What Is Mutualism?

4. A general sense that reasonable economic and social models, which address each person’s rights to her proper projects, can emerge, and that these may not be identical.

In my opinion, these principles tend to lead to market-oriented anarchism. They would probably lead to anarchism in almost any conditions, but they could lead toward communist or collectivist anarchism in different economic and/or technological conditions.

-Marja Erwin

“2. A general sense that it is better to create alternatives than to remove them.”

True that.

“3. A general skepticism towards the idea that one economic or social model can work for all people in all circumstances.

4. A general sense that reasonable economic and social models, which address each person’s rights to her proper projects, can emerge, and that these may not be identical.”

Yea, there is a certain sort of economic pluralist strain. I’m not entirely sure if this is essential to mutualism though, as it seems to be more of a contemporary view and some self-proclaimed mutualists do exclude certain economic and social models on ethical grounds.

I suppose part of what I want to say is that mutualism isn’t necessarily the same thing as anarchism without adjectives. While it might involve some reconciliation, I don’t think it could be entirely reconciliatory to the extent that it is really a distinct position.

I want to push this question: How tolerant of propertarianism and capitalism is mutualism *really*? Does this economic pluralism represent an all-inclusiveness towards property norms and organizational arrangements based on certain property? Or is mutualism more concretely non-propertarian?

I think property theory assumes too much importance—but also gets too little serious analysis—in our circles. Francois (whose “hard-core” lib-soc credentials also include absolute opposition to unions and some curious deviations) has drawn his line against property a couple of different places, always on the basis of outcomes that might or might not depend on his particular boundaries. I’ve been really enjoying the recent exchange on his blog, but he seems to share with db0 a rather limited sense of the possible outcomes of various property systems.

“Anything goes” can’t be a mutualist principle, but “anything + reciprocity-as-key-condition” might almost cut it. The most antagonistic property systems are going to face the same problems as the most seemingly benign ones, in the context of an anarchist society: either they will be adapted to accommodate some some sort of rough-and-ready reciprocity and equality, or the society will fail to remain anarchist. Highly individualistic systems, which allow unequal accumulation, will find their equivalent of potlatch, or they will fail. There are obviously more and less stable ways to achieve mutualist association, but there are unquestionably a lot of ways.

The strength of mutualism is in its joining of the best elements of individualist and collectivist social philosophy, and in its traditionally progressive approach. Because mutualism has been reborn out of the partial forms which splintered off from it, it has ended up with at least twice as many things to stress over: all the bugaboos of individualism with regard to the collective + all the fears of communism about rampant individuality. Should contemporary mutualism ever really assume its own classical mantle, its could at least reduce its anxieties to those associated with the specific, real problems of making a society out of truly free people.