What is a syndicate?
As we will use the term, a “syndicate” (often called a “producer cooperative,” or “cooperative” for short, sometimes “collective” or “association of producers” or “guild factory” or “guild workplace”) is a democratically self-managed productive enterprise whose productive assets are either owned by its workers or by society as a whole. It is important to note that individuals who do not wish to join syndicates will be able to work for themselves. There is no “forced collectivization” under any form of libertarian socialism, because coercing people is incompatible with the basic principles of anarchism. Those who wish to be self-employed will have free access to the productive assets they need, provided that they neither attempt to monopolize more of those assets than they and their families can use by themselves nor attempt to employ others for wages (see section I.3.7). In many ways a syndicate is similar to a cooperative under capitalism. Indeed, Bakunin argued that anarchists are “c
