WHAT IS MUTUAL AID?

In a world ruled by ceaseless capitalist competition, where people are pitted to work against each other, anarchists offer a different vision: Mutual Aid.

Mutual Aid is a guiding factor behind anarchist
practice, and an essential framework for understanding

anarchist views on social organization more
broadly.

So... what is it, exactly?

Well... in its simplest form, mutual aid is
the motivation at play any time two or more

people work together to solve a problem for
the shared benefit of everyone involved.

In other words, it means co-operation for
the sake of the common good.

Understood in this way, mutual aid is obviously
not a new idea, nor is it exclusive to anarchists.

In fact, the very earliest human societies
practised mutual aid as a matter of survival,

and to this day there are countless examples
of its logic found within the plant and animal kingdoms

To understand anarchists’ specific embrace
of mutual aid, we need to go back over

100 years, to the writings of the famous Russian
anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin, who in addition

to sporting one of the most prolific beards
of all time, just so happened to also be an

accomplished zoologist and evolutionary biologist.

Back in Kropotkin's day, the field of evolutionary
biology was heavily dominated by the ideas

of Social Darwinists such as Thomas H. Huxley.

By ruthlessly applying Charles Darwin's famous
dictum “survival of the fittest”

to human societies, Huxley and his peers had concluded
that existing social hierarchies were the

result of natural selection, or competition
between free sovereign individuals, and were

thus an important and inevitable factor in
human evolution.

Not too surprisingly, these ideas were particularly
popular among rich and politically powerful

white men, as it offered them a pseudo-scientific
justification for their privileged positions

in society, in addition to providing a racist
rationalization of the European colonization

of Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Kropotkin attacked this conventional wisdom,
when in 1902 he published a book called Mutual

Aid: A Factor in Evolution, in which he proved
that there was something beyond blind, individual

competition at work in evolution.

Kropotkin demonstrated that species that were
able to work together, or who formed symbiotic

arrangements with other species based on mutual
benefit, were able to better adapt to their

environment, and were granted a competitive
edge over those species who didn't, or couldn't.

In today’s metropolitan societies, people
are socialized to see themselves as independent,

self-sufficient individuals, equipped with
our own condos, bank accounts, smartphones

and facebook profiles.

However, this notion of human independence
is a myth, promoted by corporations and states

seeking to mould us into atomized, and easily
controlled consumers, concerned primarily

with our own short-term well-being.

The truth is that human beings are incredibly
interdependent.

In fact, that’s the key to our success as
a species.

Do you ever spend time thinking about where
the food you eat, or the clothes you wear

come from?

What about the labour and materials that went
into building your house, or your car?

Left to fend for ourselves without the comforts
of civilization, few among us would survive

a week, let alone be able to produce a fraction
of the myriad commodities we consume every

day.

From the great pyramids commissioned by the
Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, to today’s globe-spanning

production and supply chains, the primary
function of the ruling class has always been

to organize human activity.

And everywhere that they have done so, they
have relied on coercion.

Under capitalism, this activity is organized
through either direct violence, or the internalized

threat of starvation created by a system based
on private ownership of wealth and property.

Capitalism can inspire people to do many amazing
things, as long as there is a profit to be

made.

But in the absence of a profit motive, there
are many important tasks that it will not

and cannot ever accomplish, from eradicating
global poverty and preventable diseases, to

removing toxic plastics from the oceans.

In order to carry out these monumental tasks,
we require a change in the ethos that connects

us to one another, and to the world that sustains
us.

A shift away from capitalism... towards mutual
aid.

Glimpses of the Anarchist ideal of mutual
aid can be seen today in communities of open

source software developers, and in programmers
coming up with new forms of encryption to

thwart NSA surveillance.

They can be seen in neighbours coming together
to organize a daycare collective, and in the

aftermath of disasters such as Hurricanes
Katrina and Sandy, when in the absence of

state institutions, perfect strangers rush
to one another’s aid.

It can be seen in the bravery of the white
helmets of Aleppo, who risk their lives to

pull children from the collapsed ruins of
buildings hit by Assad’s barrel bombs.

Imagine a world in which human activity was
not organized on the basis of ceaseless competition

over artificially scarce resources, but the
pursuit of the satisfaction of human needs…

and you will understand a vision of the world
that anarchists seek to create.