Beyond Mutualism
Geo-Distributism As Analogous to Kropotkin’s Communism
Kropotkin’s Vision
Peter Kropotkin, in The Conquest of Bread, argued that the products of nature and the accumulated knowledge of humanity rightly belong to everyone in common. He insisted that land, mines, and tools are not the creation of individuals but the products of nature or the result of collective labor over generations. Every invention, discovery, or machine embodies the combined genius of past and present humanity; “there is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present.” From this, Kropotkin concluded that “all belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them.” His communist anarchism therefore rejected wages entirely, advocating instead a system of in-kind distribution to guarantee “the right to well-being: well-being for all.” Kropotkin’s critique of wages was direct: any system of remuneration by hours or labor notes perpetuates injustice and inequality. He insisted that services rendered to society “cannot be valued in money.” In his framework, true justice could only arise when access to necessities was guaranteed to all, without mediation by the wage system.
Yet while Kropotkin advocated for in-kind distribution through communal organization, a market-anarchist perspective can carry forward his insight into the twenty-first century through what I call geo-distributism. Instead of abolishing money and markets, geo-distributism proposes to socialize the economic rent of land and intellectual property. Land value tax would recognize that land is not produced by human labor but is a gift of nature, whose value arises from the community as a whole. Similarly, a Harberger Tax on Intellectual Property (patents) would reflect that no invention is purely the work of an individual, but rests upon the inheritance of centuries of accumulated knowledge.
Communal Ownership In A Market Paradigm
A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the unimproved value of land — excluding buildings, crops, or other improvements. Because land itself is not created by human effort but is a gift of nature, its value arises primarily from location, community activity, and public infrastructure (such as roads, schools, and commerce). The rationale behind LVT is that since no individual produces land, no individual has a moral claim to the rent it yields. By taxing land value and redistributing the revenue to the community, society ensures that the unearned benefits of landownership are shared as common property rather than privatized.
A Harberger Tax, also known as a Common-Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST), could apply this same principle of communal ownership to intellectual property. Under this system, owners of patents or copyrights must declare a self-assessed value for their property, pay a recurring tax based on that valuation, and accept that anyone can purchase the property at the declared price. This mechanism ensures that intellectual property remains available for productive use rather than locked away for rent-seeking. The moral justification mirrors that of land: no invention is the work of an isolated individual but the culmination of centuries of collective human knowledge and technological progress. By treating intellectual property as subject to common ownership through COST, society recognizes it as a shared inheritance, while still rewarding innovators with income for their contributions.
While land value tax and Harberger tax are traditionally referred to as “taxes,” within a libertarian framework they can be regarded as rent. The property that is “taxed” is actually communally owned and the “tax” is a rental fee. These “taxes,” then, are expressions of communal ownership rather than taxes proper. Therefore, LVT and COST are uniquely compatible with a market-anarchist vision of communal ownership. These forms of “taxation” are unique among taxes insofar as they do not have to be predicated on statism.
In practice, collecting these rents and redistributing them as a universal basic income transforms land and technology into communal property. Every individual, by virtue of being a member of society, receives a dividend — securing the well-being that Kropotkin envisioned, but in monetary rather than in-kind form. This is not mere remuneration for labor, as under mutualism, where wages remain the basis of economic life. Instead, geo-distributism transcends mutualism by making the primary source of income the social dividend, not wages.
Such an arrangement captures the essence of Kropotkin’s call for “well-being for all”, but channels it through market-compatible means. It acknowledges that while markets can efficiently allocate goods, the underlying rents of land and knowledge rightly belong to the community. By ensuring that these rents are shared equally, society guarantees subsistence, dignity, and the freedom to pursue higher aims.
Thus, a universal basic income funded by land value tax and a Harberger tax on intellectual property can be understood as a geo-libertarian adaptation of Kropotkin’s anarchist communism. Where he envisioned the abolition of wages and direct distribution of goods, geo-distributism achieves the same goal of abolishing poverty and dependence through monetary means. It fulfills his moral claim — that all wealth is the common inheritance of humanity — while preserving markets and individual choice.
In this way, geo-distributism does not merely echo mutualism but surpasses it, offering a synthesis of anarchist ethics and libertarian practicality. It promises to replace the treadmill of wages with a right to well-being, ensuring that no one’s survival depends on selling their labor, and that everyone shares in the fruits of our common earth and collective genius. This geo-distributist economic system, where land and Intellectual Property are communally owned and the revenue they generate is shared as a universal basic income, is one component of the system that I refer to as libertarian social democracy or social-democratic anarchism. The other aspects of this model, such as universal healthcare, are discussed in my essay, Liberal-Anarchism.
A Fully-Automated Future
Aaron Bastani’s vision of Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) imagines a world where automation, renewable energy, and biotechnology dissolve the scarcity that underpins wage labor. In this framework, in-kind provision of universal basic services is not just a safety net, but a bridge to a post-scarcity society where people are free to pursue leisure, creativity, and human flourishing. Like Kropotkin, he envisions in-kind provision of the necessities of life. On the other hand, Robert Anton Wilson’s RICH Economy (Rising Income through Cybernetic Homeostasis) does something similar but within a market paradigm. It complements Bastani’s vision by emphasizing that unemployment is not a disease but the natural result of technological progress. In Wilson’s vision, cybernation and “doing-more-with-less” will inevitably abolish wage slavery, and the task is not to fight unemployment but to embrace it with mechanisms like the National Dividend or Guaranteed Annual Income.
Universal basic income funded by land value tax and Harberger taxation provides the concrete mechanism to enact such a vision of a fully-automated future. By securing income independent of wages, UBI strengthens workers’ bargaining power. With their basic needs guaranteed, workers can refuse exploitative conditions, forcing employers to raise wages and improve working standards. This increased cost of labor reduces the relative advantage of employing humans in drudgery, accelerating the incentive to automate. Far from slowing automation, UBI would hasten its spread by pushing firms to deploy machines where human labor is too costly or inefficient.
In this sense, geo-distributist UBI reshapes the trajectory toward Bastani’s post-scarcity future and Wilson’s RICH Economy. It transforms automation from a threat into a collective project: the more automation replaces toil, the more abundance can be shared through the social dividend. Workers, liberated from dependence on wages, can transition into a work esthetic — what Wilson described as pursuing creativity, exploration, and personal potential once freed from the compulsion of wage labor. Bastani envisions this as “luxury for all,” while Wilson framed it as humanity’s leap into a new evolutionary relationship with space, time, and intelligence. Both converge on the idea that universal income, funded by common resources, can catalyze humanity’s transition into a fully automated, abundant society.
Liberty At Last
With mankind freed from compulsory labor and guaranteed access to the necessities of life, people will be free to engage in whatever activities interest them. The number of artists, philosophers, inventors, and athletes will abound. People will continue to produce but they will do so with leisure and for pleasure. At the same time, people will have more time to participate in communal activities. Within an anarchist paradigm, the most important communal activity is political — participation in the directly democratic decision-making processes of local free associations and democratic confederations. With mankind freed from drudgery, there will be more time for people to actively participate in democratic politics, rendering “representation” and “delegation” less and less necessary as people begin to govern themselves directly. Thus, universal basic income and cybernation present a pathway to a world where anarchism is not only possible but practical, where coercive government is replaced by democratic free associations.
