The most fundamental distinction between compeerism and capitalism is the focus on the production of democratically determined use-value instead of the private pursuit of exchange-value. In other words, it is not simply supply and demand, deeply configured by the distribution of money and privately held property, which will decide what gets produced. Instead, when the means of production are truly commanded by a compeerist society, their use will primarily be employed to expand humanity's capacity to thrive. In preceding chapters we focused on the promise and challenges facing the broad adoption of such a political economy. The context in this exploration, however, was always one in which capital and the capital-state nexus was still firmly in control. In this final chapter, then, we consider what a compeerist mode of production could look like if it actually were to become dominant.

Anarchist and Marxist depictions of a final end-goal economy generally espouse an aim in which, in the words of Kropotkin (1995, p 78), the ‘associations of men and women who … work on the land, in the factories, in the mines, and so on, [are] themselves the managers of production’. Yet there is significant variation as to how such an economy would function on a larger scale. In capitalism, money, representing all the tangible value of the world, gives the invisible hand of the market its movement. Using money determines demand while pursuing money motivates supply. What possible and preferable alternatives exist to this arrangement?

In anarcho-communist approaches the answer is to get rid of money, markets, and property altogether. Means of production are owned in common and supply and demand is determined from within the community, with each working according to their ability and everyone receiving according to their needs. In collectivist approaches, in turn, there is again an embrace of mutually-owned production capabilities, yet the role of money is generally revived, at least in the short term, as a labour token. This token, which can be redeemed for communally produced goods, ensures a motivation to work and a means with which to organize distribution, hence addressing two key uncertainties within the anarcho-communist approach.

Alternatively, mutualist outlooks accept money and markets as long as property ownership is conditional, meaning it should not lead to artificial scarcity or be used to exploit labour.