Anarchist Communism

Collectivism survived as the dominant anarchist philosophy in spain until the 1930s elsewhere it was replaced during the 1870s by the anarchist communism that was associated particularly with kropotkin although it seems likely that kropotkin was merely the most articulate exponent of a trend that grew out of discussions among anarchist intellectuals in geneva during the years immediately after the paris commune of 1871. Through kropotkin’s literary efforts anarchist communism was much more elaborately worked out than either mutualism or collectivism in such books as La conqurte du pain (The conquest of bread 1892) and fields factories and workshops (1899) Kropotkin elaborated the scheme of a semiutopian decentralized society based on an integration of agriculture and industry of town life and country life of education and apprenticeship. kropotkin also linked his theories closely with current evolutionary theories in the fields of anthropology and biology anarchism he suggested in mutual aid (1902) is the final stage in the development of cooperation as a factor in evolution. Anarchist communism differed from collectivism on only one fundamental poin the way in which the product of labor should be shared. In place of the collectivist and mutualist idea of remuneration according to hours of labor the anarchist communists proclaimed the slogan “From each according to his means to each according to his needs” and envisaged open warehouses from which any man could have what he wanted. They reasoned first that work was a natural need that men could be expected to fulfill without the threat of want and second that where no restriction was placed on available goods there would be no temptation for any man to take more than he could use. The anarchist communists laid great stress on local communal organization and even on local economic self-sufficiency as a guarantee of independence.