Mutual Feelings

Anglo Noel writes:

I'm currently reading Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, which I think has the reputation of being 'The Das Kapital of Modern Evolutionary Anarchism'. I've still to finish Mr. C's magnum opus, as there is a lot to take in...and my brain has largely forgotten how to absorb serious economic theory (as opposed to slogans) in one go. In fact I've left the opening part, the most theoretical section, largely alone, and sort of made my way through the historical and 'what is to be done now?' sections.

However, after those caveats, I'm glad I'm reading it, as I think embracing Mutualism is the way forward. As the state in Britain, the US and elsewhere is getting increasingly exposed as just means to prop up Big Business financially, I think there is a space now for an anti-corporate, non-statist alternative to Actual Existing Capitalism to make its voice heard and challenge the status quo. Mutualism seems to be a good a starting point as any for trying to achieve this.

To be frank, there has not been a lot of calls from the British Left for a Mutualist approach to the current crisis. Indeed, with the British state nationalising (totally or in part) much of the banking/financial sector here, there appears to be wind (sailing, not scatalogical, metaphor intended!) behind those on the British Left whose answer to every economic or business problem appears to be a call to nationalise the sector or company in trouble. There is nearly invariably accompanied by a simultaneous call for 'workers control' of aforesaid firm or sector. Thus far in the current crisis, the British state has not heeded those calls, and without some sort of employee or consumer representation, the moves by the state to intervene in the financial system can be seen as merely state capitalism, as the Independent Working Class Association has pointed out.

Furthermore, I think the Left (here and elsewhere) has to think beyond putting forward nationalisation as the answer to all problems. There are some sectors ie the utilities, the railways, the Post Office, the NHS where I cannot see how corporations can do a better job than the state. That is, Actual Existing Corporations, as opposed to those pie-in-the-sky enterprises Politicians, Think Tanks and Journalists seem to think run erstwhile public services. However, even in the public sector, there needs to be more than just state ownership, run (often at arm's length) from Whitehall. Tony Benn wrote back in 1980 that 'We have had enough experience now to know that nationalisation plus Lord Robens does not add up to socialism' (Arguments for Socialism, quoted in Geoffrey Foote [1986, Croom Helm]The Labour Party's Political Thought, p.330). Hence it should be pretty obvious that a state-owned bank headed by some failed ex-financier who sends Christmas cards to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair is NOT socialism either. There needs to be some sort of representation of employees and consumers in the running of public enterprises. This is not just 'a good thing' for socialists to support. It is essential that state-owned enterprises have some democratic input from those who work in them, and use their products, otherwise further down the line the claim that 'we are returning to the 1970s' or 'modelling the economy on the old Eastern Bloc model' will come to the fore and derail any moves towards a post-corporate society. Writing in the early 1980s (In the Tracks of Historical Materialism, Verso Press, 1983, p.49), Perry Anderson wrote about the need for a quite detailed exposition of what a socialist society would look like, as:

'...it is quite clear that without serious exploration and mapping of it, any political advance beyond a parliamentary capitalism will continue to be blocked. No working-class or popular bloc in a Western society will ever make a leap in the dark, at this point in history, let alone into the grey on grey of an Eastern society of the type that exists today. A socialism that remains incognito will never be embraced by it.'

Over a quarter of a century on, the need for a non-statist vision of a socialist society is even more pressing, and I think Mutualism can play a large part in creating such a vision.

A large part. Yes, I'd go along with that.