Mutualism
Nov 16 2005 20:58
How dos it differ from anarcho-communism and what is made of it? Cheers.
Nov 21 2005 00:02
#2
Catch didn't mention that mutualism recommends the setting up of democratically controlled "people's banks" - possibly locally based and controlled, but I'm not sure. These would be controlled by the local communities, who it is argued would not allow them to lend to any capitalist or hierarchical workplace or institution, which would prevent relapse into capitalism.
Also, as with all anarchism, usufruct replaces private property - those who use a resource, workplace, housing, whatever, control it whilst they use it, but it returns to a common or 'unowned' state. Their being no state, communities would not protect any individual group who tried to monopolise land or products to gain power over others.
Some mutualists (proudhon, for example) advocate some sort of voluntary agro-industrial federation(s) to facilitate co-operation and provide a buffer against the rpoblems of a market system.
I'm personallt not a mutualist, preferring communist anarchism, but these ideas are worth attention, as anarchistic communism is voluntary, and it is important to think about what would happen concerning those who chose to work alone or not to join a communistic gift economy.
Nov 23 2005 22:05
#3
Can you recommend an introduction including criticisms.
Nov 24 2005 01:46
#4
mutualist.org
But the criticisms section is incomplete. Proudhon was a mutualist, but he's not easy to read and he doesn't give a coherant picture of how things should be (but then why should he).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29
You could find out about the various ideas that mutualists have about ways people can get control over their own lives things like:
Co-ops
democratically controlled mutual credit
friendly societies
agro-indulstrial federations.
And look in the Anarchist FAQ www.anarchistfaq.org.uk
Thats all I've got really
Apr 24 2006 01:31
#5
I must admit that I am very new to co-ops and have only just come across mutualism - I think it is a very practical and possibly highly effective solution.
Why is there so little support for it at present?
The key criticism of it is that free markers will lead back towards the restoration of capitalism. Has anyone read an effective response to that criticism?
Apr 24 2006 01:44
#6
I haven't read one.
But if the monetary system operated through community controlled mutual credit or "people's banks" then the members of these could decide not to allow capitalist enterprises to join, and so they would bie out through lack of investment.
Collective boycotts of capitalist firms could work too.
If "people's banks" would provide interest free credit, it would be easier to get access to your own means of production and become self employed or start a co-op. If this happened a lot, there would be a lack of people on the labour market, leading to a high bargaining power for labour, so that workers could negotiate for workplace democracy and hire-purchase of the means of production.
And of course there is non-protection. Communities would simply not waste their time protecting anyone's claim to ownership of a workplace they did not use, so workers would take them over.
As for why it hasn't taken off, I don't know. There has been a slow but steady increase in the co-op movement, but more as an individual lifestyle choice than a movement of working class solidarity. Check out www.geo.coop and www.radicalroots.org.uk if you haven't already.
Apr 24 2006 09:36
#7
Well Its interesting to see the rise of coops in certain parts of Latin America - there is a big distinction howewver between those and British cases, in that they are born of absolute need and desperation, whereas British coops are more premeditated - also Im not clear how many coops are commited (in theory) to mutualism as a political solution.
But I think that your explenation to the key problem is good - once we got to stage where coops and other mutual enterprises are dominant the social and pollitical landscape would already be very different, and perhaps it is not necessary to have every step of the journey mapped out - mutualism seems like the veichle in which to make significant progress to me, we can wory about the future when we get there.
Apr 24 2006 14:16
#8
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/ is pretty good too. The chap that does it, Kevin Carson, self-published a really useful book which is up on that site in HTML (http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html I printed it off at work). Much of it is devoted to a subjectivist recasting of the labour theory of value in an attempt to see off the anarcho-capitalists and right libertarians and an attempt to demonstrate that the intervention of the state was responsible for primitive accumulation rather than market relations in themselves. Not sure I'm convinced, but it's a bloody good book.
Apr 25 2006 16:35
#9
Quote:
Why is there so little support for it at present?
The people who could support it, the left activists, have instead got lost chasing a mirage of pure moneyless communism.
Quote:
The key criticism of it is that free markers will lead back towards the restoration of capitalism.
