The dissolution of the "state" entails quite a bit more than setting up a commune or some trade union. While "libertarian/socialists" make strong arguments in favor of worker ownership, their arguments regarding the larger society fall flat and without a strong foundation in political science.
One of the major taboos of the "libertarian/socialists" is in prohibiting anyone from working for wages. They hate bosses, essentially, and all authority (calling Freud?). Their whole rationale could be reduced to a three-word bumper sticker: Don't boss me!
The term "wage slavery" carries some resonance, but they also make clear that people are free to choose not to become part of a syndicate, or a collective, or a trade union, or whatever they are calling their club that day. Libertarian/Anarchist/Communists claim to make exceptions for people to choose another way. But does that way include working for wages? Apparently not.
"The 'scope of Expropriation,' Kropotkin argued was clear and would only 'apply to everything that enables any man -- be he financier, mill-owner, or landlord -- to appropriate the product of others' toil.' Thus only those forms of property based on wage labour would be expropriated. In terms of housing, the same general rule applies ('the expropriation of dwellings contains the whole social revolution'). Kropotkin explicitly discusses the man who 'by dint of privation has contrived to buy a house just large enough to hold his family. And we are going to deprive him of his hard-earned happiness, to turn him into the street! Certainly not . . . Let him work in his little garden, too.' Anarchist-communism 'will make the lodger understand that he need not pay his former landlord any more rent. Stay where you are, but rent free.'" -Infoshop FAQ
Appropriation is the seizing of other's assets. It is not the building and creation of new assets. The anarchist goal is to seize and redistribute based upon their own criteria -- but absent a state to ensure fairness or standards. In an anarchist society they tell us there will be "customs" rather than law and rights. Customs are more malleable and changeable. Will these customs even be written down somewhere? By whom? Who will enforce them? Who will ensure fair practices and what happens in the case of abuse or of the exploitation by those who speak for the "collective" or what have you? Anarchy is the answer. It is the precondition. It is everything.
But what about people who freely choose to work for wages? Isn't that part of being "free" and of exercising choice? Working for wages works for many millions and keeps them in homes with food and amenities. Aren't their concerns taken into consideration? Aren't they working voluntarily, when they can quit at any time?
"And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist -- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others." -Infoshop FAQ (emphasis added)
And "exploitation" is defined as working for wages. This precludes, apriori, most other kinds of "regimes." It sets a precondition upon the free choice allegedly offered, while not directly naming the authority, which will enforce this rule. That authority would come to be the armed militias, of course.
Why is an anarchist philosopher's opinion on the working for wages situation more important than the opinion of the people making a voluntary arrangement to work for wages? And, if there's no government to enact laws prohibiting working for wages, of what significance is this diktat to anyone but the person pronouncing it? These types of inconsistencies and contradictions are threaded throughout anarchist thought.
Their essentially irrelevant answers are aimed at a different time and at a different world. The world is highly complex today, and we don't have large illiterate populations working the fields, essentially uneducated people toiling as machines. We see the specialization of skillsets as necessary and appropriate. We understand the need for concentration and study and the amount of labor that specialization and experience entails. Not everyone's labor is of equal value. Society is stratified and it will remain so. That is not to acquiesce and to accept gross injustice and gross exploitation. Far from it. But an assessment of society based upon reality is the first step to coming up with relevant solutions and corrections.
The anarchist position is knee-jerk, ready and willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Their assessment of both government and business is blinkered and a blatant half-truth. On half-truths they concoct a fanciful anti-authoritarian response. It is essentially "opposite day" gone megalomaniacal.
What I've heard from anarchist dogmatists rings as false and as implausible as most other schools of dogmatic thought. They are essentially in love with their own words. The real action is elsewhere I'm afraid.
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