The contradictions of Anarcho-Communists

A few days ago, I made a post here about Pluralism within Anarchism; and I also made one in the Debate Anarchism subreddit where I got lots of insightful answers (you’re encouraged to go read them if you want more context, just check my post recent posts).

Part of my post was defining Anarchism in simple terms as the rejection of centralised and coercive forces and from that simple premise comes the rejection from the State, and the necessity of Voluntary Association as a supreme principle and the respect of the NAP. This is, in my opinion, the simplest way to define Anarchism but also the most ethical and moral.

However, Anarcho-Communists and other Collectivists do not really respect these two precepts (Voluntary Association and the NAP), or in other words, they respect them only if they come after the rejection of hierarchy (even if ethical, consensual / non-coercive).

I concluded that not only Anarcho-Communists are full of contradictions (their ideological purity does need the use of coercion to be viable), but they are also… not in line with what Anarchism originally was.

The original form of Anarchism can be called Mutuellism or Proudhonism, and some of its principles are: voluntary association, small-scale property and no forced collectivisation. Mutuellism support self-employment, autonomous communities and free markets. What Mutuellism rejects is coercion and exploitation, which is also somewhat aligned with Agorism.

Now I’ll give some practical examples to illustrate what I mean.

A.) A person know how to build bikes from scratch, but this person hates working. So they have an idea to free themselves of hard labour: build 5 bikes, and rent them 100 bucks for 24 hours to people who want to do whatever they want with that bike, at the condition of not damaging them. Thanks to that, this person can feed themselves and entertain themselves as they wish in their community. No harm as been done, no one has been exploited or hurt in the process.

B.) A person is following a particular religious tradition which has strict rules on how to behave, how to eat, how to speak, etc. This person does not want to live in a society where people aren’t following his religious rules. So, along with 500 other follower of their religion, this person decides to found they own town where they are all free to live as they please. No one is forced to stay if they don’t share their values, and no one is permitted to enter if they don’t share them either.

Guess which branch of Anarchism would tolerate this?

Most forms of Anarchism (from Mutuellism to Anarcho-Capitalism) following a few simple precepts (Voluntary Association and NAP) wouldn’t see any problem in these two examples. Even if they disagree with the religious value of Person B, they’d still think that person is allowed to practice their vision of freedom, along with likeminded individuals, as long as they don’t harm or coerce anyone and don’t try to conquer other communities to force them to adhere to their vision.

However, this is impossible within Anarcho-Communism. Which makes the difference between them and most other forms of Anarchism very sharp: AnCom do not believe in freedom of association, they believe in the strict adherence to their vision of freedom. In their vision, Anarchism isn’t about freedom from coercion, but instead, it simply means Stateless communism, so in other words… just communism. But as we know from historical examples, communism cannot truly be achieved and get stuck in the Statist phase because it requires coercion, forced labour, etc. to make sure everyone “joyfully” partake in their vision of an ideal society.

AnCom would practice coercion, but they’d simply call it otherwise.