Anarcho-Mutualism and Market Socialism: What the shit?

[RedBlackStar]

Title is self-explanatory. I had a crack at reading 'What is Property' but it's really hard going.

So could somebody explain, or at least point me to an explanation of, how mutualist and market socialist are supposed to work, how Proudhon and other thinkers envisioned getting there and elaborate on whether Anarcho-Mutualism falls into the collectivist or individualist anarchist camp, or manages to flirt with both sides.

Hopefully once I have at least a basic understanding I can read Proudhon without thinking my eyes are bleeding...

[Collective Reasons]

"Mutualism" often induces hair-tearing-out, even for mutualists, but that shouldn't actually be a surprise, given anarchist history. Once upon a time, Proudhon's advocacy of anarchy and the social science he built up in its pursuit were about the only thing around that could be called anarchism. And a big part of Proudhon's analysis revolved around "mutualism." Sometimes that term just meant social relations in which individuals' interests, and the interests of the social groups of which they were part, were balanced, in the absence of capitalist exploitation and political authority. Sometimes the term referred to a strategy of balancing anarchic institutions to achieve that social state.

But there had also been "mutualists" who were early French trade unionists, with whom Proudhon had connections. So even in Proudhon's era there are some terminological complications. And when Proudhon's ideas were imported to the US around 1850, "mutualism" also began to mark an ideological tendency. Still, Proudhon died in 1865, without having elaborated much of an ideology of his own, although he produced an enormous body of anarchistic social science. And it was after his death, during the First International, that there began to really be an organized "mutualist" tendency among the Parisian workers. But that tendency only represented parts of Proudhon's thought, being focused on labor issues and not so much on the broader philosophical and sociological questions. So by the time the "mutualists" who were instrumental in founding the First International found themselves falling afoul of Marx, or the anarchistic "collectivists" around Bakunin, the word meant something quite a bit different than Proudhon had meant, despite his influence. Then, after the "mutualists" in the International were shoved aside, the term was adopted by various other tendencies, important among them some individualist anarchists in the US, who were even a bit more removed from Proudhon's context and full theory.

The term never went away, but it became used by, or assigned to, a variety of fairly marginal non-communist tendencies, until it was adopted quite recently by folks like Kevin Carson, a Tuckerite market anarchist, as a way of designating anti-capitalist anarchism friendly to market exchange. In the debates over individualist anarchism that also gave rise to An Anarchist FAQ, a number of folks started exploring the tradition, which promptly ended up with as many modern tendencies as there had been stages in the evolution of the meaning of the term, from "neo-Proudhonians" like myself, interested in recovering and updating Proudhon's full project, to Tuckerite individualists and enthusiasts for Josiah Warren's "equitable commerce," and even some folks attempting to marry "mutualism" to historically antagonistic projects like Henry George's "single tax."

So, in answer to your question, mutualism originally predated the splitting of the anarchist movement into collectivist and individualist camps, and depended on an analysis that placed heavy emphasis on both collective and individual aspects of social life. But the label now refers to folks who accept that approach, as well as to others who are more firmly committed to one side or the other of the collectivist/individualist divide. With self-identified mutualists, you have to ask more questions if you want to know where they stand.

But if you are reading What is Property? then you should be looking for analysis that covers both aspects. (Spoiler alert: An important definition of "liberty" in the last section of the First Memoir is "the synthesis of community and property.") The early and late sections of that First Memoir are comparatively simple and interesting. Look for the explanation of exploitation as individual appropriation of the fruits of social labor (justified by a "right of increase" or droit d'aubaine) and a very Max Stirner-like discussion of fixed ideas early on. And pay close attention to the sections dealing with the "third form of society" towards the end. The long series of demonstrations that "property is impossible" in the middle are the slowest going, but if you understand the basic theory of exploitation and know where he's going to end up with the argument, then even that becomes a lot simpler and more rewarding.

[QueerVanguard]

Title is self-explanatory. I had a crack at reading 'What is Property' but it's really hard going.

So could somebody explain, or at least point me to an explanation of, how mutualist and market socialist are supposed to work, how Proudhon and other thinkers envisioned getting there and elaborate on whether Anarcho-Mutualism falls into the collectivist or individualist anarchist camp, or manages to flirt with both sides.

Hopefully once I have at least a basic understanding I can read Proudhon without thinking my eyes are bleeding...

To make a long story short, it can't work. Markets and socialism go together like cheese and chalk, that is to say, they don't. Making every store and factory Mondragon isn't going to change a damn thing and will quickly degenerate back into Crapitalism, bottom line. Do yourself a favor and skip Proudhon and pick up Marx.

[Collective Reasons]

To make a long story short, it can't work. Markets and socialism go together like cheese and chalk, that is to say, they don't. Making every store and factory Mondragon isn't going to change a damn thing and will quickly degenerate back into Crapitalism, bottom line. Do yourself a favor and skip Proudhon and pick up Marx.

Looks like someone skipped Proudhon without even a glance. You would be hard put to find much that looks like Mondragon in Proudhon's works. On the other hand, you would find a radical sociology a valuable as anything in Marx for grounding our opposition to capitalism and other forms of authoritarianism.

[QueerVanguard]

Looks like someone skipped Proudhon without even a glance. You would be hard put to find much that looks like Mondragon in Proudhon's works. On the other hand, you would find a radical sociology a valuable as anything in Marx for grounding our opposition to capitalism and other forms of authoritarianism.

Don't peddle your wares with me, bub. It ain't gonna work. I read Proudhon before I knew any better and regret all the hours of my life I wasted waded through those bricks of pure crap. Radical sociology? Yeah, because wanting to exterminate the Jews and enshrine sexism as a "Socialist" norm is real "radical"

[Collective Reasons]

Funny how so many critics of Proudhon manage to read two passages from the *Carnets* and two sections toward the the end of *Justice*, but somehow miss everything else.

[QueerVanguard]

Funny how so many critics of Proudhon manage to read two passages from the *Carnets* and two sections toward the the end of *Justice*, but somehow miss everything else.

"everything else" consists of unworkable labor money blueprints, support for the Confederacy during the US Civil War, critiques of Communism, and a shit ton of other reactionary positions

[Collective Reasons]

"everything else" consists of unworkable labor money blueprints, support for the Confederacy during the US Civil War, critiques of Communism, and a shit ton of other reactionary positions

Heh. Can you show me where there is a "labor money" proposal in any of Proudhon's work?

[QueerVanguard]

Heh. Can you show me where there is a "labor money" proposal in any of Proudhon's work?

Start with The Philosophy of Misery then move on to Marx's critique of it in the Poverty of Philosophy to see why the proposal could never work.

[QueerVanguard]

Heh. Can you show me where there is a "labor money" proposal in any of Proudhon's work?

Start with The Philosophy of Misery then move on to Marx's critique of it in the Poverty of Philosophy to see why the proposal could never work.

[Collective Reasons]

Start with The Philosophy of Misery then move on to Marx's critique of it in the Poverty of Philosophy to see why the proposal could never work.

Proudhon's in/famous free credit projects actually date from after The Poverty of Philosophy, where Marx is delivering a rather puzzling reading of short passage from Proudhon's study on "value." In the Grundrisse Marx actually critiques Alfred Darimon's book De la Réforme des Banques, and Darimon, while a friend and sometimes collaborator of Proudhon, proposed something rather different than the Bank of the People. There doesn't seem to be a currency proposal in The System of Economic Contradictions. The "time chits" don't actually seem to have a counterpart anywhere in Proudhon's writings.

[QueerVanguard]

Proudhon's in/famous free credit projects actually date from after The Poverty of Philosophy, where Marx is delivering a rather puzzling reading of short passage from Proudhon's study on "value." In the Grundrisse Marx actually critiques Alfred Darimon's book De la Réforme des Banques, and Darimon, while a friend and sometimes collaborator of Proudhon, proposed something rather different than the Bank of the People. There doesn't seem to be a currency proposal in The System of Economic Contradictions. The "time chits" don't actually seem to have a counterpart anywhere in Proudhon's writings.

Socialism isn't about handing out "free credit" willy nilly, it's about abolishing the need of credit in the first place. The notion Proudhon supported the continuation of credit proves he supported commodity exchange and therefore Capitalism. The notion of a "Bank Of The People" is hilarious too. Socialists don't give a flying log of bear shit about "The People", we care about the *Proletariat* big difference. The fact Proudhon used words like "The People" reveal the class collaborationist logic of his Mutualist labor money crap, it also shows he supported the continuation of class society, which is probably why so many historic Fascists like Sorel and his Proudhon Circle loved to quote and promote Proudhonianism.

[Collective Reasons]

Oh, give me a break. Proudhon's critique of capitalism is clear from What is Property? and he never turned his back on it. But if you think that the phrase "the people" can only mean something about the continuation of class society, well, I don't even know where to start... That's honestly hilariously funny, and, of course, entirely arbitrary and at odds with actual socialist usage. But at least you have managed to hit nearly all of the red herrings that people trot out as excuses for not having a clue what is actually in the 50-odd volumes of Proudhon's works.

Thanks for the good laugh, anyway.

[QueerVanguard]

Oh, give me a break. Proudhon's critique of capitalism is clear from What is Property? and he never turned his back on it. But if you think that the phrase "the people" can only mean something about the continuation of class society, well, I don't even know where to start... That's honestly hilariously funny, and, of course, entirely arbitrary and at odds with actual socialist usage. But at least you have managed to hit nearly all of the red herrings that people trot out as excuses for not having a clue what is actually in the 50-odd volumes of Proudhon's works.

Thanks for the good laugh, anyway.

No, thank YOU for the laugh. It's hilarious to see that a century after Marx buried Proudhon's lilly white racist ass into the dustbin of history, some stooges on the internet have decided it would be a good idea to dust off his corpse and try to give him some sort of credibility. Sadly the poverty of his philosophy speaks for itself.

Proudhon has no criticism of Capitalism, he has criticism of Capitalists, big difference. He thinks that if you just do away with Capitalists - ironically by making *everyone* their own Crapitalist - everything will be hunky dory. Problem is that the logic of Capital remains in his system, and once you let that free it's just a matter of time until Capitalists reemerge in the picture. Marx alone wrote a real critique of Capitalism as a totality.

I like how you fail to address the fact open Fascists wholeheartedly incorporated Proudhon into their far right philosophy. Funny how they had no problem assimilating him. It couldn't possibly be because so many of his views fit seamlessly into their own through..... Strange how they could never do that with Marxism, isn't it?

