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Title: Mutualism: Fake and Real Author: Anarcho Date: November 18, 2010 Language: en Topics: mutualism Source: Retrieved on 1st February 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=458
A vision of a co-operative commonwealth has always been at the heart of
socialism. The earliest socialists suggested co-operative villages,
workplaces and consumer societies. This was echoed by libertarian
socialists.
Bakunin was “convinced that the co-operative will be the preponderant
form of social organisation in the future” and could “hardly oppose”
their creation under capitalism. Proudhon called his vision of a
co-operative economy mutualism, arguing workers’ associations were “a
new principle and model of production that must replace present-day
corporations.” This was seen as part of the transcendence of capitalism:
“the abolition of the State… consists of an incessant diminution, by
political and administrative simplification the number of public
functionaries and to put into the care of responsible workers societies
the works and services confided to the state.”
As such, it comes as a surprise to hear the Con-Dem Cabinet Office
minister Francis Maude stating that “one of our ideas is to promote the
establishment of mutuals and co-operatives among public sector workers.”
Have the Conservatives finally realised that socialism is correct? That
economic liberty, as anarchists have stressed from the start, means
associated labour, not wage-slavery?
Don’t be daft! Mutuals and co-operatives are just the latest in a long
line of words being abused by the Tories – progressive (to describe
viciously regressive cuts), fairness (to rationalise levelling down),
and so on.
In this they can depend on public ignorance. Thus public sector (and
union official) “fat cats” for denounced in the Tory media while just 1
per cent of the public knows that the average boss of a FTSE 100 company
is paid ÂŁ4.9 million (according to Income Data Services). Showing the
typical sensitivity of the capitalist class, the Head of executive
reward for the Hay Group UK bemoaned that The Guardian’s coverage that
FTSE100 executive directors have received 55% pay rise over the last
year as a misrepresentation. This was the average, he complained, which
“overstates the situation” as the median was a mere 23%. (Letters, The
Guardian, 30^(th) October 2010). The average weekly earnings of all
other UK employees went up by 1.3%.
So this “mutualism” is part of a sadly successful “sleight of hand” by
the Tories that has turned a debate about a crisis caused by the private
sector into one about the public sector. It is all above privatisation
and making labour pay for a crisis caused by capital. As can be seen
when Maude blissfully stated that staff wishing to mutualise would need
prove they could provide services “significantly cheaper” than present
and “deliver value for money”: so the Tories expect workers to make
themselves work harder, longer and for less!
Significantly, the vision is that public sector workers should set up
John Lewis-style co-operatives. A genuine co-operative, to quote
Proudhon, is based on workers having “an undivided share in the property
of the company” and “all positions are elective, and the by-laws subject
to the approval of the members.” In contrast, John Lewis is a company is
owned by a trust on behalf of all its employees who receive a share of
annual profits in addition to their salary and can influence the
business through branch forums, the divisional Councils. Above these is
the Partnership Council to which employees elect (for three year terms)
at least 80% of members while the chairman appoints the remaining. This
also elects five of the directors on the partnership board while the
chairman appoints another five. In 2008, the managing director was paid
ÂŁ500,000, plus the 20% bonus of ÂŁ100,000.
So the notion that John Lewis is a co-operative or a mutualist
association is wrong. All levels of management are not elected, although
it has higher levels of staff involvement than a typical company as well
as a profit sharing scheme. Sharing profits and electing a council is
not the same as the workers’ associations argued for by Proudhon and
Bakunin.
It should be noted that in 1999, in response to a fall in profits, some
employees in John Lewis called for the business to be demutualised and
floated on the stock market. Though this was rejected, the demutualising
of the building societies under Thatcher should be a warning of where
this can go (particularly as it eventually contributed to the current
crisis). Significantly, Proudhon stressed that while workers’ companies
would run workplaces, ownership would remain common:
“Under the law of association, transmission of wealth does not apply to
the instruments of labour, so cannot become a cause of inequality… We
are socialists… under universal association, ownership of the land and
of the instruments of labour is social ownership… We want the mines,
canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers’
associations… We want these associations to be models for agriculture,
industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of
companies and societies, joined together in the common bond of the
democratic and social Republic.”
It is doubtful that the Tories will insist that any mutuals will be
“asset-locked” to ensure that they remain public. This can be seen from
Lord Young who is looking at how to turn public bodies which charge fees
into “mutuals.” This would be based on staff being allocated shares
which could be sold or handed back when they leave. That is, these are
not mutuals as these are owned by those who actually work in them and
not by shareholders. It is easy to see that, over time, these
“co-operatives” would turn into ordinary companies in which most shares
are held by non-workers.
The aim is (to quote Maude) that they “get paid by the state on a proper
contract” and he acknowledged that if public sector staff bid to run a
service then they might also find themselves subject to EU law requiring
a competitive tendering process.
So this is simply a means of privatising more public services, not
socialising them as real mutualism demands. But there is a problem with
even discussing mutuals – it raises subversive ideas.
For, if, as Maude suggests “successful employee owned businesses further
demonstrates the viability” of public sector mutuals and that “we have
to assume that this is applicable across the public sector” then let us
raise the obvious: If co-operatives are so beneficial in the public
sector, then why not also abolish wage-slavery in the private sector?
Co-operatives can “challenge traditional public service structures and
unleash the pent-up ideas and innovation that has been stifled by
bureaucracy.” The same can be said of hierarchy in the capitalist firm,
a structure that has proven itself only efficient at funnelling what we
produce into the hands of the few.
Co-operatives demonstrate that we don’t need a class of economic masters
anywhere. Proudhon never restricted co-operatives to the public sector:
“There is mutuality… when… all the workers, instead of working for an
owner who pays them and keeps their product, work for one another…
extend the principle of mutuality…to all the Workers’ Associations as a
unit, and you will have created a form of civilisation that, from all
points of view — political, economic, aesthetic — differs completely
from previous civilisations.”
Discussing co-operatives raises the spectre of alternatives to
capitalism, of the co-operative commonwealth, of real mutual aid, of
workers’ self-management and, ultimately, of anarchism as an alternative
to both private and state capitalism – “a solution based upon equality,
– in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the
negation of political economy and the end of property” (Proudhon).
There is a substantial difference between the idea of co-operatives
suggested, pursued and permitted from above by politicians and those
being demanded and created from below by workers. Anarchists need to
encourage the latter while resisting the former as creeping
privatisation. We doubt the Tories will, like Proudhon, urge that public
works, like railways, no longer serve to “fatten certain contractors”
but be handed over “to responsible companies, not of capitalists, but of
workers”! Similarly, if workers were seizing their workplaces and
mutualising them by direct action we can be sure that they would be
ConDemned in no uncertain terms and Cameron’s “Big Society” nonsense
quickly replaced by the “Big Stick.”
So there are areas of opportunity for libertarians in these discussions.
While the Tories are raising mutuals as part of a wider attack on the
working class, it also raises issues about the current system and
alternatives to it.
Unlike the debasement of “socialism” by the left (equating it with
nationalisation), the debasement of “mutualism” is by the right
(including New Labour who first raised mutuals before the election).
This may give make the resistance to this attempt easier but it would be
a mistake to simply ignore or dismiss this debasement. This is because
they can be used as a means of raising genuine libertarian ideas and
demands, to be a means of pushing struggles from mere resistance to
social revolution.