Mutualism is an anarchist social philosophy first established in print by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. While often considered to be the father of mutualism (something I have repeated and am apt to do again), Proudhon was actually more of its first philosopher, because mutualism already existed to some degree, long before Proudhon would write about it in his works. Proudhon had spent time among the workman’s associations in Lyon, France, where he witnessed fraternal organizations and guilds functioning in mutualistic manners, involving member control from voluntary participants. When he wrote in favor of mutualism, he probably had these cooperative associations in mind. Nonetheless, Proudhon can be considered to be the first philosophical exponent of mutualism as a school of thought.
Along with being among the first philosophical proponents of mutualism, Proudhon is the first to call himself an anarchist. Yet, again, the sentiment against government and the state long preceded Proudhon. Some have traced it back to Ancient Greek or Chinese thinkers, such as Zeno or Lao Tzu. Others suggest that others much closer to Proudhon’s time were the first, such as William Godwin or Josiah Warren. Proudhon maintains the title of the first anarchist simply for being the first to call himself such on record.
Proudhon had been raised by a father who was a journeyman brewer and cooper and a mother who was a peasant and housekeeper. He is one of the few philosophers to truly have come from a lower class background. He had a thirst for knowledge, however, which drove him to study a large range of topics in social science and the humanities. He yearned for a society in which peasant and poor artisanal families like his own could live happy and fulfilling lives.
Proudhon had been influenced by a large range of thinkers, from the utopian socialists like Saint Simon and Charles Fourier to classical liberal economists such as Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say. He debated against communists such as Karl Marx, who had once been his proponent, and against capitalist philosophers such as Frederic Bastiat. Proudhon opposed communism, believing it to reward mediocrity at the expense of those who have more merit to perform social functions, and opposed capitalism on the grounds that idle holders of property held political power and income that was unearned. Proudhon said, “Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.”
Proudhon sought instead to maintain a balance between these two worldviews, which had both influenced him earlier in life, through Charles Fourier and Adam Smith, among others, and which he found himself debating against later on, with Karl Marx and Frederic Bastiat. In his view, there are useful elements in communism, as well as in capitalism, but liberty is found...
[continue reading]Open Invitation to Comment
Feel free to respectfully comment, whether in favor or against. But be prepared to defend your view!
Read More!
You can find more like this on my real blog, Ambiarchy Blog, where I cover topics such as:
- Pantheism: The Belief that Nature is God
- Mutualism: The Belief in Anarchy and Cooperation
- Antapodism: The Belief in Friendship Between Humanity and Nature
... as well as other topics related to natural philosophy, natural theology, science, and history, including but not limited to:
- Witnessing Shell Theory: An Alternative Natural Cosmology
- Henogenic Volution Out-of-Everywhere: An Alternative Approach to Evolution
- Ambiarchy: An Alternative to Neo-Anarchism
Comments
Displaying 6 of 6 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
Will
TO THE PERSON WHO REPLIED: I am so sorry. I accidentally deleted your comment. This is the second time I have done this while trying to delete my own comment to replace it without all of the bullshit code and formatting FriendRewind interjects. I value your comment greatly, and deeply regret deleting your comment because I can't remember your screenname.
I did make a reply to you below.
by Will; ; Report
I posted in the forum asking for a resolution to the issue. It is because of the red x to delete replies, which is not apparent, leading me to click on the more apparent delete button for the comment instead. I am requesting delete buttons for comment replies instead of the red x that only shows on mouseover.
by Will; (edited); Report
Will
p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }
Sure. I'll be happy to explain more about mutualism.
Mutualism is a kind of super-ideology, or ideology of ideologies, which may more simply be referred to as an applied sociology (a sociology is a study of people, their varying beliefs intact). This means that while mutualism allows for just about any particular belief, it is not itself about particular beliefs so much as it is a science that uncovers a dynamic that allows for different belief systems and their holders to coexist. This dynamic does entail some particulars, but those are particulars relating to matters between ideologies, rather than particular to an ideology. And it does have consequences, those being the end of political authority and exploitative economic arrangements.
Mutualism recognizes that there are forces of individuality, competition, contest, and etc., but while acknowledging that what serves individuals is reciprocity (equal exchange), cooperation (working together), and mutuality (shared benefits), such that those who are more cooperative, reciprocal, and mutual fare better in competitions and contests. Mutualists are typically evolutionary thinkers, and so generally see this as consistent with natural selection.
In practice, mutualism looks like respect for individual rights and encouragement toward collective pursuits. A mutualist society would allow for individualism, but Nature would tend to reward those who work favorably with others. Mutualists believe that Nature provides all of the force necessary for society to function in a desirable way, such that compulsion, or artificiality, becomes undesirable, particularly with regard to humans. So mutualists allow for individual freedom knowing that free individuals build equal societies.
Mutualists believe that equality is artificially obstructed by the existence of governments, which privilege property-owners, while land is a natural resource that nobody created and so nobody has a right to own. Governments further trample on the individual's rights to claim that which they have made and exchange it in the ways that they would like. The result of government enabling property for some and propertylessness for others, and regulating some while privileging others, is that there is economic exploitation, which is scientifically measurable: economic rent, economic interest, economic profit, and taxes. All of these are tributes taken involuntarily, or, to say the same, under duress, which could not exist without government. Without government to manipulate things by force, economic market exchanges would be cost-for-cost, meaning equal, economic wages for economic wages (not here referring to the "wage system" or contract wages, as paid by an employer, as there would be no employers). This means that there would be no landlords, bosses, or bankers, and that everyone would own their own home, workplace (solely or in cooperation with others), and issue their own currency (mutually, by way of an association) backed by their own goods and services. The economic result would be an increase in production, a lowering of prices, and an increase in pay, making the economy abundant. Socially, the result would be a massive decrease in crime, cessation of war, end of poverty, reward for responsibility, and freedom to be wrong at one's own expense.
