Mutualism is a form of anarchist anti-capitalism that can be characterized in the following ways:
1. Worker/Individual Control of the Means of Production: mutualists maintain that the means of production, like any justly acquired property, should belong to the people that use them (ie. combine their labor with them to equate ownership). In a mutualist society, individuals can either control their own means of production as personal property (use and occupy) and trade on a mutual basis with others, or can cooperate with others within a free association or cooperative to produce goods on a larger scale in which each worker is able to keep 100% of the product of their own labor.
2. Self-Regulation: the centralized state is wholly inefficient in the regulation and restriction of transactions between individuals, since the members of the state’s governing body are minimally incentivized to pursue the rights of workers and consumers and are far more invested in maintaining exploitation for self-benefit. Mutualists find that by constructing an anti-capitalist pro-worker market based on free association, society will be able to better defend the wellbeing of workers and consumers. Government functions can be replaced by voluntary associations such as guilds, trade unions, community groups, and cooperatives that do not profit off of exploitation like the state and capitalists, but are founded purley in the interest of individual workers.
3. Use and Occupy: In opposition to the capitalist position on private property, mutualists believe that people who actively use and occupy property are rightful owners of it, rather than proprietors that abandon property and use the labor of others to extract a profit.
4. Labor Value: Many mutualists (but not all) agree with the general concept that the value of a good should be based on the amount of labor required to procure it. This is founded on the fact that labor is the source of all value, and is what converts natural resources into useable commodities. The true value of a good is based on the toil required to procure it from natural resources.