Mutualism

[robbo203]

Just curious, but have we published anything on mutualism – the “free market anti-capitalist” people like Kevin Carson who, I believe, endorses the LTV? I’m engaged in a bit of online debate with one such, and it would be nice to post a link or two. I can’t find anything on the website, though….

[ALB]

I remember we discussed hisideas on the old WSM Forum on Yahoo. I checked and we did — in fact you did! Here’s what you posted on 19 December 2011:

“Theoretically speaking, it is quite true that capitalism cannot simply be equated with a “market economy” per se. It is more than just a market economy. For a start. it entails the separation of the producers – the workers – from the means of production and, consequently, the economic necessity on their part to sell their working abilities to those who own the means of production – the capitalist class. In other words capitalism is also a system of generalised wage labour and the competitve accumulation of capital in the hands of the minority owning class.

In practice, however, there is absolutely no way at all in which you can eliminate capitalism in today’s world and somehow retain a market economy. None at all. Individuals like Alex who think this is possible are completely deluding themsleves. This is the position espoused by Mutualists (or “free market anti capitalists” as they style themselves) like Kevin Carsons but it is quite hopeless. You too are quite mistaken if you think it is feasible and might be “slightly better than the present system”. It wont even be that!

The absurdity of the claim that you can have a free market economy without capitalism and all that capitalism entails has been more than amply demonstrated by Alex’s complete inability to make any kind of cogent response to the probing questions asked of him. He says the property rights of billionaires would be respected but such billionaires are a “by product of the state”. He makes no attempt to explain how this is the case. Presumably he means by this that state taxes the rest of society and hands the money over to these chosen few. Billionaires, it would seem, dont pay taxes – only the rest of us do. Yeah, right.

In his fantasy world of a stateless market economy the capitalists will simply disappear when the state is no longer there to support them. We will just stop working for them or buying the products that their companies produce. How you are going to persuade the majority of workers to do this who currently work for these companies and depend on them for their livelihood, he does not say. How you are going to persuade all those people who depend on the state (apart form the billionaires who get their billions from the state!) to get rid of the state, he does not say either – people on unemployment benefit, sick benefit, state pensions and so on. If charity is the answer why isnt it working right now? State welfare has certainly not eliminated poverty so why hasn’t charity stepped in to complete the task? Presumably we are all going to turn ourselves into small budding entrepeneurs and outcompete big business. Never mind that small businesses are also in competition wi
th each other and are collapsing in records numbers while the increasing concentration of capital in the hands of a few giant corporations continues apace. Ive heard a lot of tosh in my time but this surely has got to take the biscuit. It shows no understanding of how a market economy actually operates at all

The lesson is prertty clear. If you want to get rid of the state you have to get rid of the property relationships that go with it. You cannot try to to get rid of one and expect to keep the other intact.

Even if by magic a supposedly stateless free market economy were to materialise, it would be hell on earth. If you think Somali, (sometimes touted as an anarcho capitalist society because of the absence of a central government ) with its ferociously feuding warlords is bad enough, this would be much much worse. It would be a recipe for a large scale mafia type takeover of society. The state would not actually disappear as such but break up into a multitude of little mini-states each organised around some immensely rich and powerful mogul with his or her own private army. (Indeed this is yet another reason why the capitalists need their state – in the interest of self regulation) . Corruption and waste would spread like wildfire. Think of the bureaucracy that such an anti-economical system would engender. You wouldnt be able to cross the street and over someone’s stretch of pavement without having to pay a poll charge. Utter madness.

Within months, if not sooner, such a free market society will succumb to mass famine and internecine warfare. The populace will be clamouring for the return of a centralised state to restore law and order. Only the socialists – the real anti-statists – will be left to oppose such an idea by advocating as they have always done, the abolition of private ownership of the means of production that necessitates such a state.”

Other participants in the discussion were the dreaded late Dave McDonagh and the equally dreaded but still extant Bob Howes who I see is a regular contributor to our Facebook page,

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