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This book presents a new left-libertarian conception of liberty, ‘freedom as Marxian-autonomy’, which is explored above all in terms of its organisational contours. The project brings together in theoretical dialogue Karl Marx’s (1818–83) critique of capitalism, certain ideals adapted from the guild socialist writings of G.D.H. Cole (1889–1959) and the sub-schools of social anarchism. In doing so it contributes towards the healing of a major historical schism in socialist theory. The outcome is a newly formed anarchist constitution, ‘associational anarchism’. In offering something important to the recent outpourings in current anarchist discourse, the book contends that liberty can be attained without passing through the mediation of self-interested employers, career politicians or state planners. The foundational claim is that a condition of freedom requires equal and democratic access to the material means of life, where self-mastery is attained in both the productive and consumptive spheres. Negative (non-coercion) and positive (self-direction, self-development) ideals are combined congenially in a conceptual framework that does not frame them in perpetual contradiction. This specific protection of a set of individual liberties, of which the political liberties are of equal value, effectively challenges the ideological belief that only liberalism safeguards negative liberty. As the book unfolds, an argument is developed that hard market forces must lose their ascendancy in much the same way the socialist state must be stripped of its unaccountable authority. The associational anarchist configuration of social planning with a guild-regulated market system is offered as the necessary corrective.
those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: ‘for reasons of state’ . (Bakunin, 1973 : 134, original emphasis) There are two sections to this chapter. Section one, ‘Class struggle anarchism: a redesigned foundation’, begins by introducing
, 1958 : vi–vii) The three sections that make up this chapter will introduce associational anarchism’s mode of organisation in full. In transcending the divide between state and civil society, democratic participation is extended into the economic and civic realms and is centred on the various
The main purpose of this lengthy chapter is to establish the various elements that when integrated in certain ways constitute freedom as Marxian-autonomy in its conceptual completeness. The formal scheme and the various political perspectives, upon which associational anarchism’s more specific propositions rest, are defined through their logical
. (Chomsky, 1970 : vii) Now that the political economy of associational anarchism has been laid out in full, it will be helpful to complete this first part of the book by bringing together in a few summary paragraphs the new forms of its hybrid constitution. This is the task of
constitution. Section two, ‘Radical republicanism’, completes the exposition of associational anarchism’s federal structures by indicating how the schema of democratised investment planning outlined in section two of Chapter 3 enables a general commitment to an accepted common good in the public sphere. At this point, the anarcho-republican perspective is introduced, and I show why
communities, of workplaces, of federal structures, built on systems of voluntary association, spreading internationally. That’s traditional anarchism. (Chomsky, 2014 : 107) Coming from distinct perspectives, political theorists have frequently defended either an
the evaluation by addressing the conceptual schema of associational anarchism’s legal framework, which may be thought of as non-parliamentary jurisprudence. Very briefly, anarchism points to the possibility of life beyond the law, of a social order held together by a cooperation that, where necessary, may be legitimately coerced for the reasons captured in the above quote from Schmidt and
more will desires be varied. (Kropotkin, n.d.: 91) Providing an account of what the realm of freedom in associational anarchism will entail can only be a speculative task. The two interrelating sections of this chapter are therefore on the brief side. In many cases, there will be little call for formal organisation
Part I A new genre of social anarchism This first part consists of four chapters. As liberty cannot be separated from the conditions of its meaningful exercise, these chapters provide a detailed account of the left-libertarianism structures that are essential to its realisation. Chapter 1 , ‘Freedom as Marxian-autonomy’, lays out in full the specific conception of freedom pieced together and