[mikema63]

That's all well and good but I still say if the guy is adding value, even if through just storage and upkeep, it's interest.

I'd like to see the mutual credit in practice if you have any IRL examples.

Edit: alright, as I see it.

Money, in it's "just" form, that is to say not subject to manipulation by those in power, should represent labor you have preformed for someone. When you get this money from them it is because they have preformed labor for someone else. All it represents is labor, all the way back to the first labor that created the exchange commodity in the first place.

What you have done is separate the two party transaction of laboris between each other and allowed people to "cash in" labor they preformed in the pass, the labor can then be represented in its value to the whole of the society rather than the one person you labored for. Now society can recognize the value of the labor you preformed.

Edit2: wrote all this at five AM after a seven hour overnight shift so please forgive its rambling ness.

If you or a group of people accumulate excesses in money it is because you have labored more for others than they have for you. If you then loan out the money it is as if you are transferring the value of your labor to the other person.

So we can all agree at least that the man who gets the loan should pay the lender back at least the value of the loan, but in the example given of Robinson crusoe the borrower adds value in the form of upkeep (labor) so if money represents purely the mans expended labor then why would giving an added value on the money loan be any differ than adding a purely labor value on the physical loan?

Crusoe would not have lent out the buckskin if he did not think its upkeep was worth giving it, he would not have lent his wheat if he did not think its storage was a significant additition to its value to do so. How is an added value in the form of money, when money corresponds to expended labor, different?

[SolarCross]

A lot of places in the UK have a LETS running. LETS basically a mutual credit system.

link to Regional LETS schemes
Link to LETS in the London area

Some testimonials of those using LETS

[mikema63]

Looks fairly money like, a community money system is nice to compete with the government and it's being credit based rather than actuall dollars and cents lets it operate without tripping over any legal tender laws.

It's very nice.

Is this mainly a UK thing?

It would be nice to set something like this up, or a bitcoin system, a nice wash of competing money systems is good for getting people to work outside the system.

How long till they try to tax it?

[SolarCross]

I don't know if it exists outside the UK, I expect it does but it might go under a different name.

I had thought that in combination with bitcoin such a thing could entirely eclipse government money. LETS for local trade, bitcoin for inter-LETS and international trade.

Tax - thus far they haven't shown any interest in taxing it but if it grows I suppose eventually the thieving little bastards will try.

[mikema63]

Have you ever read the agorist manifesto?

It's basically ancaps with the idea of growing the black market outside of over meant control till it eclipses the white market.

I always rather liked the idea of all the different anarchists growing different types of institutions outside government control.

To bad we can't seem to just get along.

[SolarCross]

Agorist manifesto - no haven't read it but I already like the sound of it, I'll put it on my ever growing to do list.

Getting along - yeah that's a pain. It would do to let minor differences on land, trade and money to be settled after we despatched the great gory beast of state, until then present a united front.

[mikema63]

Thus it is with interest on capital, legitimate when a loan was a service rendered by citizen to citizen, but which ceases to be so when society has acquired the power to organize credit gratuitously for everybody

What! Now interest is OK!

What's going on here, someone help me!

[SolarCross]

What! Now interest is OK!

What's going on here, someone help me!

Where did you get that quote? Anyway I don't altogether disagree with it, particularly the last part about interest being illegitimate when 'society has acquired the power to organize credit gratuitously for everybody'. For example the LETS that is gratuitous credit for anyone who wants it and there is no interest on it. Banks just invent the money that you borrow, as and when you borrow it, yet they charge interest and this is illegitimate.

I read the Agorist manifesto - I rather liked it actually.

[mikema63]

The first sentences of the second Proudhon letter.

Certainly I agree with the last bit, credit and debt isn't legitamate in an environment where it's manipulated to benefit the creditors or debtors.

[SolarCross]

The first sentences of the second Proudhon letter.

Certainly I agree with the last bit, credit and debt isn't legitamate in an environment where it's manipulated to benefit the creditors or debtors.

Oh right well Proudhon was an early anarchist and I believe the first to call himself such. I gather he changed his ideas quite a lot over his long life. I wouldn't get too hung up over it.

[mikema63]

Hmmm.

well then how is it supposed to help me understand mutualism when I don't know which bit of Proudhoun's writing is describing mutualism.

[SolarCross]

Hmmm.
well then how is it supposed to help me understand mutualism when I don't know which bit of Proudhoun's writing is describing mutualism.

Pff.. one could say the same thing about an-capism, not all an-caps have exactly the same ideas about stuff. Proudhon doesn't have a monopoly on mutualism and even if Proudhon's ideas were consistent throughout his entire life it wouldn't tell you that much about it as he wasn't they only innovator or practitioner. Maybe start with a wiki entry?
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism (movement)

[mikema63]

I read the wiki silly bean.

