THE ANARCHY OF CAPITALISM; OVERPRODUCTION

Bassoe: Shipyard Financiers Face $15.2 Bil Newbuild Drilling Rig Loss

BY BASSOE ANALYTICS 10-30-2020 06:12:24

 

They built them and no one ever came. Now shipyards need to do something other than wait if they want to solve their newbuild rig problem.

It’s 2019, the offshore rig scene is ramping up after a long and difficult downturn and newbuilds are finally leaving shipyards. Cue 2020, Coronavirus and a new oil price mess. There are still 69 newbuilds in yards and 65 of them, estimated by Bassoe Rig Values to be now worth approximately $6.2 billion, have nowhere to go. During the offshore rig newbuilding boom, which commenced around 10 years ago now, far more rigs were ordered, many on speculation, than were proven to be needed. Fast forward to 2020 and there is still a glut of units awaiting delivery from yards with little-to-no sale or work prospects in sight.

Data from Bassoe Analytics shows that there are 43 jackups, 18 drillships and 8 semisubs still classed as “under construction” today, though many of these have had deliveries deferred year after year in hopes that they will have brighter prospects to get a contract in a few years when the market recovers. Unfortunately, this has been the plan for the best part of a decade for some rig owners and now that we have escaped one downturn just to be met by a second means that little will change near term. Oil price, near-term demand and dayrates are all struggling and until these improve, newbuild sale and contracting activity will remain muted.

Do any of these rigs have work to go to?

Between the beginning of 2019 and mid-October 2020, 40 units were delivered thanks to some improvement in global oil market fundamentals. The majority of these were jackups, which were put to work in the Middle East, Mexico or China; meanwhile five harsh-environment semisubs were successfully contracted on long-term commitments in Norway plus a further semisub was contracted for work in Chinese waters. Only two drillships were delivered during the period, both Sonadrill units, with just one securing work in Angolan waters.




Figure 1: Newbuild rigs with contracts in place (Data from Bassoe Analytics)


As can be seen in Figure 1, only four of the 69 offshore rigs currently in shipyards have known future contracts in place: two are Transocean managed 20k BOP drillships, which will be utilized under long-term deals in the US Gulf of Mexico, and the other two are newbuild jackups ordered by ARO Drilling specifically for long-term deals with Saudi Aramco.

Who is responsible for all this excess tonnage?

Most of the companies originally responsible for these newbuilds have defaulted on their orders and walked away. That does not necessarily mean that it was their fault. When everyone wanted to order a new rig, circa 2010, shipyards enabled buyers by offering low-risk terms. The original buyers were hurt the least out of all this and the shipyards have been left holding assets that nobody wants.

As has been the norm in the past, newbuild jackup ownership remains fragmented especially in comparison to floating rigs (see Figure 2). There are still 18 different “owners” within the newbuild jackup segment, with Chinese companies still essentially in control of the market. Like jackup ownership, the spread of newbuilds within shipyards is also disjointed with these 43 jackups spread across 14 different yards.






Figure 2: Newbuild jackups by owner (Data from Bassoe Analytics)


On the deepwater side of the market, drillships are the main cause for concern with more than double the amount marooned in comparison to semisubs (see Figure 3). The main reason behind this split is that many of the semisub newbuilds were designed for the Norwegian Continental Shelf, a market that has been doing relatively well, therefore yards managed to find new owners for these prior to 2020. It is now mainly benign floaters that are left in the yards. Most of these drillships were originally ordered by drilling contractors such as Seadrill, Ocean Rig, Pacific Drilling which, when faced with a depressed market and lack of demand during the last oil downturn, canceled construction contracts with yards.



Figure 3: Newbuild floating rigs by owner (Data from Bassoe Analytics)


Many shipyards are now under huge financial strain after owners backed out of contracts, leaving them to finance and finish construction work following a nosedive in drilling demand. Yards have been forced into the awkward position of having to build, own, and pay to maintain these assets.

What are the options going forward?

There are some companies which have been formed based on rescuing and managing these abandoned rigs, with SinoOcean being one of the most successful of late in the jackup segment. Perhaps more of the excess jackup tonnage will be brought under the wing of such companies, some will may be picked up by COSL for work in Chinese waters, while others could still be secured on bareboat leasing agreements which had been a growing trend until COVID and the oil price crash. Shelf Drilling, for example, recently canceled bareboat agreements with CMHI for two jackups.

One potential solution for shipyards would be to consider upgrading some of these rigs to cater to a growing trend towards “greener” drilling capabilities. This could make them more attractive to potential buyers and help to recover some of their loses. However, this would mean requiring more funding and not many yards would be open to risking further loses. However, yards that at least start investigating this could end up better off than the alternative.

The other options going forward are quite simple. Yards can keep holding onto these rigs, digging a deeper financial pit whilst hoping for a miracle upturn in the market; they can bite the bullet and try to sell assets while taking a massive financial loss; or a final option (and one that is becoming increasingly likely) is that some of these newbuilds could be scrapped before ever being put to work. Shipyards cannot keep stranded assets forever and now that many of these units are likely to have been written down, and with no market improvement in sight, it is probable that they will shortly attempt to offload rigs. Keppel Corp recently announced that it is considering divesting “non-core” assets such as drilling rigs as part of a new asset-light strategy. We believe that this is just start of many more such announcements to come.

Bassoe Analytics estimates that the original order value of these 65 remaining rigs would have been in the arena of $21.4 billion and when compared to our current estimated value of just $6.2 billion this already shows a brutal loss of over $15.2 billion for shipyards. To make matters worse, if yards start offloading newbuilds just to get rid of them, rig values may fall further. As reported in our last article, Ending offshore rig owners’ bankruptcy nightmare requires a lot more scrapping, these dormant rigs are all part of a bigger global oversupply problem in the offshore rig market. Until we witness a mass scrapping of old tonnage to make room for the new, these dormant rigs will likely continue to sit idly awaiting maiden charters that may never come.


This article is reprinted courtesy of Bassoe Analytics and it may be found in its original form here.

 

The Many Types of Capitalist Economic Anarchy

[This is a brief essay against the notion that there is only one kind of capitalist economic anarchy. I submitted it to the RCP*** in 1983 under the title "On State Capitalist Economic Anarchy". I received no response from them.]

The current discussion on the nature of the Soviet Union is an important one. But as an RCP member has pointed out to me, it is not simply a matter of arguing for one existing line against all other lines—it also includes the necessity of further developing our understanding of the question. Though I respect the contribution made by the old Revolutionary Union publication, Red Papers 7, as well as the more recent writings of the RCP on the subject, the present situation demands a still deeper analysis.

