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I said nothing about abolishing work. I was referring to the need to abolish the link between work and personal economic security. The "if you don't work you don't eat" nexus which is the motor of capitalist social control. If you don't see the need and the possibility to abolish that form of social control, then you aren't really a socialist or an anarchist. Many progressives who wouldn't think of themselves as socialists are realising that this is an important step, many even believe it is a necessary and possible reform of capitalism. </i>
You cannot abolish the link between work and economic security, because economic security itself derives from work. If no one works, there is no economic security - that is a simple fact of existence. Our demand as anarchists is that we want to tear down the state, and force the ruling class to work for their living, stripped of thier power over the means of production (and distribution).
In terms of anarchist communities... there is still the requirement that people work, however the requirement and means of work is determined both by the individual and by the needs and egalitarian social functions of the community in which that individual resides.
<i> Greens in Australia and Europe (Britain anyhow, can't say about the continent, but I would assume so) have a guaranteed income as a plank of their election policy. The need isn't even all that controversial, among progressives. Socialists need to catch up. </i>
You're passing this off as "progressive", but really this is just an extension of the welfare state, which has its fundamental roots in the opression of the working class. Guaranteeing a basic subsistance level income for the working class of an advanced industrialised nation neither emancipates the working class of that nation, nor does it help the working class of less industrialized countries that don't have such extensive welfare states. As anarchists we seek to abolish the welfare state, not work.
<i> Not if they are to be genuinely socialist, I think that is merely a utopian fantasy. nevertheless, there is still a need to set up these alternative organisations. There is a lot to be learned. But in the end those organisations will always be fundamentally affected by the "if you don't work you don't eat" basis of the society in which they exist. Insecurity breeds an underlying psychology which effects everything about an organisation. </i>
Anarchists have always organised against the current system of social relationships that allows for the control of the means of production and distribution by priveleged few. It is not a "utopian fantasy". While we create organisations that are explicitly anarchist [and many that aren't] within the context of the current society, we do not expect to actually have anarchism itself in some kind of dropout culture our socio-economic enclave - anarchism is about liberation, not escapism. We build the new society within the shell of the old.
<i> I just don't see how it is possible to be socialist for more than a few seconds though. I mean, once the organisation has abandoned all its property rights and agreed to provide its services on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay, giving away goods and services despite the fact that it must pay for the inputs, doesn't it just cease to exist? </i>
You can be an anarchist without actually living in an anarchist society. Just as you can be in a culture but not "of" it. If you want an example of anarchists building an anarchist society, look at the Spanish Civil War, or read Gaston Laval's "With the Peasents of Aragon", etc. There are many books on anarchist economics [mostly in spanish] and more broadly the subject of anarchist societies.
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