Prolegomena for Scientific Mutualism and Meta-socialism

For even gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed Him! How shall we, the most murderous of all murderers, ever console ourselves?

For even equalities putrefy! Equality is dead! Equality remains dead! And we leftists have killed It! How shall we, the cannibalisers of our own ideals, console ourselves? For we mad men, torchbearers in a dark age, have arrived too early! The more we cannibalise our own ideals, the more we must deceive ourselves we are what we desecrate! We mad men, the mutualist, the trailblazer shine light in the depths of caves that swim in darkness.

For the left has become an abomination, a desecration, and dishonouring of what it once stood for. Its ethos needs resurrecting, but its praxis must change. Moral dogmatism, a holier than thou mentality, plagues today's left, not pragmatic radical reform. It is the task of us mad men, the objective of us trailblazers, that we raise the corpse of Lazarus from the sickly death he endured.

Raising this corpse is no easy task. The New Left killed radical political economy in the 1960s giving free rein for the neoliberal right in the economic sphere. An excessive focus on cultural injustice towards minorities has taken precedence over worker solidarity. Social democrats embraced welfare capitalism abandoning a greater socialist vision altogether. So-called democratic socialists prostituted democracy and anti-capitalism to dictators like Castro, Chavez, and Maduro.

These false idols have led the left astray. We must destroy them! All of them! The Marxist religion! The Romantic puritan left! The postmodern left! The identitarian left! The authoritarian left! There is no just society with such idols. Opium is not the path to justice but to delusion and addiction.

Meta-Socialist Realpolitik

We begin with Realpolitik. Realpolitik is not Machiavellianism. The ends don't necessarily justify the means. Instead, Realpolitik is a method of doing politics - a praxis - in which we translate our ideals into concrete goals that are realistically attainable. There is no point seeking absolute equality when it is unattainable, for instance. However, implementing universal healthcare will improve the material conditions for workers and the populace.

We should understand the historical context that we live in, identify the forces at work, and subjugate those forces to accomplish our objectives. These forces may be social, political, economic, or technological. Artificial intelligence is the latest technological force which will severely impact our economy. Rent-seeking, the manipulating of economic conditions, is the primary driver of wealth creation, not productive and industrial entrepreneurism.

The dynamics of evolutionary economic change plays a central role within scientific mutualist and meta-socialist thought. Only by understanding such dynamics can we subjugate them to the principles of mutuality and equality. Our realistic objectives should naturally flow from the material conditions of society.

Enough of utopian fantasies and empty slogans! Real change demands Realpolitik infused with moral clarity. Strategic action translating noble ideals into progress is what socialist realpolitik looks like! Not ruthlessly killing off all your opponents in a Red Terror.

The Principles of Scientific Mutualism and Meta-Socialism

The Principles of Mutuality and Equality

Mutuality and equality are two polarities which require balancing for a sustainable socialist society. Mutuality emphasises the predominance of mutualisms - relationships which benefit both parties. Equality emphasises the equal empowerment of exercising one's liberty.

In the Anglo-Saxon world, we traditionally see equality and liberty as being antagonistic. No! They are the same. There is no equality without freedom and freedom without equality. The meta-socialists reject this wholeheartedly instead emphasising the polarities of cooperative growth and individual liberty.

The Principle of Mutuality - The polity should be organised through the predominance of the synergistic emergence of mutualistic symbioses between people, institutions, and the material forces of society.

Mutualism is not mere cooperation; but the synergistic fusion of talents and aspirations. The polity should be greater than the sum of the parts. That's solidarity!

The Principle of Equality - The polity should be organised through empowering everyone in expressing their will to power - the creative self-overcoming of themselves realising their purpose in life. No one should face domination from others.

True equality is not a handout from benevolent elites, as those pernicious state socialists advocate, but the empowerment to shape our own destinies and the material conditions we face.

Mutualism contra Parasitism

We must wage war against the forces of parasitism. Parasitic relationships involve one party gaining at the expense of others harming them in the process. Harm is the operative word. Evolutionary biologists term one-sided relationships which harms neither "commensalistic". These relations are tolerable but too many of them are unfitting for a mutualistic polity. Parasitic relations are intolerable because it means we have a zero-sum game. Winners entails losers.

