The Proposed Roads to Freedom: A Philosophy of Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism as Man's Perfect Government and Society

The Proposed Roads to Freedom is a treatise by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, which contemplates a society in which anarcho-communism is coupled with worker syndicalism. Russell discusses various aspects of socialist-communist and syndicalist thought, and applies them to the various portions of civil society. Beginning with an examination of the history of the political theories and their potential for success, Russell proposes a sort of 'guild socialism' whereby workers are organized into different groupings and specialisms, as opposed to the centralized, bureaucratic system advocated by state socialism. Although Russell believes that the socialist system would be the closest to perfection, he does not believe that it would be entirely lacking of flaws. Furthermore, Russell attributes many problems of the theory as solvable over time; a fine-tuning of the technical implementation of socialist economics would, so the author proposes, iron out the problems and inefficiencies in the system.