Can I have a simple explanation of the cost-price principle and mutual credit/banking?

The economics is one of the weakest areas in my anarchist theory.

When people talk about translations of Proudhon's writings they're often referring to things like letters, notes, correspondence, etc.

Given that some of these might be over 200 years old now - how much of his original source material is there? Who has it? What material do translators generally work from?

I know this sounds like a stupid question, but I find that there are some disputes about the exact definition of what constitutes “ownership.”

If there is a norm of respecting people’s personal possessions, would this be a form of “property?”

Does the social tolerance of occupancy-and-use qualify as an informal social permission or sanction?

Research into anarchy, anarchist social analysis, and anarchist organization is rather uncharted territory, we don't know too much about anarchist social organization aside from there being indications that it is possible and that assumptions that hierarchy is inevitable or necessary are completely unsubstantiated.

While the burden of proof of actually proving that hierarchy is inevitable or unnecessary is exceedingly high, thus we aren't going to get a good answer as to whether hierarchy is necessary or not for a very long time, there is always a level of uncertainty here and perhaps I have exaggerated the sort of certainty I have in the viability of anarchy, which I don't have much to substantiate. Anarchy, in its fullest sense, is difficult to really prove too though that may depend on how our experiments go.

Does anyone know how to deal with or overcome this uncertainty and how have you done so? Should be overcome at all? How can I say I am an anarchist if I cannot have certainty that anarchism is possible?

I don’t really understand federative organising or the concept of the external constitution.

I could also improve my knowledge on the economics side a bit more.

They intuitively seem like a neat way to reward those who give rather than those who own, and some have commented on unique economic advantages, but I don't have solid data to verify either of those. Another mutualist told me it was a bad idea because of the incentives it creates, but I don't remember exactly what they said and can't find where they said it. I'm specifically interested in achieving an economic system that incentivizes generosity--would time banking achieve this?

In this passage, with respects to the impossibility of achieving knowledge of the capital T truth, Volin says:

Third obstacle. – The most characteristic trait of life is its eternal and uninterrupted movement, its changes, its continual transformations. Thus, there exists no firm, constant and determined truth. Or rather, if there exists a general, complete truth, its defining quality would be an incessant movement of transformation, a continual displacement of all the elements of which it is composed. Consequently, the knowledge of that truth supposes a complete knowing, a clear definition, an exact reduction of all the laws, all the forms, all the combinations, possibilities and consequences of all these movements, of all these changes and permutations. Now, such a knowledge, so exact an account of the forces in infinite movement and oscillation, of the continually changing combinations,—even if there exists a certain regularity and an iterative law in these oscillations and changes,—would be something nearly impossible.

However, are there are not laws or fixtures to life which do not change like the sun rising and falling or the law of gravity? Is it our knowledge of those laws or fixtures limited that Volin is talking about or is he saying that there are no fixtures or laws to life?

I believe that Proudhon in What is Property made a distinction between ownership and possession.

Property would be the right of possession and use, as opposed to the mere fact.

“Absentee ownership” is then simply an emergent phenomenon of the mismatch between the fact and the right of possession.

Is the force/authority distinction then just derived from this deeper fact/right distinction?

I know a little bit about the libre milieux (basic stuff like there being no laws or authority and what not) but I don't know too much about the specifics. Is there any information available on the specifics of different communities, how they were organized, etc.?

Usually I hear the term “restorative justice” bandied around, but I’m always unsure whether the term is loaded with governmentalist or legalistic assumptions.

In an alegal social context, people might want a formal system of conflict resolution to solve their disputes peacefully, and may willingly choose to participate in certain non-binding processes in order to avoid undesirable forms of social war.

If such systems emerge, what would they look like exactly? What kinds of disputes might these systems be suited for handling?

For a hypothetical, basically functioning anarchist economy (i.e. not post-Apocalypse, not Sci-Fi Utopian) that was operating on a mix of gift, barter and some mix of currencies which, in turn, were based on a mix of time, labour, credit and commodities (preferably localised bundles of 'practical' commodities rather than e.g. gold, oil, etc.) and where the general economic incentive was towards circulation of currency rather than accumulation (or at least not oscillating between periods of spend and save) - and of course where the purely capitalist drivers of monetary inflation/deflation were gone...

...would (could?) monetary inflation still be a significant issue for anarchist economies?

I'm referring to 'monetary' inflation/deflation because the perceived/subjective value of individual goods and services might still change over time - but in a hypothetical economy like the one above - could that alone be enough to impact 'how much your money was worth'?.

