The Anarchist Critique of Political Economy

I. What is Anarchism?

"Anarchism, the no-government system of socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economic and political fields which characterize the nineteenth century...In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear...And in common with the most advanced representatives of political radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of the political organization of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying...all the infinitely varied needs of the human being."--Peter Kropotkin

A. Anarchism and the Enlightenment Tradition

B. Individual and Society

C. The organization of society

1. Non-coercive organization

2. Decentralization

D. Right-wing libertarianism vs. left-wing anarchism

E. Anarchism and Marxism

 

1. Similarities

 

2. Differences

a. The peasants

Subcommander Marcos, leader of the Zapatista movement. The Zapatistas are a revolutionary peasant force, active in southern Mexico.

b. The state

 

II. Mikhail Bakunin

A. Bakunin's background

 

B. Bakunin's critique of the state

C. Bakunin's critique of Marx

"If the proletariat is to be the ruling class, it may be asked, then whom will it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will be subject to this new rule, this new state. It might be the peasant rabble, for example, which , as we know, does not enjoy the favor of the Marxists."

D. Struggle for control of the International

III. Petr Kropotkin

A. Kropotkin's background

 

B. A brief anarchist history of the state

 

C. Anarchism as an agrarian socialism

D. Kropotkin on the law and prisons

E. Kropotkin's critique of liberal political economy

 

1. Overproduction

 

2. Against the myth of scarcity: The Conquest of Bread

3. Against the myth of competition: Mutual Aid