Meeting Spain’s last anarchist

From the BBC News Americas Website

Meeting Spain's last anarchist

By Alfonso Daniels

San Buenaventura, Bolivia

Hours after flying on a rickety 19-seater propeller plane and landing on a dirt strip, you get to the village of San Buenaventura in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon.

Here, in a simple one-storey brick house next to a row of wooden shacks, is the home of Antonio Garcia Baron.

He is the only survivor still alive of the anarchist Durruti column which held Francoist forces at bay in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the founder of an anarchist community in the heart of the jungle.

Mr Baron, 87, was wearing a hat and heavy dark glasses. He later explained that they were to protect his eyes, which were damaged when he drank a cup of coffee containing poison nine years ago.

It was, he said, the last of more than 100 attempts on his life, which began in Paris, where he moved in 1945 after five years in the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp, and continued in Bolivia, his home since the early 1950s.

Stateless

He was keen to share his views on 20th Century Spanish history with a wider audience.

"The Spanish press has covered up that the (Catholic) Church masterminded the death of two million Republicans during the civil war, not one million as they maintain," Mr Baron said before launching into one of his many anecdotes.

"I told Himmler (the head of the Nazi SS) when he visited the Mauthausen quarry on 27 April, 1941, what a great couple the (Nazis) made with the Church.

"He replied that it was true, but that after the war I would see all the cardinals with the Pope marching there, pointing at the chimney of the crematorium."

On the walls of Mr Baron's house is a picture of him taken in the camp. Next to it is a blue triangle with the number 3422 and letter S inside, marking the prisoners considered stateless.

"Spain took away my nationality when I entered Mauthausen, they wanted the Nazis to exterminate us in silence. The Spanish government has offered to return my nationality but why should I request something that was stolen from me and 150,000 others?" he said angrily.

Mr Baron arrived in Bolivia on the advice of his friend, the French anarchist writer Gaston Leval.

"I asked him for a sparsely populated place, without services like water and electricity, where people lived like 100 years ago - because where you have civilisation you'll find priests."

Some 400 people, mostly Guarani Indians, lived there at the time, but in fact also a German priest.

"He was a tough nut to crack. He learnt of my arrival and told everyone that I was a criminal. They fled and made the sign of the cross whenever they saw me, but two months later I started speaking and they realised I was a good person, so it backfired on him."

Convinced that the priest still spied on him, a few years later he decided to leave and create a mini-anarchist state in the middle of the jungle, 60km (37 miles) and three hours by boat from San Buenaventura along the Quiquibey River.

With him was his Bolivian wife Irma, now 71.

They raised chicken, ducks and pigs and grew corn and rice which they took twice a year to the village in exchange for other products, always rejecting money.

Dunkirk

Life was tough and a few years ago Mr Baron lost his right hand while hunting a jaguar.

For the first five years, until they began having children, they were alone. Later a group of some 30 nomadic Indians arrived and decided to stay, hunting and fishing for a living, also never using money.

"We enjoyed freedom in all of its senses, no-one asked us for anything or told us not to do this or that," he recounted as his wife smiled, sitting in a chair at the back of the room.

Recently they moved back to the village for health reasons and to be closer to their children. They live with a daughter, 47, while their other three children, Violeta, 52, Iris, 31, and 27-year-old Marco Antonio work in Spain.

They also share the few simple rooms arranged around an internal patio with three Cuban doctors who are part of a contingent sent to help provide medical care in Bolivia.

The hours passed and it was time to take the small plane back to La Paz before the torrential rain isolated the area again.

Only then, as time was running out, did Mr Baron begin speaking in detail about Mauthausen and the war - as if wishing to fulfil a promise to fallen comrades.

How the Nazis threw prisoners from a cliff, how some of them clung to the mesh wire to avoid their inevitable death, how the Jews were targeted for harsh treatment and did not survive long.

His memory also took him to Dunkirk where he had arrived in 1940, before he was caught and imprisoned in Mauthausen.

