Political Economy from Below
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Political Economy from Below

Rob Knowles

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eBook - ePub

Political Economy from Below

Rob Knowles

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About This Book

Communitarian anarchism is a generic form of socialism that denies the need for a state or any other authority over the individual from above, and which requires absolute belief that the individual cannot exist outside of a community of others. This book suggests that the communitarian anarchists of the nineteenth century developed and articulated a distinct tradition of economic thought. The period of this study begins with the first major writing of the French communitarian anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in 1840 and ends with the temporary burial of anarchist theorizing at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. However, he tradition of communitarian anarchist economic thought did not end in 1914. The economic thought explored in this book provides a fresh perception of the fragmentation evident in many societies today, especially where there is a substantial "informal economy."

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781135408992
Edition
1

Chapter One

Introduction

The idea is burdened with the world.’
Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History, 1987.1
The period of this study begins in 1840 with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first avowed anarchist who confronted the modern nation-state, the emergence of economic industrialization, and bourgeois political economy. It ends with the temporary burial of anarchist economic ideas as a consequence of the explosion of the First World War.2 The historical characters who have been selected for detailed inquiry are Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (18091865), Alexander Herzen (18121870), Mikhail Bakunin (18141876), Elisée Reclus (18301905), Peter Kropotkin (18421921), Jean Grave (18451939), and Leo Tolstoy (18281910). The study demonstrates the existence of a distinct tradition of communitarian anarchist economic thought, the neglect of that tradition throughout the twentieth century within histories of economic thought, and the contemporary relevance of communitarian anarchist economic ideas.
The history of the economic ideas of the communitarian anarchists of the nineteenth century has never before been interpreted and written as a distinct tradition of economic thought. With the exception of cursory overviews of very short length and far from comprehensive breadth, their economic ideas about a future society only appear as fragments in histories, biographies, or political or sociological analyses of the thought of specific individuals. It will be seen that communitarian anarchist economic thought is a web of ideas which has its own integrity, its own internal consistency.
As a history of the communitarian anarchists' positive economic ideas, there is not sufficient scope here to take account of sustained critiques of competing economic ideas either by them or of them by others, although some cross-referencing has been inevitable. There is also insufficient scopefor an attempted genealogy of their ideas although some references have been made explicit where evidence has been suggestive. Further, this study's sustained focus on the positive ideas of the anarchists for a future society has precluded engagement with their politics of transformation of society, except where it informs the history of their economic ideas. There is also no attempt to assess the practicality or otherwise of their prescriptions for future society. In sum, this is not an attempted comprehensive history of the ideas of communitarian anarchists throughout the period of this study.3 It is a history of their economic ideas and the ethical beliefs which informed those ideas, contextualized with respect to their lives and the social and political circumstances in which they lived although only to the extent necessary to connect their ideas with those lives.
The historical characters are presented in the chapters that follow in chronological order, not because this was considered to be necessary but because it facilitates a clearer understanding of the interrelationships between them. Research for this study brought out into the open the necessity for understanding at least the rudiments of the ethics that informed the economic thinking of the communitarian anarchists. Ethical beliefs were prior to economic ideas for them all. It also became apparent in the course of research that it was necessary to work with source material in both English and French languages in order to study each historical character's work in sufficient depth and breadth to achieve an adequate understanding of his (they are each male) ideas. As a consequence, a substantial amount of primary source material has been translated here for the first time.
The overall approach to this study, as noted earlier, is self-consciously historical. John Clark has observed that ‘it is not unusual for scholars to gather no more evidence about the nature of anarchism than the derivation of the term, after which they can ascend to the heights of abstraction, paying attention neither to social history nor to the history of ideas.’ He adds that the ‘paradoxical result is that we find political theorists attacking an anarchism that has existed primarily as a fiction in the minds of its opponents, and we find philosophers defending an anarchism that would be unrecognizable to the vast majority of anarchists throughout history (including the present).’4 Although Clark has positively engaged with the study of communitarian anarchism, his observations have substance.5 Accordingly, a primary imperative throughout this study is to examine historically the economic ideas of the selected anarchists although without any conscious intention of being partisan towards them. The study is, however, focused on their positive ideas so, as a consequence, there is a positive theme flowing through this work.
The ‘holistic' way in which communitarian anarchists thought about a future society and the economic ideas embodied within those views does not lend itself to analysis through the lens of conventional economic theory, either in the nineteenth century or today. For communitarian anarchists, the economy was not only underpinned by their ethics but it was thoroughly embedded in social life, such that human life could not be perceived as being in any way separate from economic ideas. The implications of this caveat are discussed in detail in the next chapter; however suffice to say here that this history is necessarily much more in the form of a narrative than one of categories of analysis. In effect, this history reflects the characteristics of their ideas and those ideas were ‘burdened with the world.’

