This article is included in the
recently released National-Anarchism: Theory and Practice, edited by
Troy Southgate and available from Black Front Press here.
By Wayne John Sturgeon
Mutualism
as Free Market Anti-Capitalism
It was the French philosopher
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who first coined the term ‘anarchist’ and
produced the economic theory of ‘mutualism’. This original
anarchism and mutualism envisaged a society which, contrary to
popular notions, was pro private property, patriotist, and advocated
a kind of co-operative free marketism through the establishment of a
mutual credit bank, which would lend to people at a minimal interest
rate to avoid systematic debt creation and usury, etc. Although
widely celebrated by the ‘left’ for his slogan ‘property is
theft’, this slogan is completely taken out of context and
misrepresented; for he also said, ‘property is order’,
distinguishing between the property created by labour and the
‘property’ created by state coercion and exploitation.
Proudhon
described mutualism as a ‘synthesis of communism and property’,
as he warned that a society with private property but without
equality would lead to statist hierarchical relations. This emphasis
on the balance between property and equality would later find another
attempted resolution in the thinking of Michael Bakuinn who developed
a more collectivist strategy, thus paving the way for
anarcho-communism via also the significant contributions of Peter
Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta etc. Thus, mutualism came to be
associated with ‘individualist’ traditions of anarchism.
I would suggest that anarchism after
Proudhon took a wrong turn, no doubt because of the problematic
engagement with Marxism that it suffered and was influenced by, and
that this is reflected in the more collectivist/leftist and
communistic leanings of all the anarchist thinkers after Proudhon,
until the emergence of the American individualist tradition.
Kevin Carson, the contemporary
mutualist economic philosopher, considers mutualism to be a form of
‘free market socialism’ but this is a pre-Marxist socialism that
operates as a kind of middle ground between classical liberal
economics (as Proudhon was deeply influenced by Adam Smith) and the
Guild socialism of people like William Morris, i.e. a libertarian
conception of full self-ownership and non aggression is balanced by
an economic egalitarianism via access to natural and social
resources. Also, while anarcho-communists/syndicalists deny private
property, mutualism – with its emphasis that workers should own property and have access to
capital in a ‘free market’ – bears striking resemblance to the
Catholic social theory of ‘distributionism’, which advocates
property ownership as a fundamental right and that the means of
production should be spread as widely as possible amongst the general
population of any given community or nation etc. To this extent, both
mutualists and distributionists would agree that ‘capitalism’ is
not actually a ‘free market’ (when it is disfigured due to the
statist driven intervention of cartels, monopolies, oligarchies and
multinationals etc.) and ironically ultimately produces not too many
‘capitalists’ but rather too few.
Kevin Carson has written extensively on
the subject and has attempted to provide a ‘subjective theory of
value’ basis to mutualist economic theory in contrast to Proudhon’s
‘labour theory of value’, which was inherited from Adam Smith and
also deeply influenced Karl Marx’s concept of exploitation etc.
Carson has attacked contemporary laissez-faire capitalism as it
denies a true ‘free market’ because of its separation of labour
from ownership and the subordination of workers to capital etc. (1)
The American Individualist Tradition
After Proudhon and the degeneration of
economic anarchist theory into various schools of left-wing
collectivism, we find the next renewal of the original and authentic
anarchist impulse to be within what has come to be known as the
American Individualist Tradition, as defined by people like Benjamin
R. Tucker, Josaiah Warren and Lysander Spooner, etc. It was Benjamin
R. Tucker who popularised Proudhonist mutualism
before becoming a Stirnerite egotist (2). From 1881 to 1903, he
edited the highly influential periodical Liberty. Tucker’s vision
of mutualism embraced an anti-monopolist laissez-faire capitalism of
small entrepreneurs, small farmers and craftsmen interpreting the
‘free market’ as an anarchist flux of voluntary associations and
contracts. While arguing that the antithesis of state monopoly is
universal competition, Tucker believed that ultimately the division
of labour would result in a co-operative social equilibrium via the
abolition of four great monopolies, i.e. the money monopoly, land
monopoly, tariff monopoly and lastly the patent monopoly. Thus, a
truly ‘freed market’ would fulfil socialistic aspirations while
avoiding despotic state socialism, of which he justly accused the
social-revolutionary anarchists of being in danger of fulfilling
despite their critique of orthodox Marxism etc.
“I will simply call attention to the
fact that it is an ideal utterly inconsistent with that of those
communists who falsely call themselves anarchists while at the same
time advocating a regime of ‘archism’ fully as despotic as that
of the state socialists themselves. And it is an ideal that can be as
little advanced by Prince Kropotkin as retarded by the brooms of
those Mrs. Partingtons of the bench who sentence them to prison: an
ideal which the martyrs of Chicago did far more to help by their
glorious death upon the gallows for the common cause of socialism
than by their unfortunate advocacy during their lives, in the name of
anarchism, of ‘force’ as a revolutionary agent and ‘Authority’
as a safeguard of the new social order. True anarchism believes
in liberty both as an end and means, and are hostile to anything that
antagonizes it.” (3)
It was the American Individualist
school of anarchism that laid one of the principal foundations for
what would later emerge in the libertarian anarcho-capitalist school
of Murray Rothbard – particularly in regard to Rothbard’s
flirtation with the American new left of the 1960s and early ’70s,
of which both in feeling threatened by corporatist state monopoly
capitalism on the one hand and an authoritarian labour movement on
the other searched for an elusive ‘third way’ between these two
extremes.
