[I've sent this extended outline for the Two-Gun Mutualism book to a number of friends and colleagues for comment, and have been debating whether or not it made sense to post it here at this point. I certainly welcome any feedback on the project, but I'm also inclined to think that the extended outline amounts to as good a summary of my overall project as I am likely to be able to produce, so here it is, offered with the hope that it may serve as a help in navigating the rest of the material on the blog. The section on property has not been extended in the same way as other sections, since that material has been my focus so often here, and, honestly, I've outlined it so many times in my own notebooks that I need to leave it for another day. ]
Two-Gun Mutualism
the
original anarchism rearmed
Shawn P. Wilbur
[expanded outline]
Two-Gun Mutualism will include five chapters and several appendices,
outlining the history, philosophy and economic theory of “neo-Proudhonian”
mutualism, with attention to the position of the reemerging mutualisms, which
have, in essence, one foot in the earliest days of anarchism and one probably
best positioned somewhere in its near future. While arguing for the power and
importance of the mutualist approach, among the goals of the work is to suggest
a perhaps novel way of thinking about the unity of the various anarchist
traditions, without recourse to fuzziness and compromise, and to advocate the
rejection of sectarian struggle between identitarian positions in favor of more
productive and individual forms of internal struggle. [This volume will possibly
be accompanied by a reader of The
Historical Mutualist Tradition.]
Preface: Becoming a
Two-Gun Mutualist
The story of the reemergence of mutualism is
inescapably tied to individual stories of the search for a variety of anarchism
adequate to the times. The present diversity of nominally “mutualist”
positions, originating from a variety of positions both within and outside the
mainstream of the anarchist tradition
we inherited from the twentieth century, may tell us something about a
widespread theoretical unrest in antiauthoritarian circles—and this may be a
far more interesting story than the one which has focused on the “incoherence”
of reemerging mutualism. Perhaps we should think about contemporary
neo-mutualisms in the context of resistances to fundamentalism and the politics
of identity, making the return of anarchism’s repressed origins an occasion for
a general renewal of the tradition.
Chapter One: The
Ungovernability of Anarchism and the Trouble with Mutualism
As an ideal, a tradition, and as a movement, anarchism
faces its would-be adherents with a special set of problems, imposing constant
vigilance, endless experiment, and active skepticism and conflict as the means
of remaining faithful to its evolving project. Two-Gun Mutualism aims to be a
particularly anarchistic approach to anarchism, both in terms of its philosophy
and its practical application.
1.
An Ungovernable Ideal—Thinking about Anarchism Anarchistically
As an ideal, anarchism is not reducible to
opposition to a particular manifestation of “the state,” or to any other
selection of individual archisms. Its
roots are in progressive, perfectionist philosophies which aimed to
relentlessly root out all archism, in
the service of an ever more demanding standard of freedom. Consequently, it is
an ideal which constantly races on ahead of us, urging us to follow if we are
to be faithful. Acknowledging this conception of anarchism essentially raises
the bar, when it is a question of self-identification or consideration of who
belongs within the anarchist movement. It should leave most of us at least a
bit uneasy. As a rather relentless goad to even the most committed of social
anarchists, it certainly provides little shelter to would-be entryists.
2.
An Ungovernable Tradition—Thinking about Anarchist History Anarchistically
Histories of anarchism have tended to impose a
consistency and developmental tendency on the tradition and its development
which, while perhaps accurate in broad strokes, has been more ideological than
strictly historical. In the twenty-five years following Proudhon’s declaration
“I am an anarchist”—prior to the emergence of collectivist anarchism, and long
prior to Kropotkin’s anarchist communism—the range of clearly articulated
anarchist positions included multiple forms of mutualism, individualism, and
communism, with predictions about means ranging from cooperation to market
competition, revolution or even Cossack invasion. And, despite the shortcomings
of some of these anarchist founders, broader movement surrounding them
including quite a number of women activists and members of the early labor
movement. While simplifying the history of anarchism makes it easier to paint,
for example, market anarchism as a modern aberration, it is arguably bad
history, difficult to manage without also suppressing, for instance, early forms
of anarcha-feminism.
3.
An Ungovernable Movement—Organizing towards Anarchism Anarchistically
Struggles over how best to imagine the practical
embodiment of elusive anarchist ideals are a necessary part of our struggle. But
struggles to “rule anarchism” or to rule one another by means of movement norms
probably fall short of fidelity our anarchist ideals. In fundamentalist or identitarian
forms, anarchism risks becoming another archism,
and a particularly difficult one to combat.
4.
