandings and distributing them with a regard to need — in a way that makes sense to them. 

My third point is that you cannot get away from ‘utopias’ by rejecting them as imperialist. Any set of ethical critiques adds up to a list of recommendations. Even when couched as not this, not that, not the other. It still ends up as – well instead this, well instead that and so on. 

It is all very well to promise the world that you do not intend to impose your utopia on other people. But just having an ethical perspective is to contradict some other perspective, you cannot avoid that.  

We are just being naïve if we think that we can tell people we need system change without explaining our utopia. You think the present system is a catastrophe. No argument with that. Well, what do you propose to replace it? A perfectly reasonable question. 

A very unsatisfying answer is to say, we want diversity and different people will come up with different answers. Anti-utopianism masks what is a very real problem for those wanting to replace capitalism. We do not agree about what that replacement might be. This sends a message that we do not know what we are doing. And a lot of our suggested solutions are not very convincing.

This book has identified the gift economy as one approach and recommended that. I have identified two other left approaches. One is democratic socialism. Most everyday punters understand that idea perfectly well and do not like it. The other is radical reformism. The default for leftists who reject socialism. But hardly a popular solution for most people. If they liked it, they would be voting for the Greens parties. They see it as the nanny state. Life run by interfering, moralising middle class bullies — who cannot be trusted. In this book I have been more concerned with why it cannot possibly work, even if people wanted it.

I suppose my last point on this. I do not really take these anti-utopian relativist raves seriously. Do these critics of utopias really want a diverse global future with half of humanity living as serfs in a theocratic ethno-state? Well no. Scratch the surface and you will find one of three things. 

1. Anarcho-primitivism a la John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen. A diversity of horticultural egalitarian societies with a pre-class toolkit. 

2. The gift economy as metaphor. Moral ideologies about caring and looking after each other — but not much about how that looks as an economy. Money is not mentioned. Critical asides about exchange value and commodities that never get turned into anything you can get your teeth into.

3. Or our old friend radical reformism, a la Herman Daly with a post-colonialist gloss tacked on. 

I am sorry to be so caustic. These are lovely people. But really?

Population is the topic that you always get when you lay out an alternative economic system before an audience. Don’t we need to reduce population to relieve the pressure on the planet? How can you do that in a gift economy? I suppose the people raising these issues imagine that a strong central government with a police force and army is the only thing that can control population pressure. Yes and no. 

Within current capitalism, some governments have done a much better job at this than others. Which points to the fact that it is a social and cultural problem. The governments that have done nothing are usually beholden to some mad version of religious fundamentalism. Posing as traditional. Backed up by a version of masculinity that sees offspring as a proof of manly vigour and economic status. 

Social scientists know quite a lot about this issue. It is surprising that so many global North environmentalists are ignorant about it. First up, birth rates are in fact falling. With this, global population will peak and then start to fall later this century. Second, environmental problems are very much connected to one’s position in the global economy. Australian per capita consumption is four times what the earth can bear while the global average is 1.5 times. The old slogan I = PxAxT (Impact equals Population x Affluence x Technology) still applies. Third, even in poor countries today, the level of education of women is a key to population pressure. Increase the education and independence of women and you see a decline in fertility rates. This suggestion is not meant to let men off the hook where population is concerned. To treat it as ‘a woman’s problem’. It is more about tactics that may work in a social environment where patriarchy is well entrenched — and where men want children as a token of masculine achievement. Finally, the bleeding obvious. People have more children when they worry some will die, and they are depending on their children to look after them in their old age – because society won’t. 
 
The gift economy is the ideal social structure to deal with all these issues at once. A safety net of community material support, security in all basic necessities, equality for women, a reduction in unnecessary consumption. A largely local bioregional economy — where people are very much aware of how they depend on adequate land and forests for future generations. And an economy where you do not have to destroy the environment to get access to basic necessities.