Anarcho-Capitalism and Market Anarchy
The first anarcho-capitalist thinker is
usually credited as being Murray Rothbard, who combined anarchism
with the traditionally pro-capitalist Austrian School as defined by
Ludwig Von Mises, but the true roots go back to Gustave de Molinari
(1819-1912) of whom the classical liberal philosopher Frederic
Bastiat named on his deathbed as his logical successor.
Interestingly, Frederic Bastiat sat next to Proudhon in the French
assembly and had publicly debated Proudhon on the issue of interest:
it was actually Gustave de Molinari who first advocated that market
forces could provide for courts of law, the police and even national
defence. There are three basic definitions of Capitalism:
1. An economic system of personal
property rights and voluntary exchanges of goods and services.
2. An economic system that features a
symbiotic relationship between big business and government.
3. The rule of workplaces and society
and the state by a relatively small number of people who control
investable wealth and the means of production. (4)
It is easy to see that definition 1
does not need a ‘state’ and thus could constitute an ‘anarchy’,
whereas definition 2 and 3, whether taken separately or together,
pretty much describe the world we inhabit and could economically
speaking at least constitute a form of corporatist fascism. It is for
this reason that anarcho-capitalists usually talk not so much about
‘free markets’ but rather ‘FREED’ markets that do not rely on
state intervention in the form of corporate power, cartels,
monopolies and rigged economic power concentrations. As definition 1
is consistent with a potentially stateless society, definition 2 and
3 could imply a form of state capitalism, which ironically is not far
away from communism. In fact, communism is the ultimate consequence
of state capitalism (or corporatism). They are simply two sides of
the same coin, and in this insight Marx was prophetically right when
he declared that capitalism was an inevitable stage on the way to
communism. In state capitalism, the state is in the service of
corporate interests even in a so-called ‘mixed economy’, so how
can this be a ‘free market’? In communism, the state has become
the corporate interest. In fascism, the ruling class and the base of economic
power are united in one all-encompassing entity. (5)
Is it not then surprising that the
fifth plank of the communist manifesto reads, ‘Centralization of
credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with
state capital and an exclusive monopoly’, a theme not too
dissimilar to the American Federal Reserve!
In this sense, ‘capitalism’ can be
inconsistent with the concept of a free market because it involves
direct interference in the market, and is only made possible when
force and fraud in the form of the state impede economic freedom and
voluntary exchange. But a truly freed market would be the means
whereby workers would be liberated through ending the privileges
conferred on economic elites by the state.
The wide dispersion of both property
and the means of production could satisfy social aspirations by using
market means. Mutualists would part company with anarcho-capitalists
over issues to do with land ownership, rent, landlordism, profit and
interest etc. But much like the tradition of national anarchism,
anarcho-capitalism has been greatly misrepresented and maligned by
the ‘orthodoxy’ of leftist-anarchist discourse, particularly
given much of contemporary anarchism’s latent Marxism. The
significant difference between anarcho-capitalism and national
anarchism would be anarcho-capitalism’s concept of society as being
atomistic, whereas national anarchism would favour organicism and a
more non-materialist conception of natural authority, in contrast to
a society seemingly valuing only entrepreneurship. Margaret
Thatcher’s infamous saying, “Society doesn’t exist, there are
only individuals and families” could be a
direct quotation straight out of Murray Rothbard’s libertarian
manifesto. It is a shame, however, that Ayn Rand’s ‘objectivism’
should be confused with anarcho-capitalism as she was greatly
critical of both anarchism and libertarianism, despite advocating the
voluntary taxation of government services. Her ‘egotism’ (much
like Max Stirner’s) should be clearly distinguished from
‘individualism’ as the ‘individualist’ recognizes the
‘social’ nature of his existence, and perceiving this commonality
sees it as the basis to ‘co-operate’ with others to achieve
mutual goals whereas the egotist on the other hand can see only
‘conflict’ because he has separated himself from others, others
who can only ‘serve’ his own personal self-centred purposes. (6)
But it would be a distortion to
associate anarcho-capitalism with reactionary conservatism if one
considers its roots during the 1960s and ’70s, as Rothbard was
clearly instrumental during this period in linking the
anti-interventionist anti-authoritarian American ‘old right’ with
the so-called ‘new left’ in opposition to the draft and the
Vietnam War. A ‘new left’ that also featured the inspirational
market anarchist revolutionary and survivalist Karl Hess, and the
radical pacifist ‘autarkism’ of Robert Lefevre. Rombard would
suffer from many a purge both from the right, the left and from
‘objectivists’ (who Rothbard considered a ‘cult’) before
embracing party politics in the formation of the American Libertarian
Party. It remained for another to develop a form of ‘left
Rothbardianism’ that was more consistently anarchist,
anti-parliamentary and voluntarist, arguing the libertarian
incompatibility of using statist means to realize anti-statist ends. Rejecting both minarchistic
conceptions of government and the ‘partyarchy’ of contesting
elections, ‘agorism’ was the realization that the ‘freed
market’ can only be arrived at by free market means. Welcome to the
‘autonomous zone’ of counter-economics.
Agorism, the Counter Economics of
Samuel Edward Konkin the Third
Agorism is a revolutionary
development within anarcho-capitalism or market anarchy as developed
by Samuel Edward Konkin the Third as an alternative to the more
gradualist, reformist and party political orientation of American
libertarianism, particularly in the thinking of Murray Rothbard.
Central to the thinking of agorism is the belief that you cannot get
rid of the state using statist means, so agorism completely rejects
any form of parliamentarianism from the outset. It was Samuel Edward
Konkin the Third who first originated the term ‘minarchist’ (i.e.
minimalist government) and declared that agorism was the only
consistent form of libertarianism that delivered an anarchist society
as its final destination without being co-opted by statism on the
way, as the minarchists would be.
