Collectivist anarchism vs mutualist anarchism for idiots

[FREE_+_LOVE]

Hello guys , I am relatively new to anarchism and i was doing research of Collectivist Anarchism and Mutualist Anarchism, I was reading alot of pages explaining the two, and piece by piece i was starting to put together what they meaning of the two are, but I still don't truly understand what collectivism and mutualism were. Can somebody explain to me (in lack of a better term) a "dumbed down" version of collectivist and mutualist Anarchism? Thank You!

[Tim Cornelis]

Collectivist anarchism, I would say, is anarcho-communism of the First International period.


I would say there is no difference. Collectivist anarchism is the name of anarcho-communism during the First International. They both advocate a moneyless, stateless, classless society based on common ownership of the means of production.

Some believe there is a difference between these supposed ideologies in that anarcho-collectivists advocate labour vouchers while anarcho-communists do not, but this isn't true. Anarcho-communists, like the writers of 'the Platform', argued "The main focus in the construction of the anarchist society does not consist of guaranteeing every individual, right from day one of the revolution, boundless freedom to seek satisfaction of their needs, but in the conquest of the social basis for that society and in establishing the principles of relations between people. The question of the greater or lesser abundance of resources is not a matter of principle but a technical issue."

And similarly, 'anarcho-collectivists' like James Guillaume (whom expanded on Bakunin's ideas) wrote "The problem of property having been resolved, and there being no capitalists placing a tax on the labor of the masses, the question of types of distribution and remuneration become secondary. We should to the greatest possible extent institute and be guided by the principle From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. When, thanks to the progress of scientific industry and agriculture, production comes to outstrip consumption, and this will be attained some years after the Revolution, it will no longer be necessary to stingily dole out each worker’s share of goods. Everyone will draw what he needs from the abundant social reserve of commodities, without fear of depletion; and the moral sentiment which will be more highly developed among free and equal workers will prevent, or greatly reduce, abuse and waste. In the meantime, each community will decide for itself during the transition period the method they deem best for the distribution of the products of associated labor."

So there is no actual difference between these supposed ideologies. It would also be weird to argue they are two different ideologies purely on the basis of remuneration. Saying collectivist anarchism is not anarcho-communism also suggests that the less advanced or first phase of communism is not communism.

Mutualism is based on Proudhon's ideas of the perpetuation of market exchange, but with labour money. So self-managed enterprises would operate within competitive markets for profits. That's the basic run down I suppose.

[bropasaran]

Well, both are sub-types, or "flavors" of anarchism. The term anarcho-collectivism makes it obvious that it's a type of anarchism. Mutualism is rarely named anarcho-mutualism, because the same person- Proudhon- was the first formal exponent of both anarchism and mutualism. So, being that these two ideologies are types of anarchism, it wouldn't hurt to firstly define what's anarchism. It can be defined by it's three core characteristics: - it is a system where the state is abolished (there is no overarching imposed organization, big or small, only voluntary ones); - all relations of domination are abolished (there are no top-down organizations, where some people are subordinated to other people, only horizontal ones); and - the capitalist notion of private property is abolished and replaced by the notion of possession (using stuff instead of owning them, this applies primarily to means of production, but also in less degree to all other stuff).

Now, to talk about what are mutualism and anarcho-collectivism. There's a myth about mutualism being free market anarchism, which is, unfortunately, promoted even by a lot of anarchists.

People sometimes defend that myth by pointing out that Proudhon was a voluntaryist concerning the question of organization in an anarchist society, but all anarchist thinkers were- e.g. neither Bakunin, often taken as the prime thinker of anarcho-collectivism, nor Kropotkin, often taken as the prime thinker of anarcho-communism, advocated forcing people into collectives/ communes. This probably arose around the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, due to there being people whose ideas were a mix of mutualism and free-market anarchism (/anarcho-individualism) and the word mutualism was used for their ideas. Anarcho-individualism is, as it's description succinctly says- free-market anarchism, some anarchists (a small minority both historically and today) hold the notion that markets are the best, they're effective, efficient, bring about quality, equality etc., and they want a free market of worker coops to provide everything, literally, they think that it's best if everything were to be provided by such a market- products, services, including public services like healthcare and even security. Even though it's popular among leftists to describe mutualism like this, this is false.

