Mutualist Economic Theory Part One

I wrote an essay on Mutualist Economics for the website http://www.theanarchist.org.  I'll post it in parts because I don't want to flood this place with all of my SHIT.  If anyone sees this that doesn't know already, please visit TheAnarchist.  It's a fine site with a lot of info that a good friend of mine is working quite hard on.  I've also been asked to be a co-editor/contributor, so I'm sure there will be more from me there in the future.

I. Basics: When is property right, and when is it wrong?
Human beings have a set of self-imposed standards or “rights” ingrained in themselves by whatever force any of us choose to believe placed us here on this Earth. Among these include the right to live and the right to voice oneself under any circumstances. Also among these is the right to have something to hold. Anyone old enough to earn money by any means knows what its like to hold something in ones hands, and think, “this is mine, damn it, and I’ve earned it”. The experience is the same for almost everyone at first. You’ve perhaps gotten your first paycheck from your first part time job, and you’ve gone and treated yourself to a new CD, book, or whatever you would choose to purchase. This feeling is right, and it is good.

But we must pose the question: Where is the line drawn between earning and taking? A sixteen-year old boy works for eight hours in the back of a grocery store, and he has earned whatever he has purchased. A thirty-eight year old Wall Street savvy business man who makes the decision to fire a couple of hundred people so his stock will go up 25 percent is taking whatever he acquires (this is aside from the fact that his “stock” is essentially imaginary anyway). But the exploitation doesn’t have to be on such a grand scale, either. A fourty-year old, five foot eight inches tall white male forces African American slaves to pick his meager amounts of cotton for him to sell at the market, and he is taking what he gets no less than the savvy business man is.

Property is right when it is earned through an amount of labor equivalent to the value of said property. A man builds a small cabin next to a stream, and that small cabin is his and his alone, and he has the right to do what he wishes with it. He may live in it, and so may his sons, and so may the sons of his sons. Or he may trade the house away for something of equal base value. The decision is in his hands, the same ones that built the house.

Property is wrong when it is gained by conquest or exploitation. A man rides in on a pristine white horse, slaughters countless natives, and claims the land as his own. This is wrong. A man wrings another man for all he is worth via an insurance scam and then purchases his house when he puts it on the market for next to nothing. This is wrong. Now that we have done something so bold as to clearly define right and wrong (though admittedly in a limited context), we’ll move on.


TO BE CONTINUED