Briefly, ‘agorism’ means ‘agora’,
the Greek for open market space, and Samuel Edward Konkin the Third
devised a revolutionary strategy consistent with the stated goal. He
identified four aspects of the economy: ‘white’ represented the
legal state-driven economy, ‘black’ the criminal market, although
he distinguished this by using the term ‘red’ to designate
whether a market was criminal in the sense of using violence such as
murder, extortion, theft, beatings and intimidation to
achieve its ends – as in the case of gangster operations such as
the mafia – or behaved in a manner totally non-coercive and
non-violent but in a manner prohibited by the state, which he
designated as a genuine black market. So we have ‘white market’ –
the system, the ‘red market’ – organized crime (a mirror
reflection of the violence inherent in statism), the ‘black market’
defined as all non-violent counter-economic activity outside of the
system, and finally the ‘grey market’ was the final economy that
Samuel Edward Konkin the Third defined as being one dealing in goods
and services not illegal in themselves but obtained and distributed
in ways legislated against by the state, the category into which
Samuel Edward Konkin the Third believed most so-called ‘white
collar crime’ fell.
The ideal situation would be to merge
the grey and black markets, and replace counter-economically the red
and white markets until finally realizing a form of economic
successionism with both statist and criminal operations being
replaced by libertarian ‘freed’ market institutions, through
voluntary action uniting both workers and entrepreneurs into one
movement against statism. It is this strategy of uniting workers and
entrepreneurs that places agorism in a context that is both
anti-statist and transcendent of the Marxist concept of ‘class war’
which, when faced with the contradiction of there being a ‘class’
of ‘capitalists’ at war with the ‘capitalist state’ (or is it
fascist mercantile corporate statism?) betrays its true colours.
Of course, there is no contradiction if
we understand that Marxism is just the other side of the coin to
state capitalism when in ‘power’. The agorism of Samuel Edward
Konkin the Third was a deviant and radical form of Austrian
economics and in this, following Ludwig Von Mises, Samuel Edward
Konkin the Third rejected the labour theory of value, replacing it
with the more individualistic subjective theory of value in
opposition to both Marx and Adam Smith, etc. But Samuel Edward Konkin
the Third did distinguish the term agorism from ‘capitalism’,
tracing the semantic use of the term to the pure free-marketer Thomas
Hodgskin, who had historically used the term in a pejorative sense –
as an ideology made by ‘capitalists’ who use coercion (i.e. the
state) to restrict the market, i.e. capitalism is neither free
enterprise nor a free market: it is an oligarchy, a cartel, a
monopoly of exclusive privilege that regulates the market in the name
of its vested interests through political domination via the theft
and extortion of compulsory taxation, etc. Agorism is also completely
‘leftist’ in supporting trade unions, workers’ co-operatives
and syndicates in the mutualist sense of the word, and as such it is
very interesting how market anarchism or even anarcho-capitalism can
be tolerant and inclusive of anarcho-communist institutions in the
context of a freed, open, competitive marketplace but
leftist/anarcho-communist economic models could never be tolerant or
inclusive of anarcho-capitalistic models (as neither are they of
national anarchist groups and communities, etc.)
It is also interesting to observe how
much of market anarchist literature is concerned with the market
provision of courts of law, crime and punishment, arbitration and
even national defence, and in that it postulates a society that could
be implemented now without any significant change in human nature.
Contrast this with the almost total
naivety of leftist anarchists who somehow appear to believe that
given the abolition of all government, armies and police, we would
instantly arrive at a totally egalitarian, peaceful, idyllic
‘brotherhood of man’ type society almost overnight with ‘all
things in common’, needing no means for any medium of exchange and
where no-one will ever act or behave in a manner ‘selfish’ or
self-interested.
Ironically, this naivety can only
betray the repressed subconsciousness of the latent control freak
(particularly when ‘human nature’ may not tick all the boxes
concerning the intellectual gulag that is political correctness come
‘the purges’, the day after the collectivists have won the
‘revolution’) with a prescriptive and dogmatic template for
utopia. Such people hold well-meaning values, but reality will
ultimately frustrate and hurt them (hence their projection onto
others of what they deny in themselves). Thankfully, the ‘agora’
is a marketplace concerned not only with the voluntary free exchange
of goods and services in a materialist sense, but also an open space
for the exchange of ideas without censorship.
Henry George and ‘Left-Libertarianism’
The economic theory of Henry George
(1839-1897) is sometimes referred to as Georgism, or Geoism. There
has also been an attempt to reconcile his theory with more
conservative schools of libertarianism, calling itself
Geolibertarianism. George advocated a largely decentralist
alternative both to finance capitalism and to communism, in that
where Adam Smith would ‘individualize’ rent, wages and interest into either private
or corporate bodies, thus laying the foundation stones for classical
capitalism and Karl Marx would ‘nationalize’ the rent of land,
plus wages and interest into the body of the state, Henry George
would ‘socialize’ only the rent of land, calculating this on its
productive fertility and site value.
