THIS is what my high school teachers were afraid of??

Since you did Proudhon, do one on Max Stiner's egoism, I recommend reading All Things are Nothing to Me the Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner by Jacob Blumenfield.

It's a shame Proudhon's ideas aren't as well known as Marx's when he had so much influence on Marx. But Proudhon actually goes even further than Marx in showing the relation government has to economic exploitation.

Proudhon is the man. Many anarchists like to act as if mutualism was simply a crude first attempt at theorizing what a post-capitalist society may be like. The theories "evolved" into "real anarchism," i.e. anarcho-communism. I have nothing against communist anarchists, and perhaps it is an improvement in some ways, but there's nothing to say that mutualism wouldn't be better for certain sectors of the economy, certain historical periods, or simply just preferred by some. It certainly seems more palatable to the more individualistic anarchists, who did indeed exist despite them being largely ignored today. Mutualists and individualists are not anarcho-capitalists. If you want to see change, you've got to be flexible with your tactics. Why not have an economy with a multitude of post-capitalist arrangements and see what works best? Long story short, it's good to see mutualism getting some love. Great video, my friend!

Seriously underrated channel. Refreshing to see Anarchism being discussed on its own merit, and not merely as an extension of the left or the right.

The beginning of this video really caught my attention. And this has left me wanting to read all of Proudhon. Well done Lewis, fascinating!

Returning to an utopian thinking reminds me of Mark Fisher and his writings on lost futures. Maybe through utopian thinking we are able to overcome this nihilism of lost futures.

I think we need fresh ideas (or even good, but previously ignored old ideas) more than ever. This year has shown the limitations and flaws of our current systems with alarming intensity.

Next, Stirner. Then, Bakunin (including Feuerbach's and Hegel's influence)

Mutualism: the ideal market system

Would be marvelous if you did a video on the Ukrainian Revolutionary anarchist Nestor Makhno who established the only successful anarchist state to date ! would be interesting to explore his thought and action in relation to intellectual history and the combination between anarchism and nationalism !

I appreciate Mutualism, I previously didn't understand it until now. Thank you!

I'm so happy to hear you can do this full time! You have single-handedly reignited my love for philosophy. I enjoy your videos very much and I look forward to seeing this channel grow in the future :)

I've always been afraid to dig the mutualism hole but now I'm glad I did. Lots of ancaps are coming here and I'm the latest. And Im I'm old school ancap. I've been on that bandwagon forever. BUT I'm a voluntaryist before that. And first and foremost I recognize my station, as a worker. If I can consent voluntarily to a system like mutualism. I don't see a problem with that and i think it's highly desirable for proletarians like me who want anarchy but who don't want what is either feudalism in disguise (ancap) or fucking tanky statism (Marxist leninist communism) I've always liked Proudhon and he was my induction into base anarchy. But I never dug that hole into mutualism itself. I finally did. And class consciousness is real. I do like credit unions, I believe in them a LOT and had no idea they came from mutualism. My family is big on labor unions and I hated them but then realized I don't hate the concept I hate what they've become in MY generation. These ideas in and of themselves are good ideas. But the hard leftists who are really just liberals cosplaying as revolutionaries bring all these other ideas in that are unnecessary unnecessary to the topics of philosophy and economics. Like this whole woke ideology with its militant political correctness. Leninists love that horse shit and I'm not on that train. But I do like the idea of reforming the system rather than relying on revolution as a first resort and then trying to force communism OR basically making people kings because they have the first rights to something, rights they created under liberalism which I don't believe in. Morality is objective and changes anyway. I don't believe in objective morality. So long as the individual is free and not forced to take part in a system I'm all for it. I have a feeling 99% of the lone wolves out there won't actually be lone wolves, hence why they aren't now. It's very rare. But as long as their ability to opt out is recognized I say let's build the society we want. But the people who want to opt out need to opt fully out. We can't carry their weight anymore.

I love these videos 🥰 can't wait for more! Mutualism must be normalized damn it!!