In this essay I would like to raise just one particular issue from among the many that need to be discussed—that of the existence and types of economic anarchy under capitalism, and under state capitalism in particular.

One of the main themes of Engels' work Anti-Dühring[1] is that under capitalism "anarchy of social production prevails" [p. 350] and that under socialism "the anarchy within social production is replaced by consciously planned organization" [p. 366]. He also says that

In proportion as the anarchy of social production vanishes, the political authority of the state dies away. Men, at last masters of their own mode of social organization, consequently become at the same time masters of nature, masters of themselves—free. [p. 369]

I agree with Engels on these points—even the last one which could be taken by some to imply support for the infamous "theory of the productive forces" (though I do not read it that way). But if these points are even generally correct, it follows that you should be able to decide whether a society is capitalist or socialist by deciding if it can still be characterized by anarchy in its social production, and by whether such anarchy as does exist is decreasing or not.

(This is an economic test of socialism as opposed to a political test; and actually socialism is both a political and economic system. However I believe that these things are so interrelated that sufficient tests of either kind can be constructed and that they will not lead to opposite conclusions. In the present case, for example, it seems to me that the only way there could possibly be an absence of economic anarchy, or even a progressive diminution of economic anarchy in a society, is if the proletariat controlled that society... but this is jumping ahead in the argument.)

In pursuing this line of inquiry, then, the key question becomes: "In what does the socio-economic anarchy of capitalist production consist?" The answer to this question is that the anarchy of capitalist production is manifested in many ways, some of which are more important than others. All of these derive, however, from one basic contradiction in capitalist production, a contradiction so important in fact that it is often called the fundamental contradiction of capitalism: This is, as Engels expressed it, "the contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation" [p. 349]. Let us then proceed to discuss some of the ways in which this contradiction leads to capitalist economic anarchy.

First, and most important, the fundamental contradiction leads to economic crises of overproduction. As is well known, this "overproduction" is not in relation to the material needs of the people, but rather in relation to what can be sold. If anything is economic anarchy it is the quintessential capitalist phenomenon of starvation and want in the midst of a mountain of "excess" goods which cannot be disposed of profitably. Of course the explication of these crises of overproduction can get quite complicated, as many subsidiary contradictions are involved. The whole of Marx's Capital is in effect the detailed story of how this all works. (This is why those who point to any single argument in Capital as being Marx's "theory of economic crises" are hopelessly off the mark.)

[Note added on 8/12/98: I've partially changed my mind on this point. It is not an appropriate response to someone seeking a short explanation of capitalist economic crises to say "go read Capital". The essential features of any process can be summarized briefly, or relatively briefly. But it is true that the essential features of capitalist economic crises are still somewhat complex. This is why Marx's dialectical explication of them is the best way to proceed.]

A second form of capitalist economic anarchy is the anarchy among the various capitalist enterprises. Each enterprise may attempt to organize its production rationally, but—traditionally at least—that same rational planning did not exist overall. There is no denying that this is an important type of economic anarchy, and it is also true that it can play a role in the development of overproduction crises. However, with the advent of monopoly capitalism this particular form of economic anarchy has become relatively less important than it used to be. For one thing, there is the widespread development of vertical integration of production within corporations, and the equally important closer integration of production between companies and their outside suppliers which has often gone so far as to allow "just-in-time" arrival of parts from other companies (in order to avoid large parts inventories). From the standpoint of rational planning of production it often no longer makes any real difference if the parts come from a different company, or from another factory or division of the same company.

For another thing, there are now generally only a small number of producers of particular commodities, and it is easier for them to divide up the market and hence impose at least a degree of rational planning among the various enterprises. Often this has even gone to the point of formal production cartels, though in the U.S. it is typically done through secret (illegal) agreements and implicit "understandings". And more important by far, there now exists the phenomenon of state capitalism of the Soviet variety, under which formal production plans are developed for the whole economy (even if they are to some extent a farce!). This does not completely eliminate the anarchy among Soviet production enterprises, but it certainly greatly reduces this type of anarchy.

Engels remarked that "The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation reproduces itself as the antagonism between the organization of production in the individual factory and the anarchy of production in society as a whole" [p. 352, emphasis in original]. While this is literally true, it is possible to read Engels here as saying that this is the only way that anarchy is manifested from the fundamental contradiction. I don't think Engels is saying this, but if he is, as much as I admire him, I have to say that he is wrong on this point. In any case, those who believe that the anarchy in capitalist production consists mainly (or entirely) of anarchy among capitalist enterprises are very much mistaken, as are those who believe that the fundamental contradiction must of necessity lead to the development of crises of overproduction through the exclusive medium of inter-enterprise anarchy.

It is easy to see why certain people today might be attracted to these views, however. For if the anarchy of capitalism derives solely (or even primarily) from the anarchy among competing enterprises, all that is necessary to eliminate this anarchy is to institute an overall state economic plan. State capitalism then becomes free (or largely free) of economic anarchy, they suppose. The Soviet revisionists repeatedly state that economic crises do not and cannot occur in the Soviet Union because of the existence of their overall economic plans. The fact that they continue to trumpet these comments at the same time as their economy sinks deeper into stagnation and crisis vastly amuses us, of course.

A third kind of capitalist economic anarchy is the anarchy which exists within capitalist enterprises. Marx and Engels often refer to the "social production" within each enterprise, and of course they even contrast this with the anarchy of production among the various capitalist enterprises. But anybody who has ever worked for a large corporation has, I am sure, seen enormous waste, disorganization, bad planning (or the partial absence of planning), and the like. In fact the "socialized production" of the capitalist workplace is really only semi-socialized and could be greatly improved upon in a more completely socialized enterprise controlled by the workers. Social production under capitalism is far from perfect because (for one important reason among many) society is split into classes and it is not in the interests of the workers to work harmoniously according to the production plans of the capitalists. Many workers know this quite well, at one level of consciousness or another.

Paradoxically, one of the factors leading to economic anarchy within corporations is a bureaucratic over-centralization! Any complex entity (be it a living organism or an economy) needs a dialectical balance between centralism and decentralism. Too much central control of production leads to a situation where some small dislocation somewhere cannot be quickly and readily compensated for, resulting in disruptive chain reactions. Of course this sort of thing is particularly characteristic of the Soviet economy, which comes close to being "one big bureaucratic corporation".

