page_title: Social anarchism
section_title: Mutualism
hierarchical_section_title: Social anarchism / Historical currents / Mutualism
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon et ses enfants en 1853
context_page_description: Social anarchism is the branch of anarchism that sees individual freedom as interrelated with mutual aid. Social anarchist thought emphasizes community and social equality as complementary to autonomy and personal freedom. It attempts to accomplish this balance through freedom of speech, which is maintained in a decentralized federalism, with freedom of interaction in thought and subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is best defined as "that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry" and that "[f]or every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them", or the slogan "Do not take tools out of people's hands".
  Social anarchism has been the dominant form of anarchism.
context_section_description: Mutualism emerged from early 19th century socialism and is generally considered a market-oriented strand within the libertarian socialist tradition. Originally developed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, mutualism typically accepts property rights, but with brief abandonment time periods. In a community in which mutuality property rules were upheld, a landowner would need to make continuous use of the land. If failing to do so, the ownership rights would be extinguished and the land could be homesteaded by someone else. A mutualist property regime is often described as one rooted in possession, occupancy-and-use, or usufruct.
  Nevertheless, mutualism is also associated with the economic views of 19th century American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and William Batchelder Greene. Today, Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist and author of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy who describes this work as "an attempt to revive individualist anarchist political economy, to incorporate the useful developments of the last hundred years, and to make it relevant to the problems of the twenty-first century".
caption: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
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