Mine and Thine

            Many anarchist thinkers have made the wonderful observation of reversing cause and effect in terms of crime and property. There is a prevailing notion that a police force or some force that can supersede the will of an individual is required to prevent crime. This line of thinking suggests that crime is a part of human nature (a negative part) and cannot be allowed to occur in a modern society. The reversal that many anarchist thinkers have identified is that the cause of crime is in ownership. They believe that if the idea of ownership was to be taken away then crime would go with it. I should clarify that the type of crime I am referring to is crime against property which accounts for two thirds of all crime.[1]

            It follows than that a State built to protect ownership of property is an entity that is creating crime. This brings us to a  foundational block of anarchism; a State is undesirable, ownership is undesirable and authority is undesirable. However there is a break that occurs following this foundation among anarchist thinkers; individualism vs mutualism, collectivism or social anarchism. It is an ongoing argument and while the various sides of the debate disagree on how to achieve a Stateless society they all argue for a Stateless society.

            Individualism and mutualism can be explained (crudely) using a top down, bottom up analogy. An individualist believes that the freedom of the individual is the first priority and will eventually lead to a community of likeminded individuals acting upon a shared goal. This is not much different then capitalism, except that money, ownership and exploitation are not compatible with anarchistic individualism (in general) because they would infringe upon another’s personal freedom. Thus individualism views the path to a free society from the bottom up.[2]

            Mutualism, collectivism or social anarchism (in the song I use mutualism only because of phonic reasons, in reality there are slight differences between all of them) believes that there is a shared desire to survive and should be acted upon as a group or community prior to individual freedom.  That is to say that collectivism/mutualism believes that it is necessary to give up some amount of personal freedom in order to achieve a free society. A good example would be Berkman’s anarco-communism that he laid out in the ABC’s of Anarchism (1929). Berkman puts forth the vision of a society where the essentials of life (shelter, food, water, air, sanitation etc) are provided by the entire community for the entire community. Using the number of workers in the US (30 million) versus the number of people in the US (120 million), Berkman comes to the conclusion that if everyone worked 3 hours a day all would be provided.[3] The rest of the time in a day would be solely available to the individual to use as they pleased. Thus mutualism/collectivism views the path to a free society from the top down, community first and individual second.[4] This is the idea behind the song Mine and Thine; an expression that I came across often in the writings of anarchist thinkers from the 17^th and 18^th centuries, it simply means mine and yours.

Mine and Thine


Should the health of the community

Be placed above the freedom of me

Which path will lead us to the place

Where there is no longer a State and no authority

We think the freedom of me is up front

The community is top down

And it will always possess

A latent desire to repress

And a latent desire to oppress

And a latent desire to possess

We think the health of the community

Is reached by cooperating

The freedom of I will deny

The need for a group to survive

And the strength to reach one’s potential

Should come from the will of us all

We dance ‘round this line

Favoring water or wine

Sketching out our designs

But when given the time

We agree to define

There should be no mine and thine.

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[1] Marshall, Peter, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. (Oakland, California: PM Press, 1992, 2010), 30.

[2] Ibid, 6.

[3] Berkman, Alexander ED: Fellner, Gene. Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1992, 2005), 285.

[4] Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible, 7-8.