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non serviam #3
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Contents: Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and
The Individualist Alternative (serial: 3)
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Ken Knudson:
A Critique of Communism
and
The Individualist Alternative
(continued)
Let us take a closer look at the type of society the
communists would have us live under and see if we can get at
the essence of these laws. Kropotkin says that "nine-tenths
of those called lazy...are people gone astray." [14] He then
suggests that given a job which "answers" their
"temperament" and "capacities" (today we would hear words
like "relate", "alienation" and "relevancy"), these people
would be productive workers for the community. What about
that other ten percent which couldn't adjust? Kropotkin
doesn't elaborate, but he does say, "if not one, of the
thousands of groups of our federation, will receive you,
whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely incapable of
producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, then
live like an isolated man....That is what could be done in a
communal society in order to turn away sluggards if they
become too numerous." [15] This is a pretty harsh sentence
considering that ALL the means of production have been
confiscated in the name of the revolution. So we see that
communism's law, put bluntly, becomes "work or starve."*
This happens to be an individualist law too. But there is a
difference between the two: the communist law is a man-made
law, subject to man's emotions, rationalisations, and
inconsistencies; the individualist law is nature's law - the
law of gastric juices, if you will - a law which, like it or
not, is beyond repeal. Although both laws use the same
language, the difference in meaning is the difference
between a commandment and a scientific observation.
Individualist-anarchists don't care when, where, or how a
man earns a living, as long as he is not invasive about it.
He may work 18 hours a day and buy a mansion to live in the
other six hours if he so chooses. Or he may feel like
Thoreau did that "that man is richest whose pleasures are
the cheapest" [16] and work but a few hours a week to ensure
his livelihood. I wonder what would happen to Thoreau under
communism? Kropotkin would undoubtedly look upon him as "a
ghost of bourgeois society." [17] And what would Thoreau say
to Kropotkin's proposed "contract"?: "We undertake to give
you the use of our houses, stores, streets, means of
transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from
twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate
four or five hours a day to some work recognised [by whom?]
as necessary to existence....Twelve or fifteen hundred hours
--------------------
*Article 12 of the 1936 constitution of the USSR reads:
"In the USSR work is the duty of every able-bodied citizen
according to the principle: `He who does not work, neither
shall he eat.' In the USSR the principle of socialism is
realised: `From each according to his ability, to each
according to his work.'"
- 8 -
of work a year...is all we ask of you." [18] I don't think
it would be pulling the nose of reason to argue that Thoreau
would object to these terms.
But some communist-anarchists would reject Kropotkin's
idea of not giving to the unproductive worker according to
his needs, even if he doesn't contribute according to his
abilities. They might simply say that Kropotkin wasn't being
a good communist when he wrote those lines (just as he
wasn't being a good anarchist when he supported the Allies
during World War I). But this idea, it seems to me would be
patently unjust to the poor workers who would have to
support such parasites. How do these communists reconcile
such an injustice? As best I can gather from the writings of
the classical communist-anarchists, they meet this problem
in one of two ways: (1) they ignore it, or (2) they deny it.
Malatesta takes the first approach. When asked, "How will
production and distribution be organised?" he replies that
anarchists are not prophets and that they have no blueprints
for the future. Indeed, he likens this important question to
asking when a man "should go to bed and on what days he
should cut his nails." [19] Alexander Berkman takes the
other approach (a notion apparently borrowed from the
Marxists*): he denies that unproductive men will exist after
the revolution. "In an anarchist society it will be the most
useful and difficult toil that one will seek rather than the
lighter job." [20] Berkman's view of labour makes the
protestant work ethic sound positively mild by comparison.
