An overview and analysis of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid showing how it has faired against developments in modern science as well as how it relates to anarchism.

Mutual Aid: An Introduction and Evaluation

Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid is usually, and rightly, called his masterpiece. While the high quality of all his work makes it hard to say whether this classic can be considered his best, it is fair to say that it is probably his most famous and one of his most widely read. Suffice to say, that it is rarely out of print testifies to its importance as well as the quality and timelessness of its message.

It is often called an anarchist classic. This is not entirely accurate. Yes, it is a classic and it was written by an anarchist, indeed the leading anarchist thinker of the time. However, it is not a book about anarchism or anarchist theory. It is, first and foremost, a work of popular science, a “best-selling work,” which made co-operation “well known in lay society” while ensuring it would “be discussed among biologists in the following decades.”[1] It was aimed at rebutting the misuse of evolutionary theory to justify the status quo, but its synthesis of zoological, anthropological and historical data achieved far more and, consequently, its influence is great. “It is arguable that of all the books on co-operation written by biologists,” argues Lee Alan Dugatkin Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Louisville, “Kropotkin's Mutual Aid had the most profound affect on biologists, social scientists, and laymen alike.” [2] Anthropologist Ashley Montagu dedicated his book Darwin, Competition and Co-operation, to Kropotkin, stating it was a “classic” and “no book in the whole realm of evolutionary theories is more readable or more important, for it is Mutual Aid which provides the first thoroughly documented demonstration of the importance of co-operation as a factor in evolution.” [3]

This is not to say that anarchism plays no part in it nor that it holds nothing of interest for anarchists or anarchist theory. Far from it! The very mode of analysis, the looking into mutual aid tendencies of everyday life is inherently libertarian. It flows from the “bottom-up” and is rooted in popular history. More than that, it is documented with the skill of a talented scientist and, in this, it is somewhat unusual. It is often noted that Proudhon, the founding father of anarchism, was unique in being a socialist thinker who was also working class. In the case of Kropotkin, he was one of the few socialist thinkers who was a trained scientist, an extremely gifted one according to his peers. This education in the scientific method can be seen from all his work, but most obviously in Mutual Aid.

Given that this work is probably the best known by non-anarchists, it is useful to place it into the context of his revolutionary ideas as well as evaluating how well it has survived advances in science. In the process, Kropotkin’s life will be touched upon, as well as the “life” of his book, its origins and influences. Finally, the various myths which have arisen about Mutual Aid will be discussed and debunked. By so doing, it will become clear why this book is considered so important by both anarchists and non-anarchists alike.

The Anarchist formerly known as Prince

Peter Kropotkin was born in Moscow in 1842 within a royal family that could trace its origins to the founders of the Tsarist regime. At the age of fifteen, he entered the Corps of Pages in St. Petersburg, an elite Court institution attached to the imperial household. Kropotkin, like Bakunin before him, became interested in politics and social issues as well as science.

In 1862 he was promoted to the army and, utilising the privilege that members of the Corps could choose their regiment, he decided to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district. Two years later, Kropotkin accepted charge of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari River into the heart of Manchuria. Kropotkin used both expeditions to pursue his scientific interests, yielding valuable geographical results. This, combined with the impossibility of obtaining any real reforms in Siberia, induced him to devote himself almost entirely to this highly successful scientific exploration. Leaving the army in 1867, he returned to St. Petersburg to begin university and, at the same time, became the secretary of the physical geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1873 he published a paper in which he proved that the existing maps of Asia misrepresented the physical formation of the country, the main structural lines being in fact from south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east to west as had been previously supposed.