Thanks.

Will there be an age at which an individual is recognised as an “adult”, or will adulthood become a more relative concept, being seen as a continuum, with the concepts of “youth” and “elder” being more comparative rather than thresholds one meets at a certain birthday?

TL;DNR: Founding document of “capitalism” fully read, implies Proudhonian mutualism (though retains its own errors).

Reading “Wealth of Nations,” we find Smith’s intention is to encourage competition between stockholders (capitalists, wholesale and retail sellers), and free choice among wage-earners between sellers, thus incentivizing lower prices to entice demand, eventually giving price reductions to the lowest possible levels. All of this was hoped by Smith to enable thrifty wage earners – he thought them so – to save their money and increase their wellbeing.

In book one, chapter eleven of “Wealth,” from Smith himself [!]: “The interest of the dealers [stockholders or capitalists] […] is always in some respects […] opposite to, that of the public […]. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the public; but to narrow the competition [between capitalists] must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy […] an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.”

(Everyone should read “Wealth of Nations” – but after Boswell’s “Life of Sam. Johnson,” for Smith’s circumstances, language, and opinions, e.g., the broad contempt for aristocrats and their “rents”; Johnson defends them only as a contrarian. Many, e.g., Milton Friedman, couldn’t read it – or misrepresented it knowing nobody would. Sometimes objectionable, there’s a fair bit of egalitarian “common sense” in it, too).

And, we can deduce mutualism from Smith’s conceit. If competition in stock reduces cost for consumers as a benefit, then absolute-maximum competition minimizes costs, for ultimate possible benefit. But maximum stock distribution occurs when everyone owns capital. And they then can also support themselves by the revenues of capital, not only labor.

This condition of ownership obtains, if all non-solo enterprises are organized as co-operatives. (Worryingly, Koch Inc., is privately owned – but its capital is not parceled in equal shares in one-to-one correspondence to its 120,000 employees – were it, they’d receive $1,041,623/year – therefore Koch is neither corporation, nor co-op).  Any reduction in revenue by such enterprises, is balanced by the stability from employees’ incentive to be conservative in the use of their sole – but also collective – capital. As competition, any “rival” co-ops in a market can challenge monopoly by lowering their prices. Even without a competitor, so long as workers are free to sell out of their own, to found a rival to a monopolist co-op’s inefficiencies at any time, only such inter-co-operative competition need be guaranteed to ensure consumer wellbeing. Those two collaborating to raise prices is disincentivised, as yet a third co-op could take market share from them at any time.

Corporations, using accumulated capital from shareholder’s investment to artificially depress prices and exterminate competition, then to raise prices monopolistically, as Smith abhorred, should certainly be eliminated, perhaps prior to the establishment of co-ops, so they and their good is encouraged.

As collective capital, certainly workplace democracy in co-ops is required. Conversely, corporations have either capital set aside to offset expected losses, or a venture fund (as with the first joint stock companies), so that capital is not distributed in a one-to-one correspondence of worker to a uniform tranche of capital; this implies corporations must be hierarchical, as will be detailed presently.

Now, a corporation is to eliminate competition, or in the original joint stock companies to raise funds for expansion into markets without competition. In the former case, per Smith himself this hurts the common good by artificially raising prices. In the latter case, it must be less responsive, so less efficient, than local businesses would be – or else has a bureaucracy, and acquires inefficiencies (and by the Iron Law of Oligarchy excludes workplace democracy) thereby. Or, if a foreign stock company “creates” a market – but then it diminishes local revenue resources, leading to inevitable reductions in local development. Therefore, corporations can never be the most efficient means of human development (vide also: Louis Brandeis’ “Other People’s Money”, passim).

Moreover, corporations and stock companies by definition do not parcel capital revenues only into equivalent shares given to each employee in one-to-one correspondence. Therefore, some employee must have more than another – and so, the ability to suborn the will of who has less (if only by buying up all the resources the latter needs, with reserve for one’s own needs), who in turn has no ability to ameliorate this condition, without directly aggressing against the better-resourced, which even libertarianism forbids. Therefore: corporations are inherently hierarchical, at least as greater capital-owner above lesser owner – and “ancap” as anti-authoritarian, yet permitting such capital hoarding and hierarchy, is thus definitely contradictory. Doubly so, since a monopolist, particularly of necessities, can deprive customers of their revenues at will, which plainly interferes with an individual’s property. “Ancap” permits corporate hierarchies that violate its own “non-aggression principle,” and violates its supposed anti-authoritarianism. “Ancap,” backhanded libertarianism, is a cruel, contradictory absurdity.

