Dark Mutualism

Dark Mutualism (credit cyborg nomad) https://antinomiaimediata.wordpress.com/

anarchy is the perennial condition of the world. the idea of centralised, unified control is a pipe dream of monotheism, and has never been, nor could ever be, attained.

2. the fundamental vector of progress isn't a moral, but a technical arc, starting way before humanity came into play, and extending ahead into vast tracts of unknown unknowns.

3. what travels the path of such arc is intelligence, abstractly conceived as negentropy. all cosmic history is the history of intelligence optimization into an asymptote.

4. the motor of this movement is generalised Darwinian processes of variation and selection. it's only through this arms race dynamics that anything ever gets built and improved. biological life is just a subset of these processes.

the obstacles in this arc are all variations of "peace" - entropic stagnation. the latest human, social form of such peace offering is democracy and its conciliating, universalist ideology.

6. all such peace offerings tap into ancestral drives towards organisation. they project the emergent functioning of systems into an idealised "organic" compound, centrally managed, and then scale them up towards universality.

the task intelligence progressively builds for itself is one of engineering systems in which larger scale conflict can be sustained, thereby both eliminating the previous peace offering, as well as creating the conditions for a new one.

8. the ever larger complexity of such new decentralised systems make time tick faster. the dissipation of entropy increases with each new step, which leads ever quicker to the next.

9. the fundamental expression of this in human societies are cities. more than just human hives, cities are self-individuating intelligence systems, singularities even, becoming cosmos within themselves.

10. prediction of the future path of the intelligence arc is complicated by its inherent nonlinearity and self-reference, but the future cities charter for themselves are likely the best starting points.

11. the current best summary of the likely, imo, is the "Transcention Hypothesis" by John Smart:

accelerating.org

Transcension Hypothesis — Acceleration Studies Foundation

12. my only minor alteration would be that cities are likely to shoot themselves into space (and avoid gravity wells like the plague) before becoming black holes.

13. critique points: Anarchism has generally and widely failed to rise up to the task that anarchy - the everlasting decentralisation of the cosmos - has out forward for them.

14. it may be indeed that the human form and psyche is utterly unprepared to deal with the horror of anorganic yet systemic reality. but I think there's also more to it, since many non-anarchists got close to it.

15. one could excuse the humanism, given the time and place Anarchism rose to prominence (everyone was a humanist in the 1800s), but the fundamental failure was not *embracing* the factionism that almost instantly sprang up in the movement.

16. even now that Anarchism is way more out of fashion, the unifying tendencies still arise. "let's have *One* movement against oppression" etc. what if, instead, anarchy is actually right?

17. developing "anarchy = order" remains the central task of Anarchism, even it hasn't done much work in that direction. how can the division and disunity of the world lead to order? how could it not!

18. this is important in terms of destabilising the current peace offering as well: being many different is incompatible with being One Together.

19. and with that we're thrown into the muddy terrain of "praxis" or "what should be done".

first and foremost I'm obliged to say: do what thou wilt

20. secondly, it is important to recognise that operating under a practical reason framework (one in which plans, habits and tactics make sense) does not immediately follow from any one transcendental appreciation of reality.

21. finally, if the anarchist transcendental ontology I sketched above makes any sense, practical reason is only going to be good very locally, and even then it's important to remember that "you" are not in the driver's seat.

22. what that means is basically "antipraxis", i.e., whatever you are doing right now is not serving only (or even at all) your purposes, but is necessarily embedded into processes that far exceed your conscious capacity of apprehension.

23. the best way to subjectively deal with that is, by and large, the u/acc motto: let go. it turns out to be very enjoyable.

24. thus, contrary to most criticism, antipraxis is not about defeatist "I can't do anything" but rather an affirmative "I can do anything I want", which immediately leads to the interesting question of desire dynamics

25. desire dynamics (what I sometimes think of as "mutual excitation") is something that deserves further study, especially from the angles of thermodynamics, economics and sociology.

26. slightly parallel to the previous line of thought, but definitely stemming from the same anarchist transcendental ontology, is the question of an economic analysis of force. an endeavour hardly undergone by anarchists (or, for that matter, anyone else)

27. the closest I have found to anything like that is David Friedman's "A Positive Account of Property Rights"

http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.html…

where the costs and benefits of protecting things are weighted.

28. any anarchism that fails to take that into consideration, and proceeds to merely affirming moral creeds against current status quo, is lacking in both breadth and depth. the question remains: if states are so abhorrent and absurd, why do they keep existing?

29. my current working answer, derived from the first tweets: statism is the box intelligence found itself in when it finally got out of feudalism.·

30. leading to the modern state apparatus was an abrupt change in military technology, which implied new calculations of costs and benefits for the use of force. the rise of the rifleman meant that faceless bureaucracies directing standing armies and police forces made sense.