Well you have to be clear on the meaning of terms like capitalism, and that one has a lot of different definitions: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Definitions_of_capitalism.
Mutualism has market trading and private ownership/use of the means of production. By some definitions of capitalism, that makes mutualism capitalist already. So it would not be a danger of sliding back to the restoration of capitalism, mutualism would already be there.
But other definitions of capitalism - mostly those used amongst the left - additionally require capitalists to hire (or otherwise compel) workers to work for them. Mutualism has peoples banks to extend credit to workers co-operatives to remove the need for workers to work for capitalism firms. But that I think would not be enough in the modern age, that there would also need to be a refusal to allow capitalist (as opposed to co-operative) firms to incorporate, and to make it a right of employment law that workers have full voting and profit rights in their firms. Capitalist ownership is a legal creation and exists at the whim of current company law and employment law.
Thanks for linking http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html, was a worthwhile read for me. Apart from that one site though mutualism as such seems to be long extinct. Its replacement is market socialism (such as http://www.chicagodsa.org/ngarchive/ng89.html#anchor650664) which is similar except is descended from Marxist-Leninism rather than any anarchist tradition.
Apr 25 2006 16:40
#10
afraser wrote:
a mirage of pure moneyless communism.
yes, that it is
Apr 25 2006 17:27
#11
Hi
Quote:
mutualism as such seems to be long extinct. Its replacement is market socialism
That’s a relief. But aren’t all these notions going to be swept aside by the working class’s self-developed economic policy, which is already much better than any of those, and it hasn’t even got a name yet.
Love
LR
Apr 25 2006 19:24
#12
Lazy Riser wrote:
the working class’s self-developed economic policy, which is already much better than any of those
can you describe it?
Apr 27 2006 13:39
#13
I wonder if the reason it hasnt taken off that much is because it requires "activists" to actually do a full days work and set up businesses rather than photocopy leaflets and go to meetings!
Apr 28 2006 01:49
#14
I think it hasn't taken off because co-ops, when they become successful, tend to either become swallowd up by big business capitalists or they become big businesses themselves.
A case in point for the kiwi poster is the Fonterra dairy company, NZ's biggest company and export earner, was basically an almagamation of lotsa little dairy co-ops.
So that's one huge problem with co-ops and mutualism: how can they seek to co-exist with big business?
As for the differences between communism and mutualism, they are huge. Let's not forget the class origins of mutualism. Most communists see mutualism as a petty-bourgeois movement. (petty means small capitalist, as opposed to the haute or big bourgeoisie). Its dream or utopia is a wet dream for the small business person: everybody, yes everybody, is to become owner and operator of their very own small business. These businesses then compete with each other on the market. Its critique of capitalism is limited to damning all those nasty big business monopolies, but idealising small business capitalism. I cant see how this will not revert back to big business capitalism. If there ever was a movement which could be justifiably called petty-bourgeois, this is it.
Apr 28 2006 11:48
#15
1) thats mutualism? really?!
2) the green party in that case are mutualists.
Apr 29 2006 12:45
#16
Skraeling wrote:
Tacks wrote:
1) thats mutualism? really?!no, that's my major critique of it, that is, i think mutualism displays a shopkeepers mentality. i have lots of other objections to mutualism as well.
Tacks wrote:
2) the green party in that case are mutualists.that's an interesting question. Mutualists will deny the links methinks, but IMHO the Greens are in part inheritors of the mutualist "small crapitalism is beautiful" tradition. In New Zealand, organic small business farmers and green tourist small business operators are strongly tied to the Greens, so the link with the petty bourgeoisie is pretty stark and obvious.
having said that, Green party type economic proposals seems to be all over the place. They mix in some mutualist ideas with others that have nothing to do with mutalism. So co-ops and small business get a strong advocation with Greens, but also ideas of workers being elected to management boards of all businesses and also the infamous belief in zero growth capitalism.
the legacy of mutualism is quite varied tho. Mutualism can claim to be a forerunner of anarcho-syndicalism, actually, with its emphasis on worker run workshops making the government disappear. A lot of anarcho-syndicalists have historically believed in money, markets and distribution of the social product according to how much work you do. They inherited this straight from mutualism.
