Economics

Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles

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Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles by Pyotr Kropotkin

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Anarchism, the no-government system of socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economic and the political fields which characterize the nineteenth century, and especially its second part. In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And in common with the most advanced representatives of political radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of the political organisation of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by means of free groups and federations – freely constituted – all the infinitely varied needs of the human being.

Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles first published in 1887 by New Fellowship Press, London. This version from Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets. Roger N. Baldwin, editor. Vangaurd Press, Inc., 1927
Communism and Anarchy from Freedom, 1901. Reprinted in Small Communal Experiments and Why They Fail, Jura Books, Australia.
Both texts taken from the Anarchist Library

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The Deepening Capitalist Crisis: From Blood and Dirt to much worse

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The Deepening Capitalist Crisis - Shawn Hattingh [ZACF]

Author: Shawn Hattingh

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It was long ago stated that capitalism came into the world dripping in blood and dirt, from every pore, from head to toe. While it has demonstrated that it won’t simply collapse under its own weight, the recent goings-on around the current capitalist crisis have shown that with age it has become even more hideous. Capitalism is now rank with massive state intervention required to simply keep its rotting body moving: through states propping up the financial sector and deepening the colossal attack on the working class.

Shawn Hattingh is a member of South Africa’s
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
www.zabalaza.net
This text from the Anarkismo site.
www.anarkismo.net

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Communism: What’s in a Word?

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Communism: Whats in a Word - Paul BowmanAuthor: Paul Bowman | File size: 350 KB

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This article opens by looking at how the meaning of communism as opposed to socialism evolved in the late nineteenth century and closes with a look at how this applies to the free software movement today. The terms socialism and communism appear in England around the 1820s as terms adopted by members of the co-operative movement who were sick of hearing their politics referred to as “Owenism”. Originally the two terms were undifferentiated but by the 1840s communism was used by revolutionaries to differentiate themselves from reformists such as J. S. Mill who had adopted socialism to cover an indigestible mess of reformisms.

From Red and Black Revolution, the theoretical magazine of the
Workers Solidarity Movement, #10, Jan/Feb 2005
http://www.wsm.ie/c/red-black-revolution-10

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The Economics of Anarchism

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The Economics of Anarchism by AnarchoAuthor: Anarcho  |  File size: 290 KB

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Includes two texts, The Economics of Anarchy and Anarchist Economics

Capitalism is in crisis (again!) and the failure of state socialism could not be more clear. Social democracy has become neo-liberal … while this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. With its state capitalism and party dictatorship, Stalinism made the disease (capitalism) more appealing than the cure (socialism)! In this anarchists should be feel vindicated – the likes of Bakunin predicted both these outcomes decades before they became reality…

So there is an opening for a real alternative. For we must not forget that capitalism is but the latest form of economy. … So we have seen slave labour, followed by serfdom, followed by capitalism. What is capitalism? As Proudhon put it, the “period through which we are now passing… is distinguished by a special characteristic: WAGE LABOUR” (“la salariat”, to use the Frenchman’s favourite term for it).…

So capitalism is an economic system based on hired labour, that is selling your labour (liberty) piecemeal to a boss. For anarchists, this is best called “wage slavery” …

These texts from the Anarchist Writers site

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Anarchy and Communism

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Anarchy and Communism by Carlo CafieroAuthor: Carlo Cafiero  |  File size: 256 KB

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“At the Congress … a speaker who was distinguished by his bitterness against anarchists said: ‘Communism and anarchy howl to find themselves together!’

Another speaker who also spoke against anarchists … cried when speaking of economic liberty: ‘How can liberty be violated when there is equality?’

Well, I think that these two speakers were wrong….”

First published as a pamphlet by Emile Darnaud in Foix (southern France) in 1890

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Marx’s Economics for Anarchists: An Anarchist’s Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

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Marx’s Economics for Anarchists: An Anarchist’s Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy by Wayne PriceAuthor: Wayne Price  |  PDF file size: 491 KB

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The world is facing upsetting upheavals, with aspects which are political, military, ecological, cultural, and even spiritual. Clearly this includes a deep economic crisis, overlapping with all other problems. We need to understand the nature of the economic crisis if we are to deal with it.

Of the theories about the economy, the two main schools are bourgeois, in the sense that they advocate capitalism. Both the conservative, monetarist, unrestricted-free-market school and the liberal/social democratic Keynesian school exist to justify capitalism and to advise the government how to manage the capitalist economy….

“The transcripts of the 2006 meetings [of the governors of the Federal Reserve Board and the presidents of the 19 regional banks]… clearly show some of the nation’s pre-eminent economic minds did not fully understand the basic mechanics of the economy that they were charged with sheparding. The problem was not a lack of information; it was a lack of comprehension, born in part of their deep confidence in economic forecasting models that turned out to be broken.”

NY Times (January 13, 2012); p. A3.

This essay can also be downloaded as a PDF with flowing text here

Economics

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Anarchy and Communism (web)

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Download PDFby Carlo Cafiero

At the Congress held in Paris by the General Region, a speaker who was distinguished by his bitterness against anarchists said: ‘Communism and anarchy howl to find themselves together!’

Another speaker who also spoke against anarchists, but with less violence, cried when speaking of economic liberty: ‘How can liberty be violated when there is equality?’

Well, I think that these two speakers were wrong. Continue reading →

Marx’s Economics for Anarchists: An Anarchist’s Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (web)

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Download PDFby Wayne Price

“The transcripts of the 2006 meetings [of the governors of the Federal Reserve Board and the presidents of the 19 regional banks]… clearly show some of the nation’s pre-eminent economic minds did not fully understand the basic mechanics of the economy that they were charged with sheparding. The problem was not a lack of information; it was a lack of comprehension, born in part of their deep confidence in economic forecasting models that turned out to be broken.”

NY Times (January 13, 2012); p. A3.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Labour Theory of Value

Chapter 3: Cycles, Recessions, and the Falling Rate of Profit

Chapter 4: Primitive Accumulation at the Origins of Capitalism

Chapter 5: The Epoch of Capitalist Decline

Chapter 6: The Post-War Boom and Fictitious Capital

Chapter 7: State Capitalism

Chapter 8: Socialism or Barbarism?

Chapter 9: What Marx Meant by Socialism/Communism

Chapter 10: An Anarchist Critique of Marx’s Political Economy

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