Chris Wyatt
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Free federation
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Through a discussion of the forms that a non-statist federal coordination may assume, this chapter argues that the functional principle of representation will be a valuable addition to a social anarchist constitution. Here the free federal structures outlined in the works of Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin are juxtaposed with Cole’s functional federation, where their similarities are drawn out. It has been claimed that this idea throws up an awkward theoretical dilemma that stretches social anarchist theory. This is the critique that an anarchist federation contains an irresolvable strain between the demands of decentralisation and the redistribution of natural resources. Associational anarchism weakens this structural tension by placing control of rare natural resources, those that are not abundant in every region, into the hands of the guilds and not the local communities themselves, and even if it cannot resolve it in full, a loss of complete voluntarism can be justified by appealing to the key anarchist principle of mutual aid. Moving on, the exposition of associational anarchism’s federal structures is completed by indicating how its strategy of democratised investment planning can be harmonised with citizens’ ethical considerations pertaining to the public sphere. At this point, the anarcho-republican perspective is introduced. Its proposal that ‘freedom as non-domination’ must be recast in a non-statist constitution which moves beyond the institution of private property leads, the chapter contends, straight to associational anarchism. This specific cooperative mode of production serves the generic desires of the higher-self well.

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Associational anarchism

Towards a left-libertarian conception of freedom

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