Mutualism

Anarchist doctrine proposed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Topics index: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W Z

Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and anti-capitalist market and socialist economic theory that advocates for workers' control of the means of production, a market economy made up of individual artisans and workers' cooperatives, and occupation and use property rights. As proponents of the labor theory of value and labor theory of property, mutualists oppose all forms of economic rent, profit and non-nominal interest, which they see as relying on the exploitation of labor. Mutualists seek to construct an economy without capital accumulation or concentration of land ownership. They also encourage the establishment of workers' self-management, which they propose could be supported through the issuance of mutual credit by mutual banks, with the aim of creating a federal society.

Articles

Anarchism, by Voltairine de Cleyre, Free Society, 13 Oct 1901
Examines various economic propositions for anarchism (socialist, communist, individualist and mutualist) and opines that all could be tried out; reprinted in Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre (New York: Mother Earth, 1914), 96-117

Anarchist Mutualism is a modification of the program of Individualism, laying more emphasis upon organization, co-operation and free federation of the workers. To these the trade union is the nucleus of the free cooperative group, which will obviate the necessity of an employer, issue time-checks to its members, take charge of the finished product, exchange with different trade groups ... through the central federation, enable its members to utilize their credit, and likewise insure them against loss. The mutualist position on the land question is identical with that of the Individualists ...

Don't Fund Religious Groups, by Sheldon Richman, Jun 2001
Argues against George W. Bush's proposal to give taxpayers' money to religious organizations, rather than ending similar subsidies to secular groups

[A]s historian David Beito shows in his book From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State, even low-income Americans were ingenious at setting up mutual-aid societies, such as lodges, that provided various kinds of "safety net" benefits when misfortune struck. It was government that effectively ran these marvelous institutions out of business by providing similar benefits "free" ... Not only has the expenditure of trillions of tax dollars not eradicated "poverty" as promised, it has corrupted a nation of people who once looked to themselves, not government, to improve their own lot.

Related Topics: George W. Bush, Religious liberty

Interviews

Mutualism: An interview with Kevin Carson, by Kevin Carson, The Isocracy Network, 3 Nov 2009
Topic discussed include: mutualism in theory and practice, worker cooperatives and credit unions, small-scale manufacturing, Henry George, worker-managed firms, Lockean land ownership concepts, labor theory of value and political coalitions

Could you [give] a description of mutualism ...?
... Mutualist practices (friendly societies and lodges, guilds, arrangements for mutual aid, etc.) are probably old as the human race. Proudhon, Owen, Warren, et al simply created a theoretical framework that emphasized such forms of organization as a building block of society ... [Proudhon's] programme centered on 1) abolishing artificial property rights in land and artificial scarcity of credit, so that the working class could secure cheap access to the prerequisites of production; and 2) organizing the economy around associations of producers.

Related Topics: Henry George, John Locke, The State, Benjamin Tucker

Books

Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, by Kevin Carson, 1 Mar 2007
Contents: Preface - Part One—Theoretical Foundations: Value Theory - Part Two—Capitalism and the State: Past, Present and Future - Part Three—Praxis

Kindle Book available at Amazon
ISBN 1419658697: Paperback, BookSurge Publishing, 2007

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mutualism (economic theory)" as of 28 Dec 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.