Apr 29 2006 20:12
#17
Hi
Quote:
A lot of anarcho-syndicalists have historically believed in money, markets and distribution of the social product according to how much work you do. They inherited this straight from mutualism.
Ho ho. Typical puritan Left Communist. You're now using Mutualist weakness to critique the Syndicalists as the Left of Capital. I love it, go on…
“Copy of Direct Action, comrade?”
“No thanks, I’m a communist.”
Love
LR
Apr 29 2006 20:17
#18
hmm i don't know any anarcho syndicalists who believe in markets or mutualism.
Apr 29 2006 20:25
#19
Hi
I'm inclined to agree. Catch, when was last mutualist spat from the Syndicalist ranks?
Love
LR
Apr 29 2006 20:43
#20
Hi
newyawka wrote:
can you describe it?
There’s no single written policy to determine the economic behaviour of the working class, any more than there is an ideological rule base that can determine its needs and abilities either at the level of the individual or as a social mass.
Everyone exhibits an autonomous economic behaviour of one kind or another, and if we are to speak of an authentic working class economic policy then it is really the aggregation of the individual behaviours of it’s members.
In the prevailing order there is a distinct socio-economic class that controls the income of the multitude and the price of capital. This restricts the behaviour of the working class to those economic forms designed to maintain the elite’s social status.
When the bourgeoisie are relieved of their position in the management chain then the unfettered behaviour of working class people going about their lives just as they please will be a perfectly adequate expression of their economic policy.
As to the technicalities of such an economy, individuals have differing levels of interest at different points in their lives in the fragile and fickle mechanisms of demand for goods and labour and the way to best supply them. Just as they have differing levels of interest in sport, sex, literature, or whatever. Authentic democracy liberated from the coercion of wage labour would allow us to continually experiment with economic mechanisms in order to seek out the solutions best able serve our diverse individual preferences. If the interactions between people looks suspiciously like exchange, in the Marxist sense, or exemplifies an approximate market, then so be it.
To that end, my number one economic policy position is the implementation of a high real income for working class people independent of the (mostly) middle class “decision makers” that seek to maintain the present elitist order. Freed from the yolk of compliance with their agenda, the world is ours to with as we please, and behave in the naturally equalitarian and progressive way that we do when left to our own devices.
Love
LR
Apr 29 2006 21:49
#21
revol68 wrote:
hmm i don't know any anarcho syndicalists who believe in markets or mutualism.
Quote:
Catch, when was last mutualist spat from the Syndicalist ranks?
Well you did ask:
I don't know any personally, but here's a three part article in Libertarian Labour Review (now Anarcho-Syndicalist Review) by a veteran of the CNT/FAI:
http://www.syndicalist.org/archives/llr14-24/14f.shtml
http://www.syndicalist.org/archives/llr14-24/15f.shtml
http://www.syndicalist.org/archives/llr14-24/16f.shtml
Yes it has critical notes with it by the translator, but when I read it about a year ago I was suprised how close to mutualism it was - it's somewhere between Proudhon and Bakunin's collectivism imo.
Quote:
As part of our continuing efforts to present anarchist economic theory, we offer this translation from Abraham Guillen's book, Economia Libertaria. The author of over fifty books and essays, Guillen is probably best known to English readers for his book, Philosophy of the Urban Guerilla (New York, 1973). A veteran of the Spanish Revolution, member of the CNT and FAI, Guillen spent most of his life in exile in South America.
Quote:
Labor-Value Money
In this case we would attempt to strengthen the economy of the free self-managed municipality, not in the traditionally Roman [state-citizen] nor modern bureaucratic sense, but as the social and public enterprise of the citizens; as well as the industrial, agricultural, of research enterprise or certain global services which would constitute the task of the associated workers with their means of production, self-organized into Worker Councils of Self-Management and in Basic Units of Associated Labor, where the economic accounting should be automated by means of computers and take as their unit of calculation, the labor-hour (LH). It would have thus a monetary equivalence of the same value, if the money is intended to remain stable. The LH would circulate monetarily in the form of ticket which would give the right to consume reasonably, always leaving an important portion in order to invest more capital than wornout during a year, so that libertarian socialism would enlarge the social capital, with the goal of progressing more with self-management than under the dominance of capitalists or of bureaucrats.
