Liberterian communism

[left]this is a page from the book "Anarchist economics- An alternative to a world in crisis" by Abraham Guillen.



Marxist-Leninism, with its socialist ideology and neo-capitalist economics, with
statist means of production, has emphasised the nationalisation of production, but
not its socialist distribution. Therefore, if socialism is limited to the 'socialisation' or
nationalisation of the means of production but maintains residual and inegalitarian
capitalism, it will just be another form of capitalism. Soviet socialism has been discredited
as the army generals, the academics, the bureaucrats and the few members
of the 'Nomenklatura' consume much more than an unqualified worker in industry or
agriculture. As a result, without any egalitarian economic ethic, there can be no
socialist distribution of social wealth, even though there exists an apparent socialist
order at the points of production.

Some have argued that if there was economic equality, that is if everyone was
paid the same wage, it would detract from the personal interest to produce more. It
is also stated that the more economic equality there is, the lower the social accumulation
of capital will be. All this is part of the economic ideology of the Western
bourgeoisie or the Eastern bureaucracy. The more equality there is between people,
for this fact alone, that which was not consumed by the privileged classes would
be saved and accumulated. This was demonstrated in the Spanish libertarian collectives
where consumption was equal and where investment improved the agricultural
infrastructure, expanded the area of land under cultivation, created public services,
improved education and developed other sectors of the economy.

In Aragon, a real, not utopian form of libertarian socialism was realised. The
model of distribution of wealth was not identical but, in general, it was based on the
family wage, usually paid in coupons and purchasing power was in harmony with the
new economy. Even though the local currency was stable it was not legal in the
whole country and therefore the libertarian collectives used national currency for trips
outside the local area. This was done so as not to limit a person's economic or physical
freedom if he or she wanted to travel or live elsewhere.

As regards the 'provisions card', the libertarian collective of Alcorisa created a
family consumption card, which was practically equivalent to a credit card and which
ordered consumer items according to a points system. If meat was given a 100 point
value and the consumer did not want meat then he or she was given another product
of equal value. In such a way the law of exchange and value was complied within
the libertarian economy. The consumer had a great deal of freedom as regards
the products on the market. And if local products could not satisfy the consumer, the
collective, through its council or appropriate section, obtained, on an equal exchange
basis, the goods and services needed. Thus a system of economic federalism waspractised by the Aragonese Regional Federation of Collectives.

If the Spanish revolution had triumphed, the libertarian socialist model of the collectives
would have been shown to have been far superior in the accumulation of
social capital, in productive investment, in rational use of resources and in regional,
national and international trade than the Soviet system which cannot feed its own
population after seven decades of Marxist-Leninism without huge grain imports from
the EC and USA.

The fact that the libertarian collectives accumulated a great deal of social capital
is due to positive economic management and the use of the coupon or supplies card,
which satisfied the needs of families, and which left the local collective or regional
federation the task of administrating production, distribution, exchange and consumption.
If no-one can accumulate capital in order to exploit anyone else, all the
economic surplus of the collective would be rationally and equally channelled into
creating reserves for a bad year, or to create more capital for investment and to create
better production techniques with improved machinery. Production would therefore
increase as the amount of time needed to be spent working would decrease.
There would therefore be full employment and manual work would be transformed
into qualified, technical, scientific work of a very high level.

However, in order to achieve this high level of economic, cultural, scientific and
technical progress it is necessary that a libertarian spirit prevails and that there is an
economic ethic of rational and frugal consumption. The waste produced by the bourgeois
'consumer society' is harmful to the planet and upsets the ecosystem.


It is clear that production and technology have advanced sufficiently for the creation
of a libertarian economy, but we are bound hand and foot by the reactionary
states of East and West. Only libertarian socialism, which guarantees freedom and
equality, pluralism of ideas, without the professional political parties of-the West or
the single party states of the East, can allow humanity to organise itself according to
its own needs. Libertarian communism can free us from war, tyranny, hunger, ignorance
and other evils inherent not to the human condition but to the anachronistic
socio-economic system - based on the exploitation of one person by another, on the
domination of one nation by another, on capitalism, hegemony and imperialism.