Proudhon as a historical thinker pioneered the concept of anarchy (though not uniquely libertarian, see my upcoming series on anarchy and desire within daoist literature. ;) ) His concept of mutualism as an economic anarchy, anarchy as the governing of each by each, establishes a network of mutual connections and imagines a market free of capitalist exploitation, intellectual property, or monopolized economies of scale. Meta-Nomad is a conservative internet mutualist. Writings of Nomad’s concept of “dark mutualism” have attempted to take Proudhonist writings and abandon his concept of progress. In this poorly written piece, we will dissect this article and attempt to understand and refute the reactionary mutualism as proposed.
He begins by outlining the difference between progress then and progress now. Although Proudhon was an advocate for social progress, Nomad mentions that the concept of progress has had quite a journey since his writings. However, this is a historical simplification. There were people who were “progressive” (including Kant) that Proudhon openly advocated against. In Proudhon’s time, the concept of progress existed in both liberatory and non-liberatory forms. Statist liberals have and will continue to exist, as is seen by the democracy advocates Proudhon wrote against. (See “What is Property?” or “The Federative Principle.” or the piece of Proudhon Nomad cites in this very article criticizing democracy.)
It is also a suspect claim that progressivism has “won.” Although in certain western markets progressivism as a concept has become profitable, this does not mean the general liberation movements have made much traction in the years since Proudhon’s life. Nomad claims “there is nowhere in the world where being anti-progress would pay high dividends socially,” but if we examine Eastern Europe, Western Asia, or Africa we can see that this claim doesn’t hold up. Not only does it not hold up, the reason these regions hold these values is because of historical colonial rule, that capital empowered imperialist countries to move on from.
Progress has forever been a liberatory concept, and the historical use of progress to justify authority (such as that of Proudhon’s statist counterparts or the democrats today) has always been the co-opting of liberatory movements.
After a brief and mediocre rundown of mutualist history, Nomad dives into Carson’s criticism of the liberal progressive class and draws a comparison between his analysis and Moldbug’s. This comparison is awful. Moldbug’s concept of the cathedral vaguely rings of criticism of “collectivism” sure, but above all, it is a conspiracy-esque critique of mass media. I concede that progressivism, as mentioned, has been co-opted. This solution however necessarily abandons Proudhon’s liberatory ideology with the natural conclusions of Moldbug’s work. Moldbug’s concept of progress as a bug that restricts the ability to conquer is not even comparable to Proudhon’s concept of progress as a necessary track on which humanity lies that will arrive at factual conclusions. Proudhon would argue against conquering at all, and if you told him that progress restricted the ability to dominate, he would tell you he was glad. So how does Nomad attempt to reconcile these ideological foes?
The objection Nomad responds to is not the rejection I have. The rejection I have here is more of a resounding “?!?!”
All four of these “ultracalvinist” ideas are things that some mutualists advocated for in different ways, but some of them diverge directly from the historical mutualist path. For example, point three, equal distribution of goods, has only been emphasized by mutualists in the sense that it is the natural byproduct of a freed market. Historical and new mutualists alike are not anti-competition in a communist sense, and as DeCleyre argued over a hundred years ago, competition is a key function in an anarchist economy. It is compeition in a form that benefits all, greed for good in a sense.
The fourth axiom here is also very unclear. Proudhon debatably enjoyed the idea of a controlled federation, but other individualists like Tucker arguably would have rejected it outright.
Nomad goes on to claim that mutualism’s historical downfall was its ethicality and universality of rights, but those concepts were the building blocks out of which anarchy was constructed. The concept Nomad describes here reads like some sort of capitalistic Stirnerite nightmare, which egoists would certainly denounce.
The concept that for its survival mutualism must abandon progress and equality all together exist in direct contradiction to the foundations on which the position lies. Anarchy has always meant the freeing of desire, the movement of the still. Nomad’s concept fails because it has abandoned all that mutualism has fought for. The free and rhizomatic market.
But the problems that Nomad attempts to highlight are real. There is a co-opting of progressivism by the political “left,” whether it be capitalist or not. There is an authoritarian wave of faux-progress in the same way that there is an authoritarian wave of faux-individualism. They are reterritorializing mechanisms of liberation to justify capitalism in the collective consciousness. As I argued in my piece on capitalist faux-individualism, we can recognize the failure of capitalist “individualism” / “progressivism” while not abandoning the concept. Rather, the concept that lies common in xenofeminism, agorism, and accelerationism tells us that we need not abandon what capital devours. We will be left with nothing but capital itself to defend. Instead? We take them back. This will be continued in part two of this piece.