31. economic sense, much before any moral sense could be derived through many series of validation propaganda. I'm always starving to read economic analysis of this change, which amounted to modernity in statecraft

10. prediction of the future path of the intelligence arc is complicated by its inherent nonlinearity and self-reference, but the future cities charter for themselves are likely the best starting points.

21. finally, if the anarchist transcendental ontology I sketched above makes any sense, practical reason is only going to be good very locally, and even then it's important to remember that "you" are not in the driver's seat.

22. what that means is basically "antipraxis", i.e., whatever you are doing right now is not serving only (or even at all) your purposes, but is necessarily embedded into processes that far exceed your conscious capacity of apprehension.

23. the best way to subjectively deal with that is, by and large, the u/acc motto: let go. it turns out to be very enjoyable.

24. thus, contrary to most criticism, antipraxis is not about defeatist "I can't do anything" but rather an affirmative "I can do anything I want", which immediately leads to the interesting question of desire dynamics

25. desire dynamics (what I sometimes think of as "mutual excitation") is something that deserves further study, especially from the angles of thermodynamics, economics and sociology.

26. slightly parallel to the previous line of thought, but definitely stemming from the same anarchist transcendental ontology, is the question of an economic analysis of force. an endeavour hardly undergone by anarchists (or, for that matter, anyone else)

27. the closest I have found to anything like that is David Friedman's "A Positive Account of Property Rights"

http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.html…

where the costs and benefits of protecting things are weighted.

28. any anarchism that fails to take that into consideration, and proceeds to merely affirming moral creeds against current status quo, is lacking in both breadth and depth. the question remains: if states are so abhorrent and absurd, why do they keep existing?

29. my current working answer, derived from the first tweets: statism is the box intelligence found itself in when it finally got out of feudalism.·

30. leading to the modern state apparatus was an abrupt change in military technology, which implied new calculations of costs and benefits for the use of force. the rise of the rifleman meant that faceless bureaucracies directing standing armies and police forces made sense.

31. economic sense, much before any moral sense could be derived through many series of validation propaganda. I'm always starving to read economic analysis of this change, which amounted to modernity in statecraft

below is a reddit mutualism thread about the creator of Dark Mutualism and about Dark mutualism

Cyborg_nomade (creator of Dark Mutualism)  is not an anti-egalitarian in the sense that mutualists understand and critique, and explicitly considers equality to be a core component of both the left and mutualism. His anti-egalitarianism is really just akin to Tucker’s hostility towards communism. So there’s that.

From left mutualist “Cyborg_nomade is engaged in all kinds of both rhetorical and argumentative games that, again, I have real interest towards, but whose meaning is obscure to anyone just stumbling into his blog. Which is why I openly advised against bothering with it! I’m charitable towards him because I know him personally, and because I have a pretty clear idea of what he is trying to accomplish and of where he is trying to go. But, again, I’m conscious that to the average anarchist, already suspicious—for obvious reasons—of novel internet labels that take advantage of anarchism’ (in)famous reputation to”

Cyborg_nomade predictably holds much of « leftist academia » in disdain, so I wouldn't expect him to be very aware of these kinds of things in the first place.

cyborg_nomade's orthodox marxism is directly inherited from landian accelerationism. This transition from Proudhon and Carson to classic Marx certainly has yet to be properly articulated. I know that Edmund Berger is itching to write a book rehabilitating Marx's critique of Proudhon from, well, rehabilitations like that of Iain Mckay which he only finds half-convincing. This should clarify quite a few things about the accelerationism/anarchism relationship, I hope.

“Needless to say, my own personal conviction is that what cyborg_nomade is working on does add to, as you say, « the general understanding of Proudhon’s work », and therefore represents a worthy and essential contribution to the mutualist canon. Otherwise, I wouldn’t give it much attention, as I already don’t give much attention to most of what is produced under the anarchist banner. But I certainly don’t expect to convince you of that, and I understand that you have more important things to do right now than being overly-charitable towards obscure internet pet projects that claim to thrive on your own turf, if only halfway.” reddit mutualism pist from left anarchist

Cyborg_nomade is hardly a reactionary in the traditional sense of the term, which should be quite obvious to anyone who is even somewhat familiar with his writings. He is also not an anti-egalitarian in the sense that mutualists understand and critique, and explicitly considers equality to be a core component of both the left and mutualism. His anti-egalitarianism is really just akin to Tucker’s hostility towards communism. So there’s that.

