Politics: Anarchism - The Economy

-In his early life his ideas were close to those of Marx - he opposed capitalism and the existence of private property, seeing them both as oppressive.

-Furthermore, he agreed with the Marxists that the state was the agent of capitalism - therefore both capitalism and the state had to be abolished.

-He saw the 1871 Paris Commune as an anarchist revolt, aiming to replace the oppressive state with a commune where there was to be common ownership of property, economic equality and direct democracy in place of political rule.

-His visions of an ordered society, based on the laws of nature, were known as federalism.

-He saw groups of workers or peasants joining together (spontaneously) in voluntary communities of any size.

-As long as people group themselves in such communes, with common ownership of property and equal distribution of rewards on a voluntary basis, there is no coercion.

-The relationships between these communes or federations were to be conducted on the basis of mutual benefit.

-There was to be no capitalist market system, which would promote inequality, but rather a system of free negotiation and exchange on the basis of the true value of goods and services.

-He saw no contradiction between economic freedom and collective ownership.

-His conversion (from socialism to anarchism) was mainly the result of his visit to the Jura Federation in Switzerland where he observed an experiment in cooperative production and living among a community of watch-makers who pooled their resources and the profits of their work.

-These communities, based on a single occupation, were self-governing cooperatives where the workers operated without any government and shared the fruits of their production equally.

-His plans were mainly described in 'Fields, Factories and Workshops' (1898).

-His brand of anarcho-communism proposed the creation of natural communities (communes).

-These would be smaller-scale communities than those described by Bakunin.

-His argument was that if people were free to join whichever community they wished, they would not be subjected to any force.

-He stated, 'Don't compete! - Competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!'

-Without scarcity, he argued, there would be no competition, and without competition, there would be no inequality.

-In 'Mutual Aid' (1902), he insisted that the competitive economic world was not inevitable - with cooperation and communal living, mankind could free itself from the structures of being forced into competition for scarce resources.