A fourth kind of capitalist economic anarchy is the anarchy which exists among capitalist countries, including that among the various state capitalist countries. This is, in a sense, the international reproduction of the older type of economic anarchy among individual enterprises within a single country. The importance of this form of anarchy has of course grown immensely with the advent of imperialism.

As long as capitalism exists all of the many types of capitalist economic anarchy will continue to exist, to one extent or another. And they all will continue to play a part in the development of overproduction crises. But the primary cause of crises of overproduction derives directly from the fundamental contradiction of capitalism (between social production and private appropriation), and these crises do not require the existence of any other type of economic anarchy for their development. Even if we imagine that the whole earth comes under control of a single capitalist world government, operating under a "perfect" world economic plan, and that every single economic enterprise on earth operates completely rationally within that plan, there would still be economic crises of overproduction! The reason is simple: surplus value would still be ripped off from the workers; the workers would therefore be unable to buy all that they produce; the capitalists would use up a certain part of the resulting spoils in the form of untold luxuries and extravagances, and would re-invest the rest in the expansion of the means of production; but there would come a time when the further expansion of the means of production would become obviously pointless; for awhile things might be kept going by advancing credit to the workers, but after awhile it would become apparent that the workers could never repay their loans and the credit bubble would collapse... and sooner or later stagnation and/or depression would develop. These things are inherent in capitalist commodity production, and there is no escaping them. It is not possible to have an economic plan under any form of capitalism, which will not eventually break down.

Socialism or communism without an overall economic plan is inconceivable. There is a great deal of work still necessary to understand exactly how socialist or communist economic plans should be developed and implemented. But one thing transcends all this: the realization that the law of value is fundamentally incompatible with communist planning, and that any economic plan that is based upon the continued existence of commodity production is either capitalist, or at best transitional (to the extent that the law of value is being progressively restricted). The importance of getting clear on the nature and varieties of economic anarchy which can exist under various forms of capitalism, including state capitalism, is that this helps us understand why the much-glorified economic planning in the revisionist Soviet Union is nothing more than capitalist economic planning carried as far as it can go.

Of course there is much more which could be, and should be, said about all this. I hope these introductory comments can be of some value to the discussion of the nature of the Soviet Union which is now underway.

—Scott H.
   2/23/83 (edited slightly on 8/12/98)

http://www/.massline.org/PolitEcon

---

Notes

[1] Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976).

*** REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY (USA) 
— End —

 

The Anarchism of Intellectuals

Nov

24

2024

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From Books & Ideas / La Vie des Idées, by Cyril Legrand , 21 November, translated by Arianne Dorval

About: Catherine Malabou, Au voleur ! Anarchisme et philosophie, Puf

Whether conceived as advocacy of disorder or as “the highest expression of order,” as the abolition of the state or as state-led deregulation, anarchy feeds on every ambiguity. This is the case even in contemporary philosophy.

Catherine Malabou’s latest book can be read as the story of a misunderstanding: the conceptual and political misunderstanding surrounding anarchy and anarchism.

The terms “anarchy” and “anarchism” are admittedly confusing. Long synonymous with chaos and disorder, they have been used since the nineteenth century to also designate an organized political movement—which has taken on a variety of forms—and a social ideal—described by contrast as “the highest expression of order” by Élisée Reclus. [1] As if this ambiguity were not enough, anarchism, which is by definition anti-state, is now sometimes associated with forms of state deregulation and withdrawal. Malabou herself strangely adds to this confusion when she uses the term “de facto anarchism” (in contrast to “dawning anarchism”) to designate the anomie of a social world “condemned to a horizontality of desertion,” or when she evokes “the anarchist turn in capitalism,” Donald Trump’s anarchism, “cyber-anarchism,” or “market anarchism.” This is all very perplexing.

What Malabou euphemistically calls the “polymorphism of anarchism”—where one might be tempted to see a certain conceptual disorder—is aggravated by the specific subject of the book: namely, the way in which a number of contemporary philosophers have recently taken up the concept of “anarchy” without declaring themselves anarchist and have thereby engaged in a “paradoxical form of anarchy without anarchism.”

Anarchy Without Anarchism

Indeed, none of the concepts eruditely discussed by Malabou in the central chapters of the book—Reiner Schürmann’s “principle of anarchy,” [2] Emmanuel Levinas’s “anarchic responsibility,” Jacques Derrida’s “responsible anarchism,” Michel Foucault’s “anarcheology,” Giorgio Agamben’s “profanatory anarchism,” and Jacques Rancière’s “staging anarchy”—refers directly to Proudhon, to Bakunin, or to the movements for which these two nineteenth-century thinkers provided the inspiration and theoretical groundwork. On the contrary, the philosophers under study generally make a point of explicitly distancing themselves from anarchist thinkers and movements, and sometimes even adopt political positions far removed from theirs: Levinas clearly defends the necessity of a state, Rancière argues for a kind of police force, and Foucault remains fundamentally attached to the principle of government. At no point does any of them go so far as to call into question what Proudhon termed “the governmental prejudice.” As Malabou observes:

Let me repeat my point: Not for a moment do philosophers consider the possibility that we might live without being governed. Self-management and self-determination are not serious political possibilities for any one of them. In the final analysis, government is always safe, even if it takes the form of self-government.

Malabou emphasizes that while none of these philosophers is strictly anarchist, all of them have inevitably been influenced by anarchism: Whether they like it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not, the philosophers of anarchy are indebted in one way or another to anarchist thinkers and movements. This is primarily evident at the terminological and conceptual level. For as Malabou recalls, it was Proudhon who first gave a positive meaning to the concept of “anarchy”: “Without this revolution in meaning, none of the philosophical concepts of anarchy developed in the twentieth century could have seen the light of day.”

More fundamentally, one could hypothesize that all of these philosophers have been influenced by the radicalness attributed to anarchism (rightly so, though at times in a rather folkloric manner): Beyond the word itself, it is the gesture of anarchism that fascinates and inspires. The imaginary that has developed around anarchism, and more specifically around the anarchist bomber of the late nineteenth century, is no doubt largely unfounded (very few attacks were actually carried out), but it has nevertheless left a profound impact on the intellectual world, on literature, and on legislation. [3] Philosophy—in particular that which presents itself as “deconstruction” (a translation of Heidegger’s Destruktion)—may well be haunted by this imaginary of radicalness and destruction.

Yet, while the philosophers under study have clearly drawn inspiration from anarchism and have even “stolen” the concept, they have also partially betrayed and diluted its meaning. As Malabou observes, none of them has taken this inspiration to its limit; all have remained “at the edge of the radicalness they advocate.” And this not only because they have not dared to declare themselves anarchist, but also because their attachment to the governmental prejudice has prevented them from deepening their own deconstructionist approaches. As if through symmetry, their lack of political radicalness has been accompanied by a lack of philosophical radicalness. This is what the central chapters of the book attempt to demonstrate.

