Overproduction goal, or Why property is thief

(by Alejandro Rivero. Copylefted, citing sources)

Abstract. We compare the principles of anarchist economy with the ones of capitalist and ("real") socialist, economies. Countries under anarchism are expected to have a higher GNP than previous systems, but the transition to such system is unclear.

The implementation of an anarchist system implies strong modifications an almost every social mechanism, as power relationships must be eliminated and each individual must be able to develop his self as far as possible.
Because of this, anarchy theory covers a wide range of areas beyond economy, and it is easy to misunderstand proposals in politics or moral taking them -and mistakenly critiquizing them- as proposals for the productive system.
The main line of thought in anarchy economical theory is the one from Kropotkine, abstracted in the famous "OK, simply take it from the stack". Although he is unable to get an adequate transition process to such economy, and it lacks of some minor details, it estimates in a realistical way how an stable anarchist system would work.
In his analysis, Kropotkine atacks (pseudo)scientific socialism because it sloppyly translates philosophical remarks to incorrect mathematical relations: it is said that sometimes Marx seems to think that every continuously raising function is linear, when he analizes how to give "to each one depending of his work". He correctly predicts that state-organized economy, as tested in real socialism, will cause a productivity loss because of the lack of iniciative and increasing burocratic errors, and he even tries to warn Lenin about it, unsucessfully.
But other hand, he coincides with the usual leftist criticism to capitalism, where the worker is not in a real position to time- sustained bargain, as he needs to get the essential goods for subsistence. Note that in addition capitalism system put difficulties to a group of individuals to start self production of some object, as access to capital is blocked or, in the best, highly subjected to interest rates. I.e, the owner of the capital also is able to get a "plusvalia" from any self-organized work of producers, not only from individual workers.
As alternative both to capitalism and to planified socialism, he proposes overproduction of all the essential goods. He correctly predicts that such overproduction will be reachable with a work of five hours a day, which is the current level in developed countries, and probably near the minimum.
Capitalism optimizes productivity by worker, but as compensation it try to mantain production always under the critical level of price fall. Here is where capitalism steals to humanity: it is not giving us as many objects as industry could be able to manufacture.
For capitalism to be able to retain production and mantain prices, it will have a system to put off the market (either temporally or ethernally) part of the produced objets, or part of the production tools and raw materials. Depending of the retained object, the retention method or the duration of it, different techniques are described in the text books: monopolist systems, trusts, carteles, industrial closings, etcetera. All these methods are based in a only concept: the "ownership" of the industry by a group of so-called capitalists.
So, we see that capitalism steals to the society (call it world, or nation, or as you want) by giving us less objects than the quantity which could be made using the society taskforce. And we see that this stealing is effectively made by claiming "ownership" at some step of the productive chain. Is in this sense that we say that "property is thief": capitalist are stealing to the whole society. They steal when they reduce the overall production of its industries, they steal when they associate to control market, and they steal when they conspirate to avoid any other free association of men to go ahead and to make the same product.
(There is a minor sense, more restricted, but perhaps closer to the pre-kropotkinian origin, of such phrase: "Ownership" also steals by asking every worker to sell himself to get the final products he needs, by menazing him either to lock-out the industry or to raise the final price of the product. I think that Marx analysis made emphasis in this microscopic -individual- stealing or "plusvalia", but mathematics in such time were too weak to sucessfully relate it to the macroscopic -global- one, and they are yet, so marxists are not to be blamed for this specific focus...)
Now, giving that capitalism works near the critical point of production of its market, this is not so difficult to be surpassed. Even putting into account the international trading, it would be expected that an entry into production of all the unoccupped workers in Europe, at the same conditions that the currently working ones, would push the whole system into the overproduction regime.
Giving the actual technological status, with a four-five hours per day per person as dayly labor time, it seems that overproduction would be easier to control that near-critical production, so the anarchist system, once started, would have an easier domino expansion than capitalism. (Some computer simulation could be interesting here too, guys;-) This would be because other regions would turn to anarchism in order to be not overflown by its production.
The overcritical status of anarchist economy must not be confused with the similarly deflactionist, but depressive, phase of capitalist cycle. In capitalism under depression, prices are cut down and stacks filled, but workers have not posibility to buy the produced goods, as control of capital continues making its way. Note that a depressive phase is characterized by a high level of unemployement while, par contra, anarchist overproduction mantains a full employ status.
The main problem theoretical problem now is how to get the transition from capitalism to anarchism. It seems that both state and property must be atacked at the same time: Historically, attacks only to state bounced back (across fascism) to capitalism in a time between four and fourty years (say, Mussolini or Franco). Attacks only to property bounced back to capitalism in sixty or seventy years. By other hand, the slow move predicated by west-socialism is really slooooowww, and the revolutionary work class move is really minoritary (and remember that industry must be preserved in the move). Perhaps some mutation of cooperativism or sindicalism, able to win capitalists in his own terrain, alone of combinated with worker class techniques, could be devised. It is also unclear if the transition will start in developed countries or in the ones currently developing. Pros and contras for different economical status must be discussed elsewhere. Lets finish this letter with a pair of remarks:

