How did Trotsky make the trains run on time?
Mitchinson asks: “Yet with no central apparatus, no organisation, how would the trains run on time, how could organ transplants be organised, how could the world’s resources be channelled into permanently overcoming famine.” Firstly, we must note the usual fallacy — being opposed to a “central apparatus” does not imply “no organisation.” Instead of centralised organisation, anarchists propose federal organisations in which co-ordination is achieved by collective decision making from the bottom up. In other words, rather than delegate power into the hands of “leaders”, an anarchist organisation leaves power at the bottom and co-ordination results from collective agreements that reflect the needs of those directly affected by them. Thus a federal organisation co-ordinates activities but in a bottom-up fashion rather than top-down, as in a centralised body. Secondly, needless to say, anarchists are quite clear on who would make the trains run on time — the railway workers. Anarchists ar