Some parasitical forces are in fact necessary. Suppose we want to move away from coal powered electricity to nuclear powered electricity. Coal miners will lose out as we transition. We mutualists don't oppose such transitions because some gain at the expense of the other. Instead, we desire new symbioses empowering the coal miner in finding a new productive activity.

A war against parasitism does not entail the wholesale destruction of parasitical forces. Instead, it involves blunting them and building mutualistic alternatives. Where they are losers, we want institutions that can make them winners gain perhaps elsewhere. Socialists that seek to eliminate workers losing entirely work against the natural dynamical trends of the economy which makes their venture unsustainable in the long-term.

Combatting these parasitical forces is a core objective of the mutualist. The primary objective, however, is developing the institutional pillars for an anti-fragile and sustainable meta-socialist mutualistic polity. The socialist polity should not only be resilient in the face of hardship but grow stronger. The conditions of its success should further breed the conditions required for its success. For instance, a healthier society results in a more productive society which results in a wealthier society that can afford better healthcare treatment for the citizens of the polity. An unhealthy society will more likely fall into the snare of reactionaryism.

The Theory of Evolutionary Revolution

Evolutionary revolution is the strategy of the mutualist. Substantial systematic reform is the only means of creating a genuine mutualistic polity. Gradualist reforms lack the energy and purpose of truly transforming the system. Social democratic parties like the SPD and Labour are no longer agents of progressive change; they are very much conservative. Violent revolutions impose order that does not arise naturally from the materialistic conditions of the day. We saw this in the October Revolution, in which Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks tried imposing economic systems onto Russia through force.

The Radicalis Principle - utilise crises for bringing about revolutionary change to the roots of specifically chosen parts of our order, while favouring gradualist reform creating the conditions for the next revolutionary change in between crises.

Meta-socialism is a republican theory of government. Both the continuity of functioning institutions and the need for transformational change of reactionary forces and institutions are essential for an effective socialist strategy in the long term. The principle combines elements of revolutionary and reformist socialism into one neat strategic principle. We call this the theory of evolutionary revolution.

Ultramodern Political Economy - Practical Applications of Scientific Mutualism

Evolutionary revolution necessitates understanding the beast we'll be subjugating, but also our own strengths and weaknesses. As Sūnzǐ acknowledged:

"Know the enemy,
Know yourself,
And victory
Is never in doubt"

Political economy is at the heart of this understanding. Without adequate understanding, socialists of all stripes will fail in attaining their objectives.

This is why state socialists (or state capitalists), and social democrats have failed. They understood neither the beast they were trying to subjugate nor themselves. Eventually, the beast attacked the fragility of their systems which the socialist and social democrat were blind to, resulting in collapse. This is why both the post-war consensus, and the Soviet experiment collapsed.

Socialist projects in the past have failed because of their fragility. They've relied on two flawed strategies - direct and indirect control over profitability in the economy:

1. Direct Control: The state controls the means of production through nationalisation. This grants control over the economy. However, the creative destructive dynamics of the economy are internalised within the state itself. Consequently, the state either cannibalises its own power base creating instability or becomes an authoritarian regime seeking the unnatural subjugating of the economy .
2. Indirect Control: Social democrats redistribute the surplus we gain feeling investment in the economy and welfare initiatives to the poor. Unfortunately, the social democrats kick the ladder from under their own feet because the surplus fuels prosperity so redistribution acts as a long-term drag on prosperity. This redistributive strategy becomes self-defeating and unsustainable in the long run. For example, James Callaghan's Labour government implemented regressive monetarist ideas before Thatcher came to power. They laid the path for neoliberals destroying the edifice of the post-war consensus creating the advent of neoliberalism.

Social democracies never influenced the profit motive sufficiently merely taxing away generated surplus value undermining the sustainability of the redistributive mechanism. Socialists tried controlling the motive but undermined the very essence of their regime which the economy became an extension of.

Scientific mutualists, on the other hand, require that profitability must be subjugated to the principles of mutuality and equality. This requires a revolution in the market mechanism, which radical political economist Anwar Shaikh terms "real competition".

Real Competition

What is real competition? Firms necessarily seek an advantage over their competitors through price-cutting and cost-cutting behaviour. Firms with the best technical and labour conditions for production have their profits equalised with fellow high-performing firms. The equalisation of such profits enables the long-term growth of the firm.