In 1871, while exploring glacial deposits in Finland and Sweden for the Russian Geographical Society, he was asked to be its secretary. However, his growing social consciousness made him refuse the offer, instead becoming a revolutionary socialist and agitator for social change. Using the privileges of his scientific position, he visited Switzerland in 1872 and joined the International Workingmen's Association (IWMA). Visiting the libertarian Jura federation, his position on socialism became clear and he embraced anarchism, “the no-government system of socialism.”[4]

On returning to Russia, he took an active part in spreading revolutionary propaganda through the Circle of Tchaikovsky, being arrested in 1874 for his activities. He escaped two years later, went into exile in Western Europe and became a, if not the, leading exponent of the communist-anarchism which was replacing Bakunin’s collectivist-anarchism as the dominant theory in the libertarian movement (a position it holds to this day)[5]. As well as editing the anarchist newspaper Le Révolté, he wrote numerous articles and revolutionary pamphlets. He was expelled from Switzerland in 1881 after attending the International Anarchist conference in London due to pressure from the Russian ambassador. Eventually, Kropotkin settled in France and was soon arrested as part of a general crackdown on the anarchist movement. After a trial in Lyons in 1883, which was utilised by the 53 defendants to expound their anarchist ideas, he was given a five-year prison sentence. The Police Correctional Court ostensibly claimed this was for being a member of an illegal organisation, the IWMA (which had been outlawed after the brutal repression of the Paris Commune).

After repeated international campaigns, he was released in 1886 and settled in England where he helped found the anarchist newspaper Freedom, contributing to the anarchist and non-anarchist press, writing books (such as Mutual Aid and The Great French Revolution), producing anarchist pamphlets and speaking at socialist and trade union events across Britain and elsewhere. He returned to Russia in the summer of 1917, after the February revolution and the subsequent fall of the Tsar. Critical of Lenin’s regime, he spent his final years working on his unfinished Ethics and warning the workers of the world not to follow the mistakes being made in Russia. He died in February, 1921, and his funeral was used by the Russian anarchist movement as a final public protest against Bolshevik tyranny.

His contributions to anarchism were significant. As his fellow leading anarchist and friend Errico Malatesta put it, Kropotkin was “without doubt one of those who have contributed most . . . to the elaboration and propagation of anarchist ideas” and has “well deserved the recognition and the admiration that all anarchists feel for him.”[6] However, he was also well known as a scientist and was “a naturalist of some renown, with specialised interest in geology.”[7] This can be seen from the fact that as well as his justly famous entry on Anarchism, he also contributed most of the Russian geographical articles to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His obituary in The Geographical Journal expressed regret that Kropotkin’s “absorption” in his political views “seriously diminished the services which otherwise he might have rendered to Geography.” He “was a keen observer, with a well-trained intellect, familiar with all the sciences bearing on his subject” and his “contributions to geographical science are of the highest value.” Kropotkin “had a singularly attractive personality, sympathetic nature, a warm but perhaps too tender heart, and a wide knowledge in literature, science, and art.”[8]

Science’s loss was anarchism’s gain.

Darwin’s Bulldog and Mutual Aid

As Kropotkin explains in Mutual Aid, the articles the book was based on were written in response to Thomas Henry Huxley’s “The Struggle for Existence in Human Society” written in 1888. Both Huxley’s original article and Kropotkin’s replies appeared in the journal The Nineteenth Century.[9] The series of replies appeared between 1890 and 1896 and were expanded to form Mutual Aid in 1902.

While Huxley’s article is often portrayed as presenting a “Social Darwinist” position, this is not true. In fact, he advocated numerous state interventions which would horrify any one actually holding that position as well as any self-respecting classical liberal of the time (or now). That state action to help those worse affected by laissez-faire was “not only desirable from a philanthropic point of view, but an essential condition of safe industrial development, appears to me to be indisputable,” Huxley argued. A nation that pursued a “Social Darwinist” position would soon self-destruct and what was needed was state intervention to ensure “a population the labour of which is sufficiently remunerated” so it may be “physically and morally healthy and socially stable.” Within reason, of course, as “a moderate price of labour” was “essential to our success as competitors in the markets of the world.”

However, Huxley drew these conclusions from an argument that human society was maintained against our natural instincts, which was “Social Darwinist” at its core:

“From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator’s show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight – whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given.”