Quote:
The LH, as labor-money and as a quantification of the economy, having a stable monetary value would program the economy: to account it; to establish the costs of the goods and services; programming the integrated branches of the division of the labor and correct disharmonies between them; quantifying in the products the cost of raw, energy, amortization of the capital, value of the work, economic contributions to the local self-governments and to the national co-government, etc. All of this would function within a libertarian socialism of a self-managed market, without speculators, hoarders or merchants, in order that competition benefit the workers and the consumers, the cooperative groups and self-managed enterprises, in the manner similar to the way the market functioned in the Spanish libertarian collectives during the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39.
Apr 30 2006 04:05
#22
to go back to the original question, here are some of my opinions on the differences between anarchist communism and Proudhonist mutualism. Some of these have already been covered, but i've added a few new ones. Obviously i'm only addressing Proudhon's version of mutualism, so it doesn't cover different takes on mutualism, but some of my comments are still relevant to non-proudhonist mutualists as well.
1. Mutualism is reformist. Proudhon believed his scheme of co-ops and mutual credit would gradually and peacefully transform capitalism. While anarchist communist is revolutionary (which doesn’t mean they opposed reforms, by the way). Anarchist communists point out the small experiments within capitalism inevitably get swallowed up by capitalism and the state. Mutualism is idealist because they believe like Christians that you can change the world by force of example. Anarchist communists see revolt as springing from the material, social and cultural conditions which us proles face every day.
2. Anarchist communists seek the abolition of all classes, while mutualists don't. Proudhon was very ambigious about classes. Sometimes, he just wanted to reduce everyone to a small business independent craftsperson. Sometimes it is though he wants everyone to become a worker. At other times, he said he was for a reconciliation between classes. Indeed, he once said reconcialiation between the classes “is revolution, I assure you”! from Proudhon’s General Idea of the Revolution, p. 9. Ho ho, Proudhon was also sceptical of the value of strikes and unions, both of which he saw as coercive methods of struggle which violated individual liberty. Murray Bookchin, not renowned for interesting comments, noted Proudhon was a liberal in proletarian disguise. Apt methinks.
3. Under Proudhon's mutualism, private property is supposed to be evenly distributed. Every person would own property and receive the full fruit of their own labour, either individually or as a member of a co-op or other producing association. You get paid according to how much work you do. Under anarchist communism, property and wages in all their forms go out the window.
4. Mutualists believe in other fundamentals of capitalism beside private property, namely markets, money, cut throat competition, contracts, the division of labour, and wage labour. Most anarchist communists reject all of these (some don’t because they believe in a transitional period of mutualism and collectivism before communism can be achieved). Anarchist communists believe in a sort of ‘gift economy’ where people come together to meet their own needs without the resorting to economic competition, wages, money, the market and so on.
They argue the retention of these fundamental aspects of capitalism will lead to class exploitation and the state re-appearing. For example, Proudhon believes in vigorous competition between small worker owned business co-ops for status and for wealth. This would inevitably lead to some businesses becoming larger and more efficient than others, as natural resources are not evenly distributed, this giving some firms important advantages in the marketplace. Anarchist commies argue mutualism will lead to the very big business capitalism and state control that mutualists despise.
5. This one is especially for Lazy Rizer. Mutualism seeks to reduce the wealth, richness and variety of human relationships to commodity relationships. Proudhon accepts contracts. Hence he wants to reduce organic, qualitative human relationships to quantitative ratios. He loves reducing life to a monetary measure. This is the shopkeepers mentality: its morality drawn from account books, its debit and credit philosophy, its mine and yours institutions. While under anarchist communism, all this goes out the window. Communism is a world without measure, a world where we don’t view others as pieces of mere meat that can be measured, weighed, owned, domesticated, and then sold on the market. We relate to others without the mediation of the commodity. That is very liberating.
Apr 30 2006 04:21
#23
Anarcho-syndicalism as i understand it descends from the anarchist collectivism of Bakunin and co in the First International. Anarcho-sydncialsits themselves accept this, and note Bakunin and co were their true heirs.