"I arrived in the morning but the British fleet was some 6km from the coast. I asked a young English soldier if it would return.

"I saw that he was eating with a spoon in one hand and firing an anti-aircraft gun with the other," he laughed.

"'Eat if you wish', I told him. 'Do you know how to use it?' he asked since I didn't have military uniform and was very young.

"'Don't worry,' I said. I grabbed the gun and shot down two planes. He was dumbstruck.

"I'll never forget the determination of the British fighting stranded on the beach."

George Orwell, Spain and anti-fascism

George Orwell, Spain and anti-fascism

(View Original)

Sixty years ago this month the events began which inspired George Orwell to write Homage to Catalonia. Leftwing militias in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, opposed to the government's policy of restoring capitalist normality in the territories which had not fallen to Franco, were attacked by Republican paramilitary forces under Communist command.

Orwell witnessed these events while on leave from the front where he was fighting as a member of one of these leftwing militias, that of the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unification Marxista, or Workers Party of Marxist Unification). The POUM was basically a dissident Communist Party which didn't believe in taking orders from Moscow. It has been called a Trotskyist party (not least by supporters of Stalin) but, although it did contain some Trotskyists, this is inaccurate. Trotsky did try to tell it what to do, but the POUM no more followed orders from Trotsky than it did from Stalin.

Orwell had joined the POUM militia because he wanted to fight Franco not because he agreed with their political views. He knew some people in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and they put him in touch with the POUM with which the ILP had some links. He was not a dissident Communist himself and never had any sympathy with Leninism or Trotskyism. As he pointed out in a book review in January 1939:

"It is probably a good thing for Lenin's reputation that he died so early. Trotsky, in exile, denounces the Russian dictatorship, but he is probably as much responsible for it as any man now living, and there is no certainty that as a dictator he would be preferable to Stalin, though undoubtedly he has a much more interesting mind. The essential act is the rejection of democracy – that is, of the underlying values of democracy; once you have decided upon that, Stalin – or at any rate someone like Stalin – is already on the way" (from George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters , Vol 1, as are all the

quotes in this article).

After May things in Barcelona got worse. In June the POUM was banned. Its leader, Andres Nin, was arrested and later murdered by agents of the GPU, the Russian secret police. Other POUM members were detained and tortured, including non-Spanish members of their militia. Orwell and his wife had to go into hiding and eventually got over the border into France.

Homage to Catalonia describes Orwell's own experiences in Spain but it also defends the POUM and the anarchists against the lies the Communist Party and their stooges put out about them to the effect that they were in contact with and acting on behalf of Franco's fascists.

Orwell knew this to be completely untrue and, out of honesty as well as loyalty to his former companions-in-arms, he denounced this. Needless to say, the Communists suggested that he too was a fascist sympathiser and "Trotsky-Fascist". It left him with an abiding disgust with the Communist Party, its ideology and its methods, which was to inspire his later novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-Four which, rightly, show them no mercy.

Russian Foreign Policy

Orwell had gone to Spain as someone who had vague pro-working class feelings. His experiences there politicised him and he left holding radical leftwing views. What he learned in Spain was, first, a respect for the capacity of ordinary workers to run things on their own and, secondly, that the Communists were bastards: that they were committed, not to furthering the interests of the working class, but to furthering the foreign policy objectives of the Russian state and that, to this end, they were prepared to lie, cheat and kill. Hence his damning, but wholly accurate, description of them: "the more vocal kind of Communist is in effect a Russian publicity agent posing as an international Socialist" (Inside the Whale)

In 1935 the Comintern under Stalin carried out one of its U-turns. When the 1930s began, Social Democratic and Labour parties were still being denounced as "social fascists" and seen as being as bad, if not worse, than the real fascists. With the coming to power of Hitler, however, Germany came to be seen by the Russian rulers as a threat to their interests. Russian foreign policy then changed, from a more or less equal hostility to all the openly capitalist powers to seeking an alliance with capitalist France and Britain against capitalist Germany.

