Anarchism: No State, No Market by Howard Moss (1986)

Blogger's Note: 

The article below by Socialist Party member and regular Socialist Standard writer, Howard Moss, first appeared in the 1986 Freedom Press anthology, Freedom: A Hundred Years 1886-1986, which, as the title suggests, was a special book published by Freedom Press to mark its centenary. I remember buying the anthology in Freedom Bookshop in Aldgate in the early 1990s, and it was a surprise at the time to see Howard's name within its pages — I perhaps applied my hostility clause a bit too literally back in the day — but it's a good piece of succinct writing and, I think in its own way, its general point overlaps with Rubel and Crump's book, Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, which was originally published around about the same time period.

According to bookfinder.com, the cheapest secondhand copy of the anthology would set you back forty dollars today, so it's good to know that a PDF of the book is available over at LibCom. It's worth checking out, not just for Howard's article, but for its history of early British anarchism, the biographical sketches of forgotten Anarchist activists over the decades, and articles from such anarchist 'names' as Colin Ward, Alex Comfort, George Woodcock, Crass, Nicolas Walter, Donald Rooum and Vernon Richards. As an added bonus, it also features a cartoon by longstanding Socialist Standard cartoonist, Peter Rigg, in his Kronstadt Kids period.

Anarchism: No State, No Market

What do anarchists want? It’s a difficult one. Perhaps an easier one along the same lines would be ‘What do anarchists have in common?’ And for me the answer to this one was summed up by Donald Rooum in the May 1986 Freedom through the words of his cartoon creation Wildcat: ‘You get rid of governments by convincing people to withdraw support’. Yes, that’s it, getting rid of governments, and of course getting rid of the thing they govern — the state. The next question, however, has got to be ‘What kind of a stateless society do we want?’ Even if we can’t be expected to give a blueprint, we can at least be expected to give some kind of idea of how things will be organised and the kind of life that will be possible in a society that doesn’t have the state to change it.

Let me say right away that, as I see it, there are two possible choices of the kind of stateless society. And the choices are simple ones. We either have a stateless society with a market or a stateless society without a market. If you’re an anarchist who doesn’t envisage getting rid of the market, then automatically, whether you realise it or not, you’re talking about keeping buying and selling, trade, money, banks, financial institutions, and so on — in other words all the paraphernalia of capitalism, even if it’s capitalism without the state. And there are people, anarcho-capitalists they call themselves, who argue precisely for this kind of arrangement. They want an entirely free-market world, without national frontiers, with a single world currency and where private ownership extends to everything imaginable and the ethos, even more than now, is unbridled competition. Freedom dealt with them (not very well, in my opinion) in October 1984 (Vol 45 No 10) and later referred to them as a ‘squalid bunch’. I doubt whether many readers of Freedom would want to be associated with them either. But the rub is that, unless as an anarchist you advocate not just the abolition of the state but also the abolition of the market system, then logically you can’t escape being an ‘anarcho-capitalist’. Because as long as you’ve still got the market or an exchange society of any kind, then you’ve still got some form of capitalism, or at any rate some form of property society.

Now I know most anarchists would say, if it were put to them, that they don’t want the market system or the exchange economy that goes with it. But how often do they explicitly express this point of view? And how often is it explicitly expressed in anarchist literature? In my experience, very rarely. And this is a pity, because one of the greatest difficulties in putting anarchist views across is reaction from people along the lines ‘You’ve got nothing practical to replace the present system with?’ or ‘An anarchist society would be chaos’. Yet if we stressed not just the stateless but also the marketless nature of anarchism, we’d be making anarchist views that much easier for people to grasp and not react to like that, because we’d be putting across the idea that it’s the market that’s chaos in the way it arbitrarily dictates how much we shall or shall not have, what work we shall or shall not do, the kind of lives we shall or shall not live. And as a logical converse to that, we’d be offering a society in which, instead of competing among one another in a system of privately owned wealth, we could all work together to provide for our needs using the commonly owned resources of the earth. If we did this, we’d not only be putting across the idea that human needs and human worth shouldn’t be measured by money and profit but also advocating a practical alternative in which that wouldn’t happen.

I’ll raise a few hackles now by saying that, having reached this point, we’re pretty close to what some people would understand by ‘socialism’. Not the ‘socialism’ of the Labour Party, or Russia, or China, or the left-wing groups, but the socialism of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’ and ‘the abolition of the wages system’. These of course are things Marx said (though he did not originate the sayings) and we’ve got to reject a hell of a lot of other things Marx said, but should we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why should’t we accept that those ideas provide a sound basis (as I see it, the only basis) for a truly free society?

It may or may not come as a surprise now if I say that I consider myself a socialist, but when people say to me (as they often do) ‘Isn’t what you’re talking about anarchism?’, I say ‘Yes, as long as by anarchism you mean not just a society organised without a state but also one organised without a market’. That is after all the only road to freedom — isn’t it?

Howard Moss

Bangladesh; migrants export class struggle

From the LibCom website

In recent days over 800 Bangladeshi workers have been deported by the Kuwaiti government for organising strikes and violent protests.

