# 2026-01-10 - Mutual Aid by Petr Kropotkin
Mutual Aid was published in 1902, which puts it just before the
revolution of 1905.
I first saw this book referenced in The Age of Empathy by
Frans De Waal. Since then i've seen it referenced a couple of other
places and felt that it would be an important book to read. The
book is rather dry reading in my opinion because of its intellectual
and scholarly focus. Even so, i still believe it is an important
book because it was an early refutation of social Darwinism and its
myths.
> Kropotkin was inspired by a setting quite unlike the one that had
> inspired Darwin. Darwin visited tropical regions with abundant
> wildlife, whereas Kropotkin explored Siberia. The ideas of both men
> reflect the difference between a rich environment, resulting in the
> sort of population density and competition envisioned by Malthus,
> and an environment that is frozen and unfriendly most of the time.
> ... Instead of animals duking it out, and the victors running off
> with the prize, he saw a communal principle at work. In subzero
> cold, you either huddle together or die.
> --The Age of Empathy by Frans De Wall
> To a century which was seeking escape from the realization of the
> horrors among which it lived, [social Darwinism] showed a universe
> in which those horrors were reflected upon a grand scale--a
> "Nature red in tooth and claw." It was... a scientific sanction of
> the doctrine of:
> "Each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost."
> --Intellectual Vagabondage by Floyd Dell
# Intro
Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys
which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria.
One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence
which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement
Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results
from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the
vast territory which fell under my observation. And the other was,
that even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I
failed to find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter
struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the
same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not
always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle
for life, and the main factor of evolution.
On the contrary, a lecture "On the Law of Mutual Aid," which was
delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by
the well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St.
Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole
subject. Kessler's idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle
there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of
the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution
of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest.
This suggestion--which was, in reality, nothing but a further
development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent
of Man--seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that
since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect
materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only
cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He
died in 1881.
The number and importance of mutual-aid institutions which were
developed by the creative genius of the savage and half-savage
masses, during the earliest clan-period of mankind and still more
during the next village-community period, and the immense influence
which these early institutions have exercised upon the subsequent
development of mankind, down to the present times, induced me to
extend my researches to the later, historical periods as well;
especially, to study that most interesting period--the free medieval
city republics, of which the universality and influence upon our
modern civilization have not yet been duly appreciated.
It is a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief
factors of evolution--not on all factors of evolution and their
respective values; and this first book had to be written, before the
latter could become possible.
# Chapter 1: Mutual Aid Among Animals
[Regarding the struggle for existence:] In The Descent of Man
[Darwin] gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide
sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the
struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence
disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that
substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral
faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for
survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the
physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to
combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike,
for the welfare of the community.
It happened with Darwin's theory as it always happens with theories
having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it
according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more.
Mutual aid is met with even amidst the lowest animals, and we must be
prepared to learn some day, from the students of microscopical
pond-life, facts of unconscious mutual support, even from the life of
micro-organisms.
It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that
of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, though
mostly being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be
explained to some extent as a consequence of the change produced in
the animal world by the rapid increase of mankind. At any rate it is
worthy of note that there are species living a quite isolated life in
densely-inhabited regions, while the same species, or their nearest
congeners, are gregarious in uninhabited countries. Wolves, foxes,
and several birds of prey may be quoted as instances in point.
[I've read elsewhere that the idea of "alpha wolf" doesn't exist in
nature, it only existed in captivity. Also, in an interview with
William Rees, i heard that 10,000 years ago human beings were 1% of
the mammalian biomass on the planet. Today humans are 32% of the
mammalian biomass, and domesticated animals are another 64%. So
somewhere between 95 to 98.5% of mammalian biomass is human beings
and their animals. So wild nature has been reduced from 99% to
just about 1.5%. This statistic goes to illustrate how the
expansion of the human enterprise is necessarily at the expense of
the rest of nature. Of course this level of disturbance will have
side effects on societies of wild animals.]
# Chapter 3: Mutual Aid Among Savages
There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind.
They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited
experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always watchful
of wars, cruelty, and oppression, told of it, and little more
besides; and they concluded that mankind is nothing but a loose
aggregation of beings, always ready to fight with each other, and
only prevented from so doing by the intervention of some authority.