The Communist Parties had their role to play in this strategy: to work for the broadest possible anti-fascist alliance to include openly pro-capitalist elements as long as they were anti-fascist, i.e. in effect anti-German. Everything was to be subordinated to the creation of such a broad anti-fascist front. All talk of "revolution", "soviets" and the like was dropped; the red flag was replaced by the Union Jack, and patriotism became de rigueur.

Orwell, having experienced first hand the application of this policy in Spain, saw through this, writing in a private letter n September 1937:

"Of course all the Popular Front stuff that is now being pushed by the Communist press and party, Gollancz and his paid hack set etc, etc only boils down to saying that they are in favour of British Fascism (prospective) as against German Fascism. What they are aiming to do is to get British capitalism-imperialism into alliance with the USSR and thence into a war with Germany. Of course they piously pretend that they don't want the war to come and that a French-British- Russian alliance can prevent it on the old balance of power system. But we know what the balance of power business led to last time, and in any case it is manifest that the nations are arming with the intention of fighting. The Popular Front baloney boils down to this: that when the war comes the Communists, labourites, etc instead of working to stop the war and overthrow the Government, will be on the side of the Government provided that the Government is on the 'right' side, i.e. against Germany. But everyone with any imagination can foresee that Fascism, not of course called Fascism, will be imposed on us as soon as the war starts. So you will have Fascism with Communists participating in it and, if we are in alliance with the USSR, taking a leading part in it. This is what has happened in Spain. After what I have seen in Spain I have come to the conclusion that it is futile to be 'anti-Fascist' while attempting to preserve capitalism. Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism when the pinch comes. We like to think of England as a democratic country, but our rule in India, for instance, is just as bad as German Fascism, though outwardly it may be less irritating. I do not see how one can oppose Fascism except by working for the overthrow of capitalism, starting, of course, in one's one country. If one collaborates with a capitalist- imperialist government in a struggle 'against' Fascism, i.e. against a rival imperialism, one is simply letting fascism in by the back door".

This position put Orwell far, far to the left of the Communist Party and in June 1938 he joined the ILP. The ILP, which had been one of the original founding elements of the Labour Party, had broken away from Labour in 1932 and was a home for all sorts of leftwing critics of Labour's short-sighted reformism. At different times, both the Communists and the Trotskyists tried to take it over, but without success. While some of its members had notions of socialism, generally speaking it was a confused organisation which was unclear both as to what socialism was and as to how to get it, and was itself reformist in the sense that it campaigned for reforms of capitalism.

Orwell was not out of place in the ILP since he, too, only had a vague notion of socialism. For him it was the general idea of a decent society without private ownership of the means of production or a privileged class and where ordinary people would run things democratically in their own interest. Orwell, however, was clear on one thing: Russia was not socialist or anything like it.

In a book review in June 1938 he asked of Russia: "is it Socialism, or is it a peculiarly vicious form of state capitalism?" His answer was that, whatever it was, it wasn't socialism. Later he embraced the theory that Russia was a new exploiting, class society best described as "oligarchical collectivism" where a self-appointed and self-perpetuating oligarchy ruled through a one-party dictatorship on the basis of the state (collective class) ownership of the means of production. For although Orwell was primarily interested in literary matters he also followed very closely the arguments that went on in Trotskyist, ex-Trotskyist and ex-Communist circles on the nature of Russian society, a knowledge he was able to put to later use when writing Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Capitalism and War

In one of his letters Orwell mentions that he had written an anti-war pamphlet. This has not been found, but it is not difficult to work out from his other letters and articles what it would have said. Its basic premise would have been what Orwell set out in book review he did in August 1937:

"1. That war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

2. That every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac ('militarist' Germany in 1914, 'Fascist' Germany next year or the year after).

