STATE VERSUS SYNDICATE

The following is excerpted from The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939, edited by Sam Dolgoff.

The contrast between statist authoritarian political organization and a free social order based upon anarchist communist economic principles cannot be more complete. In order to clarify and illustrate these diametrically opposed conceptions we make the following comparisons:

THE POLITICAL STATE

  1. It treats the people as minors, altogether incapable of self-government.
  2. All powers reside in the State: economic life, education, the administration of justice, and the enactment and enforcement of laws involving all individual and social life.
  3. Even in a democratic State, not the people but the State is sovereign. The State centralizes all armed forces (army, police, prisons, and courts), while the people are left defenceless to resist the aggression of the State.
  4. In the State and its authoritarian institutions the people are divided by their necessarily varied and often conflicting political, religious, and social ideas and interests. It is precisely in these areas where people unavoidably differ most and in a free society should differ.
  5. Although the State represents a minority, it still claims to have more knowledge and more ability than the combined collective wisdom and experience of all mankind. "One knows all."
  6. The State, in imposing a fixed norm to be followed at all times (a constitution or code), forfeits the future and constricts life, which is always mutable and multifarious.
  7. The State monopolizes everything for its own benefit. The people have nothing to do but pay, obey, produce, and conform to the supreme will of those who command: "Give me full power and I will make you happy."
  8. Society is divided into two classes: those who rule and those who must obey.
  9. The State perpetuates and legalizes the fiction of liberty, democracy, and autonomy, only to deceive the people and render them obedient.
  10. The State evolves in the direction of fascism or state socialism. It camouflages its prerogatives, but is bound to lose its privileges as class-consciousness grows, and as individuals grow in ethical-intellectual stature.
  11. In an organization with a political base, power flows upward toward the hierarchical bureaucracy and away from the people.

THE ANARCHO-SYNDICATE

  1. The workers in each branch of production are fully able to administer their particular functions without the interference of the State or the employing classes.
  2. Initiative and control passes to the workers' organizations: the control of education to teachers; health to medical workers; and communications to technicians and workers. The control of production belongs to the workers and their Federation of Unions.
  3. Power is returned to and exercised by those directly affected. It is not monopolized. Every individual has his corresponding share thereof, leaving to the collective what everyone concedes to it. There is autonomy of individuals and coordination of groups through free agreement.
  4. [People] group into unions according to their needs and occupations, and into free Communes according to their locality and common interests. Theis is the area in which the common interests of all [people] are greatest.
  5. In a free Collectivity each benefits from the accumulated knowledge and specialized experience of all, and vice-versa. There is a reciprocal relationship wherein information is in continuous circulation.
  6. In the industrial organization, the norm of conduct is decided in accordance with the prevailing and changing circumstances.
  7. All who would be "redeemers" and meddlers are dispensed with. Everyone conducts his own affairs, and thus frees himself from an imposed political-economic routine and regimentation inculcated by centuries of false political indoctrination.
  8. All people are equal partners in a cooperative association of producers.
  9. Industrial administration realizes the democratic principle: government (self-administration) by the people. It realizes the principle of federation -- the granting of maximum autonomy and communal organization to each and every unit of production.
  10. Evolution elevates the workers to the greatest possible degree. To defend and promote the economic rights of each individual, the workers eventually establish organizations capable of fulfilling their ethical responsibilities and obligations towards their fellow human beings.
  11. In an industrial organization, power flows downward towards the collective and the individual.
Return to the Anarchy for Anybody Homepage.