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anarchist rejections of the state 65
addition, anarcho-syndicalists associate exploitation with a set of
managerial and political structures. A SolFed pamphlet argues:
Capitalism, where profit takes precedence over everything else, is
the heart of the problem … A tiny number of capitalists exert real
power through their ownership and control of the economy. Our
basic rights to a decent life are dependent on our ability to generate
income.
It is the few who decide who gets to work for these basic rights
and who doesn’t. It is the few who do the hiring and firing, and
determine the conditions in which we are forced to work …
With the excess profits they get from our work, capitalists have
undisputed economic power …
… it is the nature of capitalism which makes people ‘have to’ act
in their interest and against other’s and the environment. It’s not a
few bad people, it’s a bad system. Capitalism concentrates power –
in political parties, in company and state hierarchies. All this leads
to misuse, mistrust and abuse. 47
Anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists argue that
exploitation affects the quality of social relations. It undermines
co-operation and encourages competition between workers, thus
breeding mistrust. Workers become prey to ‘false divisions’ –
manipulated by sexist, racist and homophobic ideas. Disunited,
workers feel isolated and insecure.
Alienation is a theme linked to post-Situationist anarchism and
has been explored by writers including Perlman and Zerzan. Though
it is linked to exploitation, in their hands it describes the impact that
the production process – and the technology it supports – has on
individuals rather than the mechanisms through which capitalists
make their profits. Perlman described alienation in terms of
‘reproduction’. He argued that the principle of reproduction is the
same in all types of economy – so reproduction in slavery is not very
different from capitalist reproduction. In the former, slaves reproduce
‘the instruments with which the master represses them, and their
own habits of submission to the master’s authority’. In the latter,
wage-labourers ‘reproduce … the social relations and the ideas of
their society; they reproduce the social form of daily life’. 48 In both
cases the essence of reproduction is that it perpetuates forms of
cultural or psychological domination. As Perlman argues: ‘compulsive
and compulsory reproduction’ is responsible for the ‘cadaver’s life’.