The essential job is to get people to recognize war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda".

Orwell, as we have seen, regarded the campaign for an anti-fascist "people's front" as just such war propaganda disguised as a peace campaign. It merely opposed one type of capitalism by another type of capitalism, in the interest of one particular alliance of capitalist-imperialist powers. So his anti-war pamphlet can be expected to have denounced mere anti-fascism as a means of preparing workers ideologically to support Britain, France and Russia in the coming war against Germany and Italy

But if mere anti-fascism was not a genuine alternative to fascism, what, in Orwell's eyes, was? Orwell looked to the emergence of a mass democratic revolutionary movement that would be anti-capitalist as well as anti-fascist. Reviewing Franz Borkenau's The Communist International (which should be read by anyone wanting to learn about the various turns the Comintern effected in the 1920s and 1930s) in September 1938, he wrote:

"Where I part company from him is where he says that for the western democracies the choice lies between Fascism and an orderly reconstruction through the cooperation of all classes. I do not believe in the second possibility, because I do not believe that a man with £50,000 a year and a man with fifteen shillings a week either can, or will, co-operate. The nature of their relationship is quite simply, that the one is robbing the other, and there is no reason to think that the robber will suddenly turn over a new leaf. It would seem, therefore, that if the problems of western capitalism are to be solved, it will have to be through a third alternative, a movement which is genuinely revolutionary, i.e. willing to make drastic changes and to use violence if necessary, but which does not lose touch, as Communism and Fascism have done, with the essential values of democracy. Such a thing is by no means unthinkable. The germs of such a movement exist in numerous countries, and they are capable of growing. At any rate, if they don't, there is no real exit from the pigsty we are in".

Unfortunately, no such movement did emerge and in September 1939 the widely predicted war broke out. Although previously he had envisaged going underground to oppose the war (in January 1939 Orwell had written to Herbert Read, the anarchist art-world figure, "I believe it is vitally necessary for those of us who intend to oppose the coming war to start organising for illegal anti-war activities"), when the war did break out he not only didn't go underground but he actively supported it – and not just on anti-fascist but on old-fashioned patriotic grounds.

He tried to enlist to go and kill German workers himself but was turned down because he had signs of TB. Instead, he spent the war churning out patriotic propaganda (some of it nasty stuff: he referred to pacifists as "fascifists" and denounced conscientious objectors as "pro-Nazis") aimed at getting British workers to go and kill German workers and Indian workers to kill Japanese workers.

It was a betrayal, an unpardonable one from a socialist point of view, of the working-class internationalism he had initially adopted as a result of his experiences in Spain.

(Socialist Standard, May 1997)

"Stand fast and fight to the last": The Spanish Anarchist Collectives

A stock criticism of Anarchism is that it's just too damn Utopian, a romantic fairytale for academics, a whimsical land of Oz located somewhere between Haight-Ashbury and Sesame Street. But these charges of Anarchism's impracticality fall apart when one examines the nuts and bolts of the Spanish Anarchist Collectives. It's no secret that good ideas are hard to suffocate, and this idea had been blossoming in the minds of Spanish workers for decades, one of self-management and self-governance. It wasn't difficult to look at their environment and imagine how there could be a better world. Property ownership was the only way to gain access to the means of life, and with 67% of the land in the hands of 2% of the population peasant farmers had to labor under the wealthy landowners to survive. In those days, the men who held the deeds made the rules. But the people taught themselves about the transformative potential of solidarity, and acknowledged their ability to create equality through their own collective power. From here the Spanish Anarchists produced a functional bottom up society whose ghost plutocrats worldwide still must confront.

