The main division within the mutualist movement is between the American individualists, especially Warren and Tucker and their associates, and the contintental tradition of Proudhon. The main mutualist tradition sees mutual banks and defense as community-controlled functions, part of a general framework of a libertarian community, within which market competition between cooperatives takes place. Tucker saw mutual banks and defense associations as just another form of business firm competing in the free market.

On the issue of banks, there is no inherent contradiction between the two views. There is room for community-controlled banking cooperatives existing alongside banking co-ops organized by private groups of individuals. In regard to defense and police service, a local government might, by ceasing to coercively collect payment or impose services on unwilling consumers, evolve into a voluntary defense cooperative serving the majority of a community while coexisting with a number of smaller agencies. And the issue may be moot if such services are a natural monopoly. Given natural market entry barriers, it might well be easier for dissatisfied citizens of a direct democracy to reorganize police service under new management by appointing a new selectman, than to raise capital and organize a new, competing service. In any case, Tucker envisioned any competing defense agencies as working out a modus vivendi based on federation, exclusion clauses, appeals, etc., enforced by a general common law system very like Rothbard's libertarian law code.

The two traditions also disagree on the issue of wage labor. Tucker did not favor prohibiting wage labor. He believed that a genuine free market, without privilege, was sufficient to end the exploitation of labor. The rate of profit would decline to zero under the effects of competition, and the worker would keep the full product of his labor and become a de facto co-owner. Tucker was friendly to the idea of organized labor and strikes, but opposed expropriation of the means of production against the capitalists' will. Labadie, a follower of Tucker, was more open to syndicalist ideas.

One possible compromise here, as mentioned in the history section, is to apply Tucker's ideas on land ownership to ownership of industrial means of production. Tucker supported the anti-rent movement in Ireland as a way of expropriating the landlords against their will. He also favored refusal by local defense associations to enforce absentee ownership of land, or ownership of more land by a single individual than he could use, and combined that with support for defending current occupiers against any attempt at rent collection. The same principles could be applied to industry, with communities refusing to enforce the absentee property rights of capitalists against the workers who actually operate the means of production.

A good place to start is with the opinion of communal anarchists, represented here by the Anarchist FAQ. The main difference is that communal anarchists "prefer communal solutions to social problems and a communal vision of the good society."

Mutualists, on the other hand, do not pursue collectivism or communalism as an ideal in itself. They prefer to resort to collective decision-making only when it is required by the technical nature of the means of production. When the evolution of production technology under capitalism has collectivized the production process, there is no choice but some form of collective decision-making. The only choice is whether the coordination is done by someone appointed from above, or someone responsible to the workers. In such a situation, mutualists of course prefer that decisions be made according to the democratic will of everyone in the workplace.

But when production can be carried out by self-employed artisans, family businesses and farms, or small cooperatives, mutualists prefer to leave all decision-making to the smallest unit possible. We do not desire to collectivize artisans and small businesspeople, like the barbers and florists of Barcelona who formed themselves into syndicates in 1936. The larger the decision-making unit, the more wills each worker has to take into account, and the less the autonomy of the individual in deciding how to do his own work. The fewer the independent wills that have to be coordinated, on the other hand, the more work decisions reflect the preferences and values of the actual individuals involved. Democracy is not an end to be pursued for its own sake, but a way of making decisions fairly when collective action is required.

And there is an increasing danger, the larger the organization and the further removed from direct contact with the workplace, that it will become a power base for those engaged in the day-to-day work of coordinating the organization. As an example of what the danger is, consider the libertarian communist society of Anarres depicted in Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed. The federative bodies, responsible for planning and coordinating relations between their member enterprises, were organized on formally libertarian lines, with delegates recallable at will by the local workplaces. Nevertheless, the syndics accumulated permanent planning staffs, and over time the decision-making process became a pro forma debate followed by rubber-stamping the proposal of the planning staff. The federative bodies in practice became miniature gosplans. Impersonal market relations between firms do not require higher organizations that can be seized by a new class of professionals and experts.

Nevertheless, these disagreements need not be a source of rancor or discord between mutualist and communalist anarchists. The communalists are not fundamentally opposed to voluntary forms of mutualist organization.

The only likely area for fundamental disagreement is over the individualist willingness to tolerate wage labor. But on this issue we must confront the challenge of Richard Garner, who asked what an anarchist community would do if two individuals agreed to exchange the labor of one for some form of wealth possessed by the other. One answer might be simply to refuse collective enforcement to such an agreement, and leave the two to their own devices. But in any case the absence of state-guaranteed privilege would eliminate any significant advantage for a would-be capitalist in trying to resurrect the wage system. And it should be a basic principle of any mutualist workplace, agreed to by all members, not to hire workers on any basis but that of equal partner.