The Anti-intellectualism of Anarchists

According to Malabou, not only is the philosophy of anarchy influenced by anarchism, but the anarchist movement would in turn benefit from the influence of this philosophy: “Philosophy makes it possible for anarchy to undertake the work that anarchism did not do.” One should therefore engage in the deepening, radicalization, and “rejuvenation of classic anarchism,” in line with what has come to be known as “post-anarchism.” Specifically, one should: deconstruct the rationalism, positivism, and naturalism of classic anarchism along with Schürmann, Derrida, and Levinas; desubstantialize the concept of power along with Foucault; renounce the fetishization of excess and the celebration of transgression in favor of desacralization and profanation along with Agamben [4]; and engage in a broader rethinking of social and political emancipation along with Rancière. Since the late 1990s, a number of authors and activists described as “post-anarchists” have claimed to pursue one or the other of these endeavors.

However, there seem to be some fundamental limits to this rapprochement. Anarchists’ reluctance to engage with philosophy, which Malabou deplores and deems “paradoxical,” does have its reasons.

The works of Schürmann, Levinas, Derrida, and Agamben—and to a lesser extent those of Foucault and Rancière—are undeniably highly theoretical and speculative and sometimes even completely abstruse. Moreover, reading and understanding these works require mastery of specialized academic knowledge, or at least of a set of philosophical landmarks and references that are far from being widely shared. Anarchism, which is oriented more towards practice and revolutionary organizing than towards speculative elaboration, remains for its part profoundly anti-intellectual [5] and wary of excessive theoretical detours. Malabou acknowledges this “hostility to philosophical reflection” and finds it regrettable: “Anarchism must open itself up to philosophical dialogue.” It should be noted, however, that this hostility concerns a certain kind of philosophical reflection, namely that which involves too many mediations and is only accessible to an elite. To be suspicious of intellectuals—of their sophistications and of the power they sometimes arrogate to themselves—is obviously not to reject intelligence and reflection as such. Anarchists are not so much against philosophy—or even metaphysics—as they are against its academic capture and speculative inflation, which sometimes veer into Byzantine complexity, as is the case in the philosophical works discussed by Malabou.

In fact, one wonders to whom the book is addressed: Given that the central chapters are devoted to erudite commentaries on difficult authors who themselves tend to use sophisticated references, it is difficult to see how these various reflections—which might be said to constitute an “anarchism of intellectuals” [6]—could directly feed into the practices of anarchist activists as Malabou seems to expect. As Renaud Garcia writes in Le désert de la critique. Déconstruction et politique (L’Échappée, 2015, pp. 25 and 44): “The adoption of the deconstructionist ‘tool-box of ideas’ by the most radical currents of social critique actually contributes to making [this critique] unintelligible to most of the people who might be interested in it.” And Garcia later asks: “Who are the deconstructionists writing for?”

An Anarchist Ontology?

However, the fact that anarchism is on principle hostile to philosophical flights of fancy does not prevent philosophers from interrogating the philosophical or ontological foundations of anarchism—even if this leads them to the conclusion that there are no foundations. In reality, Malabou conducts precisely this sort of—properly philosophical—interrogation in her book: Is there a philosophy, or even an ontology, of anarchism? And if so, should one view philosophical an-archy as the philosophy of political anarchism? Does the lack of a principle of command ultimately rest on the lack of a metaphysical first principle? In short: Is it possible to develop an ontologico-political anarchism? Malabou has her doubts:

We must concede that all attempts to think being and politics together have been a disaster. From Plato’s “communism” to the mathematical totalitarianism of some forms of Maoism, through the Heideggerian night, the elaboration of connections between ontology and politics authorized by the original bricolage of archē, which, as we have seen, extends its reign in both fields, has given rise to nothing but terrifying dead-ends. [...] Why risk a new impediment? Wouldn’t it be better, far better, to make a cut between being and anarchism, to stop ontologizing politics and politicizing ontology [...]?

And yet, Malabou specifically attempts this ontologization of anarchism in her conclusion. She even goes so far as to claim that “this is the task dawning in anarchism” and that there is “urgency” in taking up these philosophical challenges. But unlike what is sometimes implicitly or explicitly the case in the various currents of anarchism, the ontology defended by Malabou does not rest on a first principle: Reason, Nature, Life, or even God (for there does exist a Christian anarchism, as illustrated in particular by Leo Tolstoy). The ontology on which anarchism must rest, or which constitutes an-archism, is literally without principle (an-archē): It is therefore, in the words of Malabou, a “plastic ontology.” As the author observes:

As the only political form that is always to be invented, to be shaped before it exists, precisely because it depends on no beginning or command, anarchism is never what it is. That’s where it’s being lies. This plasticity is the meaning of its being, the meaning of its question.

Malabou thus returns to a concept she has been working on since her first book, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic, [7] though she unfortunately does not develop it further. After pointing out that this idea was already present in Bakunin—who defined anarchism as a “plastic force” in which “no office petrifies, becomes fixed and remains irrevocably attached to a single person” (quoted by Malabou)—she elevates plasticity to the paradoxical rank of ontological principle of anarchism. This ontological anarchism does not constitute a defined and closed metaphysical system; on the contrary, it is at once flexible and plural, open and multiple, irreducible to a single hegemonic principle yet woven and dispersed between the different points of a “philosophical archipelago.” Anarchism is pluralism. What remains to be done is to trace its lines of flight.

In the very last pages of the book, Malabou addresses more concrete political considerations. Here Audrey Tang provides an unexpected source of inspiration: This Taiwanese cybernetician, free software programmer, and self-proclaimed “conservative anarchist” has been Minister of Digital Affairs in the Taiwanese government since 2016. Malabou expresses astonishment at the presence of an anarchist in government.

However, she does not take offense at this state of affairs, but seems pleased by it: “Joining institutions to better subvert them. Many will respond: These are the words of the powerful. And yet...” It is as if the search for “the governmental prejudice” conducted throughout the chapters on Schürmann, Levinas, Derrida, Agamben, and Rancière came to a halt with the end of the textual analysis, at the very moment when the question of action, organization, and strategic choices—anarchism’s main concern [8]—posed itself more concretely. As if by giving anarchism a philosophical (and academic) aura that it did not ask for, the ontologization of anarchism defended by Malabou paradoxically led to its depoliticization—for political anarchism is indeed hardly discussed in the book. As if, ultimately, “being an anarchist” were merely a matter of words.