In the 1930s, Spain was begging for revolution. A third of the country's workforce, or about 1 million people, suffered from unemployment. With a primarily agrarian economy, barring Catalonia which was the only region that had successfully industrialized, growth had screeched to a halt. Because of the wide sustenance gap, starvation became prevalent amongst the peasants. While the lower classes went without food the Catholic Church retained an indefensible 30% of the total wealth of Spain and colluded with the big landowners by charming its patrons with fantastic stories of supernatural visions as to exaggerate its relevance in people's lives and ensure their obedience. The working class found no relief from their recently created Republican government, who promised to redistribute the country's wealth but wouldn't be able to fully enact this reform in under a century. Government, industry and the Church failed the Spaniards.

Harsh crackdowns on dissent followed the formation of the Republican government. A collection of organized workers called the CNT actively opposed the cruelty of the bourgeois, and were massacred as a result. During the next election, the CNT and its socialist ally, the UGT, boycotted the polls. They no longer wanted to elect an autocrat derived from a shallow pool of candidates who would decide the best way of exploiting their class. Instead, they held strikes across the country, demonstrating in every major city and converting new members en mass. As a response, a rebel group of fascists helmed by Franco promised to crush the worker's resistance. This would be the beginning of the revolution.

Franco's fascist rebellion was pushed back in many parts of Spain by workers who took over the means of production and collectivized the land. There were even reports of soldiers deserting the Republican Army and joining their fellow workers in the revolution. But all the bloodshed would have been meaningless if there wasn't a new model that could replace the old. This moment was what mattered most about the Spanish Revolution.

All remnants of hierarchy were dispensed with. In this world, there were no bosses to be obeyed or gods to be worshiped. The workers decided everything through frequent assemblies where they discussed and voted on issues. Everything was shared and distributed equitably. No longer were people forced into degrading arrangements with masters due to fear of unemployment. There were no homeless on the streets. Words that signified authority like "Sir" were replaced with "Comrade" and tips in restaurants were banished. Area churches were gutted and replaced with schools, beauty parlors and movie theaters which were free to everybody even non-Anarchists.

The new worker-managed workplaces were called syndicates, and innovated better than when they were under Capitalist control. Bakeries which suffered from rodent infestations and disease were updated and improved under the workers' guidance. Dilapidated bridges, canals and roads were fixed and developed by combining the resources of each member of a Collective. Farm Collectives grew oranges by cleaning the soil themselves, while under the old rule a chemical fertilizer was added to the earth reducing the quality of the harvest. Potatoes were also planted in the shade of the orange orchards, an idea the previous landowners never allowed. Because the workers were no longer encumbered by the effects of wage slavery and the specter of starvation they were able to increase the quality of their yields and products without the incentive of competition.

This is not to say everybody got along. There were those who didn't want to be apart of a Collective. In many areas up to 30% rejected Anarchism and kept their private property. Did the unions coerce these individuals into accepting their philosophy? Of course not, that would run counter to what Anarchy stands for. In fact, there are examples of the Anarchist Collectives offering these people the best land in the region just so the Anarchists could consolidate their land and leave non-Anarchists free from their influence. At times, members of a syndicate didn't want to share the products of their labor with other members of the Collective. Disagreements like these were aired at assembly meetings. Here, the majority did not impose their will on the minority but utilized persuasive debate. Typically, the worker who refused to share was reminded of how the former bosses also refused to share their property, and created unemployment and poverty. This memory most likely hadn't lost its sting for the worker who lived day to day under hideous conditions. Usually, he or she would have been convinced to share with the rest of the Collective.

A popular battle cry of the Anarchist militia was: "Stand fast and fight to the last". And that's what many of them did for as long as they could. But supplies ran low due to the Communist's fear of empowering the Anarchists, and Franco's Rebel Army had intensified. Eventually, amid much protest from some of its members, the CNT was absorbed into the government which ultimately fell to Franco. But the defeat of the Anarchist Collectives was not a result of their Anarchist principles, it was due to their betrayal of them. The CNT and the other Spanish Anarchists should have refused arms from the Communists and decapitated the government while they had the chance. Fortunately, we inherit the optimism of that era. Buenaventura Durruti, a famous Anarchist militiaman, summarizes:

"We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute." (source)

Anarchy made easy

A young and clever George Orwell knew the significance of a beautiful idea. He left his wife and career in England to fight in the Spanish Civil War in December of 1936, siding with the Anarchists who opposed Hitler-backed Nationalist, Francisco Franco. The upsurge of fascism so frightened the fresh faced idealist that he was willing to die to end it. Orwell recognized the elegance of the Spanish Anarchists' radically different way of administrating their affairs. As a result of the war, his affection for the new society was inverse to his disgust for totalitarianism, a position that informed his future classics Animal Farm and the prescient 1984.

