|
The cooperative organs of the individual farms would enter into the closest contact with the accounting and distributive organs of the communes. The commune on its side would establish a Bank of Exchange and Credit with numerous branch offices throughout the country. This would transact all exchange and credit operations both at home and abroad.
Thus the individual farms would voluntarily pass on all their surplus produce to their own co-operative associations, which would take upon themselves the functions of purchase and sale. The co-operative associations would transfer their produce to the Bank of the Commune and its branches. They would be paid both by monetary tokens and by all the commodities demanded by consumers. Thus, the market, speculation, commercial capital, and commerce itself, would all be abolished.
The individualist farms, on a basis of equality with the commune, would be able to avail themselves, free of charge, of the transport facilities, roads, telephones, telegraph, radio, public instruction, medical and public health service, and other public utilities of the commune. However, the commune would ask a certain annual contribution from the individual farms, to be paid in kind. The form and amount of this taxation would be laid down by the Convention of the National Confederation of Labor, but its collection would be entrusted to the Bank of the Commune and its branches, to be executed through commodity exchange.
This, as I visualize it, would be the economic regime of the new society on the day after the social revolution.
POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
In the political sphere, the State would be replaced by a Confederation of Free Communes with their Councils (soviets); that is, Communalism would be substituted for Statism. The councils (soviets) of the communes, together with the associates of such councils, up to and including the Confederal Association of Councils, would not be endowed with any prerogatives of power.
With the liberty of the individual as a starting point, the communalist regime --- through a free union of individuals into communes, of communes into provinces, and of provinces into nations --- offers the only right solution of the national problem, namely, a natural national unity in diversity, founded on liberty and equality.
As to the organization of military defense for this society, one can think only of a General Arming of the Workers as
|