There are about 200,000 workers from Bangladesh in the Gulf countries, mostly employed in cleaning services, security guards or construction. Every year thousands of poor Bangladeshis pay a labour recruiting agent (dalal) to arrange temporary jobs in Kuwait and other wealthy countries. Many workers find the labour brokers have ripped them off as pay is much less than promised - and sometimes less than other workers doing the same job. Others find on arrival the agents have failed to provide any work and so leave them stranded at the airport. Accomodation is also inadequate and expensive so that the whole point of the migration - to save and send money to family back home - becomes impossible.

It is common for employers to demand the passports of workers at beginning of employment, under threat of lower wages if workers refuse. But this makes workers vulnerable as they risk deportation if police find them without documentation. (Unsurprisingly therefore, there are thousand of illegal migrant workers, often using false ID.) If workers make demands on the boss he can simply inform the police that the worker is dismissed and so no longer has any legal right to remain in the country; wages owed to workers are sometimes used to pay for the travel costs of their own deportation.

Amin Ahmed Chowdhury, a former Bangladesh ambassador to Oman, told bdnews24.com: "Brokers of employers and recruiting agents take workers' passports on arrival, saying they are necessary for making identity and medical cards."

"Their exploitation starts with the taking away of passports," said Amin, who pointed out the practice was illegal.

He added that the brokers of the recruiting agents often made workers sign new contracts in a foreign language for much lower wages than pledged in Bangladesh. (independent-bangladesh.com 7 Aug 08)

***

Kuwaiti newspaper Arab Times in a report yesterday said one of the workers alleged that the company has not paid two months' wages to a number of workers, and is not giving them weekly holiday.

Some of them are even forced to work 16 hours a day without any payment for overtime work, he said.

Another worker said the manager of the company beat up some workers for no reasons, and deducts five dinars per day if any worker fails to turn up for work due to illness.

He alleged that the company is compelling them to buy plane tickets from a certain travel agency, which charges exorbitant fares, the Arab Times reported.

“We want the company to pay our wages through bank, besides paying us for overtime. Most of the workers are falling sick because of the long hours of work. The company is also not allowing us to take sick leave. How can we work under such an environment?” the worker posed a question. (Daily Star 22 July 08)

The trouble began in the last two weeks of July. Thousands of Bangladeshis and other South Asian migrants (from Nepal, India, probably Pakistan, etc.) employed as cleaners, rubbish collectors and stevedores/dockers went on strike over a long list of grievances; poor wages, poor working conditions, overtime without pay, lack of sick leave and time off, etc. The workers also claim that employers force workers to pay extra for health and accomodation — costs they say should be borne by the companies. Demonstrations at two sites where they're housed outside Kuwait City turned violent, with workers smashing windows, vandalising cars and clashing with camp officials, police and army - who moved in with tear gas and clubs. 800 Bangladeshi demonstrators were arrested on 28th July but clashes continued for several days.

"The army beat us mercilessly while breaking up the protest and also in detention camps," said Mohammad Ilyas, 28, who started work in Kuwait three years ago after selling everything he owned and borrowing from relatives to afford the agent fees. "Now I am a wretched person. My dream is over, he said." (Reuters, 1 Aug 08)

As the deportees arrive back in Bangladesh, evidence of beatings by Kuwaiti police and soldiers are plainly visible. While cracking down on the unfamiliar sight of public violent labour unrest by its normally invisible migrant labour force, the Kuwaiti state is obliged to recognise its dependency on exploiting cheap South Asian labour for its menial jobs. So it has conceded that it will abolish the dalal labour broking/pimping system and set a minimum wage at over double the present rates of pay.

The two exports; Ready Made Garments & Ready Made Workers

Bangladesh has also announced greater regulation of labour brokers' practices. Despite its complete disinterest in ever previously regulating or limiting workers' exploitation by local recruiting agents, the Bangladeshi state is now also anxious to resolve the labour unrest and repair the damaged reputation of their migrant workforce; over 5 million Bangladeshis work abroad, mostly in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, sending home around $8 billion a year and providing a vital foreign exchange injection to Bangladesh's economy. This is almost as much as the $9 billion the country's other main export - ready made garments - brings into the country.

Keeping the home fires burning

The migrants return to the ongoing struggles at home. Despite the continued State of Emergency in Bangladesh, a report published this week describes the growth in unrest among garment industry workers over the first six months of 2008. There were 72 incidents of labour unrest related to unpaid wages, lay-offs and holiday time disputes; and in 13 cases, workers took to streets to protest at the killing or torture of fellow workers. At least 988 workers were injured in clashes with police; 45 workers were arrested, over 10,000 were fined and at least 78 sacked over participation in demonstrations. The incidents have been spread over all the main ready made garment centers.

The protests and strikes followed a familiar pattern; an incident in one factory sparks a walkout, then those workers march to other factories and bring out many other workers. Demonstrations often become roadblocks; police actions can often result in rioting, fierce large-scale clashes with cops and sometimes attacks on bosses' property. All this is in the context of some of the lowest wages in the world, ever-higher food and fuel prices and employers often refusing to implement previously agreed improvements in pay and working conditions. Food prices have doubled in Bangladesh since September 2006, while wages have remained largely static.

The high level of struggle of the Bangladeshi working class continues and now spreads across borders.

Ret Marut