This also applied to human society and “so among primitive men, the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in any other sense, survived. Life was a continual free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence.” Ethics were an artificial creation, which are in contradiction to “the deep-seated organic impulses which impel the natural man to follow his non-moral course.” This suggested that civilisation was a fragile creation, built against the natural state of humanity and animal life:

“The history of civilisation – that is, of society – on the other hand, is the record of the attempts which the human race has made to escape from this position. The first men who substituted the state of mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step, created society.”

Kropotkin considered Huxley’s speculation as “atrocious”[10], in direct contradiction to the facts of both nature and history. He would also have taken umbrage at claims that the State was merely “the people in their corporate capacity” and the Malthusian assertion that as so long as “unlimited multiplication goes on, no social organisation which has ever been devised . . . no fiddle-faddling with the distribution of wealth, will deliver society from the tendency to be destroyed by the reproduction within itself.” As well as its crudely inaccurate assumptions on “nature”, particularly of early human life, there is also its obvious statist implication. After all, if “civilisation” requires the denial of “natural selection” then how is this to be achieved, unless by coercion by the state? And if our social problems are at root biological, what need is there for social transformation?

As Kropotkin explained in an anarchist essay written after Mutual Aid, Huxley's position like “all our religious, historical, juridical, and social education is imbued with the idea that human beings, if left to themselves, would revert to savagery; that without authority men would eat one another; for nothing, they say, can be expected from the 'multitude' but brutishness and the warring of each against all. Men would perish if above them soared not the elect . . . These saviours prevent, we are told, the battle of all against all.” This, he argued, was nonsense as “a scientific study of societies and institutions brings us to quite different views. It proves that usages and customs created by mankind for the sake of mutual aid, mutual defence, and peace in general, were precisely elaborated by the 'nameless multitude.' And it was these customs that enabled man to survive in his struggle for existence in the midst of extremely hard natural conditions.” The notion that the state was merely the instrument of the people is hardly supported by history nor current practice, for what the state and its laws have done is to “fix, or rather to crystallise in a permanent form, such customs as already were in existence” and adding to them “some new rules – rules of inequality and servile submission of the masses in the interest of the armed rich and the warlike minorities.” [11]

Huxley’s position, needless to say, was somewhat self-contradictory. If, as he suggests, “natural” man is inherently aggressive and needs the state to keep him in check then why are our rulers, those in charge of the state, exceptions to this “human nature”? As Kropotkin argued elsewhere, “while our opponents seem to admit there is a kind of salt of the earth – the rulers, the employers, the leaders – who, happily enough, prevent those bad men – the ruled, the exploited, the led – from becoming still worse than they are” we anarchists “maintain that both rulers and ruled are spoiled by authority” and “both exploiters and exploited are spoiled by exploitation.” So “there is [a] difference, and a very important one. We admit the imperfections of human nature, but we make no exception for the rulers. They make it, although sometimes unconsciously, and because we make no such exception, they say that we are dreamers.”[12] Moreover, Kropotkin argued, if “the only lesson Nature gives to man is one of evil, then [Huxley] necessarily has to admit the existence of some other, extra-natural . . . influence which inspires man with conceptions of ‘supreme good’” which “nullifies his own attempt at explaining evolution by the action of natural forces only.”[13] In other words, Huxley limits the power of evolutionary theory by excluding humans and their cultural and social evolution from it.[14]

If human nature is so bad, then giving some people power over others and hoping this will lead to justice and freedom is hopelessly utopian. Indeed, the so-called “civilised” nations have usually been far more “savage” and “barbaric”, both internally and externally, than those societies they have arrogantly labelled so. And, as Kropotkin noted in Mutual Aid, a so-called “savage” would have been shocked by how the rich treated the poor[15] – assuming that they survived the often genocidal imperialism inflicted on them by the “civilised.”

So Kropotkin could only view Huxley’s essay as little more than unsubstantiated assertion (“a very incorrect representation of the facts of Nature”[16]), misusing science to justify an oppressive and unjust social system and simply reflecting the (reformist-end of the) dominant political and economic culture. His own research and experience indicated as much. Being a trained scientist, he went out to prove it – and so what was to become Mutual Aid was written. It became an instant success and a major contribution to evolutionary and anthropological thought.

