RedCommieBear
11th February 2007, 03:13
Originally posted by
[email protected] 11, 2007 12:23 am
It's basically like the scientific principle of mutualism as a biological interaction.
If you wanna go a little more in depth, here's Kropotkin's work
Mutual Aid (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/kropotkin/mutaidcontents.html)
Mutualism and mutual aid are two different things. Mutual aid was advocated by the anarcho-communists (Kropotkin), and could be considered a synonym for gift economics. Mutualism is an economic theory that amounts to stateless-market socialism. Companies would be democratically run co-ops with members recieving labor notes (essentially a form of currency representing amount of hours worked). However, Mutualists don't advocate collectivising land for collectivation's sake. As long as you wouldn't employ others, mutualists feel there would be no need to collectivise. For instance, I could farm a plot by myself and keep all of its crop. But if 2 or more people farm the same plot, it would be democratic.
Mutualism and individualist anarchism are related. Many individualists anarchists call themselves mutualists and vice versa. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference. The difference I've been able to come up with is this; Individualist anarchists place most or all of their emphasis on the individual doing his own thing, where mutualists placed more emphasis on the co-op. While an individualist anarchist may not be opposed to a co-op in places where it took 2 or more people to work, they didn't belive it to be a basis for a society. Individualist anarchists also see capitalism and free enterprise to be at odds with one another.