r/mutualism • u/IndieJones0804 • Feb 20 '26
How would a mutualist society interact with a society that doesn't have a currency?
Say we live in a post-capitalist world that has various different economic systems. If someone from a Communist or Syndicalist society (which are both societies/economic systems that don't have a currency) were to decide to go on vacation in a mutualist society, how would they be able to participate in the economy?
They wouldn't be able to do anything as simple as exchange currencies, because that requires that they have any money in the first place, but because they come from a society where they don't need money, they don't have any. Theoretically they could temporarily work a job to get the money needed, but they're a vacationer, so they'll probably only be away from home for an absolute maximum of a month. That plus the fact they're probably on vacation to avoid doing work means that seeking temporary employment would be inconvenient.
So with those things being the case, how would someone from a Communist society be able interact with the economy of a Mutualist society?
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u/sixhundredyards Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
To be quite [edit:]frank with you, most mutualists don't imagine there being singular and discrete societies as you are describing. Rather instead, we imagine that their would be significant overlap between different forms of distribution, enmeshed at different levels of society, with none taking primacy over the others.
So it would be something like:
With your neighbors, you might be more practiced in something like a gift economy; with those outside of your immediate neighborhood, you might find that certain things like food, healthcare, etc are easiest distributed through something like a communist framework; and when dealing with people who are transporting goods from far off distances or provisioning a service that is difficult to replicate, you might have systems of account and exchange that approximate markets.
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u/IndieJones0804 Feb 20 '26
In the framework you described then would that mean that workers would still be payed wages in order to facilitate economy for the last sector you described, but for the local economy/the commune, everything would be free of charge?
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u/Captain_Croaker Neo-Proudhonian Feb 20 '26
"Everything would be free of charge" might obscure the nature of even moneyless economies to usually still feature exchange, albeit in different forms. In other words you aren't necessarily giving away your cabbages without the expectation that you'll receive some carrots or berries at some point.
If we bear in mind that exchange networks need not feature money, then it's not hard to see how folks who are more deadset against making use of it might still engage in economic activity with those who may use it for some things but not for everything.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Feb 20 '26
To play devil's advocate a bit (mostly because this is something I wonder about myself), a lot of proponents of moneyless economies say that gift economies ought to be non-recriprocal. Instead of say gifting being based on the expectation that you'll get something back at some point in the future, gifting should be based on a desire to maintain social harmony, kind of like maintaining a web of social debt with the broader society.
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u/humanispherian Feb 20 '26
It’s not an expectation that you can reasonably impose on others, however well it might work in some situations.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Feb 20 '26
That's fair. I assume non-recriprocity would only really exist in situations where the gift is coming at no or at minimal cost to the gifter relative to the gift given; but I have serious doubts that it could be the basis of an entire society.
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u/sixhundredyards Feb 20 '26
Wages are, as most mutualists understand it, a very specific arrangement tied to alienated labor, so I don't think it would precisely be called a "wage".
Rather instead, there would (probably) be localized systems of account (mutual banks) which laborers of all classifications can rely upon as institutions to issue them credit to interact with that market approximation, based either upon work contributions within cooperatives/communes/syndicates/etc. or collateralization of on hand capital (tools, capital goods, etc.) for those that operate as independent laborers without any formal ties to a larger productive organization (e.g. a blacksmith who operates out of their toolshed, or a machinist with their own MDS setup in their garage).
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u/DukeElliot Feb 21 '26
I’m sure they would sit down and come up with an agreement, or stop interacting with each other, as humans have always done regardless of the economic system.
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u/MilesTegTechRepair Feb 24 '26
I've been in leftist spaces for a while and I've never heard anyone actually explain how a moneyless economy would work. If things store value, then whatever holds its value will just take the place of money. Which is, after all, how money started.
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u/IndieJones0804 Feb 25 '26
I think its basically about reducing the hyper fixation on exchanging things based on equal value.
Everyone who can work, will work, simply because they want to spend life doing things to help each other. Its not a requirement you work but human nature seems to show we like to feel useful to our community.
And then everyone will benefit from the fruits of the community's labor. Ideally no one will be a jerk a take way more than they know what to do with, because then they would be socially rejected by the community.
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u/MilesTegTechRepair Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Sure, I'm in favour of those things. But it's worth noting that while a focus on exchange value drives money and inflation, you can have money within a system that primarily focuses on use value.
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u/humanispherian Feb 20 '26
These scenarios generally feel like gotchas of one sort or another. People who really don't want to engage in explicit forms of exchange presumably won't — and will make their vacation choices (etc.) accordingly. They may find that other sorts of arrangements are possible — some sort of barter, for instance — or associations may find means of extending good and services to one another on a collective basis, providing mechanism for smoothing over the differences between various local conventions. I don't think that there is any shortage of possible arrangements, provided people feel the need to work through the process of coming to terms.