finish reading An Anthology of Anarchism

He said the true subject of political and moral thought is human happiness. I’m translating from Hebrew translated from English, but that’s the basic idea. So true, so easily forgotten sometimes.

I’m re-reading the Godwin part now. An early anarchist, somewhat naive, pre-marxist if I’m not mistaken. Which makes me realize to what extent Marx has revolutionized radical views of production relations, but that’s besides the point.
Godwin was affected by French revolutionary optimism, and believed in the goodness of human nature and in common sense. He thought that everyone should participate in production, unless he or she serves the community better by doing something else (who will decide?), and everyone should receive a fair portion of the product, where “fair” means “according to one’s needs”.
Nice view, all very fair, but as the Israely Kibbutz experience has shown (I grew up in one) – it’s not easy to create a mechanism for deciding what everyone needs and what everyone can contribute. A non-governmental community, even a free, voluntary one, can become patronising and dictatorial in doing that, or the individual can exploit the community, and in many cases both – some people are manipulative and exploit the community, some are naive and are being exploited.