Whenever you introduce the idea of a gift economy, a typical reaction is to assume that you are talking about a low-tech Hobbit village society, with feudal technologies. I have explained why I do not make this assumption. A complex technological society could function without money. I envisage quite a bit of use of high tech. Nevertheless, I would make the following comments. We need to massively cut down our use of non-renewable resources. By using less high-tech things made from metals. By rigorously recycling everything we can’t grow. We need technologies that most well-informed people can understand and fix – Illich’s concept of convivial technology. 

We could make do with a lot less high tech than we think. I go ballistic when I hear people say that the starving global South needs fossil fuels to rescue them from poverty. In my experience in African rural villages, a huge improvement could be made to people’s lives by composting toilets, and a local version of permaculture agriculture. The technological requirements are chicken wire, fencing wire, nails, garden tools, polypipe, a bit of cement, mosquito nets, some guttering and that is about it. The problems in those villages are not an absence of high tech. In fact, they are usually awash with mobile phones. Their problems are based in social structure, local politics, and the dominance of the capitalist imaginary. Yes, I would like to maintain a high-tech solution for serious medical problems and pandemics. I think good contraception and safe childbirth is essential to save us from patriarchy. But I would hate to think that we are scared of getting rid of class society — because we are worried about losing our high-tech capacity. There is too much at stake.

I would like to take a look at ‘anarcho-primitivism’. It is not a strong contender in the left at the present time. Nevertheless, I get the feeling that the more current postcolonial critiques of modernity end up with somewhat similar implications. Anarcho-primitivism starts from the recognition that societies throughout most of human history were stateless. Using an anthropological terminology, these were hunting and gathering societies. Even after the invention of agriculture, stateless polities remained in a very large part of the globe. Usually called ‘horticultural’ by anthropologists. Anarcho-primitivists suggest that we could do well by abandoning the technologies developed by class societies. Doing this, they argue, we could go back to this kind of stateless culture. 

I am not entirely unsympathetic to this perspective. These societies were egalitarian, at least as far as men were concerned. Within the partially separate community of women, there was also a rough equality. Though some people had more influence, no one had the authority to command obedience. These societies looked after their environments and had an enviable connection to the natural world. They had a rich cultural and creative life. Their work, if you could call it that, was not alienated. They chose what to do with their time and how they might want to distribute what they produced. Much of this is identical to what I have described as the gift economy.

What could be wrong with the anarcho-primitivist solution? Maybe this is the end point of collapse anyway and not a bad thing at that. I would certainly like a gift economy to be set up that has the scope to enable this — for those who want it. But I have a few qualms if it is conceived as a one size fits all solution for post-capitalism.

One issue is that there is no way we can forget our agricultural knowledge. The whole process of class society would surely start up again as soon as one of these horticultural societies, the offspring of collapse, re-invented class. Using the agricultural stored surplus to back up a ruling elite. 

I do not find this solution particularly utopian where gender is concerned. My reading of these societies — as they have been in the past —suggests the following unpleasant aspects. Patriarchy, competitive masculinity, raids and small wars, cruel initiations. More intense in horticultural societies, but also present in hunting and gathering societies. Personally, as a long-term defector from all this toxic rubbish, I would not want to live there. Also, as I will argue in more detail, all these patriarchal aspects provide a grounding for the next iteration of class society. I do not think an act of will — and a cultural resolve carried over from the present — could eliminate all this from an anarcho-primitivism in practice. This time it will be different is not a convincing program. 

Then there is the low-tech aspiration of anarcho-primitivists. Technology got us into this mess so let’s abandon it. I can see why they think this, but my view is that this evil technology is a consequence of class, rather than the other way around. 

In the community at large (north and south) there is really no appetite for this solution. Most people view collapse to a low-tech world as a disaster. We would lose much of our medical science, our understanding of the cosmos, our agricultural science, our chemistry, the many sciences of the natural world, including those telling us where we are going seriously wrong. Our complex digital archiving and communication of cultural products. 