Cyborg_nomade is engaged in all kinds of both rhetorical and argumentative games that, again, I have real interest towards, but whose meaning is obscure to anyone just stumbling into his blog. Which is why I openly advised against bothering with it! I’m charitable towards him because I know him personally, and because I have a pretty clear idea of what he is trying to accomplish and of where he is trying to go. But, again, I’m conscious that to the average anarchist, already suspicious—for obvious reasons—of novel internet labels that take advantage of anarchism’ (in)famous reputation to draw fascist cultists, this mostly just sounds like yet-another-case of barely disguised far-right entrism (« great, as if national-anarchism wasn’t enough of a fiasco... »).

This is what I mean by « not-very-intelligible ». I don’t mean it as a covert compliment (or as an insult, for that matter), merely as a factual description. (For context’s sake, I should precise that by « discussions », I don’t just mean neoreaction, but also the accelerationist blogosphere, as well as the market anarchist blogosphere. Indeed, cyborg_nomade’s left-accelerationism is just as important for his project as neoreaction, if not more.)

All of that taken into account, I’m not surprised at all by your and Carson’s hostile reaction (pun unintended). To be perfectly blunt, this is why I didn’t post it on this sub when it came out, as I knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere and would just provoke unnecessary drama (well, drama at the very modest scale of r/mutualism...). Should cyborg_nomade actually complete his project one day, then I would feel justified in discussing it with people who are not already familiar with it. It could then be judged on its own as a complete, synthetic, autonomous work. But for now, it’s just context-heavy, theory-ladden cliff-notes. That’s why I didn’t bother. And I agree very much with you that there’s already tons for mutualists to retrieve in their own tradition before accelerationism or neoreaction finds itself thrown into it.

Well, it’s very much a work-in-progress, and I don’t want to speak for cyborg_nomade here, but, for one, I think we both share a certain fascination for the reactionary tradition, and especially for neoreaction, because of the way it unconsciously mirrors a lot of traditional anarchist (and more broadly socialist) analysis while taking completely opposite directions in terms of concrete normative political predictions. It’s a phenomenon that I find especially illuminating with Yarvin—who, after all, originally comes from the Austrian School, and therefore predictably shares quite a few of his references with someone like Carson (hence the New Class/Cathedral parallel).

More specifically, Moldbug, being an ex-rothbardian, empathetically agrees with common anarchist and communist critiques of propertarianism. He agrees that all attempts to justify property through absolutist provisos pathetically fail by their own standards, and end up biting their own tail. This is why he grew dissatisfied with libertarianism, and turned to reaction in the first place.

Where he actually diverges from anarchists is that he believes, in an old-fashioned hobbesian way, that anarchy is chaos and violence, and that therefore even the most arbitrary of archist authoritarianism is preferable to anarchy. So he agrees with the description, but goes opposite way with the solution. I find this path, from Proudhon to Hoppe back to Proudhon again deeply ironic, especially as Moldbug himself never truly realizes that he’s basically just retrading Proudhon’s critique.

For more concrete exemples, as Edmund Berger has pointed out a while ago, Moldbug’s neocameralism resembles a lot John Francis Bray’s joint-stock socialism: https://www.google.fr/amp/s/disubunit22.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/john-francis-bray/amp/.

Likewise, Moldbug’s patchwork obviously descends from panarchism, as it is more or less right-wing panarchism. It has helped revive a lot of discussion around the topic despite panarchism being out of date for a very long time, even if most people picking it up went pretty far away from Moldbug, and developed it in their own unique direction.

Now, these ancestral socialists and anarchists weren’t, well, capitalists the way Moldbug is, and these accusations are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there is something going for it. It’s been something of an inside joke in the milieu for a while that Moldbug was actually a crypto-communist all along, and that neoreactionaires never got the joke. As cyborg_nomade himself formulates it, « neoreaction is retroprogressivism from the other side ».

Of course, I am not claiming that Moldbug is a mutualist, an anarchist, or even just a leftist: he quite openly is not. But I nonetheless find these messy connections interesting to explore, and they have became all-the-easier to explore because of the work of people like Wilbur and Carson who have made a lot of forgotten socialist and anarchist literature from the nineteenth century publicly accessible—even beyond just the mutualist corpus—which I am really grateful for.

So far as I can play « dark mutualism »´s lawyer pro bono for a bit, this is part of its impetus.

As for the appropriation issue, as I said before, I personally think that cyborg_nomade is pretty honest about both paying his dues towards Wilbur and Carson for their (indeed) necessary and fantastic work, and going his own heretical way. But again, I can understand why it would ruffle a few feathers. All-in-all, the revival of the mutualist label is still a very recent one, and as such, it’s obviously going to be heavily contested by various parties, for better or worse.

I’m sympathetic towards Wilbur’s familiar accusation that we are being way too hasty in pushing « classical » authors to the side while we have barely started to dig properly into the mutualist canon, let alone the broader anarchist canon. At any rate, it’s not a recent issue. Most market anarchists gave up on Proudhon and Tucker a long time ago for the sake of retreading Hayek and Mises. I do think there’s a lot more for anarchists to gain from Proudhon than from Hayek (or even Moldbug), but it is what it is, unfortunately.