[Collective Reasons]

Do you really want to measure the value of socialist theories by how they have been co-opted or misused? I'm not sure Marx would come out of that comparison looking too good.

Anyway, you have Proudhon's target entirely turned around. Proudhon explicitly condemned systems rather than persons, and clearly laid out the mechanism of capitalist exploitation in What is Property? That seems like a puzzling thing to get wrong, if you have read even the most accessible of Proudhon's works. Most of the usual Marxist complaints can be addressed by a close reading of the early works, or just about any reading of the mature ones, but it's hard to get anywhere with Proudhon if you don't at least engage with the notions of collective force and the capitalist droit d'aubaine, and recognize the systematic nature of capitalist exploitation in Proudhon's view.

The thing that is genuinely bizarre about the Marxist "critique" of Proudhon is how little actual understanding of Proudhon is behind it. Nobody seems to know where, if anywhere, in Proudhon's work there is anything that could accurately be called a "time chit." As many times as I have asked the question, nobody has been able to show me a source in Proudhon's writings. The early emphasis on equal remuneration is, for whatever reason, conflated with the free credit projects, while the stated rationale for equal remuneration remains unexplored. A few paragraphs in The System of Economic Contradictions get an enormous amount of attention (of a sort), but nobody seems to know what kind of argument is being made in the book, and whether what Marx says really answers anything in Proudhon's project.

The French have, perhaps unsurprisingly, done a much better job of recovering what is radical in Proudhon's work, and the mid-19th century literature is full of thoughtful analysis by syndicalists and others who might not be expected to show much interest in the English-speaking world.

[QueerVanguard]

Do you really want to measure the value of socialist theories by how they have been co-opted or misused? I'm not sure Marx would come out of that comparison looking too good.

Anyway, you have Proudhon's target entirely turned around. Proudhon explicitly condemned systems rather than persons, and clearly laid out the mechanism of capitalist exploitation in What is Property? That seems like a puzzling thing to get wrong, if you have read even the most accessible of Proudhon's works. Most of the usual Marxist complaints can be addressed by a close reading of the early works, or just about any reading of the mature ones, but it's hard to get anywhere with Proudhon if you don't at least engage with the notions of collective force and the capitalist droit d'aubaine, and recognize the systematic nature of capitalist exploitation in Proudhon's view.

The thing that is genuinely bizarre about the Marxist "critique" of Proudhon is how little actual understanding of Proudhon is behind it. Nobody seems to know where, if anywhere, in Proudhon's work there is anything that could accurately be called a "time chit." As many times as I have asked the question, nobody has been able to show me a source in Proudhon's writings. The early emphasis on equal remuneration is, for whatever reason, conflated with the free credit projects, while the stated rationale for equal remuneration remains unexplored. A few paragraphs in The System of Economic Contradictions get an enormous amount of attention (of a sort), but nobody seems to know what kind of argument is being made in the book, and whether what Marx says really answers anything in Proudhon's project.

The French have, perhaps unsurprisingly, done a much better job of recovering what is radical in Proudhon's work, and the mid-19th century literature is full of thoughtful analysis by syndicalists and others who might not be expected to show much interest in the English-speaking world.

This is rich... A mental midget like you is the only person in the English speaking world who has managed to interpret Proudhon correctly while Marx, by all accounts a genius, failed to understand his crappy excuse for a philosophy? Give me a break....

Let's get a few things straight about the "r-r-r-radical" Proudhon before you succeed in confusing people who don't know any better on this site. Proudhon:
1. Supported competition
2. Supported exchange
3. Supported a form of Banking
4. Opposed Communism his whole life
5. Was a rabid anti-semite who wanted to exterminate Jews
6. Was a sexist and racist turd
7. Supported the Confederacy during the Civil War in the US
8. Opposed Materialism 100% and subscribed to a idealist form of Hegelianism that even an infant would blush upon reading.
9. Was adored and embraced by Fascists throughout Europe.
10. Was ridiculed even by fellow Anarchists like Kropotkin for being a proponent of a "Peoples" Capitalism more than any sort of actual Socialism.

[Tim Cornelis]

Not even being able to contain yourself in the learning forum. I can only comment what a miserable person QueerVanguard must be in real life. Spart brainrot I can only assume. inb4 'waah waah, fuck u in ur face, im so angry all the time; that you believe in brainrot is ultimate proof of your proudhonist politics, waah, waah, I have to speak excessively authoritatively on subjects to compensate for my lack of substance that people would otherwise notice'

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The phrase "time chit" does not appear in Proudhon's work; in fact Proudhon always called his "labour" money, well, money. Here is how Proudhon describes his own project:

Is it worthwhile now, sir, for me to recall those of my propositions, which, in politics, political economy, morals, etc., have made the most noise, and caused the most scandal? Must I show how they all resulted from the notion of Progress, which is identical in my mind to that of order?


I wrote in 1840 that profession of political faith, as remarkable for brevity as for energy: I am an anarchist. I posited with that word the negation, or rather the insufficiency of the principle of authority... That was to say, as I later showed, that the notion of authority is only, like the notion of an absolute being, an analytic idea, powerless, from whatever direction one might come at authority, and in whatever manner it is exercised, to give a social constitution. For authority, for politics, I then substituted ECONOMY, a synthetic and positive idea, alone capable, in my opinion, of leading to a rational and practical conception of the social order. However, I did nothing in this but to repeat the thesis of Saint-Simon, so strangely disfigured by his disciples, and combated today, for tactical reasons that I cannot work out, by M. Enfantin. It consists in saying, based on history and the incompatibility of the ideas of authority and progress, that society is on the way to accomplishing for the last time the governmental cycle; that the public reason has gained certainty of the powerlessness of politics, with regard to the improvement of the condition of the masses; that the predominance of the ideas of power and authority has begun to be succeeded, in opinion as in history, by the predominance of the ideas of labor and exchange; that the consequence of that substitution is to replace the mechanism of the political powers by the organization of economic forces, etc., etc.



I trust you, sir, to tell me if I have been logical in my deductions, if truly, as I think, the idea of progress, the synonym of which is liberty, leads there.
It is in the economic questions that I have pushed the development and application of my principle the farthest. I have demonstrated, and with some success, it seems to me, that most of the notions on which industrial practice rests at this moment, and thus all the economies of modern societies, are still, like the notions of power, authority, God, devil, etc., analytic conceptions, parts mutually deduced from one another by means of opposition, from the societary group, from its idea, from its law, and each developed separately without restraint and without limits. As a result, society, instead of resting on harmony, is seated on a throne of contradictions, and instead of progressing towards wealth and virtue, as is its destiny, it presents a parallel and systematic development in misery and crime.



Thus I have shown, or I believe I have shown, that the Malthusian theory of the productivity of capital, justifiable as a means of mercantile order, and to a certain degree favorable to economic movement, becomes, if one applies it on a grand scale, if one claims to generalize it and make of it a law of society, incompatible with exchange, with circulation, and consequently with social life itself; that in order to end that incompatibility, it is necessary to reconstruct the integral idea, to make it so that each borrower is a lender, each lender a borrower, and so that all accounts, to the debit and to the credit, balance; that if the circulation is not today regular, if the return of values by sale is not made by each producer with the same ease as their outflow by purchase; if the stagnations, crises and unemployments, are for the bankrupt a permanent means of equilibrium, it is first because the valorization of products ceases with gold and silver, because all merchandise is not, like gold or silver, taken for currency, which constitutes within the general wealth a destructive inequality;—in the second place, because of the capitalist prelibation, a consequence of money's prerogatives;—thirdly, because of land rent, which is the keystone, sanction and glorification of the whole system.



I have said that the right of the capitalist, proprietor or master,—who stops the economic movement and hinders the circulation of products, who makes a civil war of competition, the machine an instrument of death, the division of labor a system of exhaustion for the worker, taxation a means of popular extenuation and possession of the soil a ferocious and unsociable domain,—was nothing other than the right of force, royal or divine right, such as the barbarians conceived and as it results from the definitions of politics and of the casuists, the highest expression of the absolute, the most complete negation of the ideas of equality, order and progress.
If something has surprised me, in the course of this socialist polemic, it is much less the irritation produced by my ideas than the contradictions that have been raised against them. I could understand egoism; I do not understand argument in the presence of truth and the facts. In order to pull society from the vicious circle where it has suffered death and passion for so many centuries, it is necessary, I insist, to enter resolutely on the path of progression and of association; to pursue the reduction of rent and interest to zero; to reform credit, by raising it from the entirely individualist notion of loan to the thoroughly social one of reciprocity or exchange; to liquidate, according to that principle, all public and private debts; to purge all mortgages, to unify taxation, to abolish octrois and duties, to create the patrimony of the people, to insure inexpensive products and rents, to determine the rights of the laborer, to remake corporate and communal administration, to reduce and simplify the allocations of the State. Then, economic phenomena would occur in an opposite mode; while today the market lacks production, it will be production which will lack for a market; while wealth grows in arithmetic fashion and the population geometrically, we will see that relation inverted, and production become more rapid than population, because it is a law of our moral and aesthetic nature morale that the more intensity acquired by labor and the more perfection by man, the less fecundity is possessed by the genetic faculty, etc.



I have remarked, since first addressing these issues, that society is already engaged, on all points, with the concept of industrial progress; that thus the definition of property, following the constitution of 1848, is in complete contradiction with the Code, and at base justifies my own definition; that under the influence of the same causes all jurisprudence tends to approach more and more the idea of commutative justice and to desert the civil tribunal for the tribunal of commerce, etc., etc.



There is not a critique on my part, not an affirmation or a negation which, in that order of ideas as in all the others, is not explained, justified or excused, however you want to put it, by the same law. All that I have said of centralization, of the police, of justice, of association, of worship, etc., follows from that.



I have done more: after dispelling any pretext of irritation and hatred, I have taken care to distinguish in Progress acceleration from movement. I have repeated ad nauseam that the question of speed could be left to the estimation of the majorities, and that I did not regard as adversaries, or as enemies of Progress, those who, accepting with me the idea of movement and the sense of its general direction, differed perhaps on the details and on the time involved. Must we race or crawl? This is a practical affair, not for the consideration of the philosopher, but of the statesman. What I maintain is that we cannot preserve the status quo.



Many times it has been said to me: Tell it like it is. You are a man of order: do you, or do you not want government? You seek justice and liberty, and you reject the communitarian theories: are you for or against property? You have defended, in every circumstance, morals and the family: do you have no religion?