For example: "Can you doubt that even the hardest toil would
become a pleasure...in an atmosphere of brotherhood and
respect for labour?" [21] Yes, I can doubt it. Or again: "We
can visualise the time when labour will have become a
pleasant exercise, a joyous application of physical effort
to the needs of the world." [22] And again, in apparent
anticipation of Goebbles' famous dictum about the powers of
repetition, "Work will become a pleasure... laziness will be
unknown." [23] It is hard to argue with such "reasoning". It
would be like a debate between Bertrand Russell and Billy
Graham about the existence of heaven. How can you argue with
faith? I won't even try. I'll just ask the reader, next time
he is at work, to look around - at himself and at his mates
- and ask himself this question: "After the revolution will
--------------------
* At least Berkman is consistent in this matter. Marx,
paradoxically, wanted to both "abolish labour itself" ("The
German Ideology"), AND make it "life's prime want"
("Critique of the Gotha Programme").
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we really prefer this place to staying at home in bed or
going off to the seashore?" If there are enough people who
can answer "yes" to this question perhaps communism will
work after all. But in the meantime, before building the
barricades and shooting people for a cause of dubious
certainty, I would suggest pondering these two items from
the bourgeois and communist press respectively:
"In Detroit's auto plants, weekend absenteeism has reached
such proportions that a current bit of folk wisdom advises
car buyers to steer clear of vehicles made on a Monday or
Friday. Inexperienced substitute workers, so the caution
goes, have a way of building bugs into a car. But in Italy
lately the warning might well include Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday. At Fiat, the country's largest maker,
absenteeism has jumped this year from the normal 4 or 5
percent to 12.5 percent, with as many as 18,000 workers
failing to clock in for daily shifts at the company's Turin
works. Alfa Romeo's rate has hit 15 percent as hundreds of
workers call in each day with `malattia di comodo' - a
convenient illness.... Italian auto workers seem to be doing
no more than taking advantage of a very good deal. A new
labour contract guarantees workers in state-controlled
industries 180 days of sick leave a year, at full pay, while
workers in private firms (such as Fiat) get the same number
of days at 75 percent of full pay." [24]
When doctors, employed by the state, made an inspection
visit in Turin we are told that they found "that only 20
percent of the `indisposed' workers they had visited were
even mildly sick." For those who think that this is just a
bourgeois aberration, let us see what revolutionary Cuba,
after 12 years of communism, has to say about such
"parasites". I translate from the official organ of the
Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party:
"Worker's discussion groups are being set up in all work
centres to discuss the proposed law against laziness. These
groups have already proven to be a valuable forum for the
working class. During these assemblies, which for the
moment are limited to pilot projects in the Havana area,
workers have made original suggestions and posed timely
questions which lead one to believe that massive discussion
of this type would make a notable contribution to the
solution of this serious problem. An assembly of boiler
repairmen in the Luyano district was representative of the
general feeling of the workers. They demanded that action be
taken against those parasitic students who have stopped
going to classes regularly or who, although attending
classes, do just enough to get by. The workers were equally
adamant about co-workers who, after a sickness or accident,
refuse to go back to their jobs but go on receiving their
- 10 -
salaries for months without working. Questions were often
accompanied by concrete proposals. For example, should
criminals receive the same salaries on coming back to work
from prison as when they left their jobs? The workers
thought not, but they did think it all right that the
revolutionary state accord a pension to the prisoner's
family during his stay in the re-education [sic] centre. At
the Papelera Cubana factory the workers made a suggestion
which proved their contempt of these loafers; habitual
offenders should be punished in geometric proportion to the
number of their crimes. They also proposed that workers who
quit their jobs or were absent too often be condemned to a
minimum, not of 6 months, but of one year's imprisonment and
that the worker who refuses three times work proposed by the
Ministry of Labour be considered automatically as a criminal
and subject to punishment as such. The workers also
expressed doubts about the scholastic `deserters', ages 15
and 16, who aren't yet considered physically and mentally
able to work but who don't study either. They also cited the
case of the self employed man who works only for his own
selfish interests. The dockworkers of Havana port, zone 1,
also had their meeting. They envisioned the possibility of
making this law retroactive for those who have a bad work
attitude, stating forcefully that it wasn't a question of
precedents, because otherwise the law could only be applied
in those cases which occurred after its enactment. The
harbour workers also proposed imprisonment for the
`sanctioned' workers and that, in their opinion, the
punishment of these parasites shouldn't be lifted until they
could demonstrate a change of attitude. The steadfastness of
the workers was clearly demonstrated when they demanded that
punishments not be decided by the workers themselves in
order to avoid possible leniency due to reasons of sympathy,
sentimentality, etc. The workers also indicated that these
parasites should not have the right to the social benefits
accorded to other workers. Some workers considered
imprisonment as a measure much too kind. As you can see, the
workers have made many good proposals, which leads us to
believe that with massive discussion, this new law will be
considerably enriched. This is perhaps the path to social
legislation by the masses."* [25]
These two extracts clearly demonstrate that human nature
remains pretty constant, independent of the social system
the individual workman is subjected to. So it seems to me
that unless human nature can somehow be miraculously
transformed by the revolution - and that WOULD be a
revolution - some form of compulsion would be necessary in
order to obtain "from each according to his abilities."
