Cooperation and Self-Management

The contribution of anarchism to theories of work and organisations

Thanks to Yves’ indefatigable work ethic and following recommendations by Carl Rhodes (University of Technology Sydney), a large batch of references has been added around the areas of cooperation, cooperatives, self-management, workers’ councils, and the contribution of anarchism to the study of work and organisations.

Of particular note are the classics of anarchist theory, Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread (1892); Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898) and Mutual Aid (1902), as well as recent contributions to participatory economics by Michael Albert, outlined in particularly clear terms in his Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso, 2003).

Kropotkin’s place in the history of political theory is worth emphasising. Here’s a typical passage from the first chapter of The Conquest of Bread. In it many classical themes of radical political thinking are woven together, all around Kropotkin’s central idea that, far from a struggle of each against all, human society is in fact premised on mutual aid, the contribution each can make to “common work”, which ensures, or should ensure, the fulfillment of everyone’s needs.

“Under pain of death, human societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all human beings, since all human beings have need of them, since all human beings have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one's part in the production of the world's wealth.

All things for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say: "This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products," any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant: "This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every brick you build."

All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as "The right to work," or "To each the whole result of his labour." What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!”

The Conquest of Bread (New York: Vanguard Press, 1926, p.11)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm#CHAPTER_XV, p.11

Image

Kropotkin by Nadar (Public Domain).