Those to the “left” of mutualism often contend that it does not escape the capitalist mode of production, despite it’s radically different social form. Although Bordiga originally spoke out against markets being used against capital in general, especially amongst Leninists, his ideas are often thrown at market anarchists who claim they wish to escape capitalism. In this piece I will attempt to refute the idea that this quote holds any substantive claim against mutualism or anti-capitalist market anarchy.
So lets do it! A quick debunk to this point.
The “firm” here functions as meaning a network of individuals functioning as a unit within a market economy. The hell within said firm means a couple of things, depending on who you ask, but regardless, in each case it is demonstrable how either mutualism fixes the problem or how communism doesn't.
The first “hell” is workplace monotony
The fact that people are forced into awful work hours to do boring and repetitive work and then under-payed happens irrespective to whether the workplace has a boss. I agree with this notion. This is a criticism I see as one very valid to pin against capitalist workplace-democracy, or legislation pushing it from leftist politicians.
Let us envision a freed market, and all of the liberties that come along with it, “market” here functioning simply as a network of individual moments of exchange. Without not only bosses, but without authority, the market becomes quite a different beast. Work is specialized to the extent of interest and necessity, but not force. That which there is demand for is profitable and pursuable. Sponsorship programs and co-operatives phosphor the “chasing of desire” so to speak. Centrifugal networks of exchange drive away from concentration of wealth and make necessity relatively obsolete. Intellectual property abolition makes way for an infinitely new force within such a rhizomatic network.
This work isn’t work at all, is it? There is no “democratic 9–5” as is so often envisioned against an anarchist view of economics. In reality, the market would never incentivize work that people did not actively want to do or need to be done. If we replace work with labor here, it truly functions the same as it would under an ideal non-market system, the difference being that the freed markets ever evolving concepts of currency and exchange create a means for which to incentivize production and measure necessity, more accurately suited to fulfilling desire than it’s communist counterpart.
An existing alternative critique involves the tendency of markets to monopolize. This, once again, focuses purely on existing capitalist markets. Bureaucratic organization is unlikely in anarchist market systems, seeing as within “firms” “workers” are seen as free individuals fully and liberally negotiating with other workers as far as wages and contracts go. This sort of consciousness cannot be overlooked. Beyond this, there is a criticism of “economies of scale” from the left. However, without authority, things like rent and patent monopoly would be absent, and the ability for large firms to mistreat workers is depleted. Rather than a few large companies using the workers as pawns, there exists a peaceful and free network of individuals playing a market game, the prize for which is no longer zero-sum.
As far as the claim that this so-called firm functions within capitalist enterprise, we have explored here and previously why these markets fundamentally differ from those we label as capitalist. As brought up in my essay on meta-liberalism, Deleuzian concepts of capitalism account for this. The primary characteristic of capital is that upon it’s deterritorializing, it reterritorializes, rebuilding the social constructions it destroys in different form. These reterritorializing forces are, at their core, constructions born out of authority. We return to the old mutualist conclusion that capitalism is born of statist authority, not the other way around. A freed market is capital free of it’s primary characteristic, reterritorialization. It is not capital at all.
As we have been well aware, the petit-bourgeoise are the true revolutionary subject. Once we shift our view of this “class” from a distasteful one to a hopeful one, we can acknowledge the radical possibilities within anarchy born of a market system. Whether it be queer bookstores, illegal immigrant networks, sex worker unions, etc., it is vital that the anarchist movement take SEK3 back from it’s vulgar libertarian foe. Now more than ever, the market is revolutionary. Don’t fall into the trap internet communists have laid out. There is an opportunity for a true and liberatory concept of competition. We need only cooperate in it’s emergence.
