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A review by nooknook
Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up by Sara Horowitz
2.0
I appreciated the history of labor and mutualist organizations, but that’s about all I appreciated about this book.
I was in no way convinced by the argument that mutualism (not socialism) is the answer to our problems. The author recognizes that neoliberal capitalism is a problem, but suggests using capitalism to fix capitalism, which makes no sense. Mutualism does mean that workers have control over profit—but I don’t understand why this is somehow better than giving workers the means of production themselves. The idea that we should stop criticizing capitalism and government seems plain defeatist to me. And her rhetoric of personal responsibility and resilience us plain neoliberal ideology. Ultimately, she seems to fundamentally misunderstand communism—in a true communist society, there would be no top-down or forceful revolution; the state would no longer need to exist after the transition occurred, and anyway it would be a more true embodiment of the people than in a capitalist society.
The examples she provided of mutualism did not convince me that it would be worth abandoning a socialist ideal for. We have gaping wealth inequality & deeply engrained racism, which can’t be fixed by local or special-interest groups. We need reparations, and that needs to happen at the government level. (Jeff Bezos won’t willingly give up his stolen profits.)
We also need global reparations, which leads me to another point—the author makes no mention of what this system might mean internationally. Capitalism has unevenly developed the globe, which calls for dramatic redistribution of wealth and resources. Her (brief) use of the kibbutz as a model embodies this failure to account for how wealth has accrued in the West as a direct result of racism and settler colonialism.
It’s a no for me.
I was in no way convinced by the argument that mutualism (not socialism) is the answer to our problems. The author recognizes that neoliberal capitalism is a problem, but suggests using capitalism to fix capitalism, which makes no sense. Mutualism does mean that workers have control over profit—but I don’t understand why this is somehow better than giving workers the means of production themselves. The idea that we should stop criticizing capitalism and government seems plain defeatist to me. And her rhetoric of personal responsibility and resilience us plain neoliberal ideology. Ultimately, she seems to fundamentally misunderstand communism—in a true communist society, there would be no top-down or forceful revolution; the state would no longer need to exist after the transition occurred, and anyway it would be a more true embodiment of the people than in a capitalist society.
The examples she provided of mutualism did not convince me that it would be worth abandoning a socialist ideal for. We have gaping wealth inequality & deeply engrained racism, which can’t be fixed by local or special-interest groups. We need reparations, and that needs to happen at the government level. (Jeff Bezos won’t willingly give up his stolen profits.)
We also need global reparations, which leads me to another point—the author makes no mention of what this system might mean internationally. Capitalism has unevenly developed the globe, which calls for dramatic redistribution of wealth and resources. Her (brief) use of the kibbutz as a model embodies this failure to account for how wealth has accrued in the West as a direct result of racism and settler colonialism.
It’s a no for me.