I use the ‘our’ here intentionally. I am of course perfectly well aware that we have this knowledge now, at least in part, as a by-product of vicious global exploitation. Also, that this knowledge is spread very thin in some quarters. And finally, that this knowledge is used to much ill effect in the context of capitalism. Nevertheless, our understanding of all this science is very much a global resource by now. Do we have to lose all this to get rid of class society? 

I mean if this is truly the only answer that will save the planet, I am all for it. Modern science be gone. But is it? I think that this thinking is based on a false analysis of why we are in the present pickle. It is not modernity/colonialism/science/the enlightenment/humanism — as a de novo package of cultural invention from Europe — that have caused the disasters of class society and its latest capitalist version. Instead, I see it like this. The prime mover of the modern world is the ghost in the machine, the capitalist imaginary. That cultural invention has informed a social machine. The developments mentioned above have taken shape in the context of that social machine. Capitalism has made them serve it. On the other hand, a lot of these developments have their own sources, they are not just side effects of capitalism. Likewise, these cultural inventions are not necessarily and forever tied to the capitalist machine. What we might make of this flotsam and jetsam, washed up after the demise of capitalism, it is hard to tell. 

What anarcho-primitivists overlook is the link between patriarchy and class. And the link between feminism and technology. It is no accident that anarcho-primitivism sounds like a very macho vision. A warrior fantasy. 

Patriarchy is pretty well universal in human societies. It depends on the advantage men have in political conflicts with women. While it is a wonderful thing to be responsible for childbirth and wet nursing, the gendered division of labour coming out of this allows men to take control of political life. The first significant feminist movement, in the late Victorian period, comes about as the size of the family drops, as reliable contraception is introduced, as death in childbirth is reduced. It gets another boost in the seventies with even more reliable contraception. 

It is not technological determinism to say this. Women mobilized to attack patriarchy. A choice, a cultural invention. Yet at the same time a cultural invention enabled by a change in the material conditions. To wrap this argument up. Some version of our current medical understanding and our low birth rate are the premises of a successful feminist movement.

So, what is the link between patriarchy and class? Class society depends on patriarchy as a necessary precondition. Patriarchy is not enough in itself to cause class. But it is a vital plank. In patriarchy, men are largely absent from the daily care of infants. They have other fish to fry. The emotional links that come out of caring for infants tie you down. Boys growing up are anxious and uncertain about what it is ‘to be a man’. They solve this problem by rejecting femininity and proving their masculinity in competition with other men – sorting the men from the boys, cutting the mother’s apron strings. Some version of ‘toxic’ masculinity is a central element of patriarchy, reinforcing that power structure as men deny their nurturing side. The other key effect of the patriarchal family is the way it trains us all in the psychology of hierarchy and willing subordination. Through the experience of early childhood in the patriarchal household.

These psychological characteristics are of great assistance to any class society. They inform the oppressive hierarchy of class and the wars that are necessary to maintain elite power. Without a technology that makes feminism possible, an anarcho-primitivism cannot remain egalitarian and horticultural for very long. The elements necessary to re-start class are all present – cereal agriculture and patriarchal masculinity. Looking at all this, we must ask how far we might want to push an anti-modernist agenda. At any rate, that is how I look at it.

I worry a bit that this book is like a fairy tale. An escapist romp. We are facing a collapse. We are likely to destroy a large part of biodiversity before things settle down. With a warming of two degrees, people could only live south of Melbourne or north of London. A superhuman effort in social reform and material construction would be necessary to re-locate the world’s people. Even if that was in fact possible. That we could feed this number on that amount of land. Surely, we need some solutions that are politically possible in the short run. What to say about this. This book does not reject the reformist initiatives that seem more feasible in current times. But I have also pointed to their problems. Working on blocking the worst effects of capitalism — while developing a program to get rid of it — makes sense. Capitalism is the root of our worries. Even as things collapse, and disasters pile up we can be aiming at the gift economy as the long-term solution. 

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