Well, I maintain completely all my negations of religion, government and property; I say that not only are these negations in themselves irrefutable, but that already the facts justify them; what we have seen burgeon and develop, for several years, under the ancient name of religion, is no longer the same thing that we have been accustomed to understand under that name; that which agitates in the form of empire or caesarism, will sooner or later no longer be empire nor caesarism, nor government; and finally, that which modifies and reorganizes itself under the rubric of property, is the opposite of property.



I add, nonetheless, that I will retain, with the common folk, these three words: religion, government, property, for reasons of which I am not the master, which partake of the general theory of Progress, and for that reason seem to me decisive: first, it is not my place to create new words for new things and I am forced to speak the common language; second, there is no progress without tradition, and the new order having for its immediate antecedents religion, government and property, it is convenient, for the very guarantee of that evolution, to preserve for the new institutions their patronymic names, in the phases of civilization, because there are never well-defined lines, and to attempt to accomplish the revolution at a leap would be beyond our means.



I believe it useless, with a judge as well-informed as you, sir, to prolong this exposition. I affirm Progress, and, as the incarnation of Progress, the reality of the Collective Man, and, finally, as a consequence of that reality, an economic science: that is my socialism. Nothing more, and nothing less.


(source: Philosophy of Progress)



So there it is: inane schemes for reforming the market, while maintaining generalised commodity production, caesarism as leading to anarchy (where of course, the "negated" Caesar will be replaced by Proudhon as Director General - "Les Ministres ne sont que des Gérants supérieurs, ou Directeurs généraux: comme je serai un jour. - Nommés par l'Assemblée des Gérants.", Carnet I, 95), the defense of morals and the family and so on, and so on. Marx was being too kind by forming the confused ideas of Proudhon about money into the idea of "time chits".

As for "market socialism", there is only one phrase containing the word "socialism" that I find more absurd - Lovecraft's loving description of his perfect alien society, and their "fascistic socialism". Although given that money is mentioned, we can rest assured that fascistic "socialism" was also market "socialism". Socialism means social control of the means of production, the abolition of markets and money (even ridiculous "labour" money). Market "socialism" is the "socialism" of the joint-stock company; a ridiculous fantasy that generalised commodity production can exist without generalised wage labour. It can only appeal to the ruined petite bourgeoisie, which desires a market on which to sell their crud, and competition, but no too much competition, thank y'very much, not so much competition that they would have to compete with more efficient, objectively socialised large-scale enterprises and be ruined.

[Collective Reasons]

Hmm. Still no actual "labor money," under any name, but a whole lot of distractions. Proudhon wasn't a communist, but that appears to be the only thing Marx and his followers are capable of getting right.

[PhoenixAsh]

Warning to QueerVanguard for verbal abuse in the learning forum.

There are strict rules regarding flaming and verbal abuse in the learning forum. Keep those in mind.

[PhoenixAsh]

Also...could somebody please provide links to where Proudhon argued against annihilation of the Jews in his political work?

Or are we going to rehash the anti-semitism in socialism/communism again? Is it that time of year again?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Hmm. Still no actual "labor money," under any name, but a whole lot of distractions. Proudhon wasn't a communist, but that appears to be the only thing Marx and his followers are capable of getting right.

To be honest, that is the only thing that matters. This is ostensibly a site for communists, or if you prefer, for socialists, i.e. those who support the social control over the means of production; it is not for people who want "fair" credit or cooperatives. Mutualism has nothing to do with socialism; it is at best a minor footnote in the history of utopian system-building of the late 19th century, no different than Comte's projects or Owen's dreams. Likewise market "socialism"; a minor affair among social-democrats and disgruntled ex-Stalinists.

Now, as for "labour money":

(1) Proudhon, you will surely agree, insisted on "reciprocity" in exchange; an exchange of equal values for equal values;
(2) the only theories of value taken seriously in Proudhon's time were labour theories

and this, combined with the restraints Proudhon imposes on his "ideal" money, make the reconstruction of that money as "labour chits" plausible, even if Marx was too kind by assigning a definite idea in this regard to the horribly confused Proudhon.


Also...could somebody please provide links to where Proudhon argued against annihilation of the Jews in his political work?

I don't think anyone can.

We can, however, provide links to where he argued (https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/1847/jews.htm) for their annihilation.

[RedBlackStar]

To make a long story short, it can't work. Markets and socialism go together like cheese and chalk, that is to say, they don't. Making every store and factory Mondragon isn't going to change a damn thing and will quickly degenerate back into Crapitalism, bottom line. Do yourself a favor and skip Proudhon and pick up Marx.

Thanks for your attempt to 'enlighten me' comrade but I'd like to judge what can and can't work by the theory, and the historical evidence. I also find it useful to read into ideas which I suspect wouldn't work anyway, as far as I may disagree with a large amount of the ideology (one of the first works I've ever read was 'On Liberty', which is an obvious work of a genius, in spite of being opposed to my own ideas), it normally still reveals to me something worth knowing; be it that I see something from an angle which I haven't previously, or see something I'd like to avoid.

As for picking up Marx... I'm only 17 and would not profess to know as much about ideology as many in this forum, having only actually read (in regards to Marx) the Communist Manifesto and small sections of Das Kapital, however, as much as I find his critique of Capitalism both accurate and insightful, his ideas of revolution are not, to me at least, desirable.

[Collective Reasons]

To be honest, that is the only thing that matters. This is ostensibly a site for communists, or if you prefer, for socialists, i.e. those who support the social control over the means of production; it is not for people who want "fair" credit or cooperatives. Mutualism has nothing to do with socialism; it is at best a minor footnote in the history of utopian system-building of the late 19th century, no different than Comte's projects or Owen's dreams.

That's sort of a jumble of arguments. Presumably you don't mean that because this is a site for socialists, accurate analysis goes out the window. So, until you decide to throw me out of the clubhouse for understanding the facts of socialist history differently, there is probably room for discussion of the arguments that you seem to be making in all seriousness.

If mutualism was indeed a matter of "system-building," then it would be a little interest to modern socialists, including the majority of those of us who call ourselves mutualists. But that case has to be made, and there is a long history of Marx and his followers asserting "no difference" in the case of projects that differed significantly. If communists are not interested in Proudhon because he was not a communist, it should come as no surprise. But lack of interest is a poor ground for building real critique, when the body of work to be dealt with is as complex and extensive as Proudhon's. And what history seems to show is communist impatience winning over anything like actual critique, time and time again.

There is an odd sort of fetishism that characterizes the anti-"proudhonist" sentiment, with small and inessential parts of Proudhon's project being taken for the whole. Then even those pieces are distorted as the retelling gets more and more careless. And any sense of the context of the various distorted bits in Proudhon's work is almost always absent.

Stringing together bits of comments about equal remuneration with discussions of value from other works, and noting the existence of a vaguely understood free credit proposal, is a pretty haphazard way to attempt to explain where Proudhon went wrong, particularly when he developed all the various pieces of "evidence" himself. But actually making sense of the details would, I suppose, be a lot harder than hand-waving and then reminding the audience that Proudhon was sometimes an unsavory character.

Take get back to the example we've focused on, Proudhon and Darimon and Gray quite simply proposed different projects and had different understandings of the working of capitalism. The fact that those projects all involved some sort of circulating medium may be enough to make communists turn up their nose, but it doesn't establish that any of them were what Marx was speaking of when he talked about "money," let alone allow anyone to generalize from one to the others.


Now, as for "labour money":

(1) Proudhon, you will surely agree, insisted on "reciprocity" in exchange; an exchange of equal values for equal values;
(2) the only theories of value taken seriously in Proudhon's time were labour theories

and this, combined with the restraints Proudhon imposes on his "ideal" money, make the reconstruction of that money as "labour chits" plausible, even if Marx was too kind by assigning a definite idea in this regard to the horribly confused Proudhon.

The problem is that Proudhon had a very definite idea with regard to the mutual credit banks and their notes. The proposals are easy to find, and have been available in English since about 1850. The confusion is, again, not within Proudhon's ideas, but in the failure to differentiate between unlike proposals. When Marx was attacking the originality of Proudhon's project (not, btw, all that interesting a critique) he could perhaps have pointed to certain 17th and 18th century land banks, and at least been a bit closer, but instead he just lumped unlike things together. "Labor notes" was more than just plausible as a way of talking about Owenite systems, although, even there, the plausibility could cover dramatic differences in actual proposals and theories of capitalism, and thus in the content of the labor theories. Gray and Warren were hardly on the same page, for example. And for Marx's criticism to hold any water, something a little more substantial than a similarity based on the plausible application of the same name seems necessary. "No difference" is always a matter of relevant contexts, of course, but it's also still a stronger claim than "could perhaps be called by the same name."

Proudhon was explicitly an experimentalist in his projects, so it is dangerous to presume that you can jump, for example, from a discussion of the remuneration of each individual's "share of labor" in 1840 to a discussion of "the contradictions of value" in 1846 to the actual free credit proposals of 1848-50. If you want to claim that Proudhon was "horribly confused," you need to give at least some indication that the confusions are not actually your own.

Now, your questions are barely a response to my simplest request, that a plausible candidate for "labor money" be identified. The argument is roughly of the form: If Proudhon had proposed any medium of exchange, it could plausibly have been called a "labor money." I suppose that saves face, but it doesn't say anything about what Proudhon did indeed, in/famously, propose. What we know about labor theories in the early 19th century is that they varied from simple hour-for-hour exchange models to subjective cost theories denominated in hours of specific labor (Josiah Warren). What we know from Proudhon's own discussion of "reciprocity" in the works on free credit is that he defined that term as "the mutual penetration of antagonistic elements," which obviously requires explanation, but just as obviously isn't simply the "échange égal" of some of his socialist peers. And we know that by the early 1850s at least Proudhon's own understanding was that exchange was simply a conventional balancing of interests and perceived costs.

Bottom line: "Labor money" seems like a pretty bad name for the currencies actually proposed, unless the goal is to create a confusion with Owenite proposals. And the dearth of actual knowledge about Proudhon's thought among his would-be critics remains striking, while the perpetuation of some of Marx's weakest efforts appears more important than the actual merits of Proudhon's thought.

[The Feral Underclass]

We can, however, provide links to where he argued (https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/1847/jews.htm) for their annihilation.

Holy fucking fuck! :ohmy:

[Illegalitarian]

Yeah, market socialism, ie a system that assumes generalized commodity production and wage labor while also assuming the abolition of capital and capitalist social relations, is an oxymoron. Which is why the Mutualist question was answered by the Collectivists long ago, just as the question of collectivism was answered by the anarchist communists of Kropotkin's day.

