Introduction
Mutualism is a perennial impulse, a revolutionary social movement, and a sophisticated philosophical tradition. It is established upon, and focuses on, the reciprocity of rights and obligations, promoting the fairest approximation of justice. It was once a very rich, worldwide tradition that featured especially prominently in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. But it has been set into decline. Paleomutualism takes interest in the reasons for this decline and ways that mutualism can be revived to the benefit of working people everywhere.
Mutualism’s Impact
Did you know that the American forefather, Benjamin Franklin, was the first person to form a mutual insurance company in the New World? This makes him at least a practicing, if not an ideological, mutualist! If this isn’t odd, Alexis de Tocqueville described America as a land rich in voluntary associations (mutualism). Are you aware that the American mutualist, Lysander Spooner, had referred to the United States government as a mutual insurance company (even if a failed and illegitimate one)? Wow. Mutualism was having its impact way back then, before Proudhon! He is usually thought of as an early proponent!
Throughout human history, rulers have taken everything that is produced by society for themselves and those who do their bidding, except for bare necessities needed for survival (to keep society producing). The macrosociologists Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski say that this has been happening since people started using hoes to grow food! Ever since we moved past simple digging sticks, they suggest, rulers have taken all but what is left to secure a minimal standard of living for the people they rule. Pretty harsh, huh?
But republican governments and organized labor reversed that trend worldwide for the first time. That’s the first time ever, since the dawn of civilization. Can you believe it? That’s quite the feat! And it’s science! It actually happened.
It started with the middle class of Medieval society— merchants, landed gentry, etc.— overthrowing their monarchs or establishing constitutional governments and republics, creating modernity. That’s how they got free. However, the lower classes now owed allegiance to the middle classes. They were forced to work in factories, as laborers, or to provide services for the middle class, who became their bosses and landlords, joining the upper or ruling class.
This was not good for working people. Organized labor— that is, mutualism in the form of unions, mutuals, cooperatives, etc.— would challenge the domination of capitalists. It was when organized labor challenged the new upper class that the civilizations-long trend was reversed for the first time. Ever. In all of humanity’s history!
Mutualism was winning! Unions worked to abolish child labor and shorten the length of the workday, cooperatives had started to compete with private business and corporations, mutual companies provided working people with insurance and finance, and credit unions with accessible credit. Doing business with or in unions, cooperatives, mutuals, etc.— mutualist ways— had become a standard way of life. These mutualist institutions provided mutual self-help services “from the cradle to the grave,” from orphanages and schools to workplaces and clubs to financing and life insurance. That’s pretty cool!
Then something happened. It all went away. What caused the decline in mutualism, the first impulse to reverse the arrow of exploitation? What did mutualism look like? How might it get going again?
What Mutualism Is
Mutualism was built upon the values of brotherly and sisterly love and friendship, and freedom, equality, order, and justice. Words commonly used to describe mutualist efforts include: sodality, fraternity, sorority, fellowship, solidarity, association, cooperation, frith, friendship, and etc. As you can see, mutualism is about people getting along better.
The principles of mutualism include individual liberty, voluntary association, equal freedom, democratic participation, and reciprocity in exchange. The goals of mutualists are commonly described as anarchy, free markets, and industrial democracy, mediated by mutual credit, and graced with free land. Mutualists believe that people get along better if they are free to care about the things they love, have access to resources, and are treated fairly and treat others the same.
Mutualist institutions include credit unions and mutual banking and insurance, cooperatives of various kinds, fraternities, clubs, and all kinds of voluntary associations. Mutualism is highly connected to the concept of “civil society,” sometimes used in distinction to the market and the state. Mutualists prefer people to get along voluntarily, consensually, reciprocally, and in a convivial way!
Functionally, mutualists desire a balance of social forces that will pre-empt the external constitution of social power, a balance that will keep government from rearing its head, and bringing with it oppression and inequality. In other words, mutualists believe that when people are free to pursue their own interests, their interests balance one another out fairly, so that no individual is over or above the rest. But, to get free, paradoxically, people must pursue their collective interests in creating associations together. And that takes hard work! But freedom and justice is worth it.
Mutualist Origins
Mutualism is an impulse that is inherent in life. But the mutualism we speak of here— mutualism as ideology— may have its origins in the Netherlands, particularly in Holland. You know, the place with all of the dykes. That’s also where the Enlightenment started.
The original Hollanders— the Hollandi, or Stedinger— were known to be rustic peasants who had been given rights of freehold in their homesteads in the swamps and timberlands. They built dams and dykes, drained the swamplands, and established dry land. Saxons and Frisians, they were no doubt acquainted with the concepts of “frith” and “friendship,” and they united in common bonds into fraternities and a peasant republic, rebelling against the lords and ecclesiastics who’d rescind their rights of freehold with limited taxation. The Stedinger Crusades were called against them, and they were called “Luciferians.” The Enlightenment is often said to be about light, and Lucifer is known as the Light-bearer, or Bringer of Light.
