A theoretical question that I haven't been able to find information on. If anyone can help out please do.
1: The rejection/absence of authoritarian hierarchies is necessary for a functioning LibCom society. Cooperation between workers replaces control and domination by those with power.
2: With the overhaul of the capitalist society, its various institutions also disappear (education, law, military). In a LibCom society we have association between groups that recognise themselves as a class.
Stop me here if these premises are incorrect.
Where does consensus therefore come from ? How and why do people recognise themselves as belonging to the same class, having the same interests ? This would imply that there must be a dominant culture that instills those values into the population. They do not have this knowledge inherently.
My question:
Is the (replacing) ideology not also an ideology of coercion ?
Well, not as a class no, a libertarian communist society would be classless. Classes are defined in relation to other classes, so in abolishing the ruling capitalist class the working class ceases to exist as a class itself.
Well, the aim of libertarian communism is to create a revolutionary working class movement that will end in destroying the state and capitalism. One thing that distinguishes libertarian communism from many other revolutionary traditions, though, is the idea of 'prefiguration', that the very movement that destroys our existing society is at the same time 'building the new society in the shell of the old', that is, the movement itself is where the new social relations and the new 'values' and 'culture' are created and built up.
It's important to say in this respect that libertarian communists, on the whole, have a materialist analysis of society. That means we see things like culture and values as based on the real, material, social reality of peoples' lives - rather than being independent from the society they exist in. So in a society where everything is based on cooperation and free association, values and culture based on liberty, solidarity and mutual aid are the logical outcome.
Hope that clarifies things...?
~J.