![](https://i0.wp.com/www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/185198_264931033610567_420255763_n.jpg?resize=326%2C245&ssl=1)
Mutualism, the Anarchism of Approximations, I
What is Mutualism? It is a question that even self-proclaimed mutualists may hesitate to answer. Since 1826, when the term mutualist first appeared in print, there have, in fact, been only a handful of attempts to present mutualism in systematic form. The most important of these, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières (1865), has yet to be translated into English. The most accessible, Clarence L. Swartz’ What Is Mutualism? (1927), dates from a period when mutualism had, by most accounts, waned almost to insignificance as a political force. […]