Politics: Anarchism - Society

-Workers and peasants, he accepted, might own what they needed to manage their own production - these he called 'possessions' to distinguish them from 'poverty'.

-His brand of socialism was to be decentralised and made up of communities of workers who had come together freely to form cooperative working groups.

-He was also a bridge between individualist and collectivist anarchism.

-He was collectivist in that he proposed a federal system of communes, very like those envisaged by Kropotkin, and backed by a 'People's bank' which could recycle surplus funds to these productive units.

-However, he was also individualist as he saw workers and groups of workers freely entering contracts with each other for the exchange of labour and goods.

-His hopes for a reconciliation between individualism and collectivism are summed up in these words, as part of 'What Is Property?' (1840): 'When politics and home life have become one and the same, when economic problems have been solved in such a way that individual and collective interests are identical - all constraints having disappeared - it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.'.

-Aspects of his mutualism can be seen in the 20th-century cooperative movements (of consumers in Britain and of peasants and workers in the continent of Europe), in the commune movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and even in the current 'fair trade' movement which seeks to ensure that producers in developing countries receive the just reward for their goods.

-Similarly, his ideas of decentralisation can still be seen in the aim of some non-government organisations to promote subsistence production in developing countries to prevent producers from being forced to produce for world commodity markets at prices that discriminate against them and force them into large, artificial productive units.

-He and other anarchists insisted that society must be based upon the ties that people have as a result of economic cooperation.

-Capitalist society is oppressive, they argue, because it pits people against each other in a competitive struggle.

-It is inevitable in such a social Darwinist world that the strong will oppress the weak and that this will result in inequality.

-The kind of mutually beneficial society that they envisage ensures that all people are equal and that the economic outcomes will ensure equality.

-Furthermore, it is mankind's natural state, while capitalism is unnatural, a construct of the ruling-class.

-He was a major influence upon individualist anarchism, modern existentialism, the radical philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and the extreme form of anarchism known as nihilism, which proposes the abolition of both state and society.

-He was opposed not only to the state but also to religion and ideology.

-He saw ideologies - even socialism and Marxism - as a denial of individual conscience.

-He called all these threats to the exercise of egoism 'spooks' and 'ghosts'.

-What he meant was that they were shadowy illusions which appeared to promote individual liberty but which in practice were suppressing it.

-In place of ideology and organised revolution, he advocated that each individual should develop their sense of ego.

-He believed that as egoism spread, it would begin to challenge the authority of the state, religion and ideology in general.

-This would not be a state of permanent conflict between individuals, egoists would form themselves into 'unions of egoism', cooperative groups that saw their self-interest in terms of mutual interest.

-These unions would gradually replace the state.

-He believed morality, religion, ideology and philosophy are all to be resisted by the free individual.

-He shared this determination to resist morality with syndicalist Georges Sorel, who believed that committing acts that outraged public morality was a positive step on the road to genuine liberty of the mind.

-His followers, egoists, developed a reputation for extreme violence and opposing any form of organised society.

-He was born into a minor aristocratic family in Russia - he became radicalised after reading philosophical works as a young man and then became a revolutionary activist.

-He was strongly influenced by the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871.

-The Commune, which was a spontaneous uprising against the French state on the point of its military defeat by Prussia, seemed to show the way forward for revolutionaries.

-He believed it was an anarchist revolt rather than an example of socialist consciousness.

-It was the replacement of 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.

-He strongly believed in the power of propaganda and the Paris Commune was the perfect example of 'propaganda by deed'.

-It served as an example for others to follow even though it was destroyed after a few weeks.

-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 was born into the Russian aristocracy, but he became disillusioned by the behaviour of his own class at an early age and by the 1870s, he had been converted to anarchism.

-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!'

-Within these communes, decisions could be reached collectively through a natural democratic process - other systems would represent the tyranny of the majority or elected representatives do not necessarily reflect the will of the people.

-He looked forward to a time when these communities would be self-sufficient and prosperous.

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

-In his book 'Mutual Aid' (1902), he wrote, 'Therefore combine - practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual and moral. That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position of their respective classes have done.'.

-When revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, he returned home after years in exile - he saw this as an opportunity to see some of his plans put into practice.

-Despite his aspiration to see the development of peaceful, natural communities, he was a revolutionary who envisaged the overthrow of the state by violent means if necessary.

-When the Bolsheviks took over under Lenin, he was disappointed in the development of a new state to replace the old one.

-Perhaps naively, he had hoped that there would be a popular uprising that would destroy the state altogether and begin to build the small natural communities that he supported.

-She was Russian-born but spent much of her life in the US where she found herself frequently in prison on various charges, including planning assassinations and inciting workers to riot.

-Most famously she was implicated in the assassination of US President William McKinley in 1901, though she was never convicted and was probably not responsible.

-Nevertheless, she did preach assassination as a valid tactic for anarchists.

-She was involved in a number of social clauses, not least of which was the emancipation of women and the tolerance of homosexuality, and she championed the idea of free love.

-It is claimed she was the first anarcha-feminist.

-She spent 1936-1937 participating in the Spanish Civil War, attempting to form anarchist communes, possibly the most important example of the genuine realisation of anarchist ideals, though the experiment was short-lived.

-She coined the term 'propaganda of the deed', the idea that the best way to inspire others to join the anarchist cause was to engage in acts of violence against state and capitalist institutions.

-Once freed from oppression, she preached to sizable crowds in the US, the true nature of our loving feeling for each other can be released.

-In modern parlance, she might be described as a 'populist of the left'.

-In 'Anarchism and Other Essays' (1910), she summed up the ideas about society of many of her fellow anarchists thus: 'Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.'.