About Us

The Mutualist Society is a place for mutualists to gather — and to be — about mutualism. Some people get here from experiences in: 

• Local mutual aid efforts

• Cooperatives

• Forming a union

• Starting a DAO

• Growing up in a faith community

• Engaging in social entrepreneurship

But we all share 3 principles of mutualism:

Principle 1: Mutualists are formed into solidaristic communities

Each has boundaries based on solidarity. In unions, workers come together to bargain against a specific employer. In cooperatives, members produce, group purchase, or market together. The members of mutual-aid groups are typically neighbors located in the same geographic area. In faith communities, adherents share a common belief system passed down generationally within families.

Principle 2: Mutualist entities have a shared economic mechanism

This means that the community typically has an economic model like dues, service, fees, paid events, time banks, bartering, or lending circles. This economic mechanism enables the community to pool its own revenue, to control that revenue, and to recycle it back within the community.

Principle 3: Mutualists create institutions with a long-term focus

Through mutualist institutions, members can pass down wisdom from generation to generation. As humans, we live one life, but institutions are vessels to hold insight, ideas, values and lessons beyond one person's lifetime to reach future generations.

When we see that we share these 3 principles, we act as a sector and have the strategy and ability to transform both our lives and the economy. We could think of this sector as a very connected ecosystem composed of many networks.

But mutualists do not seek big box store uniformity. Rather it’s about decentralization and biodiversity. Right now this idea has many names — some call this resilience, regenerative agriculture and systems or simply, sustainability.

But whatever term you like, we know this isn’t about being quaint — we believe that this kind of scale emerges from local building of networks and we know it can be done because we see these examples all around us:

1. Mondragon in Spain

2. Italian Cooperatives - especially in the area around Emilia Romana

3. The Des Jardin cooperatives around Quebec and Antigonish traditions of Nova Scotia

4. Land owned by faith communities now has value in the trillions. And the only mutualist football team in America that the National Football league grudgingly admitted to the National Football League, then swiftly shut the door so there’d be no others.

In fact, one of the largest sources of capital used in the world is by private equity firms. These firms invest union pension funds as the basis of their investment dollars. Unions, as mutualist organizations, generate among the most significant economic assets in the world! But because the private equity funds keep the profits, they violate the principles of mutualism which requires that returns are recycled back to the community.

Mutualism exists in the cracks and crevices left where markets don’t work and centralized government is out of touch.

Humans power mutualism. And, participation shows we live in a world of shared fate.