Anarchist political economy
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Anarchist ideologies propose a variety of different systems for the production and distribution of social goods. These proposals can be broken down into two primary categories: anarchist communist and anarchist capitalist political economies. (see also: Anarchism_and_private_property)
Anarchist communist political economy
In the European, Central American, South American, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, Oceanic, ex-Soviet, British and Mexican anarchist movements political economies based on communist, socialist or Marxist principles have predominated. These principles of political economy have also played a large role in North American anarchism through the Industrial Workers of the World's influence and the United States New Left.
The role of Marxism
While many anarchists are hostile to the political practice of Karl Marx and Marxist parties, they also make creative use of Marx's critique of the political economy of capitalism. As such, most Anarchists make some use of the Labour Theory of Value. Anarchists tend to stress the individual and human centred implications of a Labour Theory of Value, and a general aim of anarchist political economy is the recognition of the individual as they work. These elements of anarchist political economy often unite anarchists and Marxists at the level of industrial or economic work.
The Industrial Commonwealth
The ideal of the IWW for economic organisation has been "The Industrial Commonwealth." Workers, through their unions organised by type of product, would democratically govern productive output. The model assumes that benefits arise by organising workers based on the type of good produced (health, agricultural goods, communication, domestic labour).
Means and tools of production would be held in common, through the possession of relevant unions. The Industrial Commonwealth was initially focused on the six sectors of Agriculture, Transport, Construction, Manufacturing, Government Services and Non-Government Services: a model which omitted to recognise particular industries like domestic labour or sex-work. The contemporary model of the Industrial Commonwealth more explicitly recognises this work.
In terms of its model of social change, the new "Industrial Commonwealth" economy was to grow within the belly of the old capitalist one. As unions became more powerful, and more workers worked in worker controlled industries, society would be gradually transformed by a constant struggle.
While the day to day methods of accounting and resource allocation for the Industrial Commonwealth have never been proposed, the IWW's suggestion that workers learn how to run their factories indicates that much of the contemporary economy's management and allocation strategies at the firm level would largely be taken over.
Syndicalism
Communist Anarchist "micro economics"
Wages for house-work
Feminist economists have long pointed out that the vast majority of human productive labour, domestic labour, has been unpaid and uncalculated in Gross National Product. The wages for housework campaign aims to redress the private domestic subjugation of women, by transforming domestic labour into respected and renumerated activity. This would effectively provide most women with economic autonomy from patriarchal family structures.
External link: http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2548/2002_Sept-Oct/92724019/p1/article.jhtml
Situationalism and Autonomist critiques of commodity and spectacle
Lifestylism as an attempt to directly exit the market economy
Many anarchist individuals or groups drop directly out of the capitalist economy, into communes or collectives in what is termed by some lifestylism. This tradition is a very old one, contained in the utopian socialism and anarchism of the 19th Century: an example can be seen in 'On Walden Pond.' Major examples of this economic activity include Food not Bombs.
The political economy of the free software movement
Within the free software movement a demand for both politically and economically free software exists. This software is both produced with open and transparent standards, and usually made available at a zero price. As an example of a near infinitely reproducible commodity the labour value of an instance software approaches zero. Thus, the price of software naturally attempts to find its level at zero. This nexus of political economy and social activism finds its outcome in the popularity of developing and using free software amongst socially conscious workers; and also in the wide spread belief that copying software is morally righteous, even if illegal.
The same case is not true for the installation or maintenance of actively functioning software, as these activities are more labour intensive and resistant to labour reducing mechanisation.
Russian Soviets as a historical example
Spanish collectives as a historical example
Yugoslavia as a historical example
While the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia was not an anarchy in the sense of a region without government, the nature of its political economy is of continuing importance to anarchists.
As Yugoslavia devolved a high degree of economic autonomy into local, partially self-managed bodies, examining the economic relations between these bodies is important in speculating about the relationship between free and anarchic workers councils.
Anarchist capitalist political economy
A wide variety of anarchists have advocated political economies where the commodity form, profit making and market economics predominate. While these anarchists use varying analytical tools, from human needs analysis in the case of mutualists, through to post-classical liberal economics, they share an emphasis on the value of personal private property employed for personal (and social) gain.