While the Stedinger were formally eradicated, the Netherlands would later produce the Dutch Republic. This would inspire the English Revolution and be home to the Radical Enlightenment, centered on the pantheist philosopher, Spinoza. Modern mutual insurance and actuarial science— practices characteristic of mutualism— are also traced to the Netherlands, as outgrowths of guild practice. Mutualism involves real practices relating to finance, and has its own traditions and practices. Pretty neat for some rowdy rebels, huh?
Various heretical sects— such as the Amalricians, the Free Spirit, the Waldensians, Lollardy, Cathars, Ranters, Diggers, Unitarians, Universalists, Quakers, etc.— would likewise become associated with pantheism and the Radical Enlightenment, as sources for mutualism and cooperation. While the Stedinger republic may have been a particularly bright example of mutualism in practice, they were not alone. The impulse was everywhere and in all times, often an outgrowth of enlightened pantheism. These “Luciferians” and pantheists were enlightening the world.
John Toland, a Spinozan, the first man called a “Freethinker,” the first to coin the term “pantheism,” and the first to distinguish “esoteric” from “exoteric” religion, was also an important part of early mutualism. He may have had something to do with early speculative Freemasonry, the lodges of which— each their own republic— are home to mutualistic practices such as mutual insurance, often used as examples of early mutualism in practice. These lodges would lead the the American and the French revolutions, and would establish capitalism and republics. In a way, these represent imperfect, or bourgeois, mutualism. Workers’ mutualism modeled itself largely on Freemasonry, however, as with the mutualists of Lyon in France or the Knights of Labor in America. You do follow, right?
Under the authority of the new bourgeois republics, established by Freemasonry, and capitalist economies with their industrial mode of production, ideological mutualism would really begin to formalize itself. It took many forms, from associationism, cooperativism, individualism, Ricardian socialism, and eventually to mutualism-proper. Mutualism was the first organized industrial workers’ movement, especially strong in the textiles industry. And it had resulted in the Radical War, the Luddite rebellions, and the Canuts Rebellions. Then it would organize the International Workingmen’s Association— bringing radicals together from across seas and ocean— and then the Paris Commune. Labor unions, themselves— especially early ones— a form of mutualism, had spread everywhere. Mutualism represented more than an impulse now, but an international and partially-united movement of organized labor, a concerted effort of leaders and their constituents from among the working classes. Mutualists had started to change the world!
You can thank mutualism for the end of child labor, shorter working hours, better pay, vacation time, and etc. All of that was won through organized labor, mutualism. You starting to see how mutualism already affects you? Well, get this: In the early 20th century, in the United States, a worker could get a whole year’s worth of free doctor visits— house calls— for just $2 a year! This was provided by mutual associations like fraternities or unions. $2 was about a day’s wage. Talk about universally available healthcare!
Opponents of Mutualism
Working class mutualism has had its fair share of opponents. Strangely enough, those opponents share much in common with mutualism, and have even been participants in mutualistic associations, such as Freemasonry, or have had political views not entirely different, except in intention.
The early United States, an attempted mutual company providing government services to the landed, either had been actively infiltrated by aristocratic revolutionary socialists in the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, or was at least genuinely concerned about said infiltration. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had something to say about it. Bourgeois mutualism was under assault by aristocratic revolutionary socialists of the Platonic tradition, who wanted to have a socialism guided by philosopher kings, ruling in secret, a mutualism of elites!
Worker’s mutualism also faced difficulties. Of course, it’s most obvious opponent was the capitalist, financial, landlord, and political classes of the new capitalist society. But this bourgeois variant of mutualism couldn’t last long on its own. Mutualism had become an internationally-organized movement of the working class. Mutualism was the most notable of socialist ideologies of the time, and its thinker Proudhon the most prominent. And this terrified both the old aristocracy and the new ruling class of bourgeoisie. As a solution, Karl Marx was hired by his distant cousins the Rothschilds. Today, Marxism is synonymous with socialism, and we don’t even hear about mutualism in the mainstream. That was the point!
From the same Freemasonic tradition that gave way to the Illuminati, came Martinism and the occult thinker, Saint-Yves. Saint-Yves believed something had to be done to keep anarchists— beginning with the mutualist Proudhon— from succeeding. Afterall, they had become internationally organized, and were winning. Your 8-hour workday is the proof! As a solution, Saint-Yves came up with the concept of “synarchy,” the opposite of anarchy. It means “rule together,” and refers to a secret, totalitarian global government run jointly by elite interests, such as the most elite bankers, industrialists, scientists, mystics, etc. This (and elite humanitarianism) is where globalist philosophy begins. The synarchists went about their business of plotting and eventually establishing the UN and supporting Zionism. Remember, this was all to stop the anarchists from winning!