[This is part one. Probably no part two.]

Title.

I’ve noticed that the people here in r/mutualism tend to have a more structural view of hierarchy and are less moralistic.

But a lot of anarchists outside this subreddit tend to treat anarchy more as a moral philosophy than a social structure.

Is this because Neo-Proudhonian thought is based upon Proudhon’s social science, and therefore is the “scientific anarchism” that’s the anarchist equivalent of Marxism?

Specifically, division of labor between design and fabrication (i.e. mechanical designers and mechanists, electrical engineers and electricians, etc.)? Is there also any literature talking about "reskilling" or "deskilling"?

I am personally still undecided on whether gift or market economies are the best option for an anarchist society.

Had to chuckle at this description of mutualism and mutualists from The accumulation of freedom: Writings on anarchist economics...

"...most anarchists reject mutualism outright contemporarily. While it played a historic role in laying the foundations of anarchist economics, it has little impact on the existing milieu beyond those foundations (although one will occasionally find adherents to this market philosophy at various bookfairs and anarchist gatherings or, more often, on open anarchist Internet forums — and they do seem to be gaining steam as more and more people lose faith in capitalism)."

Communism seems like an obvious solution.

By not drawing a distinction between contribution to the market vs the household, gift economies seem more likely to value contributions equally.

But in market economies, there can be unequal value accorded to certain types of contributions.

Housework and childcare get devalued as “not real work”, compared to work in the outside economy.

How does non-communist anarchism begin to address this sort of disparity?

So a couple months ago I had a conversation with u/humanispherian about innovation

This comment has been bouncing around in the back of my head for a while. https://www.reddit.com/r/mutualism/s/QYQQwk09l8

Specifically I was wondering what sorts of institutional arrangements we would expect around innovations within a mutualist society. Basically what would the "deal" look like?

I think the alpha and omega is that cost is the limit of price.

I can pretty easily see a situation where there's a sort of patronage system for innovators. So the community allocates resources towards innovators and in turn those innovators try and reduce costs for productive activities the community is involved in or they can create new and interesting concepts.

Another option is that consumers and producers can give a share of the savings that innovators make. So if you come up with an idea the reduces costs by 10% you can keep 1% of the money that otherwise would have been spent on production.

The other option is the temporary rents that Carson discussed within anti-capitalist markets. Innovators get first mover advantages, which allows for them to capitalize on innovation and therefore cover the cost of innovation.

Another potential arrangement is that you could have networks of collaboration. The incentive here is to reduce costs or to share in the temporary rents. I share my innovations because you share yours. That sort of thing. Exchange of information and collaborative efforts for mutual benefit.

My concern with the second and third arrangements are that there isn't neccessarily a way of ensuring the cost principle is applied here as the rent can be greater or lesser than cost right, and unlike with market competition there isn't really a corrective mechanism. The rent won't be permanent, that's true, but it could be greater than cost.

I'm curious though, to what extent do you think temporary rents could violate the cost principle? Not that this prevents mutualist innovation at all, I'm just trying to keep the cost principle the center of institutional arrangements. Could first mover advantages or a share of savings potentially violate that principle?

Curious as to your thoughts.

The thing I was thinking about is, with first mover advantages or a share of savings that provides and incentive for everyone in the institution to come up with ways of saving resources which isn't neccessarily the case otherwise right?

I suppose that there's an interesting argument to potentially make that innovators deserve a reward for inmovation in excess of the cost of innovation. But I don't really see that aligning with mutualisy thought, though again I'd be curious to your thoughts.

The motivation for this question comes from some recent posts on r/DebateAnarchism - but I'd like to ask it here from a clean slate rather than drawing on the definitions discussed there if possible.

Is there a definition of 'hard' or 'soft' currencies that might be worth considering as part of a hypothetical anarchist economy - particularly one that took in mutualist or market anarchist ideas?

I assume most of us can consider a potential for some form(s) of currency be it permanent or temporary, general-purpose or use-specific and the idea of linking a currency to something e.g. hours worked or a reference basket of goods, etc. is also pretty well-established.

Given that - is there any use in exploring ideas of breaking currencies down into 'hard' and 'soft' and if there is - what might that look like?

Thanks.

What were some of the early and contemporary thinkers and writers that may or have had an influence on proudhon's ideas.

And another question i have would be, what utopian socialists was proudhon critical of and why?