Mutualism differs from anarcho-individualism firstly in advocating the institution called the commune. The commune (also "the free commune") is a voluntary and [directly] democratic assembly of (ideally all) people living in a locality (village, town, municipality) that functions as it's political body, proclaims norms of anarchism (meaning- no imposition of harm, no oppression and no exploitation) and establishes a (again, a voluntary and [directly] democratic) people's militia to defend itself against domestic violators of the said norms (in which function it can be said that it's basically a neighborhood watch that protects against anti-social behavior) and against outside invaders (in which function it can be said that it's basically a people's insurrection). This is basically the anarchist answer to the question of "what to replace the state with"- federations of such communes.

Secondly, mutualists advocate the institution of the mutual bank. A mutual bank, or mutual credit, is something like a credit union or LETS, and can be a place for members to take a consumer or development loan or can function also as a friendly society, a mutual aid insurance organisation to provide (funding for) services like healthcare, education, etc. to it's members.

Thirdly, mutualism advocates something called the agro-industrial federation. AIFs would be wide federations that workers' coops make to opt out from the market, to avoid market competition from forcing them to increase work hours or to make their own working conditions worse so as to be more competitive, or to avoid market failures. This opting out of the market would be achieved by the primary point of the AIFs- they would coordinate (/plan) production and be to some degree self-sufficient economic units- to achieve that these federations would ideally encompass one or a few firms from every branch of industry, so as to be able to produce everything needed to provide for it's members. Basically it would be like a huge firm that is a worker coop and that makes most of what it's members consume. Distribution of products and services inside of AIFs would be done on the basis of credits/ scrip/ labour vauchers- meaning the more you work, the bigger share of the the AIF's product you're entitled to (with modifications for onerousness of work and number of non-able-for-work people you support).

Now, anarcho-collectivism theoretically differs very little from mutualism. Anarcho-collectivist system would be a system where the commune would also function as the AIF of that community. In practice, this makes a huge difference, it makes thing much simpler, does away with all the "moving parts" of mutualism. E.g. various mutualists had different ideas about starting projects (e.g. building factories), some have advocated a free system of mutual banking, whereas some thought that the commune should simply organize a single mutual bank, or maybe organize such production itself; there were differences of opinions about "public projects" like roads and other infrastructure, some thought that the commune (or federations of communes) should organize it, some thought that federations of AIFs could do it; there were also similar discussions about education, healthcare, etc. Anarcho-collectivism solves all those questions by making the commune not only the political, but also the economic collective body. The commune is the AIF, the commune builds new factories or whatever needs to be built, the commune takes care of infrastructure, the commune provides healthcare, education and similar things. The distribution inside such a commune is the same as inside a mutualis AIF- "to each according to his work", with mentioned modifications, or some additional ones, whatever the people who make up the commune agree to.

[Collective Reasons]

Both mutualism and anarchist collectivism come from the early enough in the development of anarchism that they did not, in their heydays, necessarily have the sort of ideological uniformity or clarity that we tend to attribute to them now. In the case of collectivism, we have a variety of statement by Bakunin and others emphasizing collective ownership of land and the means of production, and a few texts, James Guillaume's "Ideas on Social Organization" chief among them, that give some possible arrangement for collectivist societies. But if you look at Guillaume's text, the labor notes that are often pointed to as a key part of distribution within a collectivist economy actually look like one possibility among many. The early French mutualists based their ideas on parts of Proudhon's work, but mutualism was hardly a set program, and others have found different ways to put Proudhon's ideas into practice. Those early French workers primarily differed from the collectivists on the question of individual vs. collective ownership. In the United States, a mutualist current developed around William B. Greene's proposal for mutual banks, and that focus was inherited by the individualist anarchists around Benjamin R. Tucker, who kept the institutional proposal but had rather different ideas about most everything else. If you encounter mutualists now, they may be chiefly inspired by Proudhon or Tucker. If they're inspired by Proudhon, they may be focused on his early critique of property and prefer possessory property norms or they may draw from his later work and believe that individual property is acceptable as long as the capitalist "right of increase" is denied and the institution of property is balanced by other institutions.