So that men lived in societies, and had germs of a tribal worship,
even at that extremely remote epoch.
The same is still better proved as regards the later part of the
stone age. Traces of neolithic man have been found in numberless
quantities, so that we can reconstitute his manner of life to a great
extent.
"Their word is sacred," he wrote. They know "nothing of the
corruptness and faithless arts of Europe." "They live in great
tranquillity and are seldom at war with their neighbours." They are
"all kindness and goodwill to one another. One of the greatest
pleasures of the Hottentots certainly lies in their gifts and good
offices to one another." "The integrity of the Hottentots, their
strictness and celerity in the exercise of justice, and their
chastity, are things in which they excel all or most nations in the
world."
Tachart, Barrow, and Moodie fully confirm Kolben's testimony. Let me
only remark that when Kolben wrote that "they are certainly the most
friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one
another that ever appeared on the earth", he wrote a sentence which
has continually appeared since in the description of savages. When
first meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a
caricature of their life; but when an intelligent man has stayed
among them for a longer time, he generally describes them as the
"kindest" or "the gentlest" race on the earth. These very same words
have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the
Dayaks, the Aleoutes, the Papuas, and so on, by the highest
authorities. I also remember having read them applied to the
Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very
frequency of that high commendation already speaks volumes in
itself.
With the Eskimos and their nearest congeners, the Thlinkets, the
Koloshes, and the Aleoutes, we find one of the nearest illustrations
of what man may have been during the glacial age. ... How could they
sustain the hard struggle for life unless by closely combining their
forces? ... Close cohabitation and close interdependence are
sufficient for maintaining century after century that deep respect
for the interests of the community which is characteristic of Eskimo
life. Even in the larger communities of Eskimos, "public opinion
formed the real judgment-seat, the general punishment consisting in
the offenders being shamed in the eyes of the people."
What is obtained by hunting and fishing belongs to the clan.
I remember how vainly I tried to make some of my Tungus friends
understand our civilization of individualism: they could not, and
they resorted to the most fantastical suggestions. The fact is that a
savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal solidarity in everything for
bad and for good, is as incapable of understanding a "moral"
European, who knows nothing of that solidarity, as the average
European is incapable of understanding the savage.
# Chapter 6: Mutual Aid In The Mediaeval City (Continued)
More than that; not only many aspirations of our modern radicals were
already realized in the middle ages, but much of what is described
now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact. ... And amidst
all present talk about an eight hours' day, it may be well to
remember an ordinance of Ferdinand the First relative to the Imperial
coal mines, which settled the miner's day at eight hours, "as it used
to be of old" (wie vor Alters herkommen), and work on Saturday
afternoon was prohibited. Longer hours were very rare, we are told by
Janssen, while shorter hours were of common occurrence. In this
country, in the fifteenth century, Rogers says, "the workmen worked
only forty-eight hours a week." The Saturday half-holiday, too, which
we consider as a modern conquest, was in reality an old medieval
institution; it was bathing-time for a great part of the community,
while Wednesday afternoon was bathing-time for the Geselle.
# Chapter 7: Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves
It is well known by this time that the great movement of the reform
was not a mere revolt against the abuses of the Catholic Church. It
had its constructive ideal as well, and that ideal was life in free,
brotherly communities. ... The "Twelve Articles" and similar
professions of faith, which were circulated among the German and
Swiss peasants and artisans, maintained not only every one's right to
interpret the Bible according to his own understanding, but also
included the demand of communal lands being restored to the village
communities and feudal servitudes being abolished, and they always
alluded to the "true" faith--a faith of brotherhood. ... Only
wholesale massacres by the thousand could put a stop to this
widely-spread popular movement, and it was by the sword, the fire,
and the rack that the young States secured their first and decisive
victory over the masses of the people.
For the next three centuries the States, both on the Continent and in
these islands, systematically weeded out all institutions in which
the mutual-aid tendency had formerly found its expression.
The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily
favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded
individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State
grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their
obligations towards each other.
Although the destruction of mutual-aid institutions has been going on
in practice and theory, for full three or four hundred years,
hundreds of millions of men continue to live under such institutions;
they piously maintain them and endeavour to reconstitute them where
they have ceased to exist.