The use and title of the land would
remain in the user’s hands, as would wages and interest, which
would result from voluntary free enterprise and human action in a
free market. Only the rent of land would be used as a source of
taxation, which would then be used to serve the needs of the local
community or nation. There would only be this ‘single tax’, and
so both labour and free enterprise would be free from the burden of
taxation, and removing taxes from labour products would ensure that
workers would enjoy a larger share of all the products and wages they
produce. The basic premise being that whereas people own what they
create, things found in nature – most importantly, land – belong
equally to all, as no-one has mixed it with their labour. (7)
This is an idea we find in the Bible,
where it emphatically states, ‘The land will not be sold forever,
for the land is mine, for ye are Strangers and Sojourners with me’
(Leviticus 25.23). There has been a long, rich history of radical
dissent arising from calls that the land be held as common property,
most notably Gerrard Winstanley’s Diggers movement, the Levellers
in the English Civil War, Thomas Spence who devised a scheme with
remarkable similarities to that of Henry George, and to Thomas Paine
who advocated not that land should be held in common or
collectivised, but rather that under a form of private property the proprietor of land owes to the
community a ‘ground rent’. This ground rent would create a fund
or resource that could be shared unconditionally both to rich and
poor alike, as a kind of universal basic income. It is easy to see
here how ‘land value taxation’ fits very neatly into the Social
Credit theory of the brilliant radical economist and monetary
reformer Clifford Hugh Douglas, who advocated a system whereby the
state distributes a basic income as a birthright to every citizen,
whether in employment or not, in the form of a national dividend.
Thus, the free market libertarianism of
Henry George is tempered by this mutual concern. Indeed, he believed
his theory of land reform fulfilled Proudhonist aspirations, and this
tradition continues today under the title Left-Libertarianism, most
notably in the works of political philosopher Hillel Steiner and
others who have shown that natural resource-based revenue would
provide an alternative to welfare statism in the form of a Citizen’s
Income, although some argue that this could become too paternalistic
and instead propose a universal Capital Stake to be bestowed on
everyone when they become an adult. Geolibertarianism is virtually
identical to this, and is thus distinguished from the Rothbardian
rejection of Georgism (who believed all natural resources should be
completely privatised and owned). This has further developed into a
form of green anarchism called ‘geoanarchism’ – a voluntary
form of geolibertarianism where the land rent is collected by private
associations rather than the ‘state’, with the right to secede
from any given geocommunity if desired.
It is important to stress that some
geoists use the term ‘land rent’ rather than ‘single tax’ to
avoid the negative associations of the word ‘taxation’, which
should be reserved to mean an ‘income derived by the State or
Sovereign from its citizens or subjects’. However, this is not
always related to any specific benefit necessarily seen by the people
it is extracted from, so some geoists advocate the term ‘stewardship
fee’ rather than ‘land value taxation’ because a ‘fee’ is a
payment for receiving an identifiable benefit. Also, stewardship is
usually taken to mean ‘the managing of something on behalf of
others’. In this sense and in the old Anglo-Saxon meaning, ‘to
own was to owe’ – ownership was and is socially inclusive and
‘land ownership’ was seen as being held in trust as a form of
stewardship to the community rather than something held exclusively.
Anarchist versions of Georgism always
stress the voluntary nature of the ‘land rent’, its more radical
advocate being the ‘Heathian Anarchism’ of Spencer Heath
(1876-1963). Heath envisioned cities or large land areas owned by
single private corporations who would own and rent out all land and
housing in a particular locality and who would provide all ‘public
services’ out of a voluntary paid rent. The rent would be collected
by the private corporate landlords rather than by the government (as
conventional Georgism allows), and so facilitate a form of
‘anarcho-feudalism’ or ‘proprietary communitarianism’.
Heathian anarchism has been the
template for many ‘anarcho-capitalist’ styled ‘retreatists’
who have also modelled themselves on the ‘anarcho-objectivist’
community ‘Galts Gulch’ of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged novel. But
such Heathian anarcho-feudalism is to be distinguished from the usual model of
competing security agencies in an anarcho-capitalist free market, as
in the Heathian model there would be only one provider though
voluntarily resourced. Spencer Heath explores these concepts in his
book, Citadel, Market and Altar (1957). The anarchic aspect of his
vision is that it provides a framework for political, cultural and
economic succession, as the ‘landlord’ is perceived to be someone
who protects tenants from criminality, taxation and government. Heath
also adopts a threefold or Trinitarian model of society where the
‘citadel’ represents the ‘landlord’ or institution that
protects society from both the state on one hand, and criminality or
chaos on the other. The ‘market’ represents the economy while the
‘altar’ is concerned with culture, spirituality and the
arts.
Richard Hunt and Alternative Green
Richard Hunt was the editor firstly of
the highly influential UK-based Green Anarchist magazine, published
in the mid-1980s, before creating the unique and innovative
Alternative Green magazine of the 1990s. Hunt devised a theory of
revolutionary change, which aimed at the creation of autonomous,
self-sufficient armed villages via a regression of technology by
proposing what he termed a ‘revolution of the periphery’ (i.e.
the Third World should stop sending their crops to the developed
world), coupled with a progressive break-up of the political unit
(via devolution towards a historical regionalism and economic
autarky) until we reach the village (8). But this could not be
achieved until taxes were cut, first indirect taxes on the poor until
the lifeblood of all government was shed by the
abolition of taxation. Hunt was very much ‘leftist’ in
orientation, but his support for traditional gender roles and the
importance of kinship in keeping the peace and equalizing wealth
found him many supporters on the so-called ‘radical right’. His
‘Luddism’ put him on the same page as the tradition of
‘anarcho-primitivism’, although he would have been suspicious of
labels and semantics.
One of Hunt’s most valuable insights
was the basic premise that, in the 21st Century, the battle lines
were no longer to be defined by the duality of ‘Left vs. Right’,
but rather by the concept of ‘Centralist vs. Decentralist’. Left
and right meant absolutely nothing, as racial separatists (a view
usually considered in polite liberal society to be dangerously ‘right
wing’) could be consistently decentralist and anti-authoritarian,
whereas the multicultural/multiracial socialist could be consistently
statist and thus centralist, in a manner bordering on the completely
authoritarian. This ‘green anarchism for the politically incorrect’
would be used by the more politically correct to smear him as a
fascist and of the far right, although ironically similar accusations
have also been aimed at Murray Bookchin’s ‘social ecology’ and
the ‘deep ecology’ of Arne Naess, in respect to their alleged
tolerance of inequality, natural ontology, popularism and gun rights,
etc. (9)
Hunt foresaw that in the future, the
radical decentralist right would merge with the radical decentralist
left, and out of this convergence would emerge a true synthesis that
would completely transcend left and right – a true ‘third way’.