[Illegalitarian]

Yeah. Proudhon hated Jews, Bakunin had very authoritarian and racist views, Engels and Marx both held some racist and homophobic views and Kropotkin thought that if the German army could decimate most of Europe, it would somehow up the chances of revolution.

People tend to view these theorists and thinkers as infallible gods, that if they held any reactionary views that this somehow invalidates their works and contributions. They were just as much a product of their time as anyone else.

[Collective Reasons]

Yeah, market socialism, ie a system that assumes generalized commodity production and wage labor while also assuming the abolition of capital and capitalist social relations, is an oxymoron. Which is why the Mutualist question was answered by the Collectivists long ago, just as the question of collectivism was answered by the anarchist communists of Kropotkin's day.

The collectivists didn't actually "answer" much of Proudhon's theory. They managed to marginalize the Parisian workers who had been corresponding with Proudhon at the time of his death, but the famous debate in the First International didn't actually extend much further than the question of the future of farming practices. Tolain and his faction were treated pretty shabbily by other factions in the International, but the truth is that neither they nor the collectivists, who tended to identify themselves as "true mutualists," brought more than bits and pieces of Proudhon's theory to the fight. Perhaps it would be nice if there was a "verdict of history" to point to, but we never really had the trial.

It's also pretty important to note that neither "wage labor" nor "commodity production" would retain their capitalist character under Proudhon's mutualism. There certainly are forms of "market socialism" that do not seem to attack the basic mechanisms of exploitation and accumulation, but capitalism and commerce are not the same thing.

[Illegalitarian]

Wage labor and commodity production are inherently capitalist, you cannot divorce the two concepts.

There's no specific verdict of history to point to aside from the dustbin. Even as early as the 1900's, mutualism was a very scantily adhered to idea and there were zero "significant" movements that represented these ideas. Though there was still a great deal of respect for Proudhon and still is among anarchists as there should be, his ideas themselves on what a post-revolutionary society should look like among many of his other ideas were abandoned long ago by the revolutionary anarchist left.

[Collective Reasons]

Wage labor and commodity production are inherently capitalist, you cannot divorce the two concepts.

In that case, neither will exist under mutualism, which is thoroughly anti-capitalist.


There's no specific verdict of history to point to aside from the dustbin. Even as early as the 1900's, mutualism was a very scantily adhered to idea and there were zero "significant" movements that represented these ideas. Though there was still a great deal of respect for Proudhon and still is among anarchists as there should be, his ideas themselves on what a post-revolutionary society should look like among many of his other ideas were abandoned long ago by the revolutionary anarchist left.The notion of the "dustbin" seems to be wishful thinking. Ideas come and go, for a wide variety of reasons. The point is that Proudhon's ideas were always poorly known by even most of his anarchist critics, and are almost entirely unknown now, so they were not "abandoned," just as they were not "answered." His work is a largely untapped reserve of anarchist theory, which some people go to great lengths to dismiss without apparently knowing much about what they are rejecting.

[The Feral Underclass]

Bakunin had very authoritarian...views

No he didn't. I've encountered these accusations before and they are based on a misinterpretation of what he said. As for him being a racist, I have never heard that before. When was this supposed to have happened?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's sort of a jumble of arguments. Presumably you don't mean that because this is a site for socialists, accurate analysis goes out the window. So, until you decide to throw me out of the clubhouse for understanding the facts of socialist history differently, there is probably room for discussion of the arguments that you seem to be making in all seriousness.

I don't think accurate analysis goes out of the window, but all of these "hey guys, what do you think about [historical petit-bourgeois movement]?" threads boil down to one thing: we are socialists, they are not.

Incidentally, the problem with your approach is not that you "understand the facts of socialist history differently", but that you use "socialism" to refer to societies that have generalised commodity production, markets and money. Presumably de facto wage labour as well, otherwise they would collapse. In effect, you are calling a variant of the capitalist society "socialism".


There is an odd sort of fetishism that characterizes the anti-"proudhonist" sentiment, with small and inessential parts of Proudhon's project being taken for the whole. Then even those pieces are distorted as the retelling gets more and more careless. And any sense of the context of the various distorted bits in Proudhon's work is almost always absent.

No, I don't think this is the case. Perhaps it seems so if you find the difference between Proudhon's free credit and Gessel's free money to be important and interesting, but to us, to socialists, it is merely necessary to note that both proposals are capitalist, that they do not abolish money or the market. Even if Proudhon attached little importance to the continuation of money in what he called "anarchism" - more on that later - and he certainly didn't, it is important to us as we wish to abolish all forms of money, all forms of markets, and all commodity production.


Stringing together bits of comments about equal remuneration with discussions of value from other works, and noting the existence of a vaguely understood free credit proposal, is a pretty haphazard way to attempt to explain where Proudhon went wrong, particularly when he developed all the various pieces of "evidence" himself. But actually making sense of the details would, I suppose, be a lot harder than hand-waving and then reminding the audience that Proudhon was sometimes an unsavory character.

It's not that Proudhon was an unsavoury character, although he was. The paragraph I cited is more problematic than that; it has the so-called father of anarchism directly arguing for state action. And his followers doing the same in public. This goes to the heart of the matter - Proudhon's "anarchism" is nothing of the sort. What he calls "anarchism" is the "negation of the idea of authority", but in practice it is a form of caesarism (Proudhon was quite the fan of L. Bonaparte and the Emperor and Autocrat of all Russia) where Proudhon himself, or someone of his violently conservative temper, would be the Director-General.

And this is hardly surprising. Proudhon represented the ruined petite bourgeoisie; obscurantist conservatism and the fantastic plans of being Caliph instead of the Caliph are par for the course when it comes to that miserable class. Even today, many of the petit-bourgeois "anarchists" and "marxists" wish to define the state away, as Proudhon did, leaving all the structures of the state in place for them to lord over others.


Take get back to the example we've focused on, Proudhon and Darimon and Gray quite simply proposed different projects and had different understandings of the working of capitalism. The fact that those projects all involved some sort of circulating medium may be enough to make communists turn up their nose, but it doesn't establish that any of them were what Marx was speaking of when he talked about "money," let alone allow anyone to generalize from one to the others.

Marx distinguishes between Owen's labour money and what he calls labour notes, a term that covers Proudhon, and probably Grey and others. In fact Marx directly states that Owen wanted to abolish commodity production and implies that Proudhon and others did not (which is true, of course). Marx treats the proposals of Proudhon, Grey and others as the same because from his perspective they are - they differ only in inconsequential matters.


The problem is that Proudhon had a very definite idea with regard to the mutual credit banks and their notes. The proposals are easy to find, and have been available in English since about 1850. The confusion is, again, not within Proudhon's ideas, but in the failure to differentiate between unlike proposals.

No, that is not the case. Even if we take one of his works in isolation, Proudhon goes through two or three contradictory positions, sometimes in the space of a few paragraphs. Take his relation to Malthus for example: Malthus is wrong - but he is right when it comes to commerce - but he is wrong when it comes to commerce - but... More to the point, Proudhon rarely develops any of his ideas, preferring to focus on the most boring, tedious moral guff.


Now, your questions are barely a response to my simplest request, that a plausible candidate for "labor money" be identified. The argument is roughly of the form: If Proudhon had proposed any medium of exchange, it could plausibly have been called a "labor money." I suppose that saves face, but it doesn't say anything about what Proudhon did indeed, in/famously, propose. What we know about labor theories in the early 19th century is that they varied from simple hour-for-hour exchange models to subjective cost theories denominated in hours of specific labor (Josiah Warren). What we know from Proudhon's own discussion of "reciprocity" in the works on free credit is that he defined that term as "the mutual penetration of antagonistic elements," which obviously requires explanation, but just as obviously isn't simply the "échange égal" of some of his socialist peers. And we know that by the early 1850s at least Proudhon's own understanding was that exchange was simply a conventional balancing of interests and perceived costs.

Warren's theories were far from widely accepted or discussed; the overwhelming majority of the labour theories then discussed were what you call "hour-for-hour exchange models". And of course, Proudhon endorsed just this view:

This idea of value satisfies, as we shall see, all the conditions: for it includes at once both the positive and fixed element in useful value and the variable element in exchangeable value; in the second place, it puts an end to the contradiction which seemed an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the determination of value; further, we shall show that value thus understood differs entirely from a simple juxtaposition of the two ideas of useful and exchangeable value, and that it is endowed with new properties.

The proportionality of products is not a revelation that we pretend to offer to the world, or a novelty that we bring into science, any more than the division of labor was an unheard-of thing when Adam Smith explained its marvels. The proportionality of products is, as we might prove easily by innumerable quotations, a common idea running through the works on political economy, but to which no one as yet has dreamed of attributing its rightful importance: and this is the task which we undertake today. We feel bound, for the rest, to make this declaration in order to reassure the reader concerning our pretensions to originality, and to satisfy those minds whose timidity leads them to look with little favor upon new ideas.

The economists seem always to have understood by the measure of value only a standard, a sort of original unit, existing by itself, and applicable to all sorts of merchandise, as the yard is applicable to all lengths. Consequently, many have thought that such a standard is furnished by the precious metals. But the theory of money has proved that, far from being the measure of values, specie is only their arithmetic, and a conventional arithmetic at that. Gold and silver are to value what the thermometer is to heat. The thermometer, with its arbitrarily graduated scale, indicates clearly when there is a loss or an increase of heat: but what the laws of heat-equilibrium are; what is its proportion in various bodies; what amount is necessary to cause a rise of ten, fifteen, or twenty degrees in the thermometer, -- the thermometer does not tell us; it is not certain even that the degrees of the scale, equal to each other, correspond to equal additions of heat.

The idea that has been entertained hitherto of the measure of value, then, is inexact; the object of our inquiry is not the standard of value, as has been said so often and so foolishly, but the law which regulates the proportions of the various products to the social wealth; for upon the knowledge of this law depends the rise and fall of prices in so far as it is normal and legitimate. In a word, as we understand by the measure of celestial bodies the relation resulting from the comparison of these bodies with each other, so, by the measure of values, we must understand the relation which results from their comparison. Now, I say that this relation has its law, and this comparison its principle.

I suppose, then, a force which combines in certain proportions the elements of wealth, and makes of them a homogeneous whole: if the constituent elements do not exist in the desired proportion, the combination will take place nevertheless; but, instead of absorbing all the material, it will reject a portion as useless. The internal movement by which the combination is produced, and which the affinities of the various substances determine -- this movement in society is exchange; exchange considered no longer simply in its elementary form and between man and man, but exchange considered as the fusion of all values produced by private industry in one and the same mass of social wealth. Finally, the proportion in which each element enters into the compound is what we call value; the excess remaining after the combination is non-value, until the addition of a certain quantity of other elements causes further combination and exchange.

