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anarchism: a beginner’s guide
for a large and permanent federal structure. Though he envisaged
that unions would be organized on a local level and that they would
be directly responsible for the management of production, he also
believed that they would associate with other bodies in three further
tiers of organization: production associations, unions of production
associations (from different communes) and finally the General
Congresses of Labour – or Council of Peoples’ Economy and
Culture. Each of these tiers of organization would be comprised of
delegates from the body immediately below it.
Maximoff identified agriculture as the most important branch of
industry and planned for the full socialization of production and
cultivation of land. However, in the medium term he suggested that
anarchists should be flexible and allow for agricultural production
to be conducted on individual and co-operative, as well as communist,
lines. Even in the long term, he argued that the Association of
Peasant Communes – affiliated to the Confederation of Labour –
would determine the precise utilization of land. Yet his hope was that
agricultural workers could be encouraged to work collectively in
groups.
With the socialization of land and labour, Maximoff imagined
the integration of agriculture and industry in the creation of
‘agro-industrial units’. The purpose of these units was to industrialize
agriculture – to streamline food production – rather than to green
industry. Although Maximoff was keen to avoid the development of
vast agricultural units and recommended that the normal size would
be ‘an association of ten peasant farms’, he was also keen to introduce
more efficient, intensive methods of agricultural production.
One area ripe for industrialization was cattle-rearing. Here, without
wanting to force anyone to relinquish a treasured way of life,
Maximoff observed that ‘nomadic cattle raisers’ would have to be
brought up to live in a ‘higher cultural environment’ and at least
‘to the level of present-day Russian peasants’.
One of the advantages of the agro-industrial units was that they
provided workers with the opportunity to vary their labour.
Maximoff admitted that some units would be comprised of workers
who worked continuously in only one branch of the economy. Yet he
believed that the principle of syndicalized production was ‘freedom
of labour, i.e. everybody’s right to choose freely the type of activity
most attractive to him, and the right to change freely from one type
of work to another’. And for the most part Maximoff believed that
the creation of these agro-industrial units would allow workers to