With his engagement with Troy Southgate, firstly of ‘The English
National
Movement’ and then the ‘National
Revolutionary Faction’, the foundations were laid for the creative
emergence of national anarchism.
For all his great insights, Richard
Hunt’s theory was pessimistic and reductionist, almost idealizing
and romanticizing hunter-gatherer societies (a stage beyond the
autonomous village?), suggesting ‘peasants and primitive cultures
were the original affluent societies’. We cannot, and perhaps
should not, turn the clock back to an alleged idyllic pre-industrial
civilization. However, there is a society and culture that already
fulfils Hunt’s objectives – albeit, minus the guns. They are
called the Amish!
Many of the themes found in the thought
of Richard Hunt can be traced to the highly influential best-selling
book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, who was influenced by the
distributionism of G.K. Chesterton and whose ideas were also
popularised by Schumacher’s mentor and friend Leopold Kohr, author
of the brilliant The Breakdown of Nations. Central to Kohr’s vision
is the insight that throughout history, people and societies who have
lived in small units or ‘states’ have usually been more happier,
peaceful, creative and prosperous and that large political economic
states are actually dehumanising artificial constructs that impede
the emergence and celebration of more organic ‘historical
regionalist’ identities. For example, in Great Britain we find the
existence of small nations like the English, Scots, Irish, Cornish
and Welsh, plus the Islanders of Man. Britain is to some extent an
artificial state construct. If we considered Italy, we would discover
Lombards, Tyroleans,
Venetians, Sicilians and Romans. In
France, Normans, Burgundians, Asatians etc. In Spain, Basques,
Catalans etc. Finally in Germany, Bavarians, Hessians, Saxons,
Rhinelanders and Brandenburgers.
What is significant here, as Kohl
reflects, is that these historical regionalist peoples came into
existence holistically or organically while the great centralized
statist unifiers had to be created by force via bloody conflict, wars
and forms of ethnic imperialism. One can find a similar dynamic in
the creation of certain ‘nation states’ in both Africa and the
Middle East, born of British Colonialism, that have been merely the
whim of vested economic interests drawing lines on maps.
Kohr advocates the federalization of
great powers into ancient state units based on principles of native
particularism, devolution and proportional representation. We also
find this balance of federalism with devolution in the pan-European
Guild Socialism of Serbian philosopher and esotericist Dimitri
Mitrinovic (please see Dimitri Mitrinovic – a Biography by Andrew
Rigby). We also find this vision of ‘human scale’ and genuine
subsidiarity in the writing and activism of the Revd. John Papworth,
former editor of the journal Fourth World Review (and author of
Village Democracy) and a one-time associate of Richard Hunt’s
Alternative Green.
It is in the writings of such thinkers
that we may find a more satistactory resolution to the decentralist
ethos of Hunt’s extreme agrarianism and autarkism. Hunt asked many
of the right questions but perhaps only provided the answers more
akin to the survivors of a global catastrophe. (10)
Towards a
Libertarian Strasserite Synthesis?
The ‘radical right’ (11) in general
has tended to focus on social credit and distributionism as its
economic platform, but has also drawn inspiration from the ‘German
Socialism’ of Otto Strasser, whose ideology represented a ‘soft’
National Socialism and ‘left-wing’ opposition to the Nazism of
Hitler. This tradition was brutally suppressed by Hitler in a purge
that resulted in the death of Otto’s brother Gregor Strasser.
Although it is clear that Hitler’s purge of the ‘left’ in his
own party was anticipated for many years before, as the consistent
anti-capitalist/anti-Marxist stance of the Strasser brothers in
advocating a third positionist equilibrium of state feudalism was
completely at odds with Hitlerite military industrialization and
imperial expansionism (12).
In the Strasserite concept, the state
was to be the sole owner of the land, which it would lease to German
citizens. All were to be free to do what they liked with their own
land, but no-one could sub-let state property. Strasser therefore
embraced an autarkic vision of German farmers and peasants being
economically independent, being able to use the soil for their own
agricultural purposes, but of them also being encouraged by the state
to hold their plots in trust for future generations. It is here that
Strasser’s Catholicism and National Socialism bear striking
resemblance to the Biblical concept of the Jubilee.
This Strasserite third positional state
feudalism found itself increasingly alienated by the machiavellian
and totalitarian nature of Nazi Germany, given Hitler’s support of wealthy landowners and industrialists,
a concern that Strasser himself had to address by consistently
advocating the re-distribution of German soil to end the centuries
old monopoly that these rich landowners enjoyed.
Given the highly reactionary and
pathological ‘racial’ preoccupations of Nazism, Strasser disliked
Hitler’s constant scapegoating and ‘Jew baiting’, and had
little time for Alfred Rosenberg’s self-serving paganism given
Strasser’s devout Catholicism. Hitler accused Strasser of
liberalism and Marxism, while Strasser exposed Hitler’s elitist
contempt for the common German people and his seeking to raise
‘racial determinism’ above the political and economic. The fact
is that Strasser was neither a ‘liberal’ (in the modern sense) or
Marxist, but rather a revolutionary conservative who identified
genuine ‘national socialism’ (distinguished from both fascism and
Nazism) as being a prophetic synthesis of economic socialism and
state nationalism as coupled with a cultural religious idealism in
opposition to economic capitalism, social individualism and cultural
materialism/liberalism. Indeed, Strasser saw capitalism as a
consequence of liberalism, and attacked Marxists for attempting to
destroy capitalism while preserving liberalism, and fascists for
attempting to destroy liberalism while preserving capitalism!