We will explain later the function of money.

This determined, it is conceivable that at a given moment the proportions of values constituting the wealth of a country may be determined, or at least empirically approximated, by means of statistics and inventories, in nearly the same way that the chemists have discovered by experience, aided by analysis, the proportions of hydrogen and oxygen necessary to the formation of water. There is nothing objectionable in this method of determining values; it is, after all, only a matter of accounts. But such a work, however interesting it might be, would teach us nothing very useful. On the one hand, indeed, we know that the proportion continually varies; on the other, it is clear that from a statement of the public wealth giving the proportions of values only for the time and place when and where the statistics should be gathered we could not deduce the law of proportionality of wealth. For that, a single operation of this sort would not be sufficient; thousands and millions of similar ones would be necessary, even admitting the method to be worthy of confidence.

Now, here there is a difference between economic science and chemistry. The chemists, who have discovered by experience such beautiful proportions, know no more of their how or why than of the force which governs them. Social economy, on the contrary, to which no a posteriori investigation could reveal directly the law of proportionality of values, can grasp it in the very force which produces it, and which it is time to announce.

This force, which Adam Smith has glorified so eloquently, and which his successors have misconceived (making privilege its equal), -- this force is LABOR. Labor differs in quantity and quality with the producer; in this respect it is like all the great principles of Nature and the most general laws, simple in their action and formula, but infinitely modified by a multitude of special causes, and manifesting themselves under an innumerable variety of forms. It is labor, labor alone, that produces all the elements of wealth, and that combines them to their last molecules according to a law of variable, but certain, proportionality. It is labor, in fine, that, as the principle of life, agitates (mens agitat) the material (molem) of wealth, and proportions it.

Society, or the collective man, produces an infinitude of objects, the enjoyment of which constitutes its well-being. This well-being is developed not only in the ratio of the quantity of the products, but also in the ratio of their variety (quality) and proportion. From this fundamental datum it follows that society always, at each instant of its life, must strive for such proportion in its products as will give the greatest amount of well-being, considering the power and means of production. Abundance, variety, and proportion in products are the three factors which constitute WEALTH: wealth, the object of social economy, is subject to the same conditions of existence as beauty, the object of art; virtue, the object of morality; and truth, the object of metaphysics.

But how establish this marvelous proportion, so essential that without it a portion of human labor is lost, -- that is, useless, inharmonious, untrue, and consequently synonymous with poverty and annihilation?

Prometheus, according to the fable, is the symbol of human activity. Prometheus steals the fire of heaven, and invents the early arts; Prometheus foresees the future, and aspires to equality with Jupiter; Prometheus is God. Then let us call society Prometheus.

Prometheus devotes, on an average, ten hours a day to labor, seven to rest, and seven to pleasure. In order to gather from his toil the most useful fruit, Prometheus notes the time and trouble that each object of his consumption costs him. Only experience can teach him this, and this experience lasts throughout his life. While laboring and producing, then, Prometheus is subject to an infinitude of disappointments. But, as a final result, the more he labors, the greater is his well-being and the more idealized his luxury; the further he extends his conquests over Nature, the more strongly he fortifies within him the principle of life and intelligence in the exercise of which he alone finds happiness; till finally, the early education of the Laborer completed and order introduced into his occupations, to labor, with him, is no longer to suffer, -- it is to live, to enjoy. But the attractiveness of labor does not nullify the rule, since, on the contrary, it is the fruit of it; and those who, under the pretext that labor should be attractive, reason to the denial of justice and to communism, resemble children who, after having gathered some flowers in the garden, should arrange a flower-bed on the staircase.

In society, then, justice is simply the proportionality of values; its guarantee and sanction is the responsibility of the producer.

Prometheus knows that such a product costs an hour's labor, such another a day's, a week's, a year's; he knows at the same time that all these products, arranged according to their cost, form the progression of his wealth. First, then, he will assure his existence by providing himself with the least costly, and consequently most necessary, things; then, as fast as his position becomes secure, he will look forward to articles of luxury, proceeding always, if he is wise, according to the natural position of each article in the scale of prices. Sometimes Prometheus will make a mistake in his calculations, or else, carried away by passion, he will sacrifice an immediate good to a premature enjoyment, and, after having toiled and moiled, he will starve. Thus, the law carries with it its own sanction; its violation is inevitably accompanied by the immediate punishment of the transgressor.

Say, then, was right in saying: "The happiness of this class (the consumers), composed of all the others, constitutes the general well-being, the state of prosperity of a country." Only he should have added that the happiness of the class of producers, which also is composed of all the others, equally constitutes the general well-being, the state of prosperity of a country. So, when he says: "The fortune of each consumer is perpetually at war with all that he buys," he should have added again: "The fortune of each producer is incessantly attacked by all that he sells." In the absence of a clear expression of this reciprocity, most economical phenomena become unintelligible; and I will soon show how, in consequence of this grave omission, most economists in writing their books have talked wildly about the balance of trade.

(from "The Philosophy of Poverty")

[Comrade #138672]

Huh, are they supposed to work? Well, to be honest, ideas about mutualism only come from ignorance about how capitalism works. You do not live alongside the enemy; no, you destroy the enemy completely. It makes no sense to preach "peaceful co-existence". Unless, of course, you are somehow opposed to the interests of the proletariat...

[QueerVanguard]

As for him being a racist, I have never heard that before. When was this supposed to have happened?

"This whole Jewish world which constitutes a single exploiting sect, a sort of bloodsucker people, a collective parasite, voracious, organised itself, not only across frontiers of states but even across all the differences of political opinion -this world is presently, at least in great part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand and of the Rothschilds on the other. I know that the Rothschilds, reactionaries as they are and should be, highly appreciate the merits of the communist Marx; and that in his turn the communist Marx feels irresistibly drawn, by instinctive attraction and respectful admiration, to the financial genius of Rothschild. Jewish solidarity, that powerful solidarity that has maintained itself through all history, united them."
Bakunin, proto-nazi

[Zoroaster]

Oh joy, another "let's call anyone who disagrees with us racist and Proudhonist" shit flinging fest.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Oh joy, another "let's call anyone who disagrees with us racist and Proudhonist" shit flinging fest.

The only people who have been called racists are Proudhon and Bakunin; the latter for his conspiracy theories about the Jews, and the former for explicitly calling for pogroms. No one has been called a Proudhonian, not even the guy who explicitly identifies as a mutualist.

What's interesting is that Marx gets called an anti-semite fairy regularly, based on a complete misreading of "On the Jewish Question" (most people, I would guess, don't even know who Marx was replying to), but if you say something about Proudhon, who called for expulsion of the Jews, that's too much.

[PhoenixAsh]

Marx only gets quoted because of his anti-semitism, racism and sexism when that same arguments are used to disqualify all theories of Proudhon and Bakunin based on the false assertion that the personal views of Proudhon, expressed in private correspondence and not as part of his ideology, or Bakunin are in fact part of their ideology. Marx somehow seems to bve exempt from all criticism and is "merely" misunderstood, quote dout of context, or merely a "man of his time" where as everybody that is not Marxist obviously should be criticised heavilly.

That kind of double standard is glaring.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Marx only gets quoted because of his anti-semitism, racism and sexism when that same arguments are used to disqualify all theories of Proudhon and Bakunin based on the false assertion that the personal views of Proudhon, expressed in private correspondence and not as part of his ideology, or Bakunin are in fact part of their ideology. Marx somehow seems to bve exempt from all criticism and is "merely" misunderstood, quote dout of context, or merely a "man of his time" where as everybody that is not Marxist obviously should be criticised heavilly.

That kind of double standard is glaring.

Except there is no double standard. I pointed out that people misunderstand Marx because his one "anti-semitic passage" is:

(1) in a work arguing against any restrictions on the civil rights of Jews, against Bauer;
(2) an ironic attack on Bauer's characterisation of Jews.

It's as if someone read the title of "The Holy Family" and thought that Marx wrote a book about Jesus and Mary!

Now, I haven't seen anyone say that all of Proudhon's or Bakunin's theories are disqualified (as for "private correspondence", Bakunin wrote the quoted garbage in an address to the Bologna section of the 1st International, and Proudhon's followers made his anti-Semitism public) because of their racism, but it does pose problems. Just as e.g. Marx's pretty crap view of British imperialism in India poses problems - and sure, most Marxists today will say that Marx had no theory of imperialism.

[Collective Reasons]

I suppose the communist will continue to assert that only communism can be socialism and that any form of individual remuneration or market distribution amounts to capitalism. Folks actually interested in learning about socialist alternatives to communism can decide for themselves whether commerce without the mechanisms of capitalist exploitation and accumulation still somehow amounts to "capitalism." Both presently and historically, large numbers of self-proclaimed socialists have been a little more precise in identifying the mechanisms that establish and maintain capitalism. For Proudhon, it was "individual appropriation of social property" and then, more generally, "alienation of collective force." The early sections of What is Property? lay out Proudhon's theory of capitalist exploitation in general terms, and identify acceptance of the alleged droit d'aubaine, an extension of feudal "rights" to the proprietor, as key to the establishment of capitalism as a form of "industrial feudalism" (one of the most common definitions of capitalisme in the 1830s and 1840s.) Between 1840 and 1850 or so, he supplemented that critique of the legal institutions and norms surrounding "property" with a number of other analyses, with the rather strange developmental account in The System of Economic Contradictions being part of that process. The System, as one might expect from the early work of a largely self-taught scholar, is certainly uneven and its structure is at times a bit baffling. (Benjamin Tucker's half-finished translation may be a sort of tribute to its difficulties.) But it was, in fact, an early work, and most of the questions addressed there are dealt with more directly and clearly in later works.

We can block out the periods of Proudhon's career fairly simply: Prior to 1840, his interests were largely philosophical and theological. Even while working on the third of his memoirs on property he apparently thought of his political and economic work as a temporary side-trip. And his work in the mid-1840s remains relatively abstract and critical in character. He did his best to strip Fourier's thought of its utopian elements and then experimented with an alternate dialectics. All of the early work is interesting, but certainly not as useful as his mature writings. During the Second Republic, he was drawn into the "revolutionary" government. As a result, his critique of governmentalism was sharpened substantially and his theory of anarchism gained several of its most important elements. At the same time, he occupied himself with immediate projects, such as the mutual credit banks and his revenue tax proposal, aimed at the near-term relief of the workers' condition. He saw the government of the Second Republic as a body with a mandate to take such actions. He was rapidly disillusioned about its character, and adopted the now-standard anarchist doctrine of abstention. Bakunin notes that he was virtually the only representative to support those charged with actions in the June Days. He ended up in prison for insulting Napoleon III. (He was decidedly not a "fan," as an actual reading of The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat, the attacks in the Mélanges (and those excluded in order to pass the censorship) and the posthumous Napoleon III demonstrate.)