[The author gives many examples from Eropean history where the state
forced the division of communal lands, often selling or plundering
them. This reminds me of the methods used to settle North America.]
In short, to speak of the natural death of the village communities in
virtue of economical laws is as grim a joke as to speak of the
natural death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. The fact was
simply this: The village communities had lived for over a thousand
years; and where and when the peasants were not ruined by wars and
exactions they steadily improved their methods of culture. But as the
value of land was increasing, in consequence of the growth of
industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State
organization, a power which it never had had under the feudal system,
it took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did
its best to destroy the communal institutions.
It may be taken as a rule that where the communes have retained a
wide sphere of functions, so as to be living parts of the national
organism, and where they have not been reduced to sheer misery, they
never fail to take good care of their lands. Accordingly the communal
estates in Switzerland strikingly contrast with the miserable state
of "commons" in this country. The communal forests in the Vaud and
the Valais are admirably managed, in conformity with the rules of
modern forestry. Elsewhere the "strips" of communal fields, which
change owners under the system of re-allotment, are very well
manured, especially as there is no lack of meadows and cattle. The
high level meadows are well kept as a rule, and the rural roads are
excellent.
Whole populations are periodically reduced to misery or starvation;
the very springs of life are crushed out of millions of men, reduced
to city pauperism; the understanding and the feelings of the millions
are vitiated by teachings worked out in the interest of the few. All
this is certainly a part of our existence. But the nucleus of
mutual-support institutions, habits, and customs remains alive with
the millions; it keeps them together; and they prefer to cling to
their customs, beliefs, and traditions rather than to accept the
teachings of a war of each against all, which are offered to them
under the title of science, but are no science at all.
# Chapter 8: Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves (Continued)
It is well known, indeed, that when the medieval cities were subdued
in the sixteenth century by growing military States, all institutions
which kept the artisans, the masters, and the merchants together in
the guilds and the cities were violently destroyed. The
self-government and the self-jurisdiction of both, the guild and the
city were abolished; the oath of allegiance between guild-brothers
became an act of felony towards the State; the properties of the
guilds were confiscated in the same way as the lands of the village
communities; and the inner and technical organization of each trade
was taken in hand by the State. Laws, gradually growing in severity,
were passed to prevent artisans from combining in any way.
In fact, the British Parliament only followed in this case the
example of the French Revolutionary Convention, which had issued a
draconic law against coalitions of workers-coalitions between a
number of citizens being considered as attempts against the
sovereignty of the State, which was supposed equally to protect all
its subjects. The work of destruction of the medieval unions was thus
completed.
The sophisms of the brain cannot resist the mutual-aid feeling,
because this feeling has been nurtured by thousands of years of human
social life and hundreds of thousands of years of pre-human life in
societies.
[How right he was to locate this in the brain despite being a century
ahead of the neuroscience that would validate his opinion.]
In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized State nor
the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came,
adorned with the attributes of science, from obliging philosophers
and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human solidarity,
deeply lodged in men's understanding and heart, because it has been
nurtured by all our preceding evolution. What was the outcome of
evolution since its earliest stages cannot be overpowered by one of
the aspects of that same evolution.
# Conclusion
We may thus take the knowledge of the individual factor in human
history as granted--even though there is full room for a new study of
the subject on the lines just alluded to; while, on the other side,
the mutual-aid factor has been hitherto totally lost sight of; it was
simply denied, or even scoffed at, by the writers of the present and
past generation. It was therefore necessary to show, first of all,
the immense part which this factor plays in the evolution of both the
animal world and human societies. Only after this has been fully
recognized will it be possible to proceed to a comparison between the
two factors.
As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during
our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of
individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin
than that.
To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of our century to
the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason
like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to
the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial
progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and
close intercourse certainly are, as they have been, much more
advantageous than mutual struggle.
In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of
some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform,
and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last
century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of
revenge, or of "due reward"--of good for good and evil for evil--is
affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of "no
revenge for wrongs," and of freely giving more than one expects to
receive from [one's] neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real
principle of morality--a principle superior to mere equivalence,
equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And [a person]
is appealed to to be guided in [one's] acts, not merely by love,
which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the
perception of ... oneness with each human being.
author: Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kni︠a︡zʹ, 1842-1921
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title: Mutual Aid
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