While on this point, I would like to ask my communist-
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anarchist comrades just who is supposed to determine another
person's abilities? We've seen from the above article that
in Cuba the Ministry of Labour makes this decision. How
would it differ in an anarchist commune? If these anarchists
are at all consistent with their professed desire for
individual freedom, the only answer to this question is that
the individual himself would be the sole judge of his
abilities and, hence, his profession. But this is
ridiculous. Who, I wonder, is going to decide of his own
free will that his real ability lies in collecting other
people's garbage? And what about the man who thinks that he
is the greatest artist since Leonardo da Vinci and decides
to devote his life to painting mediocre landscapes while the
community literally feeds his delusions with food from the
communal warehouse? Few people, I dare say, would opt to do
the necessary "dirty work" if they could choose with
impunity ANY job, knowing that whatever they did - good or
bad, hard or easy - they would still receive according to
their needs.** The individualist's answer to this perennial
question of "who will do the dirty work" is very simple: "I
--------------------
*The Associated Press has since reported the passage of
this law: "Cuba's Communist regime announced yesterday a
tough new labour law that Premier Fidel Castro said is aimed
at 400,000 loafers, bums and `parasites' who have upset the
country's new social order. The law, which goes into effect
April 1, provides for penalties ranging from six months to
two years of forced labour in `rehabilitation centres' for
those convicted of vagrancy, malingering or habitual
absenteeism from work or school. The law decrees that all
males between 17 and 60 have a `social duty' to work on a
daily systematic basis unless they are attending an approved
school. Those who do not are considered `parasites of the
revolution' and subject to prosecution by the courts or
special labourers' councils. The anti-loafing law - seen as
a tough new weapon to be used mainly against dissatisfied
young people - was prompted by Mr. Castro's disclosure last
September that as many as 400,000 workers were creating
serious economic problems by shirking their duties." [26]
** Anyone who has ever gone to an anarchist summer camp
knows what I mean. Here we have "la creme de la creme", so
to speak, just dying to get on with the revolution; yet who
cleans out the latrines? More often than not, no one. Or,
when it really gets bad, some poor sap will sacrifice
himself for the cause. You don't have solidarity; you have
martyrdom. And no one feels good about it: you have
resentment on the part of the guy who does it and guilt from
those who don't.
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will if I'm paid well enough." I suspect even Mr. Heath
would go down into the London sewers if he were paid 5
million pounds per hour for doing it. Somewhere between this
sum and what a sewer worker now gets is a just wage, which,
given a truly free society, would be readily determined by
competition.
This brings us to the second half of the communist
ideal: the distribution of goods according to need. The
obvious question again arises, "Who is to decide what
another man needs?" Anarchists once more must leave that
decision up to the individual involved. To do otherwise
would be to invite tyranny, for who can better determine a
person's needs than the person himself?* But if the
individual is to decide for himself what he needs, what is
to prevent him from "needing" a yacht and his own private
airplane? If you think we've got a consumer society now,
what would it be like if everything was free for the
needing? You may object that luxuries aren't needs. But that
is just begging the question: what is a luxury, after all?