As Anwar Shaikh argued, the classical economists were correct in arguing that profitability regulates the economy. Both aggregate supply and aggregate demand are regulated by the profit motive. Keynesians, including post-Keynesians and Modern Monetary Theory advocates, focus too much on the pivot of aggregate demand while neglecting the influence of aggregate supply. This results in a one-dimensional political economy.

Anwar Shaikh: “The Fundamental Questions About Capitalism Seem to be Coming Back”

Anwar Shaikh is one of the world’s leading radical economists, whose work has challenged the way we think about capitalism. In an interview with Jacobin, Shaikh gives a concise overview of the ideas set out in his landmark book Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises.

Anwar Shaikh

Location, Location, Location - Gesellian Mutualism

Land is a commons which we all should share an equal part of and should share the benefits from it equally. Alas, this is not an apt descriptor of the world but a normative claim about land. Despite our reliance on land for sustenance and production, we do not all share the benefits of land equally. Landowners gain unequal access to land and profit from mere ownership. We entrench economic inequality by persisting with the unequal distribution of land.

Land is scarce and some pieces of land are more valuable than others. It also is fantastic store of value. As a result, landowners can leverage the economic power they gain from ownership extracting wealth created by the community for their personal benefit. Economists call this rent-seeking which is parasitic. Rentier capitalism has metastasised itself into the consciousness and fabric of the Anglo-Saxon neoliberal world order.

Inspired by German market socialist Silvio Gesell, we should socialise all land so that the entirety of society benefits from the proceedings which create value within land. Gesellian socialists want economic rent capturing by the mutualist polity distributing it through public investment and welfare initiatives for the benefit of all. This will help reorientate the profit motive away from parasitic ventures towards productive ventures which have the capacity for benefiting all.

Money, Money, Money - Real Monetary Political Economy

Financiers The elites concentrate wealth The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is a defining characteristic of our monetary system. Our monetary system is engineered ensuring the accumulation of it is concentrated in the hands of the few creating inequalities. This engineering also ensures that economic growth is a necessity. Furthermore, those who control money creation, primarily the banks, have significant undue political and economic influence over the whole of society.

Our economies consist of credit-money created primarily by private banks within the private sector when loans are issued. This money also comes with interest which all debtors must pay to creditors distributing wealth from debtors to creditors. Creditors also happen to be part of the top 10% income band. Money trickles-up from the bottom 90% who are primarily debtors to the top 10% who are primarily creditors. Rather than "trickle-down" economics we have "trickle-up" economics. What do people primarily get credit for? Land!

Not only does interest necessitate wealth's concentration, but perpetual economic growth becomes necessary. Suppose you have a loan of £100k and over the period of the loan you pay £100k in interest. That's a total of £200k paid to the bank. Where does the other £100k come from? The debtor won't repay the loan without economic growth.

Financial instability also arises because our monocurrency systems focus heavily on the efficient utilisation of money. The monetary system must balance two polarities - efficiency and robustness. Efficiency matters for utilising money and generating wealth. Robustness matters so we don't have constant crises in the economic. Having a single currency places too much emphasis on efficiency, as shown by financial crashes that keep happening around the world.

A diverse monetary ecosystem balances the financial systems resilience and efficiency - just like the Dao wants yin and yang balanced. Introducing complementary currencies increases diversity. These complementary currencies should have a different character to them. For example, in the video below Lietaer argues that Switzerland avoids instability because it has two currencies - the cyclical Swiss Franc and the counter-cyclical complementary Wir currency (short for Wirtschaftsring and the German "we"). For general use and during booms, the Swiss Franc is better than the Wir complementary currency. In downturns, though, the Wir currency has advantages that means people will use it which helps reduce the impact of poor economic performance.

Socialists of all stripes should advocate monetary reform - both the nature of money itself and who has power over money need changing drastically. Rather than eliminate currencies, socialist should add more currencies serving particular economic functions. Land reform and the proposed monetary reform are insufficient for the changes needed. Even if we democratised control over money creation, it would have a desirable but limited impact in attaining socialism. We'd merely live in a more democratic capitalism.

Profitability, Macrodynamics, and Money - A Self-Regulating Currency: The Future of Money

Profitability regulates aggregate supply and demand providing the conditions for economic growth. Who has power over profits has power over who benefits from the gains of economic progress. Capitalism concentrates such power in the hands of the few. Socialists seeks the dispersion of that power.