The exoteric, or public, expression of the more esoteric, or hidden, synarchy, is postmodernism. Postmodernism is a philosophy that critiques or opposes modernism. Modernism refers to the cultural movement that affirms Enlightenment values (which gave way to the modern era, or modernity). Modernism wants to continue these values or even take them further. In the arts, modernism started with the realist paintings of Gustave Courbet, mutualist, and friend to Proudhon, whom he painted a number of times. Modernism would find its way into the Catholic Church by way of Pope Leo XIII’s social teachings, or distributism. Postmodernism, then, is directly opposed to mutualism and related views like distributism. It includes thinkers as diverse as Friedrich Hayek, of Austrian economics, and Herbert Marcuse, the neo- or cultural Marxist (as opposed to economic Marxist).
The Postmodern Era
The postmodern era refers to the era in which postmodernism really started taking hold and becoming normalized in arts, philosophy, and culture. It’s often said to have begun after, and in response to, the World Wars, which postmodernists point to as a failure of Western Enlightenment ideologies and”meta” or “grand” narratives. Postmodernism existed before taking hold in the postmodern era.
The postmodern era is associated with a decline in science, the family, civil society, and mutualism. Half of our Universe— the retrocausal, syntropic, or “negative” energetic— was hidden from us under a guise of “uncertainty” when the Nazi scientist Heisenberg had his way. Women joined the workforce and kitchen appliances relieved them of domestic duties, and television of parental care. “Third places,” largely secular locations where people mingle and discuss outside of home and work— like salons, cafes, soda shops, fraternities, clubs, etc.—, started to fade as suburbanization isolated families into prefabricated housing, afforded by car culture. And the organized labor movement— mutualism— started to disappear, with unions, cooperatives, and mutuals facing a decline in their membership, thanks to co-optation of actuarial science and mutual banking by the paternalistic welfare state and Keynesian globalist organizations. Basically, it’s not looking too good at this point, folks.
The political climate of the postmodern era was very different from before. Strange conspiracy theories surround the era, involving UFOs during the Battle of Los Angeles and the Roswell incident, purposeful sinking of the Titanic, collaboration between Axis and Allies, and more. New Deal politics of welfare statism was accompanied by paternalistic conservatism, progressivism, and “sewer socialism,” all looking to the state to provide social services, largely an outgrowth of Marx’s influence toward social democracy and Bernstein’s push toward “democratic socialism.” In stepped the mixed economy, corporations, business unions, and cultural Marxism. Instead of the class consciousness of the “Old Left,” the “New Left” pushed identity politics, political correctness, and eventually “cancel culture.” Instead of labor strikes held by democratic unions, student “demonstrations” and “wildcat” strikes assisted the elites— informed by the thought of Le Bon’s crowd psychology and Edward Bernays’s psychological manipulations, among countless others— in their tactics of “revolution from above.” They use revolutionary impulses in political jiu-jitsu!
The neoliberal phase of the postmodern era was spearheaded early on largely by the “Objectivism” of Ayn Rand, by Austrian economists like Murray Rothbard, and especially took hold with the monetarism of the Chicago school. This was a time of much demutualization. The welfare state that was constructed to destroy mutualism has been dismantled. Mutualism isn’t the powerhouse providing medical care to the working class at $2 a year anymore, either. Now people do without.
Global organizations were envisioned and secret governments were established to stop mutualism. And, of course they were: Mutualism had, for the first time since the beginning of civilization— suggests the work of Nolan and Lenski—, shared the economic surpluses out to the workers. At first, this took the form of union victories and cooperative profits. But eventually it increasingly took the form of accepting concessions from the state— labor laws, welfare provisions, more stable money, etc.— much to the peril of mutualism. Progressivism, paternalistic conservatism, and sewer socialism, along with cultural Marxism, bought the workers off, substituting paternalistic control where fraternal equality had started to grow to free them. Bummer!
Paleomutualism
Can you believe it? That mutualism was such a major player in history, and we didn’t even know it!? Jeez. We’ve been played, huh? It took me a long time before I could see it. But it’s true. And our own history is hidden in plain sight.
Paleomutualism is about getting back to mutualism as it was before the postmodern era, when fascism and cultural Marxism made toxic advances. Goodness knows that in our neoliberal era of retreating welfare and increasing therapeutics we could use our old traditions to fill the gaps and expand, breaking the system like roots cracking the concrete.
This entails embracing our Western cultural heritage and our Radical Enlightenment roots, at the expense of postmodern influences such as identity politics, anti-organizationalism, opposition to ideology, and etc. It means being aware of the anti-anarchist origins of the globalist deep state and shadow government. And it has to work to restore common sense science, the family, civil society, and organized labor. It must put these issues above all others, especially identity.
Paleomutualists support the proliferation of voluntary associations, providing a rich civil society. We appreciate the value and convivial nature of the “third place.” We uphold traditional conceptions of gender as natural mate signaling between heterosexual men and women. And we dearly miss the days of sound public science. But, most of all, we miss organized labor and class consciousness, and want to see an end to the medievalist postmodern mindset of identarian persecution, and to the concentration of power into the hands of global elites. This is what it means to be paleomutualist!