Anarchist collectivists themselves accepted a hell out of Proudhon's views, indeed Bakunin once said anarchist collectivism is "Proudhonism extensively revised and updated, and taken to its logical conclusion".
The anarchist collectivists accepted that the workshop run by the workers themselves would be the fundamental unit of the new society. This is taken directly from Proudhon. These workshops would be linked to each other by the circulation of value, as with Proudhon. What the collectivists rejected was the mutualists belief in individual ownership of property. Instead, they opted for collective ownership of the means of production -- hence the term "collectivists". But in reality, because they left the division of labour intact, the anarchist collectivists believed in a de-facto form of private property (workers in each enterprises would own their own workplace to the exclusion of the rest of society).
So in a roundabout way, you can see how anarcho-syndicalism is a sort descendant of mutualism. But they did reject many aspect of mutualism, however. I'm just saying they took on board some, but not all, mutualist ideas.
Apr 30 2006 04:31
#24
Lazy Riser wrote:
When the bourgeoisie are relieved of their position in the management chain then the unfettered behaviour of working class people going about their lives just as they please will be a perfectly adequate expression of their economic policy.
so under mutualism i take it the working class still exists then? Who on earth still wants to be a proletarian if you have got rid of the yoke of capital? I don't want to be limited to, and defined by, my economic activity. I dont want just a change in management. I don't want everyone to be reduced to being a worker, even a highly paid one. That is a nightmare. A highly paid slave is still a slave.
Lazy Riser wrote:
]Authentic democracy liberated from the coercion of wage labour would allow us to continually experiment with economic mechanisms in order to seek out the solutions best able serve our diverse individual preferences. If the interactions between people looks suspiciously like exchange, in the Marxist sense, or exemplifies an approximate market, then so be it.
now you're sounding like a traditional anarchist communist. Mutualists dont reject wage labour surely? Surely you want to be paid the full fruit of your labour, dontcha? As for free experimentation, that's what most anarchist communists have traditionally believed in. I think its a good idea with many reservations. If communist economic arrangements dont work, then move on to something else. But if you allowed limited forms of capitalism like mutualism and syndicalism to flourish, then won't we be back to the starting point ie. classes will reappear, the state will be needed.
Apr 30 2006 10:37
#25
Hi
Skraeling wrote:
so under mutualism i take it the working class still exists then?
Dunno. I come neither to praise nor bury mutualism. Do you actually read my posts?
Skraeling wrote:
Who on earth still wants to be a proletarian if you have got rid of the yoke of capital?
Me! Working class power baby, yeah! There’s a universe to conquer.
Skraeling wrote:
A highly paid slave is still a slave.
Madonna. Slave to the Rhythm.
Skraeling wrote:
now you're sounding like a traditional anarchist communist.
Heaven forbid. Honestly, you’re nowhere. You’re super-imposing established middle class political pigeon holes over my beautifully crafted authentically working class art-policy. (I am attempting humour).
Love
LR
Apr 30 2006 10:46
#26
Hi
Skraeling wrote:
But if you allowed limited forms of capitalism like mutualism and syndicalism to flourish, then won't we be back to the starting point ie. classes will reappear, the state will be needed.
Like I said over on “Are you a communist?”…
Lazy Riser wrote:
The implication is that proletarians, left to their own devices, will regress into barbarism through simple acts of exchange, setting out stalls and budgeting for their consumption
Love
LR
Apr 30 2006 11:39
#27
Lazy Riser wrote:
I come neither to praise nor bury mutualism. Do you actually read my posts?
yes.
Lazy Riser wrote:
Heaven forbid. Honestly, you’re nowhere. You’re super-imposing established middle class political pigeon holes over my beautifully crafted authentically working class art-policy. (I am attempting humour).
I don't find it funny. Why do you keep using sarcy smartalecky one-liner slag offs as a substitute for argument? I am not nowhere, nor middle class, nor a puritan nor a left communist for that matter. You might be amused by it, but i'm not. I find them dismissive and a little bit abusive. I see no need to resort to slag-offs. Let's keep the debate civil aeh?