Rearming Mutualism and Remutualizing Anarchism
Mutualism has reemerged in a rather protean form,
and faces critical challenges about how it will think about its internal
diversity and its relation to the broader anarchist movement and tradition. The
most likely scenarios seem to be that mutualism will either remain primarily a
sort of catch-all category, including a range of positions between anarchist
communism and the more strictly market-centered individualisms, or that the
recovery of mutualism can be accomplished as part of a recovery of a whole era
of anarchist history and the reintegration of a largely forgotten sort of
antiauthoritarian philosophy and sociology. The latter option is obviously the
harder to achieve, but it is the one which promises to enrich the entire
anarchist tradition—even while it challenges much of its conventional wisdom.
Chapter Two: A Two-Gun
History of the World
The bold claim behind much of this work is that if
mutualism is restored to its proper place in the history of anarchism, that
history looks much different. History prior to anarchism’s emergence is
different when seen through the lenses adopted by the early mutualists. The era
covered by Proudhon’s career emerges in all of its complicated glory. And the
subsequent development of the anarchist tradition looks much less like a steady
refinement towards the goal of anarchist communism and perhaps much more like a
serious of mutilations and abandonments of grand projects for human liberty.
The “Two-Gun History” will present an alternative origin story for anarchism,
and gesture towards futures which are perhaps not so easy to imagine from the
histories we now generally adopt. [Each of these sections would ideally be
supplemented by at least a pamphlet of primary source materials.]
1.
Theories of History and Just-So Stories
Mutualism originally emerged in the context of
debates over the nature of progress and the general sweep of history, and
nearly all of its pioneers incorporated significant elements from the theorists
of “utopian” socialism. While we are likely to see tables of clearly defined
historical eras as more like “just-so” stories than serious history, we need to
understand those accounts in order to understand key elements of how and why
the various early forms of mutualism emerged—and to be conscious of where
dubious elements may have crept into those early proposals.
2.
In Search the “True Contr’Un”
Armed with some sense of the broad historical
canvas assumed by the early mutualists, we need to supplement it with a history
of early anarchist and proto-anarchist thought which directly contributed to
the theories of those early mutualist theorists. Because all attempts to
provide coherent origin stories for anarchism tend to have that “just-so” story
character, this section will simply present a sort of provocative counter-myth,
centering on Etienne de la Boetie’s Discourse
on Voluntary Servitude and its reception in 19th century French
socialist circles, by figures like Pierre Leroux. This section will also cover
the mutuellisme of the Lyons workers,
and a brief introduction to the ideas of Fourier. [This is the history that I
began in “Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule.” The responses to de la Boetie
look like they would make an interesting little volume, with early entries by
Pierre Leroux, Lammenais and others. I have also one recent response by an
Italian egoist which is striking. Aside from the collection of Fourier’s Writings on Gastronomy and Gastrosophy,
which Joan Roelofs and I are working to complete, I’ve been assembling
introductory texts on Fourier’s works on the Splendors of the Combined Order blog and in a zine called Parcours.]
3.
Feminism in the Era of the “Utopians”
Several of the women with whom Proudhon struggled
over gender issues were activists with careers in the “utopian” socialist
movement which extended back as far as his own. This section will provide an
overview of the emergence of figures like Jeanne Deroin, Jenny P. d’Héricourt,
Andre Leo, and Juliette Adam, and outline some of the characteristics of their
feminism. [Translation of works by all these figures is ongoing, with the idea
of producing a volume of Feminist
Responses to Proudhon after I complete the translation of d’Héricourt’s Woman Affranchised.]
4.
Equitable Commerce
While Josiah Warren’s project of equitable commerce
is generally included in the category of mutualism only because of its later
convergence with the Proudhonian tradition in individualist anarchism, that
later convergence was certainly not without its logic, and the neo-mutualisms
of the present are likely to draw on Warren and Proudhon without much
consideration of the historical differences. This section will provide an brief
history of Warren’s projects and the equitable commerce movement that emerged
around him. [My Annotated Bibliography of
Equitable Commerce is well under way, and I’m weighing my options with
regard to producing a capsule history for that volume or a somewhat longer work
on The Movement for Equitable Commerce.]
5.
Proudhonian Mutualism and its Discontents
While an adequate sketch of anarchism in the period
covered by Proudhon’s career would require a volume or two of its own, it is
useful in this context to outline the major developments in his career, and the
major responses to that development. This section will include discussion of Joseph
Déjacque, Anselme Bellegarrigue, Ernest Coeurderoy, William Batchelder Greene,
Jerome Amedee Langlois, and the major mutualists and “disciples of Proudhon”
through the end of the 19th century. [Work goes forward on Déjacque’s
Humanisphere, and I hope to have at least a “working translation” in
circulation by mid-2013. I hope to have a collection of Bellegarrigue’s three
major anarchist writings completed in 2013 as well. Last year, I produced the
collection In Which the Phantoms Reappear,
which is an introduction to Déjacque and Bellegarrigue in the context of their
exile on the Isle of Jersey.]