Science and the dominant culture

Given that Mutual Aid was written in response to distortions of Darwin, it is somewhat ironic that Darwin was inspired to develop his theory of natural selection after reading Malthus’s infamous “An Essay on the Principles of Population” (it was, Darwin noted, “the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold forces to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms”[17]). This is because Malthus inflicted his “law of population” onto the world in response to the ideas of anarchist William Godwin and other social reformers.[18] That is, anarchism, indirectly, inspired the theory of evolution which, in turn, was used by Kropotkin to enrich anarchist theory.

Malthus’s essay was an explicit attempt to prove that social stratification, and so the status quo, was a “law of nature” and that poverty was the fault of the poor themselves, not the fault of an unjust and authoritarian socio-economic system. As such, the “theory” was created with political goals in mind and as a weapon in the class struggle. As Kropotkin summarised, it was “pernicious” in its influence. It “summed up ideas already current in the minds of the wealth-possessing minority” and arose to combat the “ideas of equality and liberty” awakened by the French and American revolutions. Malthus asserted against Godwin “that no equality is possible; that the poverty of the many is not due to institutions, but is a natural law.” This meant he “thus gave the rich a kind of scientific argument against the ideas of equality.” However, it was simply “a pseudo-scientific” assertion which reflected “the secret desires of the wealth-possessing classes” and not a scientific hypothesis. This is obvious as technology has ensured that Malthus's fears are “groundless” while they are continually repeated.[19]

Significantly, starting with Malthus, all the “doomsday” prophets of the “population bomb” have been proved wrong time and time again. That his dire predictions have not come true have not stopped neo-Malthusians continuing to mouth his reactionary ideas. That the theory was fundamentally ideological in nature can be seen from Malthus himself. In contrast, and in direct contradiction to his population “theory,” as an economist Malthus was worried about the danger of over-production within a capitalist economy. Ironically, his economics was completely at odds with his arguments about population, in one the danger is underproduction of food while in the other it is overproduction. Anticipating certain themes of Keynes, he argued that effective demand had to be bolstered and even went so far as to argue for the poor to be employed in building roads and public works! No mention of “excess” population there, which indicates well the ideological nature of his over-population theory. It comes as no surprise that his economics writings fell into obscurity.

So it is easy to explain the support Malthus and his assertions got in spite of the lack of empirical evidence and the self-contradictory utterances of its inventor.[20] Its utility in providing a justification for the inhuman miseries inflicted upon the British working class by “its” ruling class of aristocrats and industrialists was the only reason why it was given the time of day (that is, “it provided the British ruling class with an argument against social reform.”[21]). That the population myth, like “genetic” justifications for race-, class- and gender-based oppression, keeps appearing over and over again, even after extensive evidence has disproved it, indicates its usefulness to the ideological guardians of the establishment.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its roots, Darwin’s work, particularly in the form of Social Darwinian “natural selection”, was also seized upon to use against working class people and social reform as well as justifying elite rule. Thus 19^th century capitalist John D. Rockefeller asserted that the “growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest . . . It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.” Another, Andrew Carnegie, proclaimed that while the law of natural selection “may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of wealth, business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.” [22] And who can protest against God’s law or rebel against Nature?

Noted scientist Stephen Jay Gould was right to “criticise the myth that science is itself an objective enterprise, done properly only when scientists can shuck the constraints of their culture and view the world as it really is . . . Scientists needn't become explicit apologists for their class or culture in order to reflect these pervasive aspects of life.” Recognising this obvious fact suggests that science “must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information” and so science, “since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity.” Even facts are “not pure and unsullied bits of information” as “culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural.” Science “cannot escape its curious dialectic. Embedded in surrounding culture, it can, nonetheless, be a powerful agent for questioning and even overturning assumptions that nurture it . . . Scientists can struggle to identify the cultural assumptions of their trade and to ask how answers might be formulated under different assertions. Scientists can propose creative theories that force startled colleges to confront unquestioned procedures.”[23]