Edit: some additional thoughts, he claims that interest is bad because the lender isn't really hurting himself when he gives the money, but the thing is as I see it a just money system would require that he did labor in the past for the money.

As I see it this should mean he did do work in the past and simply never used it to procure anything with it but saved the value of his labor and gave it to you, why should he not expect interest for giving his labor in some form?

[SolarCross]

I guess my take would be if its voluntary, consensual, free of fraud or force its okay whatever it is or at least not my problem. Interest on loans is, within the real world historical context that Proudhon was interested in, plainly a bad deal for the borrower and arguably is much worse now because money is all fiat and not even slightly based on commodity money.

You can talk about hypothetical situations where the lender actually worked for his money but in the real world that generally isn't the case, and it is the real world we have to concern ourselves with not the hypothetical.

[mikema63]

I've already denounced the situation in the real world as the preface to my statements about loans.

[Happyhippo]

Hmmm.

well then how is it supposed to help me understand mutualism when I don't know which bit of Proudhoun's writing is describing mutualism.

You could start with Studies in Mutualist Political Economy by Kevin Carson. He`s kinda controversial among mutualists as he`s somewhat of a wolf in sheep`s clothes, due to him being quite a bit in line with right-libertarians. But I imagine it`s a good book for you to read since it`s basically written within a libertarian framework, and gives some good thoughts on how to arrange property according to mutualist principles.

You can skip the first part of the book (it`s divided into two parts that can be read independently) as it usually makes right-libertarian minds melt and behave like lemmings to see a defense of LTV. I honestly think his defense is flawed, and LTV isn`t really integral to mutualism. The real gem is the second part of the book, where the mutualist view on property is being laid out and standard libertarian thoughts on the history of capitalism is being relentlessly attacked etc. etc.

You should also check out the critique of mutualist property theory by Roderick Long and the reply by Carson. The critiques and Carson`s reply can be found here. It`s probably a complete waste of time to read Walter Block and George Reisman`s replies as they are worthless intellectually and reminds me more of the Red Scare than anything, but you`ll continue as you wish

[mikema63]

Oh I knew I was going to end up staring LTV in the face, my running hypothesis has been that it wasn't central or necessary so I'm glad to see it semi confirmed.

[mikema63]

Reading through the wiki on left libertarianism I found this definition of mutualism.

Mutualism
Mutualism emerged from early nineteenth-century socialism, and is generally considered a market-oriented strand within the libertarian socialist tradition. Mutualists typically accept property rights, but with brief abandonment time periods. In a community in which mutuality property rules were upheld, a land-owner would need to make (more or less) continuous use of her land; if she failed to do so, her ownership rights would be extinguished and the land could be homesteaded by someone else. A mutualist property regime is often described as one rooted in “possession,” “occupancy-and-use,” or “usufruct.”[41]

Which if accurate would make me at least partly a mutualist.

[SolarCross]

Yeah I see mutualism as a sort of halfway house between capitalism and communism. So if you are traveling leftward from capitalism then mutualism is where you are going to find yourself. Question is will you stay there, go back to the right or keep on travelling leftwards into communism?

The way I see it all the economic *isms are all about authority over stuff and the exchange of stuff. Capitalism is just defined authority and defined exchange of stuff, communism is just fuzzy authority and fuzzy exchange of stuff.

Defined property and exchange is inefficient and cumbersome because of the accounting overhead needed to keep everything defined but does have the advantage of making disputes easy to solve - its most sensible use then is in environments lacking in love and trust.

Fuzzy property and exchange is efficient because of low or non-existent accounting overhead and also because exchanges need not be synchronous but it does make disputes harder to resolve when they happen - its most sensible use then is in environments wealthy in love and trust.

Love is the key to knowing where you should be on the left-right economic axis with whom you are dealing.

Ronald McDonald would be quite happy to put you in the meatgrinder for hamburger meat if he thought he could get away with it so with him you should be a capitalist and insist on clearly defined written contracts - no love environment.

With you wife or child, assuming you have a non-dysfunctional relationship, you can be free to be a commie - big love environment.

What this means is, to be realistic, in practice you should be a capitalist AND a communist. Just treat them as tactics to use according to the situation.

[mikema63]

An interesting thought, though it would mean that all large scale and inter group relations would have to be capitalistic since its biologically impossible for a human being to care about more than 150+/- people except in a limited theoretical sense.

Edit: which come to think of it would make mutualism a more viable system than communism, since in group coops could function more socially and inter group relations could be more exchange based.

(waits patiently for the actual mutualist to comment on all this )