Anarchism's conception of the State (and Switzerland)

First of all, anarchists are opposed to all forms of class society, which necessitates the existence of a state. By abolishing existing class-relations (i.e. capitalism), we can immediately abolish the state as well.

Anarchists hope to replace capitalism and the state with a new social order that places working people in control of their own lives and is the creation of working people themselves, without being led by a vanguard of party bureaucrats. That means reorganizing the economy in a self-managed, federalist, and communist fashion. That would be a very important aspect of an anarchist revolution, because we can't begin to reconstruct politics or even consider a separate sphere for politics unless the economy is organized along classless lines.

A radically, decentralized polity is not only incompatible with capitalism, but wouldn't be tolerated by the capitalist ruling class. Such a political system would be pointless if we didn't do something about class-relations.

If you haven't already, I think you should read libcom's introductory guides to capitalism, class, the state, etc, which can be accessed upon clicking the link below.

http://libcom.org/library/libcom-introductory-guide

Agent's covered it mostly already, but anarchism's opposition to the state springs from our anti-capitalism--we are the anti-state wing of the workers movement. The libcom introductions are definitely the best place to start if you want to understand our beliefs about the state, capitalism, and class society.

As to Switzerland, it's still capitalist, it's still hierarchical, coercive, exploitative, and protects a privileged capitalist class--and in the case of Switzerland, it's a major center for global finance capital.

Anarchism it ain't.

What it lacks is a world where capitalim has been abolished.

Capitalism is a class system - a system of hierarchy based on property. So while property exists, classes exist. States are expressions of the existence of classes. They may be modelled in a democratic way or an undemocratic way, but they need a class system to exist. doing away with property does away with classes - because classes are a reflection of unequal relations of property - and the non-existence of classes implies the non-existence of the state, as the state is an organ for one class to oppress another.

What you are asking it seems is 'if Britain were organised as a federal republic, would that be anarchism?' and the answer is no, it would be a class-based (bourgeois) federal republic. The difference is that you've changed the organisation of the state but haven't done anything about the reasons it exists.

I don't know of any anarchism that posits anything at a 'national' level. Nations are part of the problem.

First, a quick couple of things.

(1) anarchism will be internationalist: states can't be constructed in an anarchist way.

(2) You're still ignoring the economic aspect here: even if Switzerland lives up to some standard of political decentralization (even though in my opinion it comes nothing close to our conception of the idea), anarchism will be based on worker control of industry and the workplace communes will be directly integrated into a federalist structures of communities. You need both for anarchism.

If you're new to anarchism, here's the first two places I'd go with any questions:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Anarchist_FAQ
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism

Non-hierarchical direct democracy. The Swiss state is pretty much the closest of all existing ones to direct democracy, but they still have a parliament, their delegates are not mandated and thus not automatically recallable, so they are not a full direct democracy, also the difference between Swiss and political organization in an anarchist society would be the lack of taxes and voluntaryness- you could choose not to join a commune/ canton, and that's about it concerning the political organization, other have already mentined that anarchism also implies a revolution in the economic sphere and internationality.

invicta I don't think you really understand how anarchist federalism works* with anarchist fedralism for issues that effect everyone in the federation each local group holds a meeting, this meeting (of all members who want to attend) comes to a set of decisions, they select a delegate who is mandated to take these decisions to the rest of the federation. all the delegates meet and attempt to come to a decision that is acceptable to all groups. the results of the decision are then take back to the groups who may then chose to recall their delegates if they dont believe they acted correctly.

*and there ought to be more written about it, its way more fundamentally to anarchist organising than consensus, and there's loads written about that.

direct democracy in Swiss has some ugly sides, e.g. local referendums on individual applications for citizenship where the application of people (often long-time residents) with non-european or non-christian names are rejected by a popular majority

And it amounts to nothing because the majority of the population live under a dictatorship at work or are otherwise completely powerless over their economic life.

will people stop accepting the ridiculous premiss that switzerland has direct democracy, it doesn't read - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#Direct_democracy edit and if you look at the bit directly above that its about the fucking swiss parliament and its parties

Switzerland, like any other regime in the modern world, is quite ugly. But if you cover it up with nice makeup (i.e. rhetoric), it'll pass.

Invicta's curiosity should be welcomed; it's a good thing that someone wants to get to the bottom of this anarchism thing and how society might be organised without a state.
It may be helpful to point out that anarchists are anti-state socialists and want to create a society based on peoples needs as well as maximising individuals personal liberty within a social context.
If you understand first that we are socialists that want to organise on a stateless, communist line then you're flying.