The coup d'état and his exile forced a different focus on his works, and he marked a shift from critical to constructive projects in the early 1850s. During that period, he spent a great deal of time developing his theory of collective force and exploring its consequences in social economy. The unpublished Economie manuscripts are rich in material that was obviously integral to his later thought, but were never pulled together in publishable form. (They're available as scanned facsimiles at the Ville de Besançon archive online, and are worth wrestling with if you have the language skills and patience to do so.) This is the period of The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, which is relatively well-known (unfortunately in a flawed English translation), but that work only hints at the depth of the work on Economie. The Philosophy of Progress (1853) gives some hints about just how broadly he had applied anarchistic principles. Proudhon's most extensive theoretical work, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church (1858) remains almost unknown in English, but it elaborates the hints of the work on Progress into a major work of philosophy and social science. The early 1860s gave us his work on War and Peace (the conclusion of which, "humanity wants no more war," seems to have been conveniently missed by some critics) and the last years of his life were largely devoted to a massive work on Poland (of which The Federative Principle, The Theory of Property, The Literary Majorats and some other texts are really pieces) and The Political Capacity of the Working Classes (addressed, along with some work on abstention from political action, to the Parisian workers who would be involved in the International.)

While, as I mentioned in my first post, all sorts of bits and pieces have been called "mutualism," the name seems to have been most important to Proudhon in the context of his very last works, where the fruits of his long development were once again addressed to the working class (from whom the label mutuelliste had originally come), and it is that mature work, informed by the work on collective force from the 1850s, that strikes me as promising enough to bother recovering. For nearly 150 years, "mutualism" and "proudhonism" have been largely empty terms kicked around between enemies, political competitors and would-be inheritors. Surprisingly, enough useful and interesting work has done by self-proclaimed mutualists even under those terms to have provided the ground for a renewal of interest recently (and, face it, nearly all of us who have worked at the recovery of Proudhon's thought started out "knowing" the same batch of nonsense and half-truths that pass for knowledge of mutualism.) But what has been allowed to lie forgotten or misrepresented in Proudhon's work, and particularly the most explicitly mutualist work of the late 1850s and 1860s, is not just more interesting than all the borrowings in the interim, but is arguably one of the most interesting bodies of work that socialism has produced.

[DOOM]

Holy fucking fuck! :ohmy:

Yeah, quotes like this make me wonder how mutualists can call themselves anti-capitalists.
Like, his critique is so obviously flawed and honeycombed with antisemitism and idealism, it's hilarious.
Well, third-positionists like to call themselves anti-capitalists too, so yeah

[Collective Reasons]

Yeah, quotes like this make me wonder how mutualists can call themselves anti-capitalists.

The antisemitic outbursts are horrible, but in the historical context they certainly (and unfortunately) aren't out of tune with anti-capitalism. One of the things that made antisemitism so hard to root out of the socialist movements was the common identification of "Jew" and "capitalist" (which was even recognized in some dictionary entries as "proper" usage.) Even folks with a clear, systematic understanding of capitalist exploitation could sometimes slide from real class analysis to antisemitic conspiracy theory. We know from the notebooks and manuscript writings (and dark hints in the published works) that Proudhon was always torn between a desire for peaceful change and a wild, but largely suppressed desire to simply and directly avenge the wrongs suffered by the workers. He planned at one point to publish a plan for a Society of Avengers as his last will and testament, and late in life drafted the proceedings of a revolutionary tribunal condemning Napoleon III to death for crimes against the French people. With that knowledge, the passages in the Carnets are still stupid and offensive, but their explanation is also a bit simpler. Proudhon was a strong, eloquent critic of fixed ideas, but he was also gripped by a few of them with a tenacity that his strongly held principles couldn't seem to shake off.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The antisemitic outbursts are horrible, but in the historical context they certainly (and unfortunately) aren't out of tune with anti-capitalism. One of the things that made antisemitism so hard to root out of the socialist movements was the common identification of "Jew" and "capitalist" (which was even recognized in some dictionary entries as "proper" usage.) Even folks with a clear, systematic understanding of capitalist exploitation could sometimes slide from real class analysis to antisemitic conspiracy theory. We know from the notebooks and manuscript writings (and dark hints in the published works) that Proudhon was always torn between a desire for peaceful change and a wild, but largely suppressed desire to simply and directly avenge the wrongs suffered by the workers. He planned at one point to publish a plan for a Society of Avengers as his last will and testament, and late in life drafted the proceedings of a revolutionary tribunal condemning Napoleon III to death for crimes against the French people. With that knowledge, the passages in the Carnets are still stupid and offensive, but their explanation is also a bit simpler. Proudhon was a strong, eloquent critic of fixed ideas, but he was also gripped by a few of them with a tenacity that his strongly held principles couldn't seem to shake off.

The fact that Proudhon had nothing to do with socialism (as it is understood today) aside, this conveniently ignores Proudhon's general and violent conservatism, from his attacks on women to the constant reassurances in his work that Proudhonian "anarchy" is the best way to preserve the family and morality.

[Collective Reasons]

The fact that Proudhon had nothing to do with socialism (as it is understood today) aside, this conveniently ignores Proudhon's general and violent conservatism, from his attacks on women to the constant reassurances in his work that Proudhonian "anarchy" is the best way to preserve the family and morality.

I didn't talk about it that post, but I've certainly never ignored the places where Proudhon was downright reactionary. Proudhon didn't have a fragment of a clue about women's actual capabilities, and it compromised parts of his other work. He should, based on virtually everything else he wrote, have recognized that the rule of the father was just as much based on the alienation of collective force as that of the capitalist or the prince. He didn't. Because we do, we can move his thought forward in necessary and important ways.

If you're interested in those early debates about gender, beyond its use as a club against mutualism, you might enjoy some of the responses by Proudhon's very articulate female antagonists that I've collected and/or translated on the La Frondeuse (http://blackandredfeminist.blogspot.com/) blog. The women have been largely ignored, since they were often even less committed to specific socialist currents, but it's seems worth noting both the excellence of their responses and their continued involvement in project like the Bank of the People.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

To be blunt, even if I wanted to use Proudhon's reactionary views as a club against mutualism, there is no one to use it against. Let's be honest here: mutualism has been dead as an organised movement for quite some time. And there is no material basis for the regeneration of Proudhonianism in the strict sense; its role is today filled with various social-democratic and populist proposals, from a universal income to minting million-dollar platinum coins or whatever.

But, and I feel I need to point this out as some people (you know who you are) have a nasty tendency to put words into my mouth, I never said people who call themselves mutualists today share Proudhon's quite peculiar form of misogyny. That said, I don't think we can simply dismiss Proudhon's reactionary attitudes. They are relevant to his politics.

I mean, this was how he, himself, saw his project: that only "anarchy" of the sort he advocated could save civilisation, morality, the family, and so on. And that, I think, is the chief problem: the notion that society must change so that it can remain the same. That is why Maurras, Valois and so on were attracted to Proudhon; if you take this sort of logic to its conclusion you get a modern mass militant movement dedicated to the violent preservation of the existing order - a movement I don't think I even have to name. Note that I never said that modern people who consider themselves mutualists and others with similar positions are fascists. But their vision of what they term socialism is nothing more than a prettied up form of capitalism, and the same impulse that is evident in Proudhon is evident in many of them; they want "socialism", but one that preserves the market, competition, individual or group ownership of the means of production as opposed to social control, the family, the nation, and in many cases also the police, the state, whether they say so or not.

But thanks for the link. I was vaguely aware of a controversy between Proudhon and some of his correspondents, but hadn't read any of the letters on the opposing side, so to speak.

[Collective Reasons]

The situation is arguably even "worse" than you portray it. It is quite possible that mutualism, in Proudhon's sense, was never the basis of an organized movement. Tolain was no Proudhon, and those who might have carried forward the larger project were not even Tolains, in terms of their connections to the working class. The basis for its potential emergence at this time is precisely that it is not one of those "social-democratic and populist proposals," nor is it some foreign import from outside the socialist tradition. It is clearly unfinished business, with a good deal to add to conversation within anarchist circles, where, honestly, we could use some new theoretical fodder. There are indeed would-be anarchist who seem to be advocating a "prettied up" capitalism, and who seem unlikely to be convinced of it by a marxist critique. Among other things, Proudhon provides another anti-capitalist analysis, and one that is arguably better integrated into anarchist theory. Given a choice between a critique that only makes sense to communists and one that has the potential to reach a broader audience, and finding the marxist critique of "markets" tout court finally a bit clumsy and unconvincing, I'm happy to continue to back a rather dark horse in our internal debates (no matter how many times some communist tries to excommunicate me from socialism.)

[Illegalitarian]

The idolatry in this thread is kind of embarrassing

"well your favorite political thinker had a mangy beard haha owned"

[The Feral Underclass]

The idolatry in this thread is kind of embarrassing

"well your favorite political thinker had a mangy beard haha owned"


This is coming from the guy who went to lengths to defend Max Stirner.

Correcting factual inaccuracies isn't "idolatry" fyi.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The situation is arguably even "worse" than you portray it. It is quite possible that mutualism, in Proudhon's sense, was never the basis of an organized movement. Tolain was no Proudhon, and those who might have carried forward the larger project were not even Tolains, in terms of their connections to the working class. The basis for its potential emergence at this time is precisely that it is not one of those "social-democratic and populist proposals," nor is it some foreign import from outside the socialist tradition. It is clearly unfinished business, with a good deal to add to conversation within anarchist circles, where, honestly, we could use some new theoretical fodder. There are indeed would-be anarchist who seem to be advocating a "prettied up" capitalism, and who seem unlikely to be convinced of it by a marxist critique. Among other things, Proudhon provides another anti-capitalist analysis, and one that is arguably better integrated into anarchist theory. Given a choice between a critique that only makes sense to communists and one that has the potential to reach a broader audience, and finding the marxist critique of "markets" tout court finally a bit clumsy and unconvincing, I'm happy to continue to back a rather dark horse in our internal debates (no matter how many times some communist tries to excommunicate me from socialism.)