6.
The Parceling-Out of Mutualism
We have plenty of examples of the communist’s- or
collectivist’s-eye-view of mutualism, which tend to treat the earlier tradition
as an imperfect early attempt or even “infantile disorder,” but very few
attempts to tell the story of anarchism from the perspective of its earliest
adherents. From that perspective we might well think of our story as one of
compromise and decline. This section will provide a number of possible mutualist’s-eye-view
interpretations of, and responses to, anarchist history, ranging from a kind of
“calling out” to a doubtless more helpful call for a reintegration of the
elements of the mutualist project, which have been parceled out in a kind of
antagonistic division of labor.
7.
Individualist Anarchism and its Mutualism
One of the more complicated historical issues we
currently face arises from the fact that, in the hand of individualists like
Benjamin R. Tucker, “mutualism” came to mean something considerably different
than it hand in the hands of Greene or Proudhon. This section will cover those
changes, in order to clarify the relationship between the neo-mutualisms which
draw primary inspiration from Proudhon and those which relay primarily on
Tucker’s approach.
7.
The Interregnum
Between the retirement of Benjamin R. Tucker and
the appearance of Kevin Carson mutualism experienced a long period of relative
dormancy. This section will survey some of the likely causes and some of the
forms under which mutualism continued to exist in anarchist and radical
circles.
8.
Proudhon’s Revenge
“Proudhon’s Revenge” was the title of an early 20th
century French work, which perhaps prematurely announced the return of Proudhonian
anarchism in a form strongly reminiscent of recent left-libertarian market
anarchism—right down to some provocative quibbles about anarchist “capitalism.”
This section will focus on the apparent delayed fulfillment of that prophecy in
our own time, with discussion of the work of Kevin Carson, the Alliance of the
Libertarian Left, Iain McKay’s Property
is Theft, and related work by myself and others.
9.
Further Thoughts on Mutualism and the Future of Anarchism
Having presented some of the ways in which the
history of anarchism is transformed by the reintegration of its mutualist
beginnings, it remains to indicate why such a reintegration stands to benefit
the entire movement—barring perhaps those whose sectarian goals require some
sort of “governing” of the movement. A feature of the earlier sections will
have been an attempt to place the various anarchists schools as something like
specializations within the broader field of mutualist anarchism, but also to
suggest the ways in which the results of this ideological and theoretical
division of labor challenge mutualism to open itself to new strategies,
concepts and approximations.
Chapter Three: Progress,
Approximation, and the Larger Antinomy
Much of my own work has been an attempt to clarify
the philosophical assumptions of mutualism, and the key element of mutualist
social science. In that work, a key strategy has been to highlight the
borrowings from earlier sources. This chapter will mix elements from Proudhon,
Pierre Leroux, Fourier, Langlois, Warren and other historical sources with
formulations of my own—key among them the “larger antinomy,” which attempts to
situate the specific analyses of the earlier figures in the context of a
irreducible dialectic between the poles of concentration and circulation.
Although they will have will have appeared in a variety of guises in earlier
chapters, it is as the poles of that antinomy—the death of stasis and the death
of pure dispersion—that the “two guns” will finally be most clearly defined.
1.
The Two “Guns” of the Larger Antinomy
In order to construct a common framework within
which to discuss the various figures who have influenced the “two-gun”
synthesis, while trying to keep within a discourse fairly close to that of
Proudhon, it has been necessary to propose a slightly abstracted version of the
“synthesis of community and property” he called for in 1840. This section will
adapt the “two-gun” motif from my reading of Pierre Leroux’s “Individualism and
Socialism” (in which those two terms were presumably invented in French, in
order to dismiss both as undesirable extremes) to a broader reading of various
extremes of concentration, or circulation and dissipation, found in the various
writers who influenced early mutualism, mapping the potential helps and hazards
in each. Then it will examine the version of the “universal circulus” proposed
by Joseph Déjacque, with an eye to determining if the sort of order he proposes
there is indeed an anarchic order, and to determining the relationship between
his stated belief in a coming harmony and his own passionate insurrectionary
tendencies. At stake is the question of whether the “two guns” represented by
the extremes can—or even must—be wielded in our struggle towards greater
harmony.
2.
