Libertarian socialism.

“Libertarian” originally meant a general opposition to authority of all types. In the United States, the Libertarian Party has conditioned the reception of the idea as being exclusively aanti-statist. Classical libertarians opposed not only the power of centralized government, but of the centralized businesses and corporations that strove to dominat people and societies through the dollar (and often enough, the gun).

A phrase that often provokes confusion is the political moniker “libertarian socialist.” This is essentially a gussied up euphemism for “anarchist,” though one that illustrates the positive content of the concept. Libertarian socialist means one who promotes the decentralized, social ownership of the means of production of a society. So not only do they oppose centralized government power; they also oppose with equal ferocity corporate power, and promote as an ultimate ideal some means of direct, social ownership of economic factors.

What does this mean? The easiest and clearest example would be cooperatives. a libertarian socialist might promote employee and consumer cooperatives as an alternative to normal business organization. A worker-owned and managed firm gives full, democratic power to those that work in a firm, and entitles them to a fair and equal share of profits. In practice, worker cooperatives do wonderfully across many types of business. They generally exceed the productivity of a private firm or corporation in spades. This makes a certain degree of sense intuitively, doesn't it? Workers who share in profits have every incentive to work hard, and workers who participate in managing their firm feel that much more connected and empowered through their work. Study after study demonstrates the viability of cooperatives in terms of productivity relative to traditional business forms. Their chief impediments are access to finance and general education- people aren't taught that these are possible or viable, and they aren't taught the crucial skills of democratic and participatory management. But if we look at one form of employee ownership, the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), we see both the wide adoption of this model and an increasing incidence of ESOPs that involve high levels of employee participation in management and majority or 100% ownership of stock.

This example shows the potential of a libertarian socialist framework to address concrete experience in the modern world without selling out and compromising basic principles. Though most ESOPs and cooperatives don't mesh thoroughly with a libertarian socialist value system, they are often a positive step in that direction and prove by their own success the inherent potential of these principles.*

Another model for empowerment that fits this basic value system, the one with greatest historical presence, is anarcho-syndicalism. This is a movement of radical unionism, based around achieving worker control of the economy. Examples of syndicalism include the famous CNT, the anarchosyndicalist union of Spain that spearheaded the spanish Revolution of 1936, fighting off Franco's troops in egalitarian union militias from the factories and villages until displacement and repression by the Stalinist union. The tradition includes the French syndicalists, who strove to recreate an economy of small, democratic workshops of skilled artisans against the onslaught of deskilling and deadening factory work. It includes the IWW, the mostly American union that brought together militants from every job sector to fight for worker control of industry by any means necessary, popularized by folk singer and radical alike.

Americans bridle when they think of unions, perhaps frightened by the presumption of conflict that organized labor brings. They often rightfully cringe at the corruption of many major unions (though are usually more accepting of the institututionalized corruption of big business). Despite this, the vast majority of Americans are still working class, and they still derive most of their income from wages or salaries. Syndicalism sees unionism not as a thing in and of itself, an effort to simply raise wages or elect amenable political candidates. Syndicalism sees unions as the best tool possible for worker control of industry, once again embodying the values and ethos of libertarian socialism.

If we focus on the principles rather than the proper nouns of this movement, we can see evidence of its legitimacy as a tactic in major sectors of the economy. Labor unions in America in the past few years have begun to use their often large pension plans to influence business decisions and put pressure on major financiers. This has taken many forms: funding major workplace buyouts; launching union-funded cooperative start-ups; promoting investment in unionized firms through leveraging weight in major investment funds and bank holdings. In other countries, unions have contributed heavily to the worker-owned sector. Here in Austin, members of the IWW have successfully pressured several businesses to operate as worker-managed collectives.

Syndicalism is scarier than simple cooprativization, because syndicalism denies the right of capital to control the workplace or the profits produced by work. To many Americans this might appear strange and unjustified; investors and their managers invest in the machines and/or facilities necessary for work to happen, and why should they let workers get anything out of the affair besides their agreed upon wages? As I said, relative to actual production itself, there are good arguments that this type of arrangement actually maximizes productivity, or at least enhances it dramatically. There is the basic argument of workplace democracy, that work should be democratic in the same way that government should be democratic, as a basic right of human existence necessary for basic human dignity. I agree with these arguments whole-heartedly. but they do little to address a belief in private property rights of capitalists, banks, or landlords.

To answer the argument in favor of the rights of property is to reveal the fundamental disconnect between libertarian socialism and the libertarianism we generally encounter in the US. The libertarian socialist tends to accept the charge that all true value is created by labor or the natural world, and that owners of substantial capital got it by stealing the earned wealth of workers or the given wealth of nature, through systemic collusion with government forces. This is a similar to a labor theory of value, in which all value added to a good comes to it through the work done on it alongside its natural value. The great producer of wealth, the great producer of productivity increases that have made modern civilization possible, is intellectual and physical labor. Capital simply amasses labor value from previous ventures or through some instance of petty theft or profiteering, and then repeats the cycle in new business ventures. Think of the foundation of the centralized wealth in America, where did it really come from? Didn't the government give land to railroad companies at well below market rate? Didn't the major industrialists get their start as corrupt profiteers during the Civil War? This is a larger argument, a deeper argument that I can't address fully here, one that demands a different idea of property than the rights of accummulated wealth.

Finally, we can consider another current of libertarian socialism, that of communalism. This has taken many forms, qualititative distinct yet all sharing a basic characteristic. They all focus on community control of assets, and management of that control through democratic community organs. We can include in this any number of religious or utopian communes throughout American history, and even contemporary ecovillages organized socially. We can also include the well-developed school of thought called libertarian municipalism, promoted by the Institute for Social Ecology and its founder Murray Bookchin. This school focuses on a sort of town assembly model, in which a local governing body, directly democratic, owns and manages local property, both physical space and manufacturing or production facilities. The dangers of state control of industry are prevented by using local control instead of national or state ownership. This is a very communitarian philosophy, and maximizes the strengths and weaknesses of any communitarian vision. Again, we can see the possibilities of this line of thinking when we look at numerous successful experiments in community ownership across the country. These range from something as everyday as municipal utilities (for instance our own Austin Energy) or moderate as local ownership of a city sports teams (the Green Bay Packers); to more radical ecovillages and cooperative living projects.

These examples all express common themes. Decentralization, a focus on the local and immediate level of organization, the everyday world of experience- at work, in a union local, in the community and home. A major focus on the control of land and capital. (We might consider it the greatest triumph of mainstream politics it has convinced so many of us to seek power through government and the state instead of through direct ownership and control of capital, rooted in the communities of labor and valuation that create it.) A strong concern with the social ownership of the factors of the economy, either by purchase, creation ad hoc or seizure. A rejection, even disregard of conventional politics and economics. A focus on creating viable projects in the now, instead of planning and theorizing about the future. Political economic projects more experimental and constructive than antagonistic, even if some strategies are adversarial.These features characterize the libertarian socialist tendency, and hence a major theme within anarchist thought and practice as a whole.