Strasser did advocate central planning
and a state regulated economy, but one that was designed to put land
and property in the hands of people in a more devolved, decentralized
and distributive economy than that usually purposed by state
socialists or Fabians, etc. He wished to avoid the historical
tendency to degenerate into state capitalism and bureaucratic
authoritarianism, especially noticeable if one studies both Russian
and Chinese communism. In advocating the large-scale resettlement of
the countryside within a progressive process of de-urbanization,
Strasser attacked the large factories of both the Bolshevik and
capitalist systems, which resulted in mass industrial dehumanisation.
“The song of labour is a capitalist
device for the training of diligent slaves and the same
characterization applies to both the fascist and the communist
glorification of labour.”
Strasser clearly attacked the
authoritarianism of the bosses in capitalist production, and the
latent totalitarianism of the state in both communism and fascism. In
Strasser’s view, ‘The State will not be the night watchman and
policeman of capitalism nor the dictator whose bureaucracy cracks the
whip that drives the workers to the bench but as nothing else than
the organisational form of the people i.e., not as something that
stands above the community at large.’
Strasser also sought to abolish the
party political division of liberal democracy by transcending it
through a national unity non-partisan principle of ‘authoritarian
democracy’, although Strasser’s notion of ‘authoritarian
democracy’ was more akin to the classical and traditional Norse/Old
English – Viking/Anglo-Saxon ‘witans’ (i.e. regional governing
assemblies, lawfully binding popularist direct democracies that
inspired early Celtic societies) than to any ‘tyranny of the
majority’. This construct was ultimately more akin to a form of
Chestertonian agrarian distributionism or co-operative statism than
to fascism etc. This is particularly true in regard to
‘fascist corporatism’, which is the merger of big business with a
highly centralized state.
Regretfully, this Strasserite tradition
was to continue after his death to emerge in the more statist driven
construct of ‘National Bolshevikism’, as expanded by people like
Francis Parker Yockey, Jean Francois Thirlart and the ‘Eurasianism’
of Alexander Dugin, but ultimately in a more pragmatic ‘fascist’
direction, its more fruitful and libertarian strands being preserved
in the more ‘catholic’ third positional elements of the early
1980s’ National Front. Out of which came a more libertarian
development of Strasserite distributionist third positionism: the
tradition of national anarchism.
Conclusion
If it is to grow and develop into a
mass movement of resistance to the ‘New World Order’, National
Anarchism needs to articulate a vision beyond the narrow limitations
of an apparent survivalist paradigm which, however pragmatic, well
intentioned or prepared given the current global crisis and chaos,
needs to offer a consistent, coherent template for what at best, and
not at ‘worst case scenario’, a National Anarchist society would
look like. We have all had enough dystopias. It is now our mission to
dream up ‘anarchy’ all again. Utopia may well mean ‘nowhere’,
and it is as unlikely a destination in our lifetimes as it will be in
our children’s – but without some kind of ‘vision’, our
people will undoubtedly perish.
I believe that the revolutionary
economic theories I have very briefly touched upon offer some
‘signposts’ on the way to a coherent counter-economic National
Anarchism. Despite the semantics and variation, mutualism,
distributionalism and georgism are all variations on a single theme,
and maybe agorism (13) is the best way of getting there. The question
is whether we are consistent anarchists or take the more pragmatic
libertarian minarchist route, as many of the aforementioned radical
economic theories rely to a greater or lesser extent on some form of
central co-ordination, particularly if we would like to merge land
reform and geoism with social credit monetary reformism.
To successfully implement any of these
theories would require some kind of national revolution, hopefully
peaceful and gradualist, merged with some form of spirituality and
above all compassion (14). Without this, we will be no better and
will repeat the same mistakes as reactionary fascists, communists and
‘anarchists’ have always made, and that is of making the end
justify the means. If history will teach us anything, if we are not
to repeat it, our means must embody the ends to which they are aiming
and only in liberty can we marry the two. The problem with utopias is
that, however well intentioned (the road to hell being paved by), we
are guilty of a kind of social engineering, of laying down
blueprints, programmes and of central planning etc. For this reason,
the most unhegemonic theory thus considered consistent with anarchist
principles and involving no aggression in forcing one’s views,
however supposedly enlightened, on others would be Samuel Edward
Konkin the Third’s system of agorism.
It is actually the least dogmatic and
entirely flexible, given it can be adapted to either primitivist
pre-industrial or entirely science fiction type ‘futuristic’
technological societies. Also, as has already been stressed, agorism
is entirely capable of absorbing and allowing for workers’
co-operatives and anarcho-syndicalism. If we are so inclined,
economic successionism would allow racially separatist folk
autonomies to emerge. Thus, maybe national anarchism needs to make a
clean break with both the contemporary anarchist left and the
contemporary radical right, and instead seek alliances and
collaborations with libertarian currents, particularly the more
paleo-conservative strands, which would be more sympathetic to
national anarchism’s respect and concern for the preservation of
the family and traditionalism.