Individualities and Collectivities, Rights and Strengths
While Déjacque’s vision of universal circulus is
haunted by questions about its coherence, Proudhon’s social science threatens
to overwhelm us with complexity. Drawing from some of the same sources,
Proudhon elaborated an analysis in which every individual was at once a group,
organized according to a basic law. Individuals and what we would probably
think of as collective individualities then appear at every scale—from the universal to the infinitesimal, as Fourier said—and Proudhon’s anarchistic sense
tends to treat individualities at all scales as “equal” in the primary sense in
which he used that term—that is, as elements to be balanced by justice. [The section will involve a
substantial expansion of my essay of the same name.]
3.
Explorations and Experiments
The analysis in the first two sections will be
necessarily abstract, and the full project implied by it will perhaps remain a
bit beyond our grasp, but we can begin to explore the possibilities of this
style of analysis with a series of exploratory studies of key points of
conflict in the current mutualist milieu.
A.
Capitalism and the Right of Increase
When we oppose capitalism and aubaines, what precisely do we oppose? This section analyses
capitalism as a sort of imbalance in the negotiation of the larger antinomy,
under which circulation is always subordinated to and mediated by
concentration, and explores the proposition that mutualists are not—and perhaps
cannot be consistently—opposed to windfall increase as such, but rather to the
presumed “right of increase” which structures economic relations under
capitalism. The exploration will be an occasion to compare the consequences of
the form of rights proposed by Proudhon with other conceptions.
B.
Gendered Concepts, Feminism, and Patriarchy
The poles of the larger antinomy correspond in many
ways to an opposition between the firm and the fluid which has structured much
of the discussion of gender roles and characteristics. Arguably, one of the
aspects of that general antinomy is a general gendering of elements of our
economic relations. This section will explore some of the complex and
conflicting ways in which Proudhon and other early mutualists invoked gender in
their discussion of property and exchange, and the connections between these
treatments and the anti-feminist position taken by a number of them. It will
also present a conception of “patriarchy” of a fairly abstract sort, enabling
us to draw some connections between more conventional feminist analysis and the
neo-mutualist philosophy we are elaborating. [The issues raised here in
theoretical terms will be addressed in more practical terms in the section in
Chapter 5, “Proudhon for Lovers.”]
C.
Ecological and Economic Circulation
The claims made for “market forces” resemble the
positing of a sort of second nature, though one mediated by identity and
commodity forms at every stage, and some
of the things we mean when we talk about “competition” correspond to something
like biodiversity for the economic
realm. In some respects, however, market order and ecological order seem to be
in rather direct opposition. This section will explore these issues and try to
give the Proudhonian sociology its most ecologically sound presentation, using
the notion of the “universal circulus,” elaborated by Pierre Leroux and Joseph Déjacque,
as a potential bridge between natural and economic orders.
Chapter Four: Owning Up—A
Two-Gun Theory of Property
While one of the key elements of mutualist
philosophy has been the critique of property as “theft,” that analysis was
ultimately just the beginning of mutualist property theory. Proudhon himself
eventually came to embrace that same property-theft “according to its” aims,
incorporating it into his vision of counterbalancing institutions, but he left
a great deal of the theoretical apparatus for us to construct. This chapter
attempts to elaborate a coherent, and consistently mutualist theory of
property.
1.
Resources from the Propertarian Traditions
2.
A Survey of Proudhon’s Analysis
A.
Keywords and Primary Distinctions
3.
The Mutualist Subject—The Free Absolute
A.
As Approached through Egoism
B.
As Approached through Communism
4.
Self-Ownership Established by Two Gifts—The Gift Economy of Property
5.
Dynamic Extension of the Self
6.
The Appropriation of Resources
7.
Products of Labor
A.
Identifying the Subject of Production
B.
Alienability and Compensation
C.
Saving and Abandoning Products
D.
Intellectual Products
8.
Property in Land
Property
in land is
A.
Thinking about Land and Property
B.
Appropriation
C.
Homesteading
D.
Cycles of Use
E.
Mechanisms of Title
F.
Overlapping Use-Rights
G.
Abandonment
H.
Expropriation
9.
Ideas as Capital
A further note on intellectual property: The
elimination of protections beyond those necessary to bring intellectual
products to market eliminates many of the problems we customarily associate
with the treatment of ideas under capitalism, but there unquestionably remain a
number of less strictly capitalist ways in which we compete to accumulate
intellectual capital. This section consists of a long note on the sorts of
practices most consistent with the treatment of ideas as a sort of common
property or shared means of production.
10.
