Collectivist Anarchism
The philosophical roots of Collectivist Anarchism lie in socialism
rather than liberalism.
Collectivists believe that human beings are social animals better
suited to working together for the common good, than for individual
interests.
When people are linked together by a common humanity they have no need
to be controlled or regulated by a government. As Michael Bakunin
proclaimed, 'social solidarity is the first human law, freedom is the
second law'.
Collectivist anarchists are sometimes criticised for holding a naïve
and hopelessly optimistic view of human nature.
Human beings will be greedy if they are brought up in an unjust
society, they will be caring if they are brought up in a society where
justice and equality reign. This helps us to understand just why
anarchists are so interested in education.
Anarchism and Marxism - what's the difference?
A number of parallels exist between Collectivist Anarchism and
Marxism…
ü Both see capitalism as a system of class exploitation
ü Human beings have the ultimate ability to order their own affairs
without the controlling hand of state intervening.
But Collectivists and Marxists do come into conflict over a couple of
things…
* Firstly Anarchists criticise Marxism's deterministic character,
taking destiny out of the hands of the people, and making it an
economic certainty.
* Marxists view the proletariat as the only truly revolutionary class,
whereas anarchists view everyone from peasants, to students, to the
ethnic minorities, as victims of repression.
* The ideologies also differ in the need for a 'vanguard party', with
the specific purpose of leading the oppressed to utopia. Anarchists
have always rejected traditional political means, and that only a
spontaneous uprising of the masses can lead to true anarchism, and so
avoid a…
* …'Dictatorship of the Proletariat', an idea crucial to defending the
progression from capitalist to socialist, according to Marx, and one
abhorred by anarchists, who view the state not as a symbol of class
rule, but as an independent oppressive body.
The other difference was that China was not industrialized like Russia so there was no proletariat group, as defined by Marxism, to draw the revolution from. What the Chinese Communists needed to do is re-define the proletariat for their situation, who they looked at were the peasants. To see how the Communists looked at the peasants, the anarchist view needs to be considered, as it can be argued the the anarchists were a precursor to the Communists in the view of peasants. The anarchists tried to instil the idea of class struggle by saying the peasant revolution is showing resistance to taxes and opposition to the government and landlords. By showing opposition to taxes and the government, the anarchists tried to bring about collapse due to lack of money, which would in turn bring about a communitarian property system where the peasants would share land.
The word collectivism often makes people cringe. Overall, there is a general fear of not being able to make personal decisions in America. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, collectivism can be defined as; emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity (“Collectivism”). In Anthem, Ayn Rand describes an extreme collectivist society. Although Anthem’s society seems extremely surreal, aspects of its collectivist society closely mirror today’s society.
The infamous author Ayn Rand dedicated her life wholly to the study and furthering of her political dogma, Objectivism, the uniting theme throughout all of her published literary works. One of the most obtrusive examples is her novella Anthem, which is set in a futuristic yet inept dystopia that is entirely founded on principles of collectivism. Page by page Rand’s sentiments become glaringly obvious, subsequently causing the reader to question her motivation behind this story, their own agreement with her egocentric philosophy, how Christianity aligns with every aspect of it, and if, overall, it was adeptly written.
The book “1984” by George Orwell is a fictional work that was penned as a discourse on Orwell’s views of what it would be like to live in a totalitarianism society. It is my belief that his views were based on his personal life experiences as he witnessed first hand many of the violent crimes perpetuated by those in positions of authority. Often, these crimes against one segment of society were carried out by other members of the same society in the name of political advancement or at other times out of fear for one’s life. Due to his experiences, Orwell began to write of his hatred of political power and the concept of a totalitarianism society. “1984” serves as a warning to readers of how a government can become abusive when seeking total control of it’s population. Furthermore, it showcases in great detail how a society can allow itself to be controlled through a series of psychological abuses and manipulation of historical information.
Collectivism, the rejection of personal desires for the communal good of a whole, is a contradictory philosophy, for it punishes those who adhere to its doctrine, while simultaneously rewarding those who exploit it. In Ayn Rand’s We the Living, collectivism, as with any other political ideology, has positive and negative applications, and, whether wielded as a mechanism of justice, or terror, the pendulum of its consequence swings in both directions. In its purest form, collectivism would theoretically rise from the mass cooperation of a group for that group’s benefit; resting in the altruistic hands of the group members and running on honesty, integrity, and moral uprightness. In actuality, as portrayed through Ayn Rand’s novel, collectivism is the suppression of independent thought in the name of an assembly to whom one is forced to swear loyalty and, furthermore, results in the rationalization of tyranny for the ‘common good.’ The enticement of supremacy overwhelms any philanthropy that those in power would potentially have, spelling despair for those at their mercy.
There are several arguments against philosophical anarchism. Most of the arguments are in line with either the theory that consent is not required or of the theory we have already consented. For the sake of being brief, this essay will attempt to refute only the latter of the two. Along with the idea of individual consent is the longstanding, traditional theory of the authority of God. Other arguments follow a less anarchist view and are that of tacit consent and more specifically that of majority consent.