In this respect, market anarchists
usually look to the particular historical epochs as the templates of
what a libertarian society may look like, whether this be Celtic
Ireland (650-1650), the Icelandic Commonwealth (930-1262), the Quaker
William Penn’s ‘Holy Experiment’ in Pennsylvania (1681-1690) or
even elements of the American ‘wild’ west etc. (15)
Perhaps the concept of the
anarcho-Heathian retreat may be the model best suited to a
nationalist anarchist enclave, considered as a form of ‘counter
cultural’ opposition to statism awaiting its inevitable collapse.
This vision would and should be considered as evolutionary rather
than revolutionary as to openly engage the state would be to only
give it more power and opportunity to crush any significant
manifestation of popular dissent. Private currencies, LETS schemes,
anonymous digital currencies, home schooling, community mediation
groups and what could be termed ‘Guerrilla
Capitalism’ could all be methodologies of non-violent resistance to
the entrenchment and trappings of statism. (16)
These could also provide the basis for
the emergence of counter-economic ‘intentional communities’
within a context that is non-hegonomic, but particular, that does not
‘exclude’ but peacefully merely ‘separates from’. A form of
‘counter power’ or alternative governance. (17)
It is thus my personal conclusion that
the various shades of libertarianism briefly explored in this
article, whether mutualist, individualist, Georgist or agorist,
provide the best road map to anarchy, national or otherwise, and also
fulfil many of the best features noted in Guild Socialism,
distributionist and social credit theories. Their synthesis is an
urgent task and one worthy of all consideration and effort, as its
satisfactory resolution would give national anarchism a breathtaking
strategy for change. But until then, Agora, Anarchy, Action!
Notes
(1) The contemporary agorist activist
Brad Spangler has written an excellent article entitled Market
Anarchism As Stigmatic Socialism, where he contests the mistake
commonly made that mutualism and anarcho-capitalism are opposites,
suggesting rather that Rothbardian market anarchism is actually a
variety of ‘socialism’ (corporations being always a creation of
the state), particularly given market anarchism’s opposition to the
monopolization of capital and particularly when given a libertarian
class theory of action and revolution as developed by Samuel Edward
Konkin the Third, which combines mutualistic elements with Austrian
economics and anarchist individualism. Please refer to Markets Not
Capitalism – Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality,
Corporate Power and Structural Poverty, edited by Gary Chartier and
Charles W. Johnson.
(2) It is not commonly known as to what
extent anarchism was an influence on the formation of early fascism.
Benito Mussolini (whose father had been an anarcho-syndicalist
blacksmith) had as a revolutionary syndicalist translated Peter
Kropotkin and was influenced by the writings of Max Stirner’s The
Ego and his Own. In George Steiner’s Roots of the Right edition of
The Ego and his Own, writing in the preface (page 29), Steiner
observes that Stirner’s ideas were influential just prior to 1914
in Sarajevo, in a group known as the ‘anarcho-futurists’. In one
of his early manifestos, Marinetti, the founder of futurism,
celebrated ‘the destructive gesture of the anarchist’, in
idealization
of the violence associated with the
‘propaganda of the dead’ activist nihilism that has so blackened
anarchism as a cultural stereotype; a theme that would also emerge in
the ‘Circle Proudhon’ of George Sorel. Perhaps the ‘egotism’
of Steiner (not to be confused with individualism) if coupled with
corrupted versions of Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ can
paradoxically become the precursor to a form of fascism, when applied
to a ‘collective’.
(3) State Socialism and Anarchism –
How far they Agree and where they Differ. Benjamin R. Tucker, 1888.
(4) I am greatly indebted here to a
brilliant article by Gary Chartier (2010), entitled Advocates of Free
Markets Should Oppose Capitalism. Published in Markets Not
Capitalism, Autonomedia, 2010. The importance of this book cannot be
overestimated.
(5) Please see Francois Tremblay’s
excellent introduction to Market Anarchism, But Who Will Build the
Roads, Market Anarchy Explained, Xlibris, 2007.
(6) For this invaluable distinction, I
am greatly indebted to Butler Shaffer’s excellent article, The Ego
and his Own at http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer28.html
(7) Please see Progress and Poverty,
Henry George, Henry George Foundation, 1953.
(8) Please refer to Richard Hunt’s To
End Poverty, The Starvation of the Periphery by the Core.
(9) Please refer to Ulrike Heider’s
Anarchism, Left, Right and Green, City Lights Books, 1994 (page 91).
(10) Most people do not want to live in
a Britain of only 15’000 people, nor roam in a pre-industrial
anti-technological hunter-gatherer society, yet this is what Hunt
appeared to advocate (please see To End Poverty, page 201). The
future nonetheless may well turn out to be akin to ‘medieval’ but
hopefully it will be a ‘medievalism’ of computers, life support
machines and the wheel. Please see The Return of the Primitive by Ayn
Rand, which for all the shortcomings of Rand’s objectivism and
‘capitalism’ does offer a critique of ‘environmentalism’,
multiculturalism and certain extremes within ecological thinking that
is compelling. Also valuable is her observation that both militarism
and racism are forms of authoritarian collectivism.
(11) I am more than aware that a
genuine national anarchism is neither right nor left, but for the
state of clarification and economy of words I have sometimes used
these terms while realizing their limitations. Please see The Radical
Right in Britain, Alan Sykes, Palgrave, 2005.
(12) This section is greatly indebted
to Troy Southgate’s excellent and highly informative, well
researched book, Otto Strasser, The Life and Times of a German
Socialist, Blackfront Press, 2010. It is an invaluable resource on
the Strasserite tradition.