As far as "anarcho"-communism, like all forms of communism is traces back to the Illuminati by way of neo-Babouvism and Babouvism through people like Joseph Dejacque, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin who took to the views of the Babouvists. It is an attempt by occultists to circumvent legitimate anarchism, which is mutualism, the original, and turn it toward communist ends. Communism is the absence of freedom because it entails either democratic centralism or some other interference with the rights of people to exchange their products for money. "Community" is just a stand-in word for "the majority," which in practice tends to defer to an oligarchy that makes fanciful appeals to it, such as that things can be freely consumed. Because communism does not make use of natural human instincts, but goes against them, for it to exist in practice requires things like bread lines, labor camps, and etc. "Anarcho"-communism pretends this is not so so that workers keep attempting futile ends, remaining exploitable.
That said, and because mutualism is not an ideology, mutualism does incorporate the forces of communism. Proudhon described mutualism as the "synthesis of communism and property." Communistic elements include abolition of private property in land and democratic control in voluntary associations with sharing of assets.
Let me know if this helps or not and if you have any specific questions.
first, no worries about accidentally deleting my comment lol
i do think you may have misunderstood part of my comment though. when i said "terms and conditions" (or something like that, i forgot my exact words) i was mainly talking about conditions and things that need to be met before a community or whoever transitions into something like anarcho communism. an example would be that unless a majority of the world and its powers convert to anarcho communism, there is bound to be outside intervention, which would lead to the inevitable fail of an anarcho communist country due to lack of a state. a lot of people would suggest militias, which at first thought could work, and has worked before (take Rojava) but as we know, Rojava was recently overwhelmed. So we can conclude that for an anarcho communist country, defense is a serious concern. (of course this is a problem amongst all anarchist ideologies, not just anarcho communism)
one question i have is do you think under a mutualist society there would be a major decrease in population? like do you think that people who benefited from the old system would resist during or after the transition, and do you think that would cause significant population loss?
i feel like i worded some of this weirdly so i can reword or elaborate if needed
by they're.sawnick.rings; ; Report
p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }
Glad you checked back in.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood your comment. I wish it was there for us to reference. lol
It's hard for me to entertain the notion of an anarcho-communist country because it presumes that such a thing can exist. It is kind of like speculating what shoeing a unicorn might be like, but with true believers in unicorns who will deplatform you if you are not one of them. I don't believe unicorns exist, so I cannot speculate with any worth on what it takes to place a horseshoe on them. Similarly, "anarcho"-communism cannot exist except as a contradiction of speech, so it is not of much worth to speculate on its hypothetical struggles.
Your question about population is interesting, because it actually gets to the heart of mutualism as it was arising in England and Scotland. But this has more to do with birthrates than conflict. I'll address the conflict particular and then mention some of the other history.
It is not unlikely that there will be some conflict, and even violence, that accompanies a transition to a mutualist society, but such violence need not be aggressive on the side of the mutualists, but merely defensive. This is because the ruling class is attached to its power and privileges, and is itself founded on aggressive violence, and so likely to attempt to escalate. So mutualism is really about undoing the original aggression that is already in place at the foundation of the state, which when countered becomes less latent and more active. However, there is very little that needs to be done with regard to military action when it comes to implementing a mutualist society, and it very well may be able to be instituted purely by means of passive resistance, civil disobedience, and nonviolent direct-action. Any defensive use of force would result from aggressions upon peaceful withdrawal, and so morally justified and lawful. All conflict results in a momentary population decline.
Mutualism there developed from out of the Ricardian socialists, who were opponents of Thomas Malthus, who is the guy who promoted the idea that there is a problem with the population. The Ricardian socialists pointed out that populations naturally fluctuate and remain in equilibrium with the environment so long as poverty does not drive marriage and childbirth rates to third-world levels. Instead of there being a population problem, there was a problem with wealth and poverty, whereby the wealth of the rich comes from the poverty of the poor, thereby creating a struggle for survival that encourages more children as a form of survival insurance. We have since seen the Malthusians ignore these insights and produce welfare programs, eugenics, and other tactics to put the problem under the rug, which are arguably exacerbating what population issues do exist. A mutualist society is unlikely to see an immediate drop in population levels, but because it would eliminate poverty would, over time, tend to situate people in conditions in which they approach child-rearing on a more first-world sort of level, seeing children as even a bit of a nuissance that can take away from one's life pursuits, thereby reducing childbirth rates naturally and without compulsion. The population that does currently exist will be more than taken care of by the reduction in prices, increase in production, and increase of pay, such that the concern of the Malthusians is that such a condition does not place a cap on population levels. The Malthusians argue that capitalist surplus ensures that not all of society's wealth goes toward consumption for increase of population, and that removing this cap will result in overpopulation because if poor people get what they produce they will consume everything and have more babies. But the data shows otherwise, that populations that are economically comfortable have fewer children per household.
by Will; ; Report