Kropotkin’s work must be seen in this light, as an attempt to refute, with hard evidence, the cultural assumptions at the heart of the Darwinism of his day. In its most extreme form, this became “Social Darwinism” which (like much of sociobiology today) proceeds by first projecting the dominant ideas of current society onto nature (often unconsciously, so that scientists mistakenly consider the ideas in question as both “normal” and “natural”).[24] Anarchist Murray Bookchin referred to this as “the subtle projection of historically conditioned human values” onto nature rather than “scientific objectivity.” Then the theories of nature produced in this manner are transferred back onto society and history, being used to “prove” that the principles of capitalism (hierarchy, authority, competition, etc.) are eternal laws, which are then appealed to as a justification for the status quo! “What this procedure does accomplish,” noted Bookchin, “is reinforce human social hierarchies by justifying the command of men and women as innate features of the 'natural order.' Human domination is thereby transcribed into the genetic code as biologically immutable.”[25]

Amazingly, there are many supposedly intelligent people who take this sleight-of-hand seriously. Kropotkin was not one of them and, significantly, he was not alone in this. He was representing the commonplace evolutionary ideas of Russian science.

Darwin without Malthus

While Mutual Aid was provoked by Huxley’s article, Kropotkin’s interest in evolutionary theory pre-dated both it and, significantly, his anarchism by decades. He recounts in his memoirs how Darwin's work had “revolutionised all biological sciences” when it was published and how “a thorough knowledge of the natural sciences and familiarity with their methods must lie at the foundation” of any studies undertaken.[26]

As an anarchist, Kropotkin first wrote about Darwin to mark his death in 1882. In the anarchist weekly Le Révolté, Darwin was praised for showing that species were mutable and evolution resulted from the struggle for existence, so making a profound contribution to the spirit of “criticism and demolition” that promised to explode the religious and social fallacies of the age. While the bourgeoisie had attempted to use this theory against socialism, the opposite was the case as others “applying his methods and developing his ideas” had shown that it were the “sociable species” that “prosper, develop and reproduce . . . Solidarity and joint labour – this is what supports species in the struggle to maintain their existence against the hostile forces of nature.” Thus Darwinism comprises “an excellent argument to the effect that animal societies are best organised in the communist-anarchist manner.”[27]

The unnamed “others” in this article were the Russian naturalists, for in the nineteenth century as historian of science Daniel P. Todes has shown, “mutual aid remained an uncontroversial element in Russian evolutionary thought.” In the 1860s, for example, Nikolai D. Nozhin “argued that intraspecific relations were normally characterised, not by competition, but by mutual aid.” Leading Russian Zoologist, K.F. Kessler, in a lecture given in 1879, “transformed a widespread sentiment into a coherent intellectual tradition.” Significantly, “his theory of mutual aid was not based on a benign vision of natural relations in general or of intraspecific relations in particular.” Kropotkin was simply “the most famous heir to Kessler's legacy” and “brought a Russian intellectual tradition into contact with a quite different English one”, simply elaborating “what for many Russians was commonsensical.”[28]

Todes shows how Darwin’s ideas on natural selection found a welcome home in Russian intellectual and scientific circles but his Malthusian assumptions were seen for what they were, a product of his society and “the unsurprising fact that he shared the ideological outlook of his class, circle, and family. This outlook was not universal, and a reader . . . who did not share it . . . . might easily identify the author's ideological preconceptions as bourgeois, Malthusian, or, perhaps, typically British.”[29] In other words, these Russian scientists and commentators (both radical and conservative) quickly perceived what it has taken modern historians so long to recognise, namely that notwithstanding his important scientific claims and evidence, Darwin’s metaphors and language reflected the social values of his time. That is, much of what passed for “objective science” was little more than transferring the characteristics of 19^th century British capitalism onto nature.[30]

