On Anarchist Social Democracy: Taxation, Welfare, and Anarchy

There have traditionally been two forms of anarchism that are theoretically workable. The first is democratic anarchism and the second is market anarchism. Although I no longer advocate anarchism, I would like to explore the notion that these two forms of anarchism could be combined. If you are not already familiar with anarchism and the various schools of anarchist thought, you should check out my post An Intro to Anarchism: Democratization and/or Privatization of Government and my post Property as Theft: The Libertarian Socialist Critique of Property (Part 3).

When I was an anarchist, I was advocating what I called anarchist social democracy. My basic contention was that it would be theoretically possible to establish a voluntary post-capitalism social democracy—i.e. a libertarian social democratic system in which wage-slavery (capitalism) has been abolished and in which everyone is guaranteed free access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, etc. This would involve combining three different elements of anarchist thought, borrowed from different anarchist schools of thought: (1) democratic confederalism, the organization of society on a directly democratic basis, through assembly democracy, at the level of the commune/municipality, and the confederation of communes/municipalities into a larger system of governance for the macro-scale, (2) communal-ownership or municipal-ownership of land, and (3) allowing a market for the distribution of goods and services. All of these ideas are actually rooted in classical anarchism. The first two points are actually drawn from communist anarchism and mutualism, the philosophies of Peter Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon respectively. The third point is drawn from individualist anarchism, the philosophy of Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, and Thomas Hodgskin.

^{>Image from Will Schnack's Geo-Mutualism site}

"In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And in common with the most advanced representatives of political radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of the political organisation of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by means of free groups and federations—freely constituted—all the infinitely varied needs of the human being."—Peter Kropotkin (Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principle)

I believe that we can take this idea of communal-ownership and democratic management of common property and combine it with the market-anarchism of Tucker, Spooner, and Hodgskin. Suddenly, my idea of libertarian social democracy seems compatible with anarchism. Libertarian social democracy, as I espouse it, involves collecting a ground-rent or land value tax and using that as a source of revenue for funding universal basic income, universal healthcare, etc. This idea of ground-rent or land value tax is based on the ideas of Henry George. The basic idea is that land ought to be regarded as communal property, and the community ought to charge rent for its use. The rent that would normally go to the landlord or a mortgagee/bank now would go to the community. If you have a system of anarchism with both communal-ownership of land and a monetary system with a market, then suddenly Georgism and anarchism don't seem to be incompatible at all. If land is communally-owned by an anarchist commune/municipality or confederation, and money and markets are not abolished, then the community can legitimately collect rent under anarchism. This approach is called geo-anarchism, anarcho-Georgism, or geo-mutualism. This train of thought has been developed more thoroughly by Fred Foldvary and William Schnack. This idea is not really a departure from classical anarchism. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the founder of modern anarchism, actually did believe that the community had a right to confiscate economic rent under anarchism. Ground-rent or land value tax was, in his estimation, compatible with anarchism. (Cf. William Schnack, Proudhon on Economic Rent)

"“[A]ll payments made as rental shall be carried over to the account of the purchase of the property, at a price estimated at twenty times the annual rental.
“Every such payment shall purchase for the tenant a proportional undivided share in the house he lives in, and in all buildings erected for rental, and serving as a habitation for citizens.
“The property thus paid for shall pass under the control of the town administration, which shall take a first mortgage upon it, in the name of all the tenants, and shall guarantee them all a domicile, in perpetuity, at the cost price of the building.
“Towns may bargain with owners for the purchase and immediate payment for rented buildings…
“For repairs, management and upkeep of buildings, as well as for new constructions, the towns shall deal with masons’ Unions, or associations of building trades, according to the rules and principles of the new social contract.
“Proprietors who occupy their own houses shall retain property therein, as long as suits their interests….
"Every payment of rent for the use of real estate shall give title to the farmer for a share of the real estate, and shall be a lien upon it.
“When the property has been entirely paid for, it shall revert to the town, which shall take the place of the former proprietor, and shall share the fee-simple and the economic rent with the farmer….
“As soon as all landed property shall have been completely paid for, all the towns of the Republic shall come to an understanding for equalizing among them the quality of tracts of land, as well as accidents of culture. The part of the rent to which they are entitled upon their respective territories shall serve for compensation and for general insurance.
“Beginning with the same date, the former proprietors who have held their title by working their properties themselves, shall be placed on the same footing as the new, subjected to the same rental payments, and invested with the same rights; in such a manner that the chance of locality or of succession may favor no one, and that conditions of culture shall be equal for all."—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, Fifth Study)

It seems, then, that an anarchist commune or even an anarchist confederation, assuming that it exercises communal-ownership of land, could effectively use ground-rent as a way to raise money to fund public services and welfare. You could, therefore, have an anarchistic social democracy with security, universal healthcare, and universal basic income all funded by ground-rent charged for private use of communally-owned land. Additionally, if air and water are viewed as part of the Earth and consequently analogous to land, they too can be regarded as communally-owned, meaning that emissions taxes and environmental regulations are not off the table for such an anarchist society.

The balance of communalist anarchism to individualist anarchism in such a society would depend on community consensus. Perhaps the people would agree to have communal security services, funded by ground-rent. Alternatively, they could opt for a system of competing private security services on the free market. It's quite probable that they would opt for some mixture of both. Such a system would allow for one to have the best of both worlds with regards to communist anarchism and individualist anarchism. Furthermore, the problem of distribution is made much more simple. You can ensure an egalitarian distribution of wealth simply by redistributing wealth—you collect ground-rent, with the people who possess the most valuable land owing the most, and you redistribute it in the form of a citizen's dividend or basic income. Whatever revenue isn't needed for security or welfare programs goes directly back to the people as a basic income. You also have a means of funding and ensuring universal healthcare, paid for by revenue from ground-rent, and so can have a society that is essentially social democratic in nature but with an anarchistic basis. So you also get the best of both worlds with regards to social democracy and anarchism.

While such a system is theoretically possible—and actually possible, for that matter—, it doesn't at all seem likely to me that anarchist communities would ever reach a consensus to implement such a system. Personally, I would rather live in a social democracy than in either a pure communist anarchist or pure market-anarchist system. Since I don't think it is likely for an anarchist community to embrace a social democratic model, I find it better to embrace a more conventional approach to social democracy. Furthermore, I define any system that reduces human suffering as relatively good and any system that increases human suffering as relatively bad. People die during revolutions and there is surprisingly little evidence that anarchistic systems are sustainable on a large scale. No large-scale anarchist confederation has ever stabilized and guaranteed security for its members. Lack of security and stability increase human suffering. It would be better, in my estimation, to work within the framework of conventional republican systems of democracy and attempt to reform them along libertarian social democratic lines. We ought to push for universal healthcare, land value tax, cap and trade, and universal basic income through existing democratic means. "In the long run, we are all dead." We don't have a hundred years to wait for anarchism to save the planet. Pollution and global warming are destroying the planet right now, and we need to get existing governments to embrace cap and trade, emissions taxation, and regulations that will prevent corporations from destroying the planet. People are suffering under wage-slavery now. We need to abolish it in the quickest way possible, which seems to me to be by getting existing governments to introduce a universal basic income funded by land value tax. In practice, then, I am more of a social democrat, with some sort of mixture of civic republicanism and radical republicanism. I think we should rally and protest for certain causes, and vote for politicians that support social democratic policies, and attempt to change the system through education and organizing within the framework of the existing system, rather than attempt to overthrow the system and build a new society from scratch. Thus, I'm not an anarchist.