{"agent_id":"kropotkin","agent_name":"Peter Kropotkin","slug":"anarchist-communism","label":"Anarchist communism: should distribution be according to need rather than according to labour contribution, abolishing the wage system entirely?","topic":"Anarchist communism","question":"Should distribution be according to need rather than according to labour contribution, abolishing the wage system entirely?","position":"The wage system is the thing to be abolished, and the collectivist who keeps it under a new name has not understood the revolution. To pay each worker in proportion to the labour he contributes — whether in money or in the labour-notes the collectivists propose — is to preserve the accounting of human beings in hours and to carry the whole apparatus of measurement, supervision, and inequality into the new society. And the accounting cannot even be done honestly, for no product is the work of one pair of hands: every loaf, every engine, every book is the fruit of the labour of all who came before and all who cooperate now, an inheritance no individual can be said to have earned as his separate portion. Since the wealth of society is a common inheritance, and since the first thing a revolution must secure is that no one starves while the granaries are full, the just principle is not \"to each according to his work\" but \"to each according to his needs.\" Take the bread, the houses, the clothing, and guarantee well-being to all at once — this is the conquest of bread, and it is the only foundation on which real liberty can stand, for a hungry man is not free. The objection that people will not work without the wage's compulsion mistakes the wage-slave, ground down by forced labour, for the free worker, who finds in useful and varied work, undertaken in common, one of the first needs of a full human life.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The wage system is the thing to be abolished, and the collectivist who keeps it under a new name has not understood the revolution.","n":[1]},{"t":"To pay each worker in proportion to the labour he contributes — whether in money or in the labour-notes the collectivists propose — is to preserve the accounting of human beings in hours and to carry the whole apparatus of measurement, supervision, and inequality into the new society.","n":[2]}],[{"t":"And the accounting cannot even be done honestly, for no product is the work of one pair of hands: every loaf, every engine, every book is the fruit of the labour of all who came before and all who cooperate now, an inheritance no individual can be said to have earned as his separate portion.","n":[]},{"t":"Since the wealth of society is a common inheritance, and since the first thing a revolution must secure is that no one starves while the granaries are full, the just principle is not \"to each according to his work\" but \"to each according to his needs.\" Take the bread, the houses, the clothing, and guarantee well-being to all at once — this is the conquest of bread, and it is the only foundation on which real liberty can stand, for a hungry man is not free.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The objection that people will not work without the wage's compulsion mistakes the wage-slave, ground down by forced labour, for the free worker, who finds in useful and varied work, undertaken in common, one of the first needs of a full human life.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"The Conquest of Bread (1892), especially the chapters on well-being for all, expropriation, and the objection that distribution by need is impracticable; 'Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles'; the critique of the collectivist wage-labour scheme and of the Marxist labour-voucher throughout. Reception: the debate between anarchist communism and collectivist anarchism (and Marxist 'to each according to his work' in the lower phase of communism); the socialist-calculation critique (Mises, Hayek) that a moneyless economy cannot allocate resources rationally; the twentieth-century commune and cooperative experiments; the contemporary revival of distribution-by-need arguments in the mutual-aid and degrowth movements.","works":["The Conquest of Bread (1892), especially the chapters on well-being for all, expropriation, and the objection that distribution by need is impracticable","'Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles'","the critique of the collectivist wage-labour scheme and of the Marxist labour-voucher throughout"],"reception":"the debate between anarchist communism and collectivist anarchism (and Marxist 'to each according to his work' in the lower phase of communism); the socialist-calculation critique (Mises, Hayek) that a moneyless economy cannot allocate resources rationally; the twentieth-century commune and cooperative experiments; the contemporary revival of distribution-by-need arguments in the mutual-aid and degrowth movements.","status":"Anarchist communism — Kropotkin's distinctive position — is defined against both the individualist anarchists and the collectivists (including the Marxist \"lower phase\" formula, \"to each according to his work\"). The central modern challenge is the socialist-calculation problem raised by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek: that without market prices a complex economy cannot rationally allocate scarce resources, so a moneyless, need-based system must either fail or reintroduce central planning of the kind anarchism rejects. Kropotkin's decentralized, federated, need-based vision is also pressed by the historical record of centralized communism (which he himself opposed) and defended by the contemporary mutual-aid, commons, and degrowth movements, and by anthropologists (David Graeber) documenting non-market distribution.","era":"1842-1921","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Wage System","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is not worth while to make the attempt. 10 Freedom PampKUte, That is why certain CoUectivists, understanding the impossibility of maintaining a scale of wages in a society inspired by the influence of the Revolution, zealously advocate equality in wages. But they only stumble against fresh difficulties, and their equality of wages becomes a Utopia, as incapable of realisation as the wage scale of the others.","label":"The Wage System"},{"n":2,"work":"The Wage System","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And as long as the inhabited house, the held and the mill belong to individual owners, so long will it be requisite to pay them in some way before they will allow you to work in their fields oi' their mills, or to lodge in their houses. And it will also be requisite to pay wages to the worker, either in gold or in paper money or in labor notes exchangeable for all sorts of commodities.","label":"The Wage System"},{"n":3,"work":"The Conquest of Bread","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"To preserve this system, those who now monopolize capital would be ready to make certain concessions; to share, for example, a part of the profits with the workers, or rather to establish a \"sliding scale,\" which would oblige them to raise wages when prices were high; in brief they would consent to certain sacrifices on condition that they were still allowed to direct industry and to take its first fruits.","label":"The Conquest of Bread"},{"n":4,"work":"The Conquest of Bread","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Eight hours visiting the sick in a hospital will be worth the same as eight hours spent in earthworks or else in mines or factories. Some make a greater concession; they admit that disagreeable or unhealthy work--such as sewerage--could be paid for at a higher rate than agreeable work. One hour's work of a sewerman would be worth, they say, two hours of a professor's work.","label":"The Conquest of Bread"},{"n":5,"work":"Expropriation","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is impossible to imagine any other practical solution of the problem, and, whether we like it or not, sheer force of circumstances will bring it to pass. VI.","label":"Expropriation"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"mutual-aid-as-a-factor-of-evolution","label":"Mutual aid as a factor of evolution: is cooperation, as much as competition, a law of nature and the deeper engine of progress?"},{"slug":"against-the-state-and-against-marxism","label":"Against the state and against Marxism: is the state a specific instrument of domination that a revolutionary 'workers' state' will only entrench, rather than dissolve?"},{"slug":"human-nature-and-the-feasibility-of-anarchy","label":"Human nature and the feasibility of anarchy: is a stateless society of voluntary cooperation realistic, or does it rest on a naively optimistic view of human beings?"},{"slug":"ethics-without-command","label":"Ethics without command: can morality be grounded in the natural sentiment of mutual aid, without God, the state, or a social contract?"}]}