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What is Libertarian Communism?

category ireland / britain | anarchist movement | opinion / analysis author Friday May 27, 2005 18:53author by Martin Report this post to the editors

Well, we stand not only for the destruction of Capitalism and all it’s attendant barbarity but, more importantly, for a society in which we experience both personal freedom and collective control over our workplaces and communities. A new society consciously created by all from the bottom up, one in which the flowering of personal expression and freedom takes place in ever more aspects of life.

This article in Greek (Ellenika)

What is Libertarian Communism?


So what is Revolution! fighting for? Well, we stand not only for the destruction of Capitalism and all it’s attendant barbarity but, more importantly, for a society in which we experience both personal freedom and collective control over our workplaces and communities. A new society consciously created by all from the bottom up, one in which the flowering of personal expression and freedom takes place in ever more aspects of life.

In such a society we wouldn’t be trudging off to work just so that we could get the money to have a good time at the weekend, pay the mortgage or rent, or shell out for things that could easily be free (Water, Bread, Milk, Electricity etc). Rather, we would have freely chosen our own jobs on the basis of our aptitudes and interests and also chosen the conditions in which we work. Life wouldn’t be dominated by work, instead how we choose to lead our lives would determine the work we do. Once production is controlled by the producers, then it becomes subservient to need rather than profit. We, as workers, will choose what we produce and when, and the stark division between work and leisure will be eroded.

Nor will our personal relationships remain untouched. Libertarian Communism, being a society based on equality and involvement, will enable us to relate in novel ways to each other that we can’t necessarily foretell now. Whilst we can’t predict this future, we can say that the first stages of forging a new society will involve the questioning and overturning of much of what we now take for granted. For example, the structure of the family, the arrangements around child-rearing and education as well as forms of loving relationships, are likely to be central concerns in the construction of a free society. The creation of education controlled by the learners, suitable childcare on request and communally controlled housing would, most likely, start in the midst of revolution and continue well after. In addition, our sexual relationships would start to be liberated from the confines of sexist stereotypes and jealousy-based monogamy, as a part of an ongoing liberation from all bourgeois forms of possession and property. An era of social and personal liberation will open up and humanity will stand on the threshold of being consciously free for the first time.

Society would organise itself so as to oppose the development of a bureaucracy of professional administrators or controllers. This would mean creating a freedom and democracy far beyond anything experienced in today’s society. In previous revolutions we have seen the emergence of workers and peasants councils based on a genuinely participatory democracy; these would form the starting point for communist society. The principles of instant recall of delegates, rotation of posts, mandation of delegates and transparency, consistently applied, would ensure that power couldn’t be usurped by a new ruling elite claiming to represent our ‘real’ interests, as happened so tragically in Russia.

Society would be transformed from top to bottom, on a global scale. War and famine would cease to exist and be replaced by mutual aid and cooperation. Humanity would start to put into practice the old dictum ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need’. This is the future Revolution! fights for: why not join us?


This article is from Revolution Issue 1

This article in Greek (Ellenika)

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