CHARACTERISATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF COMMUNITARIAN ANARCHISM

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Introduction
Deconstruction of Economic Thought
Characterisations of anarchism
Anarchism has been most often understood to involve violent revolutionary overthrowing of the existing state (and its economic system) with nothing more than anarchy (meaning unstructured social chaos), or a ‘utopian’ dream of harmonious communal life, as a post-revolutionary outcome for society. Whereas these perceptions and imperatives can be found in numerous published definitions of anarchism [1] , they are far from being representative of anarchist theorising about the characteristics of future society.
The undeniable violence of some elements of anarchist activism, especially late in the nineteenth century, must be read into the bloody context of state colonialist activities outside of Britain and Western Europe, and considered in the context of state repression through restrictive laws and police action against socialist and anarchist protest activities which opposed contemporary economic and political systems (see Kropotkin 1988, pp.118-119). The question of revolution was always, to anarchists, a choice between violent overthrow of a system which was seen by them never to be capable of reforming itself, and a more evolutionary ‘social revolution’ which would take time, perhaps even generations, together with widespread education of the people. Albert Lindemann (1983, p.159) has noted that ‘The bomb throwers undoubtedly gained the most attention, but most anarchists expressed a preference for nonviolent solutions’.
Until at least the middle of the nineteenth century, there was no clarity of differences between anarchists or between anarchisms and socialisms. As Paul Corcoran (1983, pp.1-2, emphasis in original) points out, ‘Early French socialism was already a richly elaborated political, intellectual and literary movement when Karl Marx was still a student at the University of Berlin’, and that ‘socialist ideas had gained a wide currency in France by 1840’. Not only were many of the doctrines of Marx’s so-called ‘scientific socialism’ anticipated or espoused by early French socialists and the anarchist Proudhon, but there was, at least in the early work of Marx and Engels, little difference between their ideas and those of the early socialists and anarchists. [2] The basic common ground was a commitment to social justice and community control of land and the means of production (Williams 1988, pp.286-287). In a discussion of the anarchist thought of Kropotkin in 1918, the logical-positivist philosopher and state socialist Bertrand Russell felt able to assert that

‘The economic organization of society, as conceived by Anarchist Communists, does not differ greatly from that which is sought by Socialists. Their difference from Socialists is in the matter of government…’ (1970, p.50, emphasis in original).

The hegemony of Marxist ‘scientific socialism’ by the end of the nineteenth century has overwhelmed knowledge today of the mosaic of syncretic and differing generic socialist and anarchist ideas which were thoroughly alive throughout the century. [3] It is important to note Lindemann’s (1983, p.159) suggestion that, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the ‘followers’ of anarchism, ‘while scattered, inconstant, and often difficult to identify, probably exceeded in absolute numbers for Europe as a whole the followers of the Marxists’.
As far as the labelling of socialisms or anarchism as being ‘utopian’ is concerned, the practice has only had relevance from competing ideological perspectives, even within the discourse of socialism generally:

The early French socialists not infrequently attacked each other for being ‘utopian’, and the phrase ‘French utopian socialism’ became a commonplace in Marxist and non-Marxist literature to refer to Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and a few other obscure writers, largely by way of acknowledging them as ‘precursors’ of Marxism before dismissing them (Corcoran 1983, p.11).

All competing ideologies have seen each other as being ‘utopian’. The naked appearance of the label ‘utopian’ should always sound a warning of the need for close examination of its meaning and the reasons for its use in those particular circumstances. [4]
Characteristics of communitarian anarchism
Communitarian anarchism is best seen as a form of generic socialism, an imperative for community solidarity and social justice, common possession of land and the means of production, but which denies the need for a state. [5] The concept of a ‘state’ can be problematic in this context. It is most relevant to hear an anarchist speak on the subject:

The state idea means something quite different from the idea of government. It not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration of many functions of the life of societies in the hands of a few . . . see in it the institution, developed in the history of human societies, to prevent direct association among men, to shackle the development of local and individual initiative, to crush existing liberties, to prevent their new blossoming - all this in order to subject the masses to the will of the minorities (Kropotkin 1975, pp.213,259).

The ‘communitarian’ label is necessary in order to differentiate a community form of anarchism from an individualist form. By the end of the nineteenth century, there had developed two distinct streams of anarchist thought; distinct from each other, and each distinct from state socialism. Individualist anarchism argued that the liberty of the individual was paramount and that, within society, each should be free to follow one’s own will without restraint. There should be no need for a state to control society or to dictate behavioural rules or norms to the individual.
The foremost historian of anarchism at the end of the nineteenth century, Max Nettlau (1865-1944) who knew many of the individualist and communitarian anarchists personally, traced the roots of individualist anarchism to America, in the form of what he called ‘libertarian spiritualism’, a reaction against the growing authoritarianism and ‘the political machine’ in America in the late eighteenth century (Nettlau 1996, Ch.3). One of the members of the famous American Owenite community ‘New Harmony’, Josiah Warren (1798-1874), in the mid-1820’s broke away from the community life and espoused a theory of individualist anarchism. Warren believed that ‘social community living, conducted in a spirit of altruism, was a practical impossibility . . . [he] came to repudiate any compulsion that a collective group might impose on individuals for the performance of public services’ (Nettlau 1996, pp.32-3). Warren’s ideas spread widely, especially through his books Equitable Commerce (1846) and Practical Details in Equitable Commerce (1852), and through the lectures and writings of a follower of Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews.

Later in the century, these ideas were taken forward by many others (Nettlau 1996, pp.33-6). Whilst within the writings of some individualist anarchists it may be possible to discern elements of a need for community co-operation, it does not follow that such characteristics represent a fundamental commitment to the community as a basis for social life. It is this latter commitment which essentially differentiates between the two, almost opposing, streams of anarchist thought.
In contrast, the communitarian anarchists ‘had faith in people’s associative and federative tendencies’ and their propensity to form communal groups of cooperation and solidarity. They were anti-statist, and fought against the growing monopolisation of capital and its ill-effects on the common people (Nettlau 1996,, pp.45-51). Community solidarity was therefore an idea both of refuge and refusal. Proudhon was the first comprehensive exponent of these ideas of ‘positive anarchy’, with belief in a natural ‘social instinct’ which underpinned social justice:

To practice justice is to obey the social instinct; to do an act of justice is to do a social act … man is moved by an internal attraction towards his fellow, by a secret sympathy which causes him to love, congratulate, condole; so that, to resist this attraction, his will must struggle against his nature (Proudhon 1970, pp.226-7).

Josiah Warren believed that ‘self-sovereignty is an instinct of every living organism . . .’ (Warren 1863, p.10). We can see Warren’s individualist ‘instinct’ juxtaposed against the ‘social instinct’ of Proudhon. Proudhon’s and other communitarian anarchist ideas spread widely towards the end of the century, especially in the aftermath of the so-called ‘Darwinian revolution’, to become more finely articulated in the writings of intellectual anarchists such as Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) and Peter Kropotkin’s evolutionary-inspired concept of ‘mutual aid’ (see Fleming 1979; Kropotkin 1972a). Communitarian anarchism requires some form of commitment, whether philosophical or evolutionary, to the notions of human solidarity and a propensity for spontaneous co-operation in the absence of restraining state, political, or economic power from above.
Next:
Communitarian Anarchism Economic Thought
Kropotkin and the marginalisation of anarchist economic thought
Kropotkin’s economic thought: An Overview
Concluding Remarks
References