Catherine Malabou, Au voleur ! Anarchisme et philosophie, Paris, Puf, 2022, 408 p., 21 €.

by
Cyril Legrand, 21 November

 

Cosmic Anarchy and the Law of Increasing Complexity

Jul

31

2024

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From The Commoner UK by Simoun Magsalin

If the entire universe follows laws of natural selection, what could this mean for anarchy?

Last year, a curious paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Wong et al. (2023) entitled “On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems.” This team of scientists and philosophers theorized a ‘law of increasing functional information’ or the law of increasing complexity. The new natural law states: ‘The functional information of a system will increase (i.e. the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.’ This law is proposed to be at parity with other natural laws like the laws of motion, thermodynamics, gravitational attraction, and electromagnetism.

The authors further argue that there seem to be common elements in evolving systems that constitute a natural law, to which evolution and natural selection belong. According to Wong and co-authors, evolving systems refer to a ‘collective phenomenon of many interacting components that displays a temporal increase in diversity, distribution, and patterned behavior,’ which includes not only life on Earth, but also abiotic (‘nonliving’) processes like how the atmosphere is created and maintained, how minerals form and diversify, and how stars emerge from hydrogen fusion, leading to heavier matter.

Evolving systems have three main characteristics: component diversity, configurational exploration, and selection. A system has multiple interacting units (component diversity) that spontaneously configure themselves through various processes (chemical, thermodynamic, gravitational, of course, biological) which results in multiple new configurations. These configurations are then selected based on stability, patterned behavior, or function. Through this lens, the law of increasing functional information is the law of evolution applied to all physical matter. According to this proposed law, matter in the universe can and will diversify and complexify in new configurations and these configurations will be naturally selected for depending on the viability and stability of the configuration or pattern. Of course, the paper also outlines ways by which this natural selection is interrupted through phenomena such as supernovae, planetary freezing, or mass extinction events.

Anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin applied scientific inquiry to liberatory politics. In the same tradition, perhaps we can ask: what could the law of increasing complexity tell us about social and political life?

Cosmic Anarchy

Let us return to a story about the universe. At one point in time, there was a singularity — everything in the known universe compressed into a single point — and then it became everything we see today. A great Big Bang ordered the universe, an anarchy of energy and expansion, of space and time, of matter and antimatter. Then the stars were born, they lived, they died, and they reproduced (in that order). In the molten cores of the first suns fused the material needed for later suns, planets, and eventually, life. This whole cosmic dance is organized anarchically — if only because hierarchy and domination have no physical equivalent in the cosmos. 

In reflecting on this cosmic anarchy, we can deduce a few things. First, we learn that the cosmic order of the universe tends toward greater and greater complexity. Second, we learn that this complexity is ordered spontaneously. Stars spontaneously fuse helium and heavier elements in their cores. Meanwhile, similar spontaneity constellates the stars into galaxies and forms and seeds worlds.

These two law-like generalizations — complexity and spontaneity — also order life as we know it. What is life but the self-reproduction of chemical reactions? At one point in the history of this great Earth, chemical reactions began self-reproducing spontaneously and into greater and greater complexity until it became life. This is abiogenesis. 

Cosmic anarchy, then, is not merely a normative theory (i.e. what should be) but descriptive (i.e. what is). In its descriptive aspect, it suggests that the natural order of the cosmos is anarchic in nature, precisely because hierarchy and domination have no physical equivalent and that complexity and spontaneity is what prevails in the natural order of the universe. 

Later on, life became sapient — humanity. For hundreds of thousands of years, humanity lived in the same cosmic anarchy where complexity and spontaneity reigned. As far as we can tell, precursor species to humanity were already social. There does not seem to have been a time that humans lived in a ‘war of all against all,’ like a Hobbesian ‘state of nature.’

Humanity experimented widely by taking on and rejecting all kinds of social forms. They created everything from small tribes to confederations, free cities, anarchic and kingless societies. Some human societies would settle and create metropolises, only to be later abandoned when that organizational form became untenable — making it incorrect to assert that cities and urbanization somehow constitute ‘more advanced’ modes of organization over other (sometimes nomadic) forms. Whether as urban, pastoralist, or nomadic cultures, human societies bring with them past forms — functional information — and add it to the repertoire of current social forms in increasing complexity. 

When it comes to the natural world, Murray Bookchin reminds us that humanity has the unique ability to nurture and cultivate our natural and social environments, to consciously direct the fecundity and diversity of life on the planet. In this sense, humanity is unique in the cosmic history in the universe in that we are the only known beings with the ability to consciously and actively choose to develop our ecological and social environs to be more fecund, diverse, and complex, to consciously direct the cosmic order towards more complex (or perhaps information-dense) forms of life and living. 

Hierarchy

It was only quite recently in the some thirteen odd billion years of existence that the order of cosmic anarchy became punctuated by hierarchy, by the violent imposition of a rival order, by simplification under the command of a few. Yet it was not inevitable. Just as specific historical circumstances led to life on Earth (maybe something to do with the Moon and its tides, tectonic plates, solar energy, and raw power of lighting), specific historical circumstances led to the formation of hierarchy and its slow generalization towards the entire world.

Hierarchy may follow similar rules of complexification and diversification as it takes a variety of social forms. Some may be stateless societies with slavery, others large empires with various castes and gradients of power and privilege, still even others having a mix of egalitarian and hierarchical relations. But hierarchy and domination remain a rival order to the cosmic anarchic order in the universe. 

Hierarchies may be able to diversify in their own way, but hierarchical and domineering forms of social organization still function to simplify rather than complexify the world. Spontaneous action might even bring about the creation of hierarchies — consider Murray Bookchin’s postulation that reverence to elders might dialectically bring about gerontocracy and then later other forms of hierarchy — but once established, these hierarchies will inevitably act against spontaneity in favor of securing their own domination. 

Indeed, both hierarchy and domination deprive us of the vast repertoire of social forms available to human society. Hierarchy and domination are also agents for erasure of memory, forced conversion of religion, and genocide that actively simplify the world in defiance of the natural tendency towards complexification. In this sense, hierarchy simplifies the world and destroys various functional information created in the vast diversity of human society and the natural world. We need only to remember how the Spanish conquistadors burned the vast libraries of Mesoamerica, their forced conversions of conquered peoples, and the mass death they brought to the colonized. Not merely content with genocide, hierarchy also actively destroys the functional information of the natural world through ecocide — mass death of another level.