Towards a Mutualist Communism
While mutualists have traditionally emphasized
individual possession or property, that is perhaps not the only way to organize
around the principle of mutuality. In Proudhon’s later work, society is
organized in federations of individuals and collective individualities, with
the federative bond incorporating a propertarian separation. This section will
explore a range of different means of balancing the aspects of property
relations which pertain to the separateness and persistence of the self with
those which pertain to its evolution and circulation, with an approach to
anarchist communist relations among the systems explored.
Chapter Five: Applying the
Anarchism of Approximations
Proudhon observed that “humanity proceeds by
approximation,” and our hope is that within anarchist societies our
institutional approximations will increase in efficiency, justice, and aptness
to current conditions. These case studies, drawn from common debates about
mutualism, will be more exploratory than definitive, emphasizing the ways in
which issues of historical change, rhetorical difference, individual
preference, etc. may introduce variation or confusion in our approximations,
while attempting to lay out the sorts of consistent concerns which must be
addressed regardless of specific contexts.
The
Past and Future of the Mutual Bank
Mutualists have been dismissed as “currency
cranks,” because of their historical emphasis on “free credit” and mutual
currency—a charge which has historically often been unfair, but which might
well apply to us in the present if we don’t make sure we have adapted our
currency strategies to present conditions. This section will explore “mutual
banking” from its origins in the land banks of the 17th and 18th
centuries through to the present, discuss the difficulties of applying the
institution under present conditions, explore alternatives, and then propose
some possible forms of mutual banking for the mutualist communities of the
future.
Theories
of Value and Cost-Price Exchange
The debates pitting “labor theories of value”
versus “subjective theories of value” seem as often as not to embroil us in
misunderstandings and false choices. Mutualists draw from a tradition which
includes the recent “Carsonian synthesis” and the subjectivized “labor for
labor exchange” proposed by Josiah Warren in the 1820s. This section will
explore some of the variations of “equitable commerce” and “equal exchange”
proposed historically by mutualists, as well as examining the extent to which
the various theories of value overlap in their concerns.
Variety,
Competition, and Plenty—In the Marketplace, the Workplace, etc.
There is a temptation to say that mutualist
societies will necessarily have less variety in offering in the marketplace,
but we perhaps there is cause to hope that variety might be maintained, while
the sorts of inefficiencies which make consumerism so destructive might be
minimized. This section will explore these questions, with particular attention
to adapting Fourier’s system of competitive offerings and the notion of
attractive industry to the needs of mutualist societies.
Are
Hotels Immoral?—Further Thoughts on Occupancy and Use
Presumably, one of the goals of mutualist land
tenure theory ought to be an increase in liberty, but we often talk about our
opposition to monopoly rent and absentee ownership in terms of abolishing the
exploitive options, rather than multiplying those based in justice. This
section explores a variety of possible use-strategies for real property.
A
Mutualist Minimum and Mutualist Insurance Schemes
Proudhon identified the “collective force” created
under a division of labor as a key source of wealth and property, while still
organizing his proposals for mutualist society around the human individual.
Warren argued for a separation of interests as complete as possible. However,
the degree of “collectivism” incorporated into mutualist societies will be
dependent on the needs and preferences of the individuals involved—and in some
communities those needs and preferences may make some larger collectivity the
appropriate scale for addressing certain basic needs. This section will explore
the question of “social security” under mutualism, and address some of the
historical debates about the relationship between the collectivist anarchist
tradition and the mutualist forms its attempted to supplant during the period
of the First International.
Proudhon
for Lovers
Proudhon is infamous for his anti-feminism and his
defense of quite traditional, patriarchal family structures. His writings
reveal a mistrust of passion and a rather narrow notion of love. However, his
influences included Fourier, for whom the passions were the key to every aspect
of life, and there are a variety of tensions in his writings which contemporary
readers might be inclined to pursue in other directions. This section will
begin with a discussion of some of those tensions, and then will take up Proudhon’s
search for the “organ of justice” in human relationships, reading his
“Catechism of Marriage” in a variety of ways—including some very much against
the grain of Proudhon’s own views.
Appendix A: A Gallery of Mutualist
Rogues
The Gallery will contain brief biographies of a
range of historical figures associated with the mutualist tradition.
Appendix B: Bibliography
of Mutualism
The
Bibliography will consist of an essay presenting the major works of the mutualist
tradition.
Appendix C: A Working
Glossary of Mutualist Terms
The Working Glossary will collect major keywords
from the text and from the major mutualist writings, and provide simple
definitions, notes on usage and citations in the literature for further study.
1 comment:
Wow. This is the holy grail I've been looking for since I've become interested in mutualism. Really looking forward to reading this when it's complete!
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