Personally, I think that Proudhon's conception of "communism", and resulting aversion to it, was heavily circumscribed by a certain limited number of communist currents that were prominent in his time, namely those revolving around figures like Blanqui and Marx. Some of his issues with communism were, imo, tho, resolved with later libertarian/anarchist communist theorists like Dejaqcue, Cafiero, Kropotkin, etc.

This was a great introductory video for Proudhon.

One of those videos i saw 4 times in the row Thank You so much

Great video. Thank you for compiling this info and making it so palatable for those of us that hadn't read any of Proudhon's work.

So glad someone is mentioning Mutualism. Even if I am super late.

Hope you get bigger and bigger over time, you deserve it.

It's a good time for this video. Property is Theft!

This writer was loved and visited Leo Tolstoy who shared many of his opinions on Anarchy and Christian values being one and the same and the only real solution to a Golden age of the Kingdom of heaven coming to Earth

Brilliant video, thank you for helping me learn about these interesting concepts! New subscriber 😄💙

EXTREMELY well delivered !!! Wish I could explain as clearly as you did here ... WELL DONE

Excellent breakdown! It is exactly this kind of deep dive into anarchist thought we need these days.

Congrats on going full time. You've put in the work and it shows

I resonate the most with this “flavor” of anarchy. Makes the most sense.

an excellent prief intro to Proudhun's moral philosophy .. Brilliant .

I came here after watching 'A Man of Action'. Great discourse.

Proudhon needs some more recognition on the left.

Absolutely brilliant explanation!

Good man for doing these videos, I'm revisiting my favorite writers after highschool

I know you answered it shortly earlier. But since you covered Proudhon indepht now, I would really love to see an indepht comparison between Rawls and Proudhon. Thank you for the quality content

Another great video, thanks.

Love this topic

I would love to see you do videos on people like Goldman, Kropotkin, Bakunin and Stirner. Do you intend on doing any videos of the sort?

interesting thoughts and nice video man!

Brilliant topic

Handsome dude tickling me brain button. Thank you🎩

Great video. Nice emphasis on anarchism as inner direction but how to cohere everyone's individual inner direction, at same time? Exegesis requires praxis philosophy 🔧 for the libertarianism that has run amok in USA.

Awesome & Thanks :)

Liked and agreed with the comments at the end of the video!

QUESTION: How is Innovation communal? Great Video!

Would expertise not be considered when determining value? Or is that factored into what is considered labor? What of the man who can make nails the fastest? Would he not slow down his work so as to make his nails more valuable? And what of quality? If a man produces a nail that breaks twice as fast compared to his neighbors nails should they be worth the same?

Read; "Parecon - Michael Albert" for a more modern vision of this sort of society.

I love the new green screen! How much dit it cost?

Is there and English translation of 'Du principe de l'art?'

For labor: If it costs you 100 hours to put together this video but someone can put together a equally informative one with with the same run time in 25 hours are you "paid" for the time you put in overall or the outcome? Why would you be paid more for taking longer and why would they be paid more for something which took them less time? Or is it based on the number of people who watch and if they like it (wait is KZfaq mutalist?)

Does he make a distinction between a state and government?

Hi, for a school project I’m writing a report about Proudhon. I have trouble finding sources, because English is not my first language and all websites I’ve visited are hard for me to read. Do you have some tips on finding information on the internet?

Have you tried the Invisible Committee? they are brilliant, a vanguard

🎯

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL! This makes me believe we need to cancel privacy. Also men talk to much and women are never present in Thinking unfortunately. Most of the philosophy channels never talk about women's opinions. But now I sound like a feminist (god forbid with all the TERFs around huh) :3 But on the mutualism, I really don't know (a reluctant communist anarchist). It sounds amazing in theory but "Do to others as you wish to be done to yourself" is something that people REALLY don't want to do. I mean imagine someone like me who is constntly splaining things to people. I'd feel petrified by that much splaining. Also what about extremely heterogeneous groups... like I'm a migrant in France, I'm never going to have people agree with my cultural norms, they're going to outvote me every time. And I can't even imagine an introvert spending more than 10 minutes with my activist friends, they'd probably have a panic attack and think we're oversharing all the time... Also contracts are a part of "law of obligations" And just to give an example for a debate let's assess what we would do if a (white) woman in distress called us to save her from a (black) man who was filming her (without her consent, AND because she didn't have a leash on her dog) while she was all alone in a park with her dog.

if money gives purchasing power to efficiency, that is if people always want to spend less people will always tend to get less but if people want to spend more eventually they will only get more money. But if people naturally value hard and quality work without money we can change the behavior of the economy without the distortion of market value. I think we tend to forget money behaves.