Entropy

Despite the rival order of suffering and simplification brought about by hierarchy, there is another law-like generalization of the universe, of cosmic anarchy: entropy and decay. A star reaches its breaking point and goes supernova, thereby releasing its matter into the universe, birthing new stars, and ultimately birthing life as we know it — are we not stardust? Just in the same way a tree falls in the forest; it dies, it rots, it is consumed by fungi and bacteria, and then the decay gives birth to new life. Here we see entropy spontaneously giving way to complexity, and the cycle continues anew. This is not to say that entropy is a normative value — again, it is merely a description — it merely is, and forms part of, the anarchic order of the cosmos. 

What entropy ultimately suggests is that hierarchy was not always here and will not always be here. Hierarchy is untenable in the long term. Great empires descended into ruin in the Bronze Age Collapse, the Roman Empire fell, and the great Chinese empires stagnated and dissipated. Even our current world order has an ending that everyone today is aware of: the threat of humanity-wide collapse due to the climate crisis. The question being is if we control and complement the entropy and survive it, or if it all comes crashing down around us. 

In the historical experiences of imperial decay, humanity finds and creates new niches and ultimately creates new functional information, like how the death of empires can give birth to republics. Some forms of functional information, like the Roman industry of creating garum, was historically contingent on certain forms of human organization and would fall apart under different contingencies. Hierarchy makes possible certain technologies of power that would otherwise be impossible. Roman nobility would eat nightingale’s tongues as a delicacy, a dish unthinkable to create today. Or perhaps, industrial society today makes possible nuclear energy or vast fossil fuel extraction, feats impossible under earlier forms of human organization. 

But the decay of hierarchy would make possible other free social forms that would otherwise be impossible under hierarchy, like communism. We will lose some functional information from hierarchical modes of living, many of which will not be missed. After all, what possible nostalgia could emerge from the loss of the functional information of insurance and stock markets? Humanity only stands to gain new functional information from its decay, much like how death and decay can lead to new life in complement — rather than in conflict — with the cosmic order.

The ultimate destiny of the universe is where the complexity and spontaneity of all this develops and decays to a point where the universe dies in heat death, unable to further complexify and only decay. Such is also the ultimate fate of hierarchy: it will morph, transform (sometimes spontaneously), but it will decay. The natural order of cosmic anarchy will resume. Whether humanity will live to see it is another question altogether. 

Sapience

So what now? Humanity is, as far as we know, unique in all of existence in having been endowed with sapience. We are creatures of the universe with the ability to be conscious of our existence in the universe. If, as Murray Bookchin reminds us, ‘humanity is nature rendered self-conscious,’ we can perhaps also say that humanity is the universe rendered self-conscious.

When colonizers reached the so-called Americas, they found a land of unparalleled bounty. They were unaware that the complexity and fecundity of the land’s bounty did not exist just as it was, but was actively, spontaneously, and intentionally nurtured and cultivated by a keystone species: humanity. In many parts of the world today, Indigenous peoples continue to fill the keystone ecological niche vital to the continuing complexity of the ecosystems they belong to. This is the greatest blessing of humanity: that we are endowed with the ability to consciously enrich the complexity of the universe.

We, as humanity, have the ability to nurture and cultivate the spontaneity and complexity of the universe, to direct decay towards further spontaneity and complexity, to fully realize the order of cosmic anarchy. This is then the normative aspect of cosmic anarchy: that humanity can once again choose to act not only in a complimentary manner to the cosmic anarchic order of the universe, but also to enhance it and consciously complexify the universe by adding novel functional information into the overall system.

However, like how environmental circumstances can limit the generation of new configurations in the law of increasing complexity, humanity actively limits the generation of new configurations through mass violence on ecology and on humanity itself. Humanity is rapidly decaying the world, decomplexifying it into monotones, monocrops, monocultures, and monotheisms. Genocides simplify the world. Like how a monocrop decomplexifies an ecosystem, conquests and forced conversions have made the world more progressively uniform over the multiplicity of human culture and spirituality. It was the ‘end of history,’ as some have claimed, as we transitioned into one (homogenous) kind of social form of organization with ‘liberal-democratic’ capitalism.

Species-Choice

There is only one cosmic inevitability in this universe and it is decay.

We are now faced with a choice: either we use our sapience to enrich the natural world and restore the balance of cosmic and social anarchy, or it shall be imposed upon us by the order of the universe. As many have suggested within the degrowth movement, the end of growth (read: domination) is inevitable; it is merely our collective species-choice if it is controlled degrowth or full collapse. Indeed, it is a choice before us as a species if we can complement nature’s tendency towards complexity or continue to act against it at our collective peril. 

If the order of cosmic anarchy is imposed upon us through the unsustainability of hierarchy and domination, all that we recognize of this beautiful world will be gone in self-destruction, and life and the universe will continue on without us. Without us, the universe would lose its self-awareness.

The choice has always been, as Murray Bookchin presciently noted, anarchy or annihilation.

Author’s Note

This essay was first drafted before “On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems” was published. It was first drafted with key insights and lessons learned from both anthropology and dialectical naturalism from thinkers like Peter Kropotkin, David Graeber, and Murray Bookchin. Peter Kropotkin, and Élisée Reclus, grounded their anarchism in a tradition of scientific inquiry, or the grounding of radical politics in the sciences. Kropotkin, for example, connected his observations of mutual aid among animals and humans to the theory of evolution. In this sense, we can think of the story of cosmic anarchy and the choices before us as being likewise informed by the new sciences of today, particularly by this proposed law of increasing complexity.

Special thanks as well to Samuel and Søren for reviewing and suggesting expansions to this text!

Why Donald Trump was the ultimate anarchist

The former president is being tried for his role in inciting anarchy but anarchia, in the Greek sense of “vacant office”, characterised his entire term.

BY MELISSA LANE
8 FEBRUARY 2021

Trump support inside the Capitol in Washington, DC on 6 January
PHOTO BY BRENT STIRTON/GETTY IMAGES

On 13 January, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump for a second time in just over a year, making Trump the first American president to be impeached twice. The House resolution focused upon Trump’s “incitement of insurrection” during a speech delivered to a crowd of his supporters on 6 January, some of whom later stormed the Capitol where Congress was meeting to certify the election results. The resolution argued that by such conduct Trump “betrayed his trust as president”.

“Democracy suddenly gave way to political anarchy”, the Washington Post wrote on the evening of 6 January. The theme was echoed in the British press, which converged on the headlines “Anarchy in the US” (Metro) and “Anarchy in the USA” (the i and the Daily Express).