To millions of people in the world today food is a luxury.
To the English central heating is a luxury, while to the
Americans it's a necessity. The Nazi concentration camps
painfully demonstrated just how little man actually NEEDS.
But is that the criterion communists would use for
determining need? I should hope (and think) not. So it seems
to me that this posses a definite dilemma for the communist-
anarchist: what do you do about unreasonable, irrational, or
extravagant "needs"? What about the man who "needs" a new
pair of shoes every month? "Nonsense," you may say, "no one
needs new shoes that often." Well, how often then? Once a
year? Every five years perhaps? And who will decide? Then
what about me? I live in Switzerland and I'm crazy about
grape jam - but unfortunately the Swiss aren't. I feel that
a jam sandwich isn't a jam sandwich unless it's made with
GRAPE jam. But tell that to the Swiss! If Switzerland were a
communist federation, there wouldn't be a single communal
warehouse which would stock grape jam. If I were to go up to
the commissar-in-charge-of-jams and ask him to put in a
--------------------
* I'm reminded here of the tale of the man who decided
his mule didn't NEED any food. He set out to demonstrate his
theory and almost proved his point when, unfortunately, the
beast died. Authoritarian communism runs a similar risk
when it attempts to determine the needs of others.
- 13 -
requisition for a few cases, he would think I was nuts.
"Grapes are for wine," he'd tell me with infallible logic,
"and more people drink wine than eat grape jam." "But I'm a
vegetarian," I plead, "and just think of all the money (?)
I'm saving the commune by not eating any of that expensive
meat." After which he would lecture me on the economics of
jam making, tell me that a grape is more valuable in its
liquid form, and chastise me for being a throwback to
bourgeois decadence.
And what about you, dear reader? Have you no
individual idiosyncrasies? Perhaps you've got a thing about
marshmallows. What if the workers in the marshmallow
factories decide (under workers' control, of course) that
marshmallows are bad for your health, too difficult to make,
or just simply a capitalist plot? Are you to be denied the
culinary delights that only marshmallows can offer, simply
because some distant workers get it into their heads that a
marshmallowless world would be a better world?
But, not only would distribution according to need hurt
the consumer, it would be grossly unfair to the productive
worker who actually makes the goods or performs the
necessary services. Suppose, for example, that hardworking
farmer Brown goes to the communal warehouse with a load of
freshly dug potatoes. While there Brown decides he needs a
new pair of boots. Unfortunately there are only a few pairs
in stock since Jones the shoemaker quit his job - preferring
to spend his days living off Brown's potatoes and writing
sonnets about the good life. So boots are rationed. The boot
commissar agrees that Brown's boots are pretty shabby but,
he points out, Smith the astrologer is in even greater need.
Could Brown come back in a month or so when BOTH soles have
worn through? Brown walks away in disgust, resolved never
again to sweat over his potato patch.
Even today people are beginning to complain about the
injustices of the (relatively mild) welfare state. Theodore
Roszak writes that in British schools there has been a
"strong trend away from the sciences over the past four
years" and that people are showing "annoyed concern" and
"loudly observing that the country is not spending its money
to produce poets and Egyptologists - and then demanding a
sharp cut in university grants and stipends."[27] If people
are upset NOW at the number of poets and Egyptologists that
they are supporting, what would it be like if EVERYONE could
simply take up his favourite hobby as his chosen profession?
I suspect it wouldn't be long before our professional
chess players and mountain climbers found the warehouse
stocks dwindling to nothing. Social unrest would surely
increase in direct proportion to the height of the trash
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piling up on the doorsteps and the subsequent yearning for
the "good old days" would bring about the inevitable
counter-revolution. Such would be the fate of the
anarchist-communist utopia.
* * * * *
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* If the whole is not defined as the sum of its parts, there is *
* no reason to expect the whole to be just the sum of its parts. *
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