Mutual Aid

Mutual Aid is a radical handbook for anyone who grasps the severity of the global poly-crisis and wants a community-based means to fight back. Dean Spade - lawyer, academic, writer, and activist - highlights the bold and innovative ways ordinary people have developed to share resources and care for those in crisis. Mutual aid isn't charity. It is a form of organizing integral to all influential and successful social movements. Spade offers practical tools and advice to help with the challenges of working in groups, forming a decision-making process, and preventing and addressing conflict.

A pioneering treatise on cooperation and reciprocity, from the great anarchist thinker 'Don't compete! - competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!' In his pioneering 1902 treatise on human cooperation, the anarchist thinker and natural scientist Peter Kropotkin argued that it is our innate instinct for mutual aid - rather than mutual struggle - which enables societies to survive and flourish. From the earliest days of evolution through to medieval guilds, indigenous nomads and modern voluntary organisations, Kropotkin's vision of small-scale, ecologically sustainable, collective communities challenged the orthodoxies of his age, whether individualism or Marxism. Mutual Aid offers instead a radical, and prescient, rewriting of the whole of human history. With an introduction by David Priestland

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to--or actively engineer--each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable. Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

A pioneering treatise on cooperation and reciprocity, from the great anarchist thinker 'Don't compete! - competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!' In his pioneering 1902 treatise on human cooperation, the anarchist thinker and natural scientist Peter Kropotkin argued that it is our innate instinct for mutual aid - rather than mutual struggle - which enables societies to survive and flourish. From the earliest days of evolution through to medieval guilds, indigenous nomads and modern voluntary organisations, Kropotkin's vision of small-scale, ecologically sustainable, collective communities challenged the orthodoxies of his age, whether individualism or Marxism. Mutual Aid offers instead a radical, and prescient, rewriting of the whole of human history. With an introduction by David Priestland

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a 1902 collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. The essays, initially published in the English periodical The Nineteenth Century between 1890 and 1896, explore the role of mutually-beneficial cooperation and reciprocity (or "mutual aid") in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against theories of social Darwinism that emphasize competition and survival of the fittest, and against the romantic depictions by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love. Instead Kropotkin argues that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of human and animal communities and, along with the conscience, has been promoted through natural selection. Mutual Aid is considered a fundamental text in anarchist communism. It presents a scientific basis for communism as an alternative to the historical materialism of the Marxists. Kropotkin considers the importance of mutual aid for prosperity and survival in the animal kingdom, in indigenous and early European societies, in the medieval free cities (especially through the guilds), and in the late 19th century village, labor movement, and poor folk. He criticizes the State for destroying historically important mutual aid institutions, particularly through the imposition of private property. Many biologists (including Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of his generation) also consider it an important catalyst in the scientific study of cooperation. (wikipedia.org)

2017 Reprint of 1919 Edition. "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" is a 1902 work by Russian anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin explores the role of mutually-beneficial cooperation and reciprocity (or "mutual aid") in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against the competition-centered theories of so-called social Darwinism, as well as the romantic depictions of cooperation presented by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued it was motivated by universal love rather than self-interest. "Mutual Aid" is considered a fundamental text in anarchist communism, presenting a scientific basis for communism alternative to the historical materialism of the Marxists. Many biologists also consider it an important catalyst in the scientific study of cooperation.

In the merciless arena of life, we are all subject to the law of the jungle, to ruthless competition and the survival of the fittest – such is the myth that has given rise to a society that has become toxic for our planet and for our and future generations. But today the lines are shifting. A growing number of new movements and thinkers are challenging this skewed view of the world and reviving words such as ‘altruism’, ‘cooperation’, ‘kindness’ and ‘solidarity’. A close look at the wide spectrum of living beings reveals that, at all times and in all places, animals, plants, microorganisms and human beings have practised different forms of mutual aid. And those which survive difficult conditions best are not necessarily the strongest, but those which help each other the most. Pablo Servigne and Gauthier Chapelle explore a vast, forgotten continent of mutual aid in order to discover the mechanisms of this ‘other law of the jungle’. In so doing, they provide a more rounded view of the world of living things and give us some of the conceptual tools we need to move beyond the vicious circle of competition and self-destruction that is leading our civilization to the verge of collapse.

In the merciless arena of life, we are all subject to the law of the jungle, to ruthless competition and the survival of the fittest – such is the myth that has given rise to a society that has become toxic for our planet and for our and future generations. But today the lines are shifting. A growing number of new movements and thinkers are challenging this skewed view of the world and reviving words such as ‘altruism’, ‘cooperation’, ‘kindness’ and ‘solidarity’. A close look at the wide spectrum of living beings reveals that, at all times and in all places, animals, plants, microorganisms and human beings have practised different forms of mutual aid. And those which survive difficult conditions best are not necessarily the strongest, but those which help each other the most. Pablo Servigne and Gauthier Chapelle explore a vast, forgotten continent of mutual aid in order to discover the mechanisms of this ‘other law of the jungle’. In so doing, they provide a more rounded view of the world of living things and give us some of the conceptual tools we need to move beyond the vicious circle of competition and self-destruction that is leading our civilization to the verge of collapse.

Written partly in response to Social Darwinism and in particular to Thomas H. Huxley's Nineteenth Century essay, "The Struggle for Existence", Kropotkin's book drew on his experiences in scientific expeditions in Siberia to illustrate the phenomenon of cooperation. After examining the evidence of cooperation in nonhuman animals, pre-feudal societies, in medieval cities, and in modern times, he concludes that cooperation and mutual aid are the most important factors in the evolution of the species and the ability to survive. (wikipedia.org)

1 Illustrations, unspecified

Written partly in response to Social Darwinism and in particular to Thomas H. Huxley's Nineteenth Century essay, "The Struggle for Existence", Kropotkin's book drew on his experiences in scientific expeditions in Siberia to illustrate the phenomenon of cooperation. After examining the evidence of cooperation in nonhuman animals, pre-feudal societies, in medieval cities, and in modern times, he concludes that cooperation and mutual aid are the most important factors in the evolution of the species and the ability to survive. (wikipedia.org)