As it happens I grew up in Switzerland and my step-mother is Swiss. What that WP article doesn't exactly make clear, is that all acts of parliament have to be submitted to the population via referendum. Hence, the Poll Tax, for example, (or Gove's education reforms) would have to be submitted to plebiscite. So in that sense (i.e. that the government can't pass new legislation, or rescind old, without majority consent) the system has an element of direct democracy that no other electoral representative system has.

Having said that, once proposed legislation has made it through the horse-trading of the Swiss parliament (PR prevents single party government, coalitions rule), the booklet sent out with your postal ballot, includes not only the human-readable explanations of the different propositions, but also the voting recommendation from the majority coalition. 9 times out of 10 the citizen vote follows the government advice.

The system is also quite federalist in that, of your income taxes, the largest share goes to your local Canton, the next largest to your local Commune and the smallest to the Federal level. Cantonal governments have far more power than States in the US, and even the local Commune has enough financial clout to make decisions that affect the lives of the local inhabitants (unlike countries like Ireland, where local government is a powerless charade whose principle function is as a purgatory/rite of passage for those whose electoral ambitions outweigh their political intelligence).

None of this democratic machinery prevents Switzerland from being a normal capitalist country, where most workers are alienated from politics and mainly concerned with economic survival and trying to have a life. Nor does it make the general politics of the country either liberal or libertarian, if anything Switzerland is dominated by small-minded, right-wing reactionary politics that makes Germany look like a liberal lefty paradise (no mean feat).

Switzerland, however, is a good example in one sense only - it's a perfect example of why all those two men and a dog "radical democratic reform now" fringe groups are definitely barking up the wrong tree. It's not so much more democracy we need as less capitalism.

This is true only if you have no knowledge of what a state is, which is an institution defined within the context of a class-based society.

Ocelot, I honestly feel like I now know a lot more about Switzerland than I thought I ever would. Good post.

YESSS!!!!!

Fair enough. What I was aiming for, and missed, was to point out that efforts at making a state more directly democratic are futile in a capitalist society.

My question is that if direct democracy among these lines is truly implemented fully and completely as we would want, isn't it probably that the resulting shit tonne of meetings becomes a bit of a chore/bore for people after a while leading to political apathy and meetings being reduced a dedicated group who attend everyone and accidentally form a sort of elite/vanguard that disproportionately decide a lot more than everyone else ?

First, in a communist society, all meetings would be voluntary. Second, I think people would be interested in engaging in the decision-making process especially after the abolition of work (8+ hours per day, 5 days per week). Third, people will only attend meetings where their affected (i.e. workplace and community). Its not like everybody in the country, or perhaps the world, would have to attend one big meeting at the Capitol. And decisions that regards a grouping of localities, such as an entire geographical region, can be made by elected, mandated and re-callable delegates.

I know all of the above but I still think the problematic scenario I described would occur.

I tried my best.

lol

Well, since the future society will be the work of the working-class themselves, this question is something they are going to have to confront and they alone can deal with it. Whatever federalist structure they establish I'm sure is going to be flexible and comfortable for everyone to collectively govern society.

there is no doubt that some people would attend more meetings than others, but with this system ate least everyone has the option to take part, and i imagination the amount of meetings would be relitivly low once the things had stabilised a bit. there is also the fact that if this was a normal part of life then it wouldn't be such a massive effort to spend and hour or two a week on

^^^^That, but to throw in my own two cents...

It's a fair enough concern, but I think it stems from the fact that under capitalism politics, work, and the rest of life are seperated. In a directly democratic society, the decision making process (politics) will be integrated into the activities we do in a direct way. So of course we'll have meetings, but they'll be about the day to day running of our workplaces and our communities--they'll just be part of the process, not these seperate, aliented things that they currently are under capitalism. (And, yes, that includes SF meetings, too )

Thats a good point and one I hadn't thought about. Cheers.

in my opinion, the Landsgemeinde in the central Swiss cantons like similar structures which existed e.g. in the marsh areas at the German coast with the peasant republic of Dithmarschen up to 1525, the free peasants in the Friesian areas (who preserved some of their liberties like exemption from military service up to 1864) or with the late medieval Diet of Tyrolia (Foros in Navarra/Euskadi?) are political structures in areas were feudalism never was able to become fully established because of inaccessibility and a self-confident social layer of peasants which was able to resist the advance of the nobility, they evolved into societies ruled by a relatively broad layer of well-of peasants but were always also only able to maintain their prosperity through mass-emigration of those, who did not inherit the farmstead (Friesian/Dithmarschian sailors or Swiss mercenaries and servants were found all over Europe in the early modern period), there was also like everywhere in continental Europe a growing social layer of a "Sub-Peasantry and rural poor ... many of these areas are today pretty conservative