Aeris - Toward an Economy of Relationships (Anarchist Mutual Credit System)

Author: AerisTitle: Toward an Economy of Relationships (Anarchist Mutual Credit System)Date: May 8th, 2026Notes: Note: I haven’t updated my blog in quite some time, so my thoughts may vary from what I’ve written here. To any new readers, reproductive labor is the work that sustains and reproduces people and communities, from cooking and cleaning to caregiving and emotional support, not just pregnancy and childbirth.Source: https://aeris.baby/?p=1216 After reading Kevin Carson’s Anarchist Notes on the Theory of Money, Credit, and Capital, I was struck by two things: We can do this. Where the fuck is reproductive labor in this? Here’s where my thoughts have led me so far. If you’re not familiar with mutual credit, I’ve added a summary at the end you can read first – What IS Mutual Credit? Legibility and Credit Extension In Anarchist Notes, Carson quotes Thomas Greco on the proper basis of credit issuance: “It is crucial that the quantity of the exchange medium be balanced with the flow of goods and services coming into the market, and that it be self-adjusting…. If money is properly issued, there will never be any problem of under-supply or over-supply. The quantity of money will always be just the right amount to purchase the goods and services which it represents…. The proper basis of issue is the transfer of value, as it is being exchanged, from a producer to another (potential) producer.” And later, on what qualifies a participant to issue credit: “A participant is qualified to put into circulation an amount of ‘money’ up to the amount of his/her sales over a 2 or 3 month period.” Both treat market activity — value transfer between producers, sales turnover over a recent window — as the natural anchor for credit issuance. The unit of account is calibrated to the flow of legible exchange. This is sensible as far as it goes, but it leaves two substrates unaccounted for, and both matter. The ecological. “The transfer of value” treats value as a closed loop between producers, but every transfer is also a draw on ecological systems whose regenerative capacity is finite. Issuing credit against value that depends on irreversibly depleting non-substitutable natural capital is issuing claims against a wealth base that may cease to exist. The proper basis of issue isn’t only transfer of value — it’s transfer of value within the limits of what ecological systems can regenerate. Without that constraint built in, the “self-adjusting” property Greco describes is self-adjusting only with respect to the market, not with respect to the substrate the market depends on. The currency floats free of the conditions that make it possible. The reproductive. Sales-turnover-based credit qualification builds in a structural bias toward productive labor and against the labor that makes productive labor possible in the first place. Every adult capable of generating sales is the product of decades of reproductive work, such as feeding, teaching, protecting, integrating into community life, that doesn’t itself generate sales but without which there is nothing to sell and no one to sell it. A credit system that calibrates issuance to recent sales volume treats this entire substrate as exogenous, the way classical economics treats the household. Would one need to ‘rent’ their creditworthiness from someone in the productive sector, reinforcing hierarchies? We already see the capitalist version of this bias in lending discrimination against women-owned businesses, where the same pattern of “what counts as legitimate productive activity” leads to less lending. Continuing to favor productive activity in a mutual credit system would carry the bias with it. Both omissions suffer the same underlying issue: the proper basis of credit issuance has to make legible what the system actually depends on. Sales volume is easy to measure. Ecological regenerative capacity is harder. Reproductive labor may be harder still. But the difficulty of measurement isn’t a justification for treating the substrate as if it weren’t there. Credit extension is a decision about whose contribution counts as economic and who is recognized as a participant capable of issuing claims against future flows. When the basis of legibility is sales turnover, the people whose labor doesn’t pass through markets become economically invisible, even though the markets depend on their labor. They become illegible in the social field, with no material agency that the system recognizes. Someone in that position may reasonably wonder whether someone like them is allowed to dream of a different life — because the system has already answered, in its choice of what to count, that they’re not the kind of person economic flows are organized around. In time, the coercion of the system becomes internalized. Although I haven’t explored it here, I also believe that records should be adjustable afterwards, during clearing or during a collaborative accountability session. If an activity ultimately had a greater impact than anticipated, the historical record should be adjusted to reflect that instead of the original transaction considered final. What matters is the actual relationship and its consequences. Some examples would be like a fisherman who overfishes being held responsible for damages to the fishery or a sex worker internalizing any unexpected costs imposed by a client. A mutual credit system worth building has to extend legibility to ecological stewardship and to reproductive labor, both, and it has to be accounted for in such a way that the system functions even when its users do not naturally adhere to anarchist ideology. The basis of issue itself has to internalize what capitalism made external. The rest of these notes work out what that may look like, although I’m still exploring functional implementation. ...