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anarchy 101
co-ordinated through banks of exchange. It also included a
Communal Statistical Commission to ‘gather and classify all statistical
information pertaining to the commune’ and perform other
‘functions that are today exercised by the civil state’ – including the
registration of births and deaths (not marriage in a free society). 30
The central task of the agency was to ensure the uniform provision
of goods and services across a region. Amongst other things, it could
determine hours of work, exchange values and production targets
for ‘corporative’ worker federations.
Anarcho-communist models of decentralized federation tended
to be far more fluid than Guillaume’s. For example, Reclus imagined
that social relationships would be based on fraternity rather than
contract, that groups would associate for particular purposes and
that they would assume different forms. Reclus also imagined that
these associations would emerge and disappear as their purposes
arose and were met. Although his model did not preclude
co-ordination, he believed that this would result from a sense of
shared responsibility and that it would not require any formal
decision-making structure. Modern international networks like
People’s Global Action (PGA) and the World Social Forum (WSF)
follow similar principles, prioritizing co-ordination based on
solidarity or affinity over contract and explicitly rejecting the notion
of governmental, confessional or judicial function, providing
instead a platform for plural, open discussion.
The two sketches of anarchy outlined below contrast an anarchosyndicalist
with an eco-anarchist view of anarchy. Neither, of course,
is typical. The first is adapted from G.P. Maximoff’s Program of
Anarcho-Syndicalism, first published in 1927 to discuss the ways in
which anarchists should address the problems of organization posed
by the Bolshevik revolution. The second is taken from Graham
Purchase’s My Journey With Aristotle to the Anarchist Utopia. This
literary utopia reworks the federalist idea to develop a communitarian
and ecological, quasi-primitivist vision of anarchy.
anarcho-syndicalism: maximoff 31
The leading idea of Maximoff’s anarchy was the ‘syndicalization of
production’. This process involved the transfer of the ownership of
the industrial structure from employers to workers, organized in
fully autonomous industrial unions, and the construction of
producer-consumer communes. Like Guillaume, Maximoff argued