A society like the Anarchist collectives had never before or since existed, an entirely autonomous community divested of centralized rule. But how would a modern Anarchist system operate? Could there be roads, bridges or sanitation? Who would defend the masses from oppression? If it were sustainable back then would it be more so today?

The Principles of Anarchy: An Introduction

An Anarchist is against all categories of authority. The most obvious being government, but in a free society corporations and organized religion would also be relinquished. Modified versions of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. would be acceptable as long as they were personal expressions of faith and not a component of a larger hierarchic structure such as the Catholic Church. These institutions constrict the freedom of their adherents. It is impossible to move unencumbered while under the thumb of any system which asserts control from aloft. Today's dominant attitudes of helplessness and disenchantment can be linked to this cultural feature. People elect Representatives to govern while citizens play no direct part in legislation. As bureaucracies grow (because that's what Capitalism does - it expands) they monopolize the lion's share of wealth and power. It is the goal of Anarchism to bridge this chasm and place people in charge of themselves.

Under Anarchism all property serves as a public resource, therefore it is false to assume nothing is owned in Anarchistic communities. On the contrary, the public owns everything. This is why it is believed, as proprietors, individuals are more inclined to be dutiful stewards of what belongs to them. A timeless example of this principle in action can be taken from the book of Nehemiah. In it Nehemiah must rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after a vicious attack. He assigns laborers to work on restoring, not the sections of the wall farthest from where they live, but sections of the wall nearest to each worker, ensuring a quick and meritorious result.

The story of Nehemiah and the wall of Jerusalem illustrates the underpinnings of the Anarchist's view of human nature. Everyone is an egotist at heart, selfish and individualistic. But most people are social animals as well capable of compassion and sympathetic toward sufferers. This is why the laborers Nehemiah placed in charge of the construction of the wall cooperated with each other. They wanted protection. Anarchist collectives would work for the same reason. The members of the collective value nourishment, social relationships and creative expression, and would enter into a social contract without the supervision of government. Unfortunately, there is one fatal flaw in this story. To any self-respecting Anarchist Nehemiah must go.

There's no business like no business

From the perspective of the Anarchist, Capitalism degrades human potential when greed becomes the engine of society. Profits justify all beastly pursuits: theft, murder, deceit. The only unpardonable sin is losing money. Cities, for example, serve as a surplus of available labor for corporations. The design of a city centers around the needs of businesses, clustering employees and their families around factories, providing the employees with food, clothing and entertainment along with modes of control. The aim of Anarchists would be to abolish these inhibiting conditions.

After wresting authority away from their corporate handlers the workers would go on to erect "syndicates". Each syndicate would be devoted to a specific aspect of production necessary for the continuance of the community. One syndicate would specialize in chairs another in toilets and another in ceiling fans and so on and so forth. The workers in a particular syndicate would have dominion over the policies in their workplace. Each worker has an equal vote in the direction of their co-operative. For the day-to-day decisions required to run a complex syndicate workers would divide the collective into administrative branches through popular vote. At this point it is up to an individual to persuade their fellow workers of their education and skills in order to be placed in the proper administrative branch.

In keeping with the spirit of self-management the community also deserves a say in how their syndicates operate. That is why all the syndicates would be owned by everyone in a commune. A collection of syndicates is called a confederation. Just how workers determine the best methods of how their syndicate produces, the members of the confederation decide what is produced and how much.