Most of this coverage associated “anarchy” with the violence and lawlessness that characterised the Capitol riots, as a direct result of which five people died, including one Capitol Police officer. Yet there is a sense in which Trump not only incited anarchy during this violent finale to his presidency, but acted as an anarchist par excellence during his entire tenure in office, embodying what an ancient Greek observer would have called “anarchia”.

The Greek word anarchia literally means a vacant office: the absence of an officeholder. It was also used to describe an officeholder who undermines the constitutional order on which their own office, and the rule of law, depends. In fact, anarchia was often used to describe an officeholder – usually retrospectively – as having been no proper officeholder at all.

While violence might be unleashed by a vacant office or a vacuum of accountable power, it’s striking that a number of Greek authors, from Aeschylus to Isocrates, contrasted anarchia with tyrannis, or “tyranny”. This means anarchy is not just another word for the tyrannical or authoritarian abuse of power, or “lawless” conduct. It is a condition in which the very basis of political office has been undermined.

Explaining how a democracy might degenerate in the Republic, Plato tied the idea of anarchia (using the related adjective anarchos) to the actions and attitudes of both citizens and officeholders. Like those who stormed the Capitol, the citizens of a degenerating democratic constitution in Plato’s narrative come to believe that “there is no necessity…to be governed, unless you like [to be]”. Plato’s Socrates claims that these members of a failing democracy are influenced by distorted civic values which redescribe “anarchy” as “freedom”; he sums up the democratic constitution as being anarchos.

Plato cannot literally mean here that no one has been installed in office: democracies in ancient Greece chose many officials, both by lot and by election, and the same is true of the democracy described in the Republic. Rather, the point of linking democracy to anarchia is to suggest that democracy involves no meaningful and enforceable requirement either for citizens to obey officeholders, or for officeholders to use their powers as intended.

On this view, it is possible for the duties and legal entitlements of a democratic office to be hollowed out in spirit, even if formally followed in practice. Here democracy risks becoming a kind of shadow play in which people are chosen for office and nominally claim to hold it, but in so doing violate the most basic expectations of that office and thereby undermine its effectiveness and power.

The latest article of impeachment charges Trump with having acted “in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law”. Following the ancient Greeks, the underlying idea can be taken further. By “betray[ing] his trust as president” as flagrantly as he did, Trump should be counted as an anarchist: ie, as having been no real officeholder at all.

Trump’s effective abdication of office can be seen in many of his acts before the November election and his efforts to reject and undo its results. It is most egregious in cases in which his conduct undermined the very conditions of political office, just as Greeks fearing anarchia would have expected.

Consider Trump’s pardoning of former sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona. Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for continuing to detain people based solely on suspicion of their being unauthorised immigrants, in defiance of an order of a federal district judge. By pardoning not just someone guilty of criminal conduct, but specifically an official who had been held in contempt of court, Trump undermined the fundamental democratic and constitutional principle that, as John McCain put it in the wake of Arpaio’s pardon, “No one is above the law.”

Worse still was Trump’s refusal to abide by a court order that the acting head of the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, “should be removed from his position because he was performing his duties illegally”, having been appointed in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The judge in the case ruled that because Pendley “had served unlawfully for 424 days as acting director of the bureau”, it followed that his acts in that role “would have no force and effect and must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious”. By refusing to remove Pendley, Trump again shirked the duties of his office. But this refusal went further insofar as it undermined the legitimacy of the acts of the bureau as well.

In the end, Trump’s “incitement of insurrection”, combined with his consistent failure to live up to the obligations of the presidency, show that he was no proper office holder at all. Despite his claim to be “the only thing standing between the American Dream and total anarchy”, it is clear that Trump was the real anarchist all along.

Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 professor of politics and the Director of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is the author of Greek and Roman Political Ideas.

This article is part of the Agora series, a collaboration between the New Statesman and Aaron James Wendland, senior research fellow in Philosophy at Massey College, Toronto. He tweets at @aj_wendland

Proudhon

Found a couple of good posts on Proudhon. One is Proudhon on government over at CLASSical Liberalism. Where Proudhon denounces representative parliamentary democracy as a sham. Considering the election of King Stephen the Haropcrite this passage seems particularly apt.

"It is completely otherwise in democracy, which according to the authors exists fully only at the moment of elections and for the formation of legislative power. This moment once past, democracy retreats; it withdraws into itself again, and begins its anti-democratic work."

"In fact it is not true, in any democracy, that all citizens participate in the formation of the law; that prerogative is reserved to the representatives."

"It is not true that they deliberate on all public affairs, domestic and foreign; this is the perquisite, not even of the representatives, but of the ministers. Citizens discuss affairs, ministers alone deliberate them."

"...According to democratic theory, the 'People' is incapable of governing itself; democracy, like monarchy, after having posed as its principle the sovereignty of the People, ends with a declaration of the incapacity of the People!"

"This is what is meant by the democrats, who once in the government, dream only of consolidating and strengthening the authority in their hands."

The other is on Anarkismo.net.

Time to abondon our concept of Collectivism for a concept of Mutualism?

Proudhon and the 21st Century

As I have said here before the real nature of Proudhonian anarchism is self government, something embraced by Max Stirner and late Nietzsche. As well as by Kropotkin and Emma Goldman.

In self government, the individual is soverign, and no decision can be made without my input. Any decisions over my life must be done by my consent. It is classical liberalism taken to its logical teleology.

And yet the post-modernists who rant on about the teleology of Marxism as being essentialist, accept this of anarchism. Post Modernism is also a teleology of liberalism.

While Anarchy means No Government we can see that the government it denies is Monarchy and representative democracy, parlimentarianism. Instead Prodhoun saw government, as did Kropotkin, as self organized by individuals as community.

That is in community or workplace councils, with revocable delegates going out ot present positions within a larger federation, and coming back from those federations with proposals for approval.

This particular article on Proudhon in the 21st Century introduces Prodhoun to North American readers who may not have heard of him. I present an exerpt of this very interesting paper. Discuss amongst yourselves. Those who would call themselves Libertarian would do well to read their Prodhoun.

A NOTE TO NORTH AMERICAN READERS

Most people in North America are unaware of Proudhon, but he did have an influence here. The newspaper editors Charles Dana and Horace Greely were sympathetic to his ideas and he influenced the American individualists, most especially Benjamin Tucker, who translated and published some of his most important writings. Proudhon's criticisms of the credit and monetary systems were an influence upon the Greenback Party. His concept of mutual associations and the People's Bank were forerunners of the credit union and cooperative movements.

