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anarchy 103
move from agricultural labour to industry in accordance with
seasonal changes and the needs of the economy.
All other branches of the economy – mines, heavy industry,
public services – would also be syndicalized. The management of
each area – communications, utilities, housing, transport and so on
– would be transferred to the union of workers in that area and,
through that transfer, each would be integrated into the communist
economy. At the centre of the economy would be the Bank for Cashand-Goods
Credit. Like Guillaume, Maximoff believed that a
Central Statistical Bureau would be necessary for the smooth
running of the economy, but he charged the Bank with its operation.
As well as monitoring information for distribution and exchange,
the Bank would serve as the ‘organic liaison’ between the syndicates
and the agricultural units and between the communist economy and
the ‘individualist world abroad’. The Bank would have considerable
power and would be used in the immediately post-revolutionary
period to encourage socialization in agriculture by means of credit
and interest policy. The Bank would also have an accounting role in
organizing distribution. However, everyday distribution would be
handled by special agencies, organized in cities and villages by
consumers’ communes. Maximoff’s idea was that free factories,
workshops and agricultural units would deliver their products (only
the surplus in the case of the agricultural units) to public warehouses
and these in turn would pass on goods to the Bank. Until a system of
needs could be established, Maximoff also envisaged that workers
would receive tokens in return for their goods. But he gave some
consideration to non-workers and insisted that communes make
provision for ‘the children, the nursing mothers, the old, the invalids
and the sick’.
Maximoff recommended his plan of organization on the
grounds that it offered a ‘process of production on the basis of
technical concentration and administrative decentralization’. When
it came to administration, he argued that the economic organization
of the syndicates would work alongside the organization of local
communes and federations of communes. These units would
protect individuals from tyranny and guard against the bureaucratization
of the economic system. In this hope, Maximoff argued:
the communal confederation, constituted by thousands of freely
acting labor organizations, removes all opportunities for the limitation
of liberty and free activity. It definitely prevents the possibility