Stephen Jay Gould indicates the impact of Todes original 1987 article on him.[31] Before reading it, he “viewed Kropotkin as daftly idiosyncratic, if undeniably well meaning. He is always so presented in standard courses on evolutionary biology – as one of those soft and woolly thinkers who let hope and sentimentality get in the way of analytic toughness and a willingness to accept nature as she is, warts and all.” However, he discovered that “the parochiality had been mine in my ignorance of Russian evolutionary thought, not Kropotkin’s in his isolation in England.” Kropotkin “was part of a mainstream flowing in an unfamiliar direction, not an isolated little arroyo.” His work, in fact, represented “a standard, well-developed Russian critique of Darwin, based on interesting reasons and coherent national traditions.” Gould noted that decades after Mutual Aid was published, the “ideas of this school are unknown to us.” [32]

Kropotkin, like the others in this tradition, pointed to ideas and arguments that Darwin himself developed, particularly in his later work. So as well as providing substantial empirical evidence, Kropotkin “quite rightly [also] referred . . . to evidence provided by Darwin in The Descent of Man . . . in further support of his doctrine.”[33] For example, Darwin argued that co-operation conferred an advantage on individuals and, therefore, on a group as a whole.[34] This means that a Darwinism without Malthus could be found in Darwin’s work, building upon such insights as “[t]hose communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.”[35] Kropotkin was correct when he explained to fellow anarchist and biologist Marie Goldsmith that he sought to demonstrate “that Mutual Aid does not contradict Darwinism, if natural selection is understood in the proper manner.”[36] Thus, Todes argues, Kropotkin's argument that the sixth edition of Darwin's Origin and his correspondence shows that Darwin had been approaching a theoretical position much like his “will not strike modern historians of biology as entirely fraudulent.” [37]

In summary, then, Kropotkin's views “were but one expression of a broad current in Russian evolutionary thought that pre-dated, indeed encouraged, his work on the subject and was no means confined to leftist thinkers.” Significantly, he “first questioned Darwin's approach to the struggle for existence while exploring Siberia as a youth and was an accomplished and celebrated naturalist before his political views crystallised. Furthermore . . . his ideas about co-operation in nature were quite common among Russian naturalists of varying political perspectives.” Given this, Kropotkin’s work “cannot be dismissed as the idiosyncratic product of an anarchist dabbling in biology.”[38] Rather, they were the product of a trained scientist using his considerable skills to refute the cultural assumptions which marred an otherwise ground-breaking contribution to science and human knowledge. In this he was extremely successful as will be seen.

Modern Science and Mutual Aid

Kropotkin was always keen to situate anarchism within the trends of science (one of his best essays was called “Modern Science and Anarchism”). As such, it is only fitting to see how the themes and ideas in Mutual Aid have faired. If done, it will be quickly concluded that (terminology aside) they have stood the test of time and are now standard positions in evolutionary theory, biology and anthropology. There is overwhelming evidence to corroborate Kropotkin’s thesis, so much so it is near impossible to document it. Sadly, it is likely that, in spite of his evidence-free assertions and speculations being refuted, Huxley will still be considered the “hard-headed scientist” while Kropotkin and his well-documented critique will be dismissed as “politically driven wishful-thinking.”

In terms of popular introductions, Alfie Kohn’s No Contest[39] presents a well documented critique of the notion that competition is inherently the best option. He notes how Kropotkin “is still recognised as being on the right track” and draws on substantial evidence to support his conclusion “that competition is an inherently undesirable arrangement.”[40] He discusses how competition has negative effects on those subject to it. James C. Scott, in Seeing Like a State[41], discusses why centralised, top-down, schemes to improve the human condition in the 20^th century failed so badly. Acknowledging his debt to anarchist thinkers like Kropotkin (“who consistently emphasise the role of mutuality as opposed to imperative, hierarchical co-ordination in the creation of social order”[42]) he stresses the importance of local knowledge, of participation and decentralisation in social activity and institutions, all factors which are expressed in the kinds of popular organisations Kropotkin documented. He provides an update on (to quote Mutual Aid) “the crushing powers of the centralised State” verses “the need of mutual aid and support” found in the village, the union and other popular organisations.[43]