One of the major themes throughout this book is the need for more collaboration, coalitions, and alliances at the regional level dealing with major political, economic, social, and environmental problems our metropolitan regions face. One example the book provides for increasing collaboration between regional actors is to create a dialogue to establish “mutual understanding through a process that suspends judgment, reveals assumptions on both sides, and includes diverse perspectives..” A dialogue replaces the inefficient process of debate with a collaborative one that builds trusts and helps to reconcile difference between seemingly competing interests. In San Diego for example, in the 1980’s civic leaders had UCSD set up an organization to spell out all the regions problems and bring the community together to help work at solving the region’s challenges. The San Diego dialogue was noted for helping to build connections that broke down borders between different groups and the shift in focus from individual grievances to community solutions.
Despite their different approaches, both theories conclude in universal equality, a real equality between humans that has never before been observed in any lasting civilization. While both theories operate on reason and seem to be sound, they remain unproven due to their contingency on various factors of time and place, but mainly on their prerequisite of incorruptibility. Now, while both theories may very well have the odds dramatically stacked against their favor, I believe they must be thoroughly dissected for their content before attempting to condemn them to utopianism. In his Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx created a radical theory revolving not around the man-made institution of government itself, but around the ever present guiding vice of man that is materialism and the economic classes that stemmed from it. By unfolding the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, Marx is able to outline a repeating variable....
Ayn Rand is a Russian-American author who wrote about her philosophy, Objectivism. Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism. Throughout her novel, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand routinely endorses the individualists thinking and way of life. However, there is always an opposing side. Collectivism is the philosophy that the community comes before the singular man, and sometimes that must require sacrifice. In the Fountainhead, Ayn Rand presents the conflict between individualism and collectivism through her characters such as Howard Roark and Ellsworth Toohey.
Marx outlines the goals that the Marxists should strive toward. He states that they do not form a separate party from the other working class parties and serves only to protect the interests of the proletariat. Marx states that the only differences between the Communist party and other working class parties are that Communists serve the proletariat regardless of nationality and that Communists must always represent the movement as a whole. This way, Communists are the most driven of the working class parties because they have a clearly defined goal and standard operating procedure. This goal is the same as all other proletariat parties, as Marx
To explore the concepts of Utopian theory, both political and social, one must first engender a concrete definition of what Utopia means. Sir Thomas More, the original creator of the term Utopia, signifies it as “no place”. However, More’s clever play on words seems ultimately to suggest that ”no place” is just no place right now. That is to say that Utopia is “an ideal place that does not exist in reality” yet (Murfin and Ray 529).
Houyhnhnm’s Land is a society unique to Gulliver’s adventures because he encounters not only horses reigning over society, but also that these supreme animals think more rationally and intellectually than the Yahoos and even Gulliver himself. Gulliver’s stay in Houyhnhnm’s Land represents the “perfect”, but emotionless and detached conventions of utopia. According to Dr. Joyce Hertzler’s The History of Utopian Thought, utopians hold a false view of society so that when developing their “perfect” social order they think nothing of “…over-riding natural affections and balking natural desires and impulses” (304). Life is really nothing but a systematic social order if devoid of all emotion, causing one to question the “perfection” of utopia. If one looks beneath the surface of the Houyhnhnm’s culture, one will find that Gulliver’s final journey does not describe an immaculate society, but rather a visionary world, meaning a world that is purely speculative and out of reach.
Contemporary liberal and anarchist philosophy are both two very different ways of trying to see what would be the best way to run society. While discussing these two ideologies I will try to show how both, in their purist sense, are not able work in today's society effectively. Contemporary liberals are involved in every day politics but through over regulation and dependence on government they loose their chances of running a reliable democracy. Anarchist have very good ideas of how a natural society could function without government or modern institutions but the biggest problem they have is how to get to that point.
According to the “ Introduction of sociology” in 1848 Marx and Friedrich Engels created the “Communist Manifesto”. This piece of literature is important in that it is one of the most influential political manuscripts in history. “Communist Manifesto” also disagreed with Comote theory of society, thus creating the concept of antipositivism. Marx believed that society 's growth came from hardships of other social classes over the means of production. At the time Marx was developing his theory, he was politically influenced, the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism were growing in nations. Both created a class divide in wealth, factory workers being lower class and poor, and the owners being upper class and very wealthy. Marx predicted that capitalism would cause inequality with his theory of antipositivism, Marx prediction was that the inequalities of capitalism would be so severe that factory workers would eventually riot. (Open Stax 1.2) The failure of capitalism lead to the creation of Communism, Communism focused on no established private or corporate ownerships rather than distribution of wealth to everyone. Marx opinion that Communism was better suited for the government over Capitalism may have been influenced by his study of social patterns of psychological causes. While Marx prediction wasn 't fully accurate Marx’s concept that Societal disputes lead to change in society is still one of the major theories that sociology still supports to this
Marxism is a set of theories, or a system of thought and analysis, developed by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century in response to the Western industrial revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism as the predominant economic mode. Like feminist theory, Marxist theory is directed at social change; Marxists want to analyze social relations in order to change them, in order to alter what they see are the gross injustices and inequalities created by capitalist economic relations. My capsule summary of the main ideas of Marxism, however, will focus on the theoretical aspects more than on how that theory has been and is applicable to projects for social change.