WHAT DID PROUDHON MEAN BY ANARCHY?

The public thinks anarchy means chaos or terrorism. But many people who claim to be anarchists are also confused as to its meaning. Some think anarchism is a doctrine espousing the right to do what ever you want. Others dream that one day a pure anarchist utopia, a kind of earthly Paradise of peace and freedom will come to be. Neither of these conceptions were Proudhon's. "Anarchy" did not mean a pure or absolute state of freedom, for pure anarchism was an ideal or myth.

[Anarchy] ... the ideal of human government... centuries will pass before that ideal is attained, but our law is to go in that direction, to grow unceasingly nearer to that end, and thus I would uphold the principle of federation.[2]
...it is unlikely that all traces of government or authority will disappear...[3]

Proudhon wanted people to minimalize the role of authority, as part of a process, that may or may not lead to anarchy. The end was not so important as the process itself.

By the word [anarchy] I wanted to indicate the extreme limit of political progress. Anarchy is... a form of government or constitution in which public and private consciousness, formed through the development of science and law, is alone sufficient to maintain order and guarantee all liberties... The institutions of the police, preventative and repressive methods officialdom, taxation etc., are reduced to a minimum... monarchy and intensive centralization disappear, to be replaced by federal institutions and a pattern of life based upon the commune.[4] NB. "Commune" means municipality.

In the real world, all actual political constitutions, agreements and forms of government are a result of compromise and balance. Neither of the two terms, Authority and Liberty can be abolished, the goal of anarchy is merely to limit authority to the maximum.

Since the two principles, Authority and Liberty, which underlie all forms organized society, are on the one hand contrary to each other, in a perpetual state of conflict, and on the other can neither eliminate each other nor be resolved, some kind of compromise between the two is necessary. Whatever the system favored, whether it be monarchical, democratic, communist or anarchist, its length of life will depend to the extent to which it has taken the contrary principle into account.[5]

...that monarchy and democracy, communism and anarchy, all of them unable to realize themselves in the purity of their concepts, are obliged to complement one another by mutual borrowings. There is surely something here to dampen the intolerance of fanatics who cannot listen to a contrary opinion... They should learn, then, poor wretches, that they are themselves necessarily disloyal to their principles, that their political creeds are tissues of inconsistencies... contradiction lies at the root of all programs.[6]

In rejecting absolute anarchy and favoring an open-ended process, Proudhon criticized all forms of absolutism and utopianism. He saw that utopianism is dangerous, and was a product of absolutism - the sort of thought which fails to distinguish between concrete reality and the abstract products of the mind. Anarchist theory should be open-ended, or "loose". No hard-edged determinism or "necessary stages of history" for Proudhon.

...writers have mistakenly introduced a political assumption as false as it is dangerous, in failing to distinguish practice from theory, the real, from the ideal... every real government is necessarily mixed...[7]

...few people defend the present state of affairs, but the distaste for utopias is no less widespread.[8]

Not only was utopia a dangerous myth, the working people were too practical and too intelligent to bother with such pipe dreams.

The people indeed are not at all utopian... they have no faith in the absolute and they reject every apriori system...[9]

There was no easy way out - no Terrestrial Paradise, things might improve, but we still have to work. Such was his hard-headed realism in contrast to all the fancy dreaming and system-mongering of the intellectuals. Poverty, by which he meant lack of luxury, not destitution, was the foundation of the good life.

In rejecting absolutism, Proudhon never waffled on the question of freedom. As opposed to the modern left which pits equality against liberty, and demands the restriction of the latter for the sake of the former, Proudhon was a resolute libertarian:

Lois Blanc has gone so far as to reverse the republican motto. He no longer says Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, he says, Equality, Fraternity,
Liberty!... Equality! I had thought that it was the natural fruit of Liberty, which has no need of theory nor constraint.[10] ...the abolition of taxes, of central authority, with great increase of local power. There lies the way of escape from Jacobinism and Communism.[11]

MUTUALISM

Proudhon proposed mutualism as an alternative both to capitalism and socialism. Mutualism was not a scheme, but was based upon his observation of existing mutual aid societies and co-operatives as formed by the workers of Lyon. But the co-operative association in industry was applicable only under certain conditions - large scale production.

...mutualism intends men to associate only insofar as this is required by the demands of production, the cheapness of goods, the needs of consumption and security of the producers themselves, i.e., in those cases where it is not possible for the public to rely upon private industry... Thus no systematized outlook... party spirit or vain sentimentality unites the persons concerned.[27]

In cases in which production requires great division of labour, it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among the workers... because without that they would remain isolated as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage workers, which is repugnant in a free and democratic society. But where the product can be obtained by the action of an individual or a family... there is no opportunity for association.[28]

Proudhon was in favor of private ownership of small-scale property. He opposed individual ownership of large industries because workers would lose their rights and ownership. Property was essential to building a strong democracy and the only way to do this on the large-scale was through co-operative associations.

Where shall we find a power capable of counter-balancing the... State? There is none other than property... The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner. Property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists.[29]

...the more ground the principles of democracy have gained, the more I have seen the working classes interpret these principles favorably to individual ownership.[30]

[Mutualism] ...will make capital and the State subordinate to labor.[31]

Alienation and exploitation in large-scale industry was to be overcome by the introduction of workers' co-operative associations. These associations were to be run on a democratic basis, otherwise workers would find themselves subordinated just as with capitalist industry. A pragmatist, Proudhon thought all positions should be filled according to suitability and pay was to be graduated according to talent and responsibility.

That every individual in the association... has an undivided share in the company... a right to fill any position according to suitability... all positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to approval of the members. That pay is to be proportional to the nature of the position, the importance of the talents, and the extent of responsibility.[32]

Proudhon was an enemy of state capitalism and state socialism. At the very most, government could institute or aid the development of a new enterprise, but never own or control it.

In a free society, the role of the government is essentially that of legislating, instituting, creating, beginning, establishing, as little as possible should it be executive... The state is not an entrepreneur... Once a beginning has been made, the machinery established, the state withdraws, leaving the execution of the task to local authorities and citizens.[33]

[Coinage] ...it is an industry left to the towns. That there should be an inspector to supervise its manufacture I admit, but the role of the state extends no farther than that.[34]

The following quote is a good summary of Proudhon's economic and political ideas:

All my economic ideas, developed over the last 25 years, can be defined in three words, agro-industrial federation; all my political views... political federation or decentralization, all my hopes for the present and future... progressive federation.[35]


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