Apr 30 2006 11:52
#28
Lazy Riser wrote:
The implication is that proletarians, left to their own devices, will regress into barbarism through simple acts of exchange, setting out stalls and budgeting for their consumption
No, not at all. The problem is not proletarians setting up a few stalls to get by. The problem to me is that small business capitalists believe in what i reckon is a myth. That myth is that there is such a thing as an even marketplace between small business entrepreneurs, a level playing field if you like. The problem is that because natural resources (including human aptitude) are not spread evenly, some will be more efficient than others, and accumulate profit faster than others, even if everybody starts off just with owning a wee bit of property and their very own stall. Some stalls will get bigger than others, and buy the others out, and then buy their land, and then force them to work for them, and then you're back to square one all again.
OK how do u think big businesses can be stopped from developing under your small business utopia? how can small businesses all remain small?
Apr 30 2006 12:53
#29
Hi
Quote:
Why do you keep using sarcy smartalecky one-liner slag offs as a substitute for argument?
They are not a substitute for argument, what argument would you like me to make? In what way are they sarcy? I suppose compared to re-treading the arguments between Victorian bourgeois factions they’re bound to be smart-alecky.
Quote:
I see no need to resort to slag-offs
Really? In what way do you feel you’ve been slagged off? It’s you who have dragged this discussion onto the personal plane by deciding to tell us how you “feel” about the political pigeon hole you’ve decided to slot me, personally, into. Let me repeat, when you sling “mutualist” at me you are nowhere. The working class couldn’t care less about our precious ‘ism’s and who is or who is not a ‘ist of this kind or another, and quite right too.
Quote:
The problem to me is that small business capitalists believe in what i reckon is a myth.
Excellent. Personally am not too concerned by what small business capitalists believe, it’s likely a lot of it is wrong though. That’s their problem.
Quote:
if everybody starts off just with owning a wee bit of property and their very own stall. Some stalls will get bigger than others, and buy the others out, and then buy their land, and then force them to work for them, and then you're back to square one all again.
There you go, “the voice of communism speaks”. Do I get to keep my own toothbrush or does the fact that I’ve got shinier teeth than everybody else mean that the communist secret police will have to come round and confiscate it?
Quote:
OK how do u think big businesses can be stopped from developing under your small business utopia? how can small businesses all remain small?
I have no interest in stopping “big business from developing”. I do not advocate a “small business utopia”. Like I say, you are nowhere. If you were somewhere, you wouldn’t bother slinging this stuff at me.
Seeing as you’re arguing the same position on three threads now, I’m thinking dismissed is the last thing you’re being. Which one would you prefer we choose to consolidate the discussion? “Are you a communist?”, “Mutualism” or “What does libcom stand for?”
Love
LR
May 1 2006 12:41
#30
Mutualists are divided on whether or not to allow wage labour:
Kevin Carson wrote:
The main division within the mutualist movement is between the American individualists, especially Warren and Tucker and their associates, and the contintental tradition of Proudhon. ... The two traditions ... disagree on the issue of wage labor. Tucker did not favor prohibiting wage labor.
Proudhon by contrast was opposed to wage labour. That seems a huge difference to me.
quickly and a bit rough.
Mutualism - workers own their own means of production as individuals or co-operatives. Goods are exchanged on a free market between those collectives or co-operatives and workers recieve what they can get on the market for the goods they produce. No ground rent or surplus value since "ownership" is based on usufruct not property titles. Could make use of barter, or labour notes, or money depending on who you talk to. Since co-ops make goods in order to exchange with others, you still have the production of commodities and the separation of use-value and exchange value.
Most communists would argue that the continuation of markets and commodity production would lead straight back to class society via competition and accumulation.
communism - means of production are socially owned - i.e. by everyone not exclusively by those working on them. The products of labour are distributed "from each according to their ability; to each according to their need", and as such decisions about production are made democratically. Loosely, this means bottom up planning based on what people decide they want to consume and produce rather than market production based on what people decide to buy after it's already been made. The commodity form - specifically the division between use and exchange value is superceeded since goods are made to directly satisfy human need and desire instead of exchanged for equivalents or to acquire abstracted representations of the labour involved in producing them.