For what it’s worth, I know that cyborg_nomade has long been interested in translating mutualist literature, and that he’s just been too busy to really get it on. I can personally attest to the quality of his translation work, so I hope this, too, will materialize in due time

Loki_of_the_Outyards

1y

I read his formalist manifesto and parts of the blog on patchwork, but the one about the brown scare and how America was actually communist was so pretentious and bad that it sort of killed any further interest I had in exploring this stuff. At any rate, weren't you the one who said that if someone studied the reactionary tradition, there wouldn't be anything left to get "redpilled" by Moldbug about?

I can sort of see the fascination in seeing how different lines of thought can unconsciously "mirror" each other, but at the end of the day, there's so much unexplored about Proudhon and co, with (in my opinion) much more relevant and synergistic connections waiting to be drawn. As far as lesser known theorisation of these sorts of politics goes, I think Eugene Holland's Nomad Citizenship should be of far more interest to mutualists than accelerationism.

At any rate, it’s not a recent issue. Most market anarchists gave up on Proudhon and Tucker a long time ago for the sake of retreading Hayek and Mises

e do you think cyborg_nomade conflates mutualism with market anarchism? He certainly is more of a tuckerian-austrian than a proudhonian insofar as he tends to favorise market arrangements, but he doesn’t preclude non-market arrangements, either. Just like Carson, he is very much fine with letting people do their own thing.

As for Proudhon’s progressivism, cyborg_nomade’s contention is that it rests on a theory of time that he finds insufficiently kantian. He doesn’t deny Proudhon’s anti-absolutism at all, he just affirms that Proudhon didn’t conceptualize it well-enough—on this specific point, he is admittedly closer to Marx than to Proudhon.

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humanispherian

1y

He doesn’t deny Proudhon’s anti-absolutism at all, he just affirms that Proudhon didn’t conceptualize it well-enough...

And this is one of those places where we would need the missing footnotes, but what my own experience suggests is that this kind of claim almost always comes back to bite us in the ass, simply because of the enormous labor necessary to even get a clear sense of the shape of Proudhon's project. If Edward Castleton—possibly the most careful Proudhon scholar we have ever seen—said something similar, I would still want to see the footnotes

Where do you think cyborg_nomade conflates mutualism with market anarchism?

Considering that his version of mutualism (or LRx) considers market economy as a tenant, I'd say that he most certainly does. Like ancaps, he's more interested in people doing their own thing without stepping on the rights and privileges he favors (in this case market anarchism)

As for Proudhon’s progressivism, cyborg_nomade’s contention is that it rests on a theory of time that he finds insufficiently kantian.

Ok, and? It doesn't rely on a theory of time at all, it simply states that change is the only constant in all social and natural development and interaction. In short, it's effectively "change of change's sake".

He doesn’t deny Proudhon’s anti-absolutism at all, he just affirms that Proudhon didn’t conceptualize it well-enough

Firstly, Proudhon's theory of progress is only tangibly related to his anti-absolutism. It is what he opposes and what he distinguishes his theory from hierarchy but it is not so similar that you can use it in the way you are now. Secondly, do you have any evidence that Proudhon didn't conceptualize it well enough? I don't see anything about it that's not clear.

out to merge the insights of NRx with those of traditional, proudhonian anarchism.

t's a neoreactionary line of thought which holds that anarchism ran into an impasse due to its embrace of communism, and that the way out lies in reading Proudhon through Moldbug. As far as I know, this is the extent of it: https://antinomiaimediata.wordpress.com/2020/02/05/dark-mutualism-part-1/

There's some other stupidity like trying to draw parallels between Carson's analysis of the "new class" and Moldbug's "Cathedral". I've spoken to Shawn and Kevin about this and they've both disavowed the stuff completely.

just came across the term “dark mutualism” and I looked it up and I’m not sure what exactly it’s about? From what I can tell, it seems to be some sort of mutualist critique of egalitarian humanism. Does anybody here know anything else about this?

Basically, his thesis is that anarchism hit an impasse about a century ago because it got caught up in universalist—to be blunt, communist—politics, and that Proudhon, read through Moldbug, gives us the tools required to both understand this impasse and get out of it.

As to this day, it’s very much a work-in-progress, but it’s also, as far as I am concerned, by far the most interesting research program to come out of NRx in years (as an anarchist myself, I may be biased).

You can find the first (and so far only) piece—as well as the rest of his blog—here: https://antinomiaimediata.wordpress.com/2020/02/05/dark-mutualism-part-1

Dark Mutualism is the combination  Dark Enlightment and  Mutualism and a neoreactionary line of thought that's thinks anarchism is stalled due to it's embrace of communism and progressivism