(13) Please see Samuel Edward Konkin
the Third’s An Agorist Primer, Kupubco, 2009, and The New
Libertarian Manifesto, Agorist Class Theory by Samuel Edward Konkin
the Third and Wally Conger, Grey Market, 2006. Samuel Edward Konkin
the
Third and Agorism are also briefly
touched upon in Ulrike Heider’s Anarchism, Left, Right and Green,
pages 118-123, concerning Samuel Edward Konkin the Third’s
association with the ‘Institute for Historical Review’, of which
he was listed as a member of the advisory board. Suffice to say that
this was motivated by his belief in the libertarian right of free
speech, and should not (as, sadly Heider does) suggest any sympathy
on the part of Samuel Edward Konkin the Third for ‘far rightism’
etc.
(14) Please see the excellent www.distributarian.com which
advocates a synthesis of distributionism, agrarianism and
libertarianism with a Christian anarchist approach to eastern
orthodoxy. Also refer to National Anarchism and the Old Faith by
Father Raphael Johnson, Vine and Fig Tree: www.vftonline.org
www.christianarchism.com and the Catholic Worker movement.
(15) Please refer to Francois Tremblay,
But Who will Build the Roads, Market Anarchy Explained, Xlibris,
2007.
(16) Please refer to Guerilla
Capitalism – How to Practise Free Enterprise in an Unfree Economy,
Adam Cash, Loompanics Unlimited, 1984. It is important to stress that
the ‘underground economy’ concerns those activities in regard to
non-payment of taxes and licences to the government. It is not about
drug dealers, prostitutes, loan sharks etc. who evade taxes on
‘illegal’ activities. www.masterjules.net/guerillacapitalism.net
(17) Hans Herman Hoppe’s Democracy –
The God that Failed argues that monarchy is preferable to a democracy
because
‘monarchy’ is a form of privately
owned government whereas ‘democracy’ is a publicly owned
government. Hoppe develops this concept to embrace a form of
Puritanical kinship tribalism that is intolerant towards democrats,
homosexuals, hedonists and communists etc. Of course, people will
always associate with likeminded folk (each to their own) but an
anarcho-capitalism of the sort as advocated by Hoppe would only
create ‘outlaws’ and gangs made up of the ‘persecuted’ and
those who do not ‘conform’. Rather, let out watchword be: “Mind
your own business and live and let live.”
Recommended Sources, Contacts and Links
Mutualism
Works by Kevin A. Carson:
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy,
Booksurge, 2007.
Organization Theory – A Libertarian
Perspective, Booksurge, 2003.
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution –
A Low Overhead Manifesto, Booksurge, 2010. www.mutualist.blogspot.com
www.mutualist.org Freemarkets v. Capitalism, www.nata-ny-blogspot.com
Market Anarchism, Individualism and
Left-Libertarianism
Molinari Institute,
www.praxeology.net/molinari.htm
Alliance of the Libertarian Left,
www.allianceofthelibertarianleft.com www.praxecology.net/all-left.htm
www.all-left.org Centre for a Stateless Society, www.c4ss.org
www.anti-state.com www.anarchism.net www.strike-the-root.com
www.freedomainradio.com
Markets Not Capitalism –
individualist anarchism against bosses, inequality, corporate power
and structural poverty. Edited by Gary Chartier and Charles W.
Johnson, Autonomedia, 2010.
But Who Will Build the Roads, Market
Anarchy Explained, Francois Tremblay, Xlibris, 2007.
www.marketanarchy.com www.simplyanarchy.com The Online Freedom
Academy, www.tolfa.us Lew Rockwell, www.lewrockwell.com
The Machinery of Freedom, David E.
Friedman, La Salle, Open Court Publishing Company, 1989.
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian
Manifesto, Murray Rothbard, San Francisco, Fox & Wiles, 1996.
Democracy – The God that Failed: The
Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order,
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Transaction Publishers, 2001.
www.anarcho-monarchism.com
Healing Our World in an Age of
Aggression, Mary J. Duwart, Sunstar Press, 2003. www.selfgov.org
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A.
Heinlein, Berkeley, 1968.
The Probability Broach, Neil I. Smith,
Del Rey, 1979.
Agorism
www.agorism.info
Alongside Night, J. Neil Schulman,
Pulpless, 1999.
An Agorist Primer, Samuel Edward Konkin
the Third, Kupubco, 2009.
New Libertarian Manifesto and Agorist
Class Theory, Samuel Edward Konkin the Third, Wally Conger, Grey
Market, 2006.
Guerrilla Capitalism – How to
Practise Free Enterprise in an Unfree Economy, Adam Cash, Loompanics
Unlimited, 1984.
Georgism/Geoism/Heathianism
Progress and Poverty, Henry George,
William M. Hinton, San Francisco, 1879.
Stewardship Economy – Private
Property without Private Ownership, Julian Pratt, Lulu, 2011.
www.stewardship.ac
Citadel, Market and Altar, Spencer
Heath, 1957.
The Henry George Foundation:
www.henrygeorgefoundation.org www.cooperativeindividualism.org
www.progress.org/geoism.html www.geonomysociety.com
See also the works of E.C. Riegel:
www.newapproachtofreedom.info www.beyondmoney.net
www.reinventingmoney.com
Also, John Zube: www.panarchy.org
Distributionism
www.distributionistreview.com
www.distributionist.blogspot.com
Social Credit
www.socialcredit.com
www.douglassocialcredit.com
See also For US, The Living: A Comedy
of Customs and Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein, Robert
Hale, 2005.
Strasserism/Third Positionism
Otto Strasser, The Life and Times of a
German Socialist, Troy Southgate, Blackfront Press, 2010.
Green Anarchism and Regionalism
To End Poverty, The Starvation of the
Periphery by the Core, Richard Hunt.
Village Democracy, John Papworth,
Imprint Academic, 2006.
The Breakdown of Nations, Leopold Kohr,
Green Books, 2001.
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