The excommunicate has been excluded from an organisation they once belonged to; my point, however, is precisely that mutualism was never part of the socialist movement. As such, there is no internal debate; mutualists might consider themselves socialists, but many responsible for WWI-era "war socialism" also considered themselves socialists of sorts.

And the dispute is not a terminological one; the words "socialism", "communism" and so on are unimportant. The problem is that you insinuate that there is some sort of commonality between our positions; whereas to me it seems that almost everything I and others who share my position find problematic about class society and wish to abolish, mutualists wish to continue or even encourage, from the inefficiency and irrationality of the market to the family.

[Collective Reasons]

It's fine to say that "the dispute is not a terminological one," but much of your response does seem to be terminological in nature. I don't imagine anyone reading this exchange is going to think our positions have much in common, and the talk about my supposed "insinuation" is comical. But the claim that "mutualism was never part of the socialist movement" is a rather remarkable one, depending precisely on a special definition of "socialism" as conforming to your particular tastes and aims, rather than to its historical definitions. It's a purely partisan claim, and a particularly extreme one, going farther even than Engels' famous (if also faulty and partisan) division of the realm. It's also a tactic very familiar to anyone who knows the history of the various things that have been called "socialism," "anarchism" and "communism," or engages in political debate. Grabbing up terminological real estate is a time-honored method of suppressing debate that might otherwise be considered "internal." Communists, both inside and outside the anarchist movement, have used it quite effectively. (After all, Kropotkin and Co. were the entryists of the early 1880s, suddenly claiming a name they had previously rejected for its associations with Proudhon and the "Proudhonians.") Just to be clear, the "socialism" that I claim is the broad, historical range of socialist movements, within which some communication (even if only just debate) and cooperation has still been possible. That socialism still has important questions to answer about how to thoroughly dismantle class society. If you see yourself as separate from that broader tradition, then I certainly don't expect any solidarity from you, though I might extend it myself where I can.

But if marxists or anti-authoritarian communists really want to set themselves up in a realm separate from the other currents of historical socialism, with no "internal discussion" or "unfinished business" remaining, then perhaps they should consider taking a few steps back from Proudhon and mutualism. After all, stories of the "defeat" of Proudhon and "Proudhonism" have been the bread and butter of a pretty large number of socialist tendencies, which have enjoyed a long period in which they have been able to largely control the perception of Proudhon's work. That hegemony over interpretation is being increasingly challenged, as translation work is accomplished, manuscript writings become available, critical interpretive work is done, etc. As long as communists make anti-Proudhonism a part of their project, then they inevitably share a discussion with those of us doing that work. You can't have it both ways. You can trail along behind and snipe as best you can, repeating the rather slap-dash critiques of Marx and Kropotkin (and citing the same bizarre mix of incriminating notebook entries, bit of early works and speculation about the mature ones), or engage with the actual, contemporary work being done to clarify what Proudhon actually proposed, or just stop trying to govern the conversation taking place. If mutualism is as bad as you make it out to be, then it should be obvious to anyone who has reached a mature sort of critique of class society. If, on the other hand, Proudhon's thought actually does contain untapped resources for dismantling class society, then it ought to be welcome to anyone who is more concerned with that dismantling than they are with making certain their particular program is installed in its place. The one thing that does not clarify the situation seems to be the constant, rather half-baked, sectarian bickering over questions like who gets to call themselves a "socialist."

[Illegalitarian]

This is coming from the guy who went to lengths to defend Max Stirner.

Correcting factual inaccuracies isn't "idolatry" fyi.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Defending the misrepresentation of a certain thinker's ideas isn't the same as arguing for two pages about who really had the prettiest tweed jacket between Marx and Proudhon. I know your're smart enough to know the difference between the two and this isn't even directed at you, since you didn't start that particular idiocy parade

Even bothering to engage in a discussion with someone about superficial nature of what this or that person thought about something completely unrelated to their political work is pointless and kind of funny to see anarchists do.

That's just as dumb as engaging libertarians who go on and on about how Marx was a "lazy fuck who mooched off of his best friend for most of his life". What does it accomplish? Why does it matter?

[QueerVanguard]

It's fine to say that "the dispute is not a terminological one," but much of your response does seem to be terminological in nature. I don't imagine anyone reading this exchange is going to think our positions have much in common, and the talk about my supposed "insinuation" is comical. But the claim that "mutualism was never part of the socialist movement" is a rather remarkable one, depending precisely on a special definition of "socialism" as conforming to your particular tastes and aims, rather than to its historical definitions. It's a purely partisan claim, and a particularly extreme one, going farther even than Engels' famous (if also faulty and partisan) division of the realm. It's also a tactic very familiar to anyone who knows the history of the various things that have been called "socialism," "anarchism" and "communism," or engages in political debate. Grabbing up terminological real estate is a time-honored method of suppressing debate that might otherwise be considered "internal." Communists, both inside and outside the anarchist movement, have used it quite effectively. (After all, Kropotkin and Co. were the entryists of the early 1880s, suddenly claiming a name they had previously rejected for its associations with Proudhon and the "Proudhonians.") Just to be clear, the "socialism" that I claim is the broad, historical range of socialist movements, within which some communication (even if only just debate) and cooperation has still been possible. That socialism still has important questions to answer about how to thoroughly dismantle class society. If you see yourself as separate from that broader tradition, then I certainly don't expect any solidarity from you, though I might extend it myself where I can.

But if marxists or anti-authoritarian communists really want to set themselves up in a realm separate from the other currents of historical socialism, with no "internal discussion" or "unfinished business" remaining, then perhaps they should consider taking a few steps back from Proudhon and mutualism. After all, stories of the "defeat" of Proudhon and "Proudhonism" have been the bread and butter of a pretty large number of socialist tendencies, which have enjoyed a long period in which they have been able to largely control the perception of Proudhon's work. That hegemony over interpretation is being increasingly challenged, as translation work is accomplished, manuscript writings become available, critical interpretive work is done, etc. As long as communists make anti-Proudhonism a part of their project, then they inevitably share a discussion with those of us doing that work. You can't have it both ways. You can trail along behind and snipe as best you can, repeating the rather slap-dash critiques of Marx and Kropotkin (and citing the same bizarre mix of incriminating notebook entries, bit of early works and speculation about the mature ones), or engage with the actual, contemporary work being done to clarify what Proudhon actually proposed, or just stop trying to govern the conversation taking place. If mutualism is as bad as you make it out to be, then it should be obvious to anyone who has reached a mature sort of critique of class society. If, on the other hand, Proudhon's thought actually does contain untapped resources for dismantling class society, then it ought to be welcome to anyone who is more concerned with that dismantling than they are with making certain their particular program is installed in its place. The one thing that does not clarify the situation seems to be the constant, rather half-baked, sectarian bickering over questions like who gets to call themselves a "socialist."

This is just too rich.... You go on for pages and pages about how Proudhon is this marvelous untapped resource for dismantling Capitalism that Marxists constantly fail to explore and yet you fail to cite even 1 unique, useful insight that turd of a thinker ever came up with. I mean, we all know how Proudhon thought competition and Malthusianism when carried forward would somehow lead to his hairbrained Mutualist fantasy, but those are just the ravings of a madman. This whole hoopla also displays your Utopian idealism for all to see, because actual Socialists understand the material dialectic underlying society and how Capitalism's own internal contradictions are what it going to bury it in the end, not the pretty (according to you) little thoughts of a sexist racist cis honkey pig like Proudhon.

[Collective Reasons]

Oh, be careful what you wish for. I could probably be persuaded to go on for a few more pages about details. But I don't sense a great readiness to tackle all that. Perhaps I was wrong...

[QueerVanguard]

Oh, be careful what you wish for. I could probably be persuaded to go on for a few more pages about details. But I don't sense a great readiness to tackle all that. Perhaps I was wrong...

Let's just hear one. The one you think is the most brilliant. If it takes 10 pages to flesh out, odds are it isn't actually an useful insight, it's more likely the confused gobbledygook we've come to expect from Proudhon and his followers. So come on, out with it. What is this genius insight that hasn't already been covered by Marx and the Marxists.

[Collective Reasons]

The key insights in Proudhon are pretty simple: The material basis of oppression is exploitation in the form of "alienation of the collective force;" its ideological basis is "external constitution," by which social relations are assumed to be "realized" by something external to them ("governmentalism," etc.) "Systems" are inevitably governmental when they extend beyond an anarchistic minimum (equality between actors and attention to the working of the collective force.) Analyses and institutions are incomplete if they solely focus on "individual" or "collective" interests, and their ultimate value (in terms of meeting wants and needs, or expanding liberty) are often incalculable individually (since forces that appear harmful when considered singly may have different effects when balanced against one another.) The elaboration of those insights over Proudhon's works is neither simple, nor always consistent, nor always pushed to equal degrees of clarity (as we might expect.) So, for example, Proudhon's great blind spot is not seeing that the authority of the father parallels that of the capitalist or the prince.

For anyone who accepts the anarchistic critique of authority, there is hardly anything in the literature of the tradition that pursues anti-authoritarian analyses and models in as many separate, specific realms. For those who don't accept the anarchist approach, we have differences more significant that a disagreement about Proudhon.

[QueerVanguard]

The key insights in Proudhon are pretty simple: The material basis of oppression is exploitation in the form of "alienation of the collective force;" its ideological basis is "external constitution," by which social relations are assumed to be "realized" by something external to them ("governmentalism," etc.) "Systems" are inevitably governmental when they extend beyond an anarchistic minimum (equality between actors and attention to the working of the collective force.) Analyses and institutions are incomplete if they solely focus on "individual" or "collective" interests, and their ultimate value (in terms of meeting wants and needs, or expanding liberty) are often incalculable individually (since forces that appear harmful when considered singly may have different effects when balanced against one another.) The elaboration of those insights over Proudhon's works is neither simple, nor always consistent, nor always pushed to equal degrees of clarity (as we might expect.) So, for example, Proudhon's great blind spot is not seeing that the authority of the father parallels that of the capitalist or the prince.

For anyone who accepts the anarchistic critique of authority, there is hardly anything in the literature of the tradition that pursues anti-authoritarian analyses and models in as many separate, specific realms. For those who don't accept the anarchist approach, we have differences more significant that a disagreement about Proudhon.

Just as I thought, a steaming load of gobbledygook. "Collective force", "external constitution", these are just meaningless catchphrases Proudhon cooked up for his laughable metaphysics. They make no sense, just like you made no sense in the above paragraphs. There's no way to distill any of that into a coherent thought. Anyway, all of this was already dealt with by Engels in on authority anyway https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm Give it a gander so you can stop wasting more years of your life on these silly idealistic parlor games.