• It can seem paradoxical that we claim capitalism and its variants (any one retaining ownership) are currently underproducing, as it is the same old blame that capitalism puts on communism by comparing gross production rates. Note that anarchism correctly claimed that state communism would decrease strongly productivity, probably before any capitalist theorist. Burocratic problems and lack of iniciative were evidents in the theory, and become clearly relevants after fifty years of practice.
  In capitalism, burocratic issues are minor when compared with state communism, but lack of iniciative comes from the self- protecting practices of capitalists, merely ownership. Capitalism ask any association of producers to buy or rent capital from the owner, then slaving them to put priority on capitalist requeriment, and not in social or market objetives. As the producers become aware of capitalist control -which eventually can be made explicit by ruling the company organization- their iniciative goes down.
  (By example, consider Apple technological innovation with and without the founders, or the two years delay on PDA technology dued to Apple capitalism control of the ARM chip)
  Anarchist system completely blows away any blockings to iniciative, and then gross national product is to be expected higher than under capitalist, ownership based, systems. If you are unable to imagine this, try at least to imagine a zero-interest rate mechanism, where you are entitled to give back the bank no more than the capital they gave you. (asking in exchange to give to "the stack" the rest of goods overproduced by you).
• Count unit (money) is one of the minor details we referred to in the beginning of this letter. It must be understood that money is a major detail in our current economical system, when fast conversion between money and capital is adequate to evaluate benefits of capital control. With overproduction, and without capitalist mechanism, market is dinamited and pricings will more closely evaluate real work. In a long range term, money could be disposed.
  Due to the fast conversion mechanism, it is a common error to identify money and capital. It is even a common insult between economists, in the same mood than a physicist can attack other by shooting "You are confusing between heat and temperature, go back to the school!". This error is, voluntary or involuntary, made both by leftist and rightist analists when critiquizing taxes, social expenses, or military budgets... To put a example, when we ask "How many doctors can be paid with the cost of a military plane" the nearest answer, "the number of engineers involved divided by the number of planes manufactured, if you are intending to cut down all the military air industry", is almost never got. The same kind of failures raises when a libertarianist ask to substitute public health by private one, or to modify salary laws, based mainly in wrong monetarist calculus.
  In the overproduction phase, money is unidentified from capital, and its equivalence rules can be simplified, so it could be a valuable tool for statististical estimates. From the individual point of view, to have some money would certify your right to get from the stack, but to accumulate a lot of money would proof unuseful: With no possibility of capitalist trade, the interest rates would be zero or close, as insinuated in the previous remark.
  Small scale experiences with a secundary currency, non able to be converted to capital, are currently being done in some European towns. Independently from this, and allthougth its low significance for anarchist fundamentals, a mathematical classification of currency systems under Kropotkinian economics would be valuable by itself, as both capitalist and socialist economical flows could be calculated as perturbations to the "free" Kropotkinian ones.