It is important to keep in mind that this is the formula of choice when it comes to any Anarchist commune. Hospitals, schools and the military are all organized in this fashion. The reason for this is simple. When a syndicate's course is no longer navigated by the workers, but by a tiny elite, it reverts back into a corporation.

A worthy aside, the word "labor" has a different meaning in a free society. Within the current system people compliment machines in an assembly line mentality, but self-facilitating communes would use technology to eliminate dangerous, tedious and undesirable work. The result would be an abundance of leisure time with a few hours of intermittent labor resembling art more than drudgery. Those assembly lines would run themselves leaving the workers to decorate the products at the end. And even in cases like the construction of roads and bridges, the hazardous aspects will be automated and workers, free from bosses and arbitrary deadlines, will take pride in what they produce because it will be for their benefit.

When workers manage themselves it is unlikely they would pollute their streams and sky or maintain an unsafe working environment. Today's corporations have made these practices apart of their culture. Consumption and competition animates Capitalism but in tomorrow's society producers and consumers will be one in the same.

Welcome to the neighborhood

For all the praise in reference to "the people" it could be wrongfully assumed Anarchists romanticize the masses. Untrue. Anarchists make no illusions about the gullibility of massive groups of people. It is the multitude who allowed the minority, the wealthy oligarchy of policy-makers, to enslave them in the first place. The answer is to transform the majority into well-educated cells.

Communes are structured in exactly this way. While they will communicate with other communes it is important to reach a balance so as not to become bloated with a large population. When free people are taught outside the restrictions of a repressive society it is difficult to imagine this being a problem. Work in an Anarchist society is voluntary so if someone wants to leave a syndicate, or even a commune, he or she may. The end result being a vibrant culture in a constant state of flux.

But even with each individual expressing him or herself freely without the deterrence of laws a few basic needs will remain. Health care will be just as vital as ever. Hospitals would function in the same way as syndicates. The doctors and nurses would organize, split into administrative branches based on their training and abilities, and be available for public use at any time. Doctors would visit the homes of the handicapped and the elderly who cannot care for themselves. The treatment people receive under this system, it could be said, would be superior because they would be cared for as patients and not customers. Additionally, those who entered into the health care profession would not do so for material gain but because of their passion for the work.

Some criminal element could be expected to dwell inside any commune. Plenty of crime would have been extinguished after the socialization of a community's resources. Still a fraction of criminals would linger. Prisons have never been a popular solution and embodies everything Anarchists abhor about authoritarian rule. Instead the treatment of a criminal would be based upon their specific crime. He or she may be ostracized from the commune through popular vote or, depending upon the crime, given an opportunity to observe the destructive effects they had on the community. Popular opinion also would be used to pressure an injurious individual. A court system, constructed by the people of the commune and served in by everyone via lottery, would determine the guilt or innocence of an individual as well as his or her punishment. For those who need to be removed from society altogether, such as rapists, child molesters and sociopaths, asylums would be built in order to treat the offender without harm to others.

As for protection, a police force could be built if a commune desired. However, it would not patrol neighborhoods in the traditional sense, instead it would be an on-call service, much like a fire department, for anyone who wished to utilize it. And just like any other syndicate in the commune, the people hold sway over the policies of the police force. So if somebody abuses his or her power they can be immediately dismissed.

Anarchy made easy?

Because there have been so few examples of functional Anarchist societies in history these suggestions cannot be seen as gospel truth. Many of these ideas are taken either from noteworthy Anarchist thinkers or from the Spanish Civil War where they were put into practice. Freedom requires massive amounts of education on a large scale. It took the people of Spain seventy years to prepare for their revolution all the while overcoming illiteracy and a civil war, but with the internet and relative peace (at least here in the United States) the conditions are markedly better to annunciate the message. Isn't it time to start thinking like George Orwell and recognize the significance of this beautiful idea?