*¡pondering and wondering at 10:56 am Pacific Daylight Savings Time on Wednesday, 16 March 2022 Common Era or CE formerly known as Ano Domini or AD!*

This is very informative, but massively undermined buy the many ad's in wierd places.

I wonder how labor theory value distorts supply and demand for there are a great many products which have high and quality labor that under market value would be cheap. also some of the products that employ the most might become relatively more expensive.

See to me this sounds a lot like voluntaryism but with respect and meritocracy between workers taking center stage.

In anarchist society how can be sure to preserve inalienable rights if there are no laws? There are rules tho, how would them be decided/established?

This shit is awesome!

3:22 that's actually an utilitarian moral law

Stirner is next i hope!

How about now when labor can be done by robots but innovation comes from human minds (at least for now)?

Look at all the order in U.S. cities when they stop enforcing crime. Does the honestly and consideration necessary for peace manifest or no?

.mmmh a "moral low" that drives the humankind it sounds to me pretty dangerous, but thank you for this video.

The one question i have for anarchist, How do you feel about pedophilia? should they be allowed to to value their individual self interest over the collective? How do feel about a collective looking through the internet and stopping pedos from sharing abusive material? Should the collective protect the most vulnerable?

If your defining moral law as purely an enlightened self intrest, that sounds rather like the abscence of morality, not it's presence. For morality to mean anything it must be distinct from self intrest.

Who was the first thinker who introduced the word communism? I thought they ware marx and engels in 1848 but "what is property was published in 1840 and indeed Proudhon mentioned communism.

"earning a living" is a myth. We all deserve right to property and food. That's the bare minimum necessary for one to live the good life.

so it's basically just communal egoism?

according to proudhon i would say that an anarchist only obeys to the law of necessity.it is the only concept to which everybody has to give respect.

Do one on julius evola

btw, what definition of communism was he using? cus at least the recent definition is a stateless, classless, moneyless society with common property of the means of producton

innovation is communal? how? only the brightest/most creative thinkers & inventors, who have time/resources to incubate them, will come up with the new big ideas that can innovate, improve, & transform society with new technology - then actually putting those ideas into practice with functioning prototypes & inventions, not to mention mass producing & marketing them, is another feat to achieve...patents on innovations claim the ideas for the inventors to personally benefit from, or sell as intellectual property (not to be shared communally)

I liked this but “Imagine all the people…” is for the birds.

9:10 that is so so silly... did he really say this?

Marx would be critical of that kind of characterisation of communism.

Sorry but just the Brit accent reminded me of the anarchy syndicate russell Brand