METHODOLOGICAL INSIGHTS AND HISTORICAL SOURCES

While this is a history with its primary focus on ideas, it is not believed possible to abstract ideas from human beings as agents and from their social context as structure.6 Ideas are never fixed in meaning but change at the site of the ‘structure of the conjuncture,'7 and are therefore never able to be transmitted unchanged from their sources. Ideas are certainly able to be transmitted or shared and they certainly can travel through time however they do not remain unchanged through any parts of those movements. Each person brings to a received or collected idea his or her own interpretation, consciously or not. This historical study therefore requires an interpretation of the historical characters and their relevant life experiences and the social context in which they lived and from which their beliefs and ideas had their genesis. It also requires an examination of the fundamental beliefs and ethics as well as the methodological foundations from which and on which they each developed and expounded their thoughts. This work of history is therefore written across a broad canvas that is derived from an equally broad range of relevant source material. The question of relevance will always be arguable but it is a part of the task of this study to make a sound judgment, without consciously utilizing the benefit of hindsight. Writing this history has been a voyage of exploration and discovery.
With respect to primary source material, it is essential to listen without knowing prejudice to the voices from the past, acknowledging always that human beings are not capable of producing polished works of complete coherence and consistency throughout their lives, neither is it necessary for them to attempt to do so. The British political philosopher John Dunn explains this contingency with great clarity:
there are certain banal truths which the customary approaches appear to neglect; that thinking is an effortful activity on the part of human beings, not simply a unitary performance; that incompleteness, incoherence, instability and the effort to overcome these are its persistent characteristics; that it is not an activity which takes its meaning from a set of finished performances which have been set up in type and preserved in libraries, but an activity which is conducted more or less incompetently for most of their waking life by a substantial portion of the human race, which generates conflict and which is used to resolve these, which is directed towards problem-solving and not towards the construction of closed formal games; … that language is … simply the tool which human beings use in the struggle to make sense of their experiences. Once talking and thinking are considered seriously as social activities, it will be apparent that intellectual discussions will only be fully understood if they are seen as complicated instances of these social activities.’8
These methodological insights are directly applicable to the writing of a history which positively engages with anarchist thought. As Marshall Sahlins, American anthropologist and historian, notes:
Acting from different perspectives, and with different social powers of objectifying their respective interpretations, people come to different conclusions and societies work out different consensuses. Social communication is as much an empirical risk as worldly reference. The effects of such risks can be radical innovations.9
And Sahlins adds: ‘in action, meanings are always at risk.’ The ‘empirical risk' of ‘social communication' implies the possibility of changing or changed meanings within a society, the outcome of which can open up the possibility of ‘radical innovations.’ For anarchists, ‘acting from different perspectives,' possessing ‘different social powers of objectifying their respective interpretations,' and exposing meanings to ‘empirical risk,' there were many ‘radical innovations,' at least in their ideas for a future society. There is no basis for such ideas being negatively or dismissively cast aside. The economic ideas of the communitarian anarchists were positive and real for them, and that is reason enough for them to be heard.
Primary source material with respect to anarchist economic thought is sparse and highly fragmented, both regarding the source documents and the habits or political activities of anarchist writers. Few communitarian anarchists set out to write cohesive or comprehensive material regarding their visions of a future anarchist society. The main reason for this was not an oversight or absence of a wish to do so. Communitarian anarchism was abody of thought which grew haltingly and changeably throughout the century. It was also not sufficiently well respected by scholars who were not anarchists for there to be a body of writings about them and their ideas, or for such scholars or for public libraries to make an effort to systematically collect anarchist writings. Ernst Victor Zenker, one of the earliest historians of anarchism, highlighted the difficulties as early as 1895:
What little literature exists upon the subject of Anarchism is almost exclusively hostile to it, which is a great drawback for one who is seeking not the objects of a partisan, but simply and solely the truth … Since the extraordinary danger of Anarchist doctrines is firmly fixed as a dogma in the minds of the vast majority of mankind, it is apparently quite unnecessary to obtain any information about its real character … And so almost all who have hitherto written upon or against Anarchism, with a few very rare exceptions, have probably never read an Anarchist publication, even cursorily, but have contented themselves with certain traditional catchwords …10
He added that ‘great public libraries' proudly possess all the texts of Herodotus or Sophocles but they have ‘thought it beneath their dignity to place on their shelves the works of Anarchist doctrinaires, or even to collect the pamphlet literature for or against Anarchism …’.11 A substantial part of this prejudice and deficiency of source material was fortunately overcome by the anarchist philologist and historian, Max Nettlau (18651944), through his concerted efforts to ensure that as little material as possible was lost to posterity.12
As with any history of socialist or anarchist thought, the vast majority of those involved at the time remain silent as far as historical records are concerned. A great deal of material has simply been lost due to the transitory characteristics of events. Those who were active in personal discussions and other forms of activism in their dynamic, often convulsing, and ever-changing world often did not see the need or lacked the literacy to be able to document their ideas. It was, or had to be, enough for them to speak and to be actively involved. What is left as source material are the thoughts only of those who were literate, who spoke loudly enough to be documented by others, or who wished to make themselves heard in a more durable way. It is primarily the urban intellectuals or self-educated artisans who can be heard. They were sufficiently well educated to be able to develop fresh arguments and to be aware of the history which preceded them. They were also sufficiently literate to be able to articulate their views. They also often became the intellectual leaders around whom much of the theoretical thinking and debating revolved.
The largest collection of relevant primary source material is held by the International Institute for Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam, the basis of which was formed by acquiring Max Nettlau's expansive personal collection in 1935.13 The archives of the English journal, Freedom: A journal of Anarchist Communism (now just Freedom), which has been published virtually continuously since 1886 when Peter Kropotkin was a founding editor, are held by the IISH. The British Library in London also holds extensive original material. There are numerous other collections across Europe and in the United States, where especially notable are the Labadie Manuscripts at the University of Michigan and the Joseph Ishill Collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Apart from sources which are generally available in published form, most of the primary source material for this study was examined at the IISH and the British Library.
Secondary source material with respect to anarchist economic thought is tellingly in very short supply. In effect, the only aspects of histories of anarchism and anthologies or political analyses that have provided significant material to inform this study have been occasional references with respect to the broader context of particular anarchists or their ideas. General histories of anarchism have been written since late in the nineteenth century, the earliest being works such as Ernst Victor Zenker's Anarchism: A criticism and history of the Anarchist theory (1898), the popular work by Paul Eltzbacher, Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy (1900), and in 1925 Max Nettlau commenced writing his monumental History of Anarchy of which three volumes were published during his lifetime and another six volumes have been recently published, all volumes being in German.14 ...

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