[PhoenixAsh]

Engels...

Accused of rape (unsourced); frequenting prostitutes and having somewhat of a questionable position on outspoken women.

[QueerVanguard]

Engels...

Accused of rape; having somewhat of a questionable position on outspoken women.

There's 0 proof for any of that. Just the usual lies from reactionary detractors.


frequenting prostitutes

You're talking to a former sex worker here, so these little bourgie moralist arguments don't work on me, sorry. I just wish I had lived back then so he could have paid me a visit.

[PhoenixAsh]

There's 0 proof for any of that. Just the usual lies from reactionary detractors.

I rest my case.


You're talking to a former sex worker here, so these little bourgie moralist arguments don't work on me, sorry. I just wish I had lived back then so he could have paid me a visit.

Yeah I don't care how you make or made your money....what you are overlooking here is that Friedrich Engels argued heavilly against men using prostitutes because it was patriarchal sexism...so how serious can we take his ideology given how you feel about how serious we should take Proudhon's ideology based on his private remarks.

Double standards...

[QueerVanguard]

I rest my case.

What case? People presenting cases at least try to bring forth evidence for their claims. you did none of that


Yeah I don't care how you make or made your money....what you are overlooking here is that Friedrich Engels argued heavilly against men using prostitutes because it was patriarchal sexism...so how serious can we take his ideology given how you feel about how serious we should take Proudhon's ideology based on his private remarks.

Double standards...

where did he ever argue this?

[PhoenixAsh]

Well...among others Engels wrote: [prostitution is the ] “most tangible exploitation—one directly attacking the physical body—of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie”

[RedBlackStar]

Several ego boosts and deflations later and I still haven't got any closer to understanding this shiz.

[QueerVanguard]

Well...among others Engels wrote: [prostitution is the ] “most tangible exploitation—one directly attacking the physical body—of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie”

He was talking about prostitution as it exists under Crapitalism, where you often do have bourgeois men paying for the services of proletariat sex workers, in that sense its no different from regular wage work, same exploitation. He didn't say we should ban it, he was saying it that exploitative aspect of it will end with Capitalism. So no, he didn't put sex work in its own little category of especially bad work. Capitalist work is Capitalist work to Engels, same crap that's going to go when the Communist revolution happens.

[QueerVanguard]

Several ego boosts and deflations later and I still haven't got any closer to understanding this shiz.

That's because there's nothing to understand. It's hardly anarchism and it sure as hell ain't Socialism. It's the Utopian dream of petty bourgeois types, nothing more.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The key insights in Proudhon are pretty simple: The material basis of oppression is exploitation in the form of "alienation of the collective force;" its ideological basis is "external constitution," by which social relations are assumed to be "realized" by something external to them ("governmentalism," etc.) "Systems" are inevitably governmental when they extend beyond an anarchistic minimum (equality between actors and attention to the working of the collective force.) Analyses and institutions are incomplete if they solely focus on "individual" or "collective" interests, and their ultimate value (in terms of meeting wants and needs, or expanding liberty) are often incalculable individually (since forces that appear harmful when considered singly may have different effects when balanced against one another.) The elaboration of those insights over Proudhon's works is neither simple, nor always consistent, nor always pushed to equal degrees of clarity (as we might expect.) So, for example, Proudhon's great blind spot is not seeing that the authority of the father parallels that of the capitalist or the prince.

For anyone who accepts the anarchistic critique of authority, there is hardly anything in the literature of the tradition that pursues anti-authoritarian analyses and models in as many separate, specific realms. For those who don't accept the anarchist approach, we have differences more significant that a disagreement about Proudhon.

Alright, let's try to unpack this. "Collective force" is an incredibly obtuse term for objectively socialised labour. So the notion that oppression is due to the "alienation of the collective force" runs into problems from the start. Petty commodity production is never described by Proudhon as an example of the "alienation of the collective force", yet oppression existed, more severe than it ever was under capitalism, when petty commodity production was the dominant economic form.

Which brings us to the real problem: Proudhon portrayed the petite bourgeoisie, a reactionary class ruined by capitalism, as revolutionary, and not a reactionary remnant whose interest is directly opposed to that of the proletariat.

And Proudhon indeed did see that the authority of the father (which is a poor way of viewing the oppression of women, homosexuals etc. anyway) is the same as that of a prince or capitalist; but he specifically endorsed this authority as appropriate to the sphere of the family (there is no mention of the abolition of the family in Proudhon - although already Fourier argued for this).

As for his "external constitutions", Proudhon explicitly repudiated democracy in favour of contractual social exchange. How is it that this sort of nonsense is laughed at when "anarcho"-capitalists do it, but is supposed to be respected when Proudhon does it?

[PhoenixAsh]

He was talking about prostitution as it exists under Crapitalism, where you often do have bourgeois men paying for the services of proletariat sex workers, in that sense its no different from regular wage work, same exploitation. He didn't say we should ban it, he was saying it that exploitative aspect of it will end with Capitalism. So no, he didn't put sex work in its own little category of especially bad work. Capitalist work is Capitalist work to Engels, same crap that's going to go when the Communist revolution happens.

He was talking about prostitution period. Prostitution in his arguments was an expression of bourgeois mentality.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

He was talking about prostitution period. Prostitution in his arguments was an expression of bourgeois mentality.

So, have you read the "Origin..."? Engels considered prostitution to be inseparable from marriage, and indeed, a product of class society. But neither he nor Marx were lifestylists who thought their individual choices could overthrow class society. If Engels did hire prostitutes, and I have to admit I have no idea if he did, that's the same as Marx marrying or both of them participating in class society in general.

[QueerVanguard]

He was talking about prostitution period. Prostitution in his arguments was an expression of bourgeois mentality.

His point was that *every* form of labor is an expression of bourgeois mentality under Capitalism, hardly a shocking statement to a Communist. He was not, contrary to what you're suggesting, saying that sex work was uniquely "evil" and in special need of abolition. He was not a bourgie moralist.

[RedWorker]

Prostitution isn't regular wage labor. Unless I'm missing something here, a prostitute is not a member of the proletariat, and is not being employed by someone (bourgeois) who owns the means of production involved in his/her labor. I guess we could say the prostitute is a member of the lumpen-proletariat, or perhaps an outside stratum. Some people here would call the prostitute petty-bourgeois.

[RedBlackStar]

That's because there's nothing to understand. It's hardly anarchism and it sure as hell ain't Socialism. It's the Utopian dream of petty bourgeois types, nothing more.

Whether you agree with it or not it still has a process, reasoning and justification. These are useful things to learn comrade. And I constantly want to learn.

[Collective Reasons]

Alright, let's try to unpack this. "Collective force" is an incredibly obtuse term for objectively socialised labour. So the notion that oppression is due to the "alienation of the collective force" runs into problems from the start. Petty commodity production is never described by Proudhon as an example of the "alienation of the collective force", yet oppression existed, more severe than it ever was under capitalism, when petty commodity production was the dominant economic form.

I suppose many terms seem "obtuse" if they are not your term. "Objectively socialised labour" doesn't exactly flow off the tongue, or give up its full meaning at the first glance. But Proudhon's argument is in this case readily available in a variety of languages, so we can presumably avoid terminological discussion that seems to be largely aesthetic in character. It would be wonderful to also avoid hyperbole and claims that are obviously beyond the knowledge of any of us. What Proudhon "never described" is the sort of claim I wouldn't accept from anyone but perhaps Haubtmann or Castleton. So, the logical step would be to unpack the objection. Why, specifically, was oppression so severe in the period when petty commodity production was the dominant economic form? With that question answered, we can assess the utility of the general claim (and the fact that Proudhon did or didn't examine that particular case doesn't matter much.) That done, we can then determine if the real cause of oppression in that period was anything that Proudhon seemed intent on keeping around. And if it seems that it was, we can then determine whether the fault lies in his analysis or in a failure to consistently apply it. But the first step is going to be avoiding the mistake of assuming that Proudhon just gave a silly name to some part of Marx's system, which seems to be the temptation.


Which brings us to the real problem: Proudhon portrayed the petite bourgeoisie, a reactionary class ruined by capitalism, as revolutionary, and not a reactionary remnant whose interest is directly opposed to that of the proletariat.

Source? Proudhon doesn't speak specifically about the petit bourgeois all that often, that I can see, but, for example, in War and Peace (in the discussion of the "right of force") it seems clear that the revolutionary class is the proletariat (when they achieve consciousness of their own interests), with the peasants and petit bourgeois perhaps joining them as laborers sharing in those interests.


And Proudhon indeed did see that the authority of the father (which is a poor way of viewing the oppression of women, homosexuals etc. anyway) is the same as that of a prince or capitalist; but he specifically endorsed this authority as appropriate to the sphere of the family (there is no mention of the abolition of the family in Proudhon - although already Fourier argued for this).

Again, a source would be nice. My claim was fairly specific, so if Proudhon "specifically endorsed" an authority based in the alienation of collective force (which certainly captures one key aspect of the traditional family) as appropriate, presumably you can show me where. The point of emphasizing the notion of "the rule of the father" in this context is that it is the form that Proudhon should presumably have been able to recognize, had he not simply been a dunce about women's capabilities. Fourier was indeed the frontrunner on a lot of these questions, but even his own followers had trouble dealing with what genuinely exciting about his work on love, marriage, the family, etc. (So we didn't get The New Amorous World until the middle of the 20th century.)


As for his "external constitutions", Proudhon explicitly repudiated democracy in favour of contractual social exchange. How is it that this sort of nonsense is laughed at when "anarcho"-capitalists do it, but is supposed to be respected when Proudhon does it?

Proudhon was absolute hell on "democracy," except when he was endorsing it. The obvious difference is that anti-state capitalists quite clearly endorse capitalism as a legitimate form of rule, although they won't acknowledge it as such. Their fall-back is to treat "the market" as emergent order, and thus external arbiter. Proudhon might conceivably have considered certain kinds of markets associated collectivities, with interests of their own, but he was careful to distinguish between collective and individual interests. And then he actually made it explicit in the Economie manuscripts that he considered markets a form of social conflict, different than the association in a workshop, family, etc.

[Collective Reasons]

Several ego boosts and deflations later and I still haven't got any closer to understanding this shiz.

Don't sweat the squabbling. Dig into the beginning and end of What is Property? and it will either ring useful bells for you or it won't. If it doesn't, there is a lot of other useful stuff out there to read, and you can always come back to it later if you feel the urge.