So far, we have seen that land ownership and interest enhances profitability through rent-seeking behaviours. Banks profit from creating money by receiving interest payments. Entrepreneur's and producer's see their surplus distributed to banks rather than reimbursed back into their ventures. We've proposed means of combatting nefarious forces having an ill effect on profitability. However, subjugating the profit mechanism itself is necessary if socialism will truly replace capitalism.

Meta-socialism necessitates the subjugation of profitability to the principle of egalitarianism and mutuality. The socialist regime will be unsustainable and unstable otherwise. The key to this is further monetary reform.

Imagine we had a currency in which each unit was an artificially intelligent cell that increases in value when its use promotes ecologically sustainable endeavours and encourages mutual aid. This currency would also deprecate in value when we act in ways antagonistic towards that. Also imagine a counter-cyclical currency whose worth becomes apparent during recessions and becomes unappealing during economic booms.

Self-regulating currencies offer a means of regulating and managing the profitability mechanism so that it's consistent with the aims of a socialist society. The key is developing an AI kernel creating the rule set which enables the regulation of the profit mechanism. The concept is the value of currency fluctuates making desirable activities profitable while undesirable activities not-as-profitable. If we want ecological sustainable activity, then making such activities more profitable than ecologically damaging activity is desirable. This is subjugating the profit mechanism.

The exogenous control of money through state apparatus is how capitalists and socialists typically seek influence over money or monetary policy. The locus of control is external of the rules governing that currency. Socialists hopelessly apply their principles to a capitalist kernel creating the seeds for their own demise. We can only sigh at the socialist's foolishness. Socialism will eventually morph into capitalism, as we've seen in China, or implode as we've seen with the USSR.

Suppose we attain money's value by balancing exogenous economic forces with the endogenous agency within the unit of currency itself. The currency will be a neural network with each unit being a node. We define its value recursively - in terms of itself. The recursive function, its endogenous component, terminates based on a function assigning value based on properties of its usage at the time. Units of currency will apply a demurrage charge onto its own value when it detects its usage will encourage ecological unsustainable behaviours. The purchasing power of the currency can even increase when the artificially intelligent currency recognises a dearth of purchasing power is causing harm such as poverty, recessions, etc. Why not make money itself determine its own value based on utilisation, reason, evidence, and the common good?

Internalising the imperative logic of socialism into a unit of currency revolutionises the nature of money and alters the dynamics of profitability. The currency itself will make socially desirable ventures such as poverty alleviating schemes profitable through altering its own value relative to the value of the rest of the currency. The logic of the market itself changes. Real competition that promotes environmental decay will be penalised by becoming unprofitable.

Despite the dynamism inherent with the currency, it would need well defined rules, so it still has a reasonable degree of predictability. It is this predictability which socialises us to use money in different ways to how we currently do. Money's neutrality makes no differentiation between economic activity that destroys the planet and that which sustains civilisation. It's much less problematic when we don't want authorities telling us which endeavours we can and cannot pursue. This is the dynamic polarity between mutuality - ecological conservation - and equality - economic liberty.

The notion of a self-regulating currency is purely conceptual. It's more a vision of how socialists can influence the market mechanism so that it works towards mutualistic and egalitarian objectives. Socialists must conduct research in designing the kernel of this currency so that it has the desired outcomes in practice. Currency users must trust the self-regulating currency otherwise they rightfully won't accept it as money. The self-regulating currency is not an alternative to having a complementary currency system.

Socialists have already thought of using artificial intelligence as a means of simulating economic planning replacing the market mechanism. The advantage of the market mechanism is its evolutionary essence, and its far greater computing power than even an AI. AI inside a unit of currency only needs applies its programmed rules, while adapting to the circumstances within the framework of those rules.

"Workers of the world, unite!"

The spectre of climate disaster looms. At this critical juncture, we must act decisively. We stand at a crossroads: persist on this path of stagnation and watch our world unravel or dare to forge a new direction rooted in reason, compassion, and bold innovation. Let us cast off the shackles of outdated ideologies and rise to meet the challenges of our time with courage and conviction. 

Workers of all backgrounds must unite, transcending divisions and building a new egalitarian order. By embracing mutualist principles, we will create a society that values all individuals equally and harnesses collective power for the common good. The future of civilisation in the Anthropocene depends on our ability to realise this vision, ensuring a sustainable and equitable world for generations to come.

Enacting and proselytising the new political economy are necessary for this egalitarian vision to become reality. In the wise words of Gene Kranz:

"Failure is not an option!"