Main fallacies. (TL;DR): Assumes reasoning provides grounding for beliefs and actions. Ignores the assumption of selfishness. Ignores that social consequences are socially constructed. Assumes that reasoning and authority are mutually exclusive. Ignores that reasoning actually depends on authority. Ignores that politics, at base, is a game of power. He assumes that reason tells us to do anything. Reason does not provide a basis for any behavior or any belief, it strips them away due to skepticism; you can always question that premise, and any argument to that premise will create new premises in need of justification. He fails to recognize the actual impetus for behavior that our reasoning presupposes: selfishness. He explicitly states that we don't murder or steal because of the social consequences, yet he fails to recognize that this assumes selfishness. We don't steal because the social consequences ensure that we will suffer accordingly. It is fundamentally self-focused. Bafflingly, according to Proudhon, not stealing because you will be ostracized indicates that you care about moral law. At the same time, actually stealing is bad and selfish. This assumes that moral law exists, when it is simply selfishness, and it implicitly assumes that selfishness implies hurting others for personal gain. This is false. You can be nice for selfish reasons (as I mentioned earlier). He then creates a false dichotomy between authority and reason, suggesting that man can rely on reason to behave morally, and that blind adherence to authority should be thrown out. People using reason (while presupposing selfishness) to engage in pro-social behaviors actually depends on authority. Remember, when people use reason, they are rationalizing that there will be social consequences to a given behavior. But whether there are social consequences depends on how the power structures of a given society are oriented. For example, a person will reason that they should not kill a man because they know they will go to jail. Of course, they will only go to jail is there is a state. And, historically, there are countless examples of societal structures not ensuring consequences for murder and other behaviors, at least for everyone. And sure enough, these behaviors are rampant among those not subject to authority. In other words, even if you accept this idea that people are rational enough to behave such that they avoid the social consequences, this ignores the fact that what social consequences you receive is . . . well . . . a social construct. The entire point of politics is determining how we ought to orient the various power structures that make up a society. Do you want there to be social consequences to coming out as gay? Do you want there to be social consequences to coming out as a bigot? How you answer these questions determine how you want to orient these power structures. Ultimately, if you control these power structures, then you control what social consequences people receive; if you control what the social consequences are, then you control what people do. Politics is ultimately about power, in all its forms. And a brief caveat, the power structures I am referring to are: the state, businesses, the academy, the media, entertainment, and simple social norms, all of which are influenced by culture (the beliefs and attitudes that people hold). These all influence behavior by ensuring social consequences (placing incentives on people).

I thought you were describing what I normally call capitalism for about 90% of the video, until you got to the labor theory of value at about the final two minutes. And, that’s the part that seems unjustified. First, value is transitive and requires a valuer, and everyone has different values. Second, value includes many inputs, not just labor. Third, even if value only includes labor, not all labor is equal.

Should have noted that communism doesn't actually mean any of the things Proudhon thinks it means.

Sixst

*Labour.

I came up with my Decentralized Collectivist Utopian system in 2001 and set about getting the money to build an example of it to show people the way through a book and videos on it...I never got the money to do that. I plan on just writing the book on it and hoping people can self-organize according to the book. It is very Eden like, back to nature, but still technically advanced, green technologically advanced Collectivism. I believe in contracts instead of money or even labor vouchers, you get a decent life if you fulfill your contracts and if you don't you will get less contracts, it's all about the trust between others. Proudhon is very close to how I think, but he doesn't have the advantage of seeing what came after his writings. One thing is for sure, the Marxist radicals that like Lenin and Mao will be the death of us, they want to put us under even worse control than the Capitalists they want to replace. Critical Race Theory is not Utopian, it can't coexist with mutualism since it seeks inequal treatment of whites for example. There are tons of ideas from the far-Left that are absolutely crazy and most likely injected into our collective thinking by evil sinister people. I find most Leftists hard to talk to and reason with, they are just some woke revolutionary trying to take down the whitey and western civilization, absolute whackos. Instead of forming a community they build and own collectively, the radicals seize areas of a city and set up a CHAZ and they have no idea how to grow food, clean water, build shelter, etc, etc. CHAZistanis are like the worst examples of Anarcho thinking, just a pack of ignorant criminals, not anybody I would build a society from scratch with. Anarchists have to be smarter and more responsible than all the other people, because they have to self-govern.

I don't see how anyone can make the leap from capitalism straight to anarchism. It would need a total restructuring of the human psyche, which is possible based on a materialist understanding of "human nature", but you'd need a long long time and it would need overseeing (enforcing?) by something like a state. Communism acknowledges this, in that it is something to strive towards. A real life example being Cuba, who in 2019 amended their constitution to commit to building towards communism. But to me, something resembling anarchism is a final stage of organised society after this overseen building process is complete (if it ever can be complete) and the state naturally dissolves. Can any Anarchist tell me how they get from capitalism to anarchism without going through something like communism?

Labor theory of value is fail and utopia is already here; the highest good is to grow in wisdom and the world is a place that constantly reflects the consequences of our choices.

Innovation is rarely communal. Usually it comes from commited individuals with new ideas. I think that was one of Proudhon's few conceptual failures.

This is a deceptive and gross misrepresentation of Proudhon. He was a right-libertarian. A voluntarist. Here are resources: "Neither heredity, nor election, nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate. Whatever form it takes, - monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic, - royalty, or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd." - What is Property? "There is property and property, - the one good, the other bad. Now, as it is proper to call different things by different names, if we keep the name “property” for the former, we must call the latter robbery, rapine, brigandage. If, on the contrary, we reserve the name “property” for the latter, we must designate the former by the term possession, or some other equivalent; otherwise we should be troubled with an unpleasant synonymy." - What is property? "M. Blanqui acknowledges that property is abused in many harmful ways; I call property the sum these abuses exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need knocking off; but, the operation performed, M. Blanqui maintains that the figure will still be a polygon (an hypothesis admitted in mathematics, although not proven), while I consider that this figure will be a circle. Honest people can at least understand one another." - What is property? "In my first memoirs, attacking the established order at the front, I said, for example: Property is theft! It was a matter of protesting, so to speak in relief the nothingness of our institutions. I was not then occupied with anything else. Also, in the memoir in which I demonstrated, by A plus B, this stunning proposition, I had taken care to protest against any communist conclusion." - Confessions of a revolutionary. "I protest that in criticizing property, or rather the whole mass of institutions of which property is the pivot, I have never intended either to attack individual rights, based upon existing laws, or to contest the legitimacy of acquired pos. sessions, or to demand an arbitrary division of goods, or to place any obstacle to the free and regular acquisition, by sale and exchange, of property, or even to forbid or suppress, by sovereign degree, ground rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity which I propose." - The solution of the social problem. When Proudhon said, "property is theft" he was talking about state sanctioned property especially of aristocratic nature. He supported private ownership of the means of production and free markets with NO restrictions. He was basically an ancap.

I suprisingly agree with most of what Proudhon (at least whats in this video). However, the "socialist" type anarchist doesn't understand that collectivising land, innovation, and labor lessens incentive for the individual. Mises debunks the Labor Theory of Value with the Subjective Theory of Value. Individuals have subjective preferences. Destroying the incentive of property rights which can drive those subjective preferences leads to a less efficient society. That's why communism has to be enforced by authoritarianism, because collectivism lessens incentive for the individual. If you create or earn "capital" with your own labor, you should have the right to freely negotiate how others could utilize your capital for your own benefit... or else why would you take the risk to create or incest in surplus capital? This freedom to negotiate with your capital includes the right to offer wages. This is leverage and leverage is an incentive for others to acquire their own capital. I think Rothbard has a better philosophy about liberty than the collective anarchicst types. In Anarcho-capitalsim, you can still have that type of "socialist" liberty described by Proudhon, if all party's consent to it... but you can't have anarcho-capitalsim in Proudhon's vision if you believe property is theft... Correct me if I'm misunderstanding Proudhon, because I only have a surface level understanding of his philosophy.

Yes, yes, this is all well-intentioned, but as usual, we have an incomplete, imbalanced, over-intellectualized model of reality. It's all left-brained, ignoring the more subtle, generative influence of our feminine aspect. *Love is the Law* An intellectual understanding of how this plays out is incredibly supportive, but a union of our dual aspects is essential. Ignoring the voice of the heart is just as ill-fated as ignoring the dictates of reason.

No to vaccine passports, no to forced or coerced vaccines.

No I can see why Marx called Proudhon an idealist, this is completely delusional. Nice video, helped me understand anarchism better

Why are you growing a beard BENEATH your chin and jaw, but not ON your chin and jaw?

Nietzsche would eat Proudhon for breakfast. Any negative sublimation of the passions is always pushing us further to domestication. N would suggest this man was engorged with the love of the slave for sake of posterity and 'justness'.

Anarchy leads to another government

And who are you ?