As regards evolutionary theory, Stephen Jay Gould concluded that “Kropotkin’s basic argument is correct. Struggle does occur in many modes, and some lead to Co-operation among members of a species as the best pathway to advantage for individuals.”[44] Lee Alan Dugatkin has documented in great detail such behaviour in his work, including his book Cooperation Among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective. Dugatkin has also traced the history of evolutionary explanations of co-operation and altruism, including Kropotkin’s, in his book The Altruism Equation.[45] Leading primatologist Frans de Waal notes that Kropotkin “rightly noted that many animals survive not through struggle, but through mutual aid”[46] and documents such activity in his book Good Natured.[47] With Jessica C. Flack, he argues that Kropotkin is part of a wider tradition “in which the view has been that animals assist each other precisely because by doing so they achieve long term, collective benefits of greater value than the short term benefits derived from straightforward competition. Kropotkin specifically adhered to a view in which organisms struggle not necessarily against each other, but collectively against their environments.” They summarise that the “basic tenet of [Kropotkin’s] ideas was on the mark. Almost seventy years later, in an article entitled ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’, Trivers refined the concepts Kropotkin advanced and explained how co-operation and, more importantly, a system of reciprocity (called ‘reciprocal altruism’ by Trivers) could have evolved.”[48] Thus, as one biologist notes, “Kropotkin's ideas, though unorthodox, were scientifically respectable, and indeed the contention that mutual aid can be a means of increasing fitness had become a standard part of modern sociobiology.”[49]

Robert Trivers original 1971 paper showed that “under certain conditions natural selection favours these altruistic behaviours because in the long run they benefit the organism performing them.” This applied as much to humans as to other animals, with Trivers suggesting that while there was “no direct evidence regarding the degree of reciprocal altruism practised during human evolution nor its genetic basis today, but given the universal and nearly daily practice of reciprocal altruism among humans today, it is reasonable to assume that it has been an important factor in recent human evolution and that the underlying emotional dispositions affecting altruistic behaviour have important genetic components.” [50]

Trivers did not mention Kropotkin, but he later recounted that he learned from exchanges with Soviet bloc scientists that “in their literature, Peter Kropotkin was an early pioneer whom they would have expected me to cite.” [51] However, he seemed to have developed his theory independently for, in a 1992 interview, he mentioned that people “keep asking about Kropotkin. You know, I have never read the anthropologists who write about reciprocity, and I never read Kropotkin.” [52] He also notes that a “very agreeable feature of my reciprocal altruism, which I had not anticipated in advance, was that a sense of justice or fairness seemed a natural consequence of selection for reciprocal altruism. That is, you could easily imagine that sense of fairness would evolve as a way of regulating reciprocal tendencies.” [53] If Trivers had consulted Kropotkin, he would have discovered that his unanticipated feature had been discussed in Mutual Aid decades previously.[54] As another scientist argues, the “fairness principle” in humans has evolved and is “part of our background as co-operative primates.” It has reached the point of “declaring inequity a bad thing in general . . . If the goal is to maintain co-operative relationships by ensuring payoffs for everybody, hence a widespread motivation to participate in joint efforts, the evolution of the fairness principle is really not that hard to explain. The parallels between human and animal responses to inequity seem to tell this story.”[55]

Richard Dawkins, in his much discussed introduction to modern biology, The Selfish Gene, presents arguments why co-operation serves an evolutionary purpose. In the 30^th anniversary edition, he acknowledged that the title could be misleading and argued that “if anything, it devotes more attention to altruism” than selfishness. This is because “gene selfishness can translate itself into individual altruism.” As Dawkins stresses, the selfish gene does not exclude, and in fact can encourage, what he calls “mutualistic co-operation” or the “evolution of associations of mutual benefit” [56]

This hopeful conclusion is based on Trivers work, which Dawkins summarises in chapter 10 of The Selfish Gene. Theoretically, it is based on game theory and the prisoners' dilemma. This is based the idea that two people are arrested for a crime that they did commit but there is not enough evidence to convict them. They are separated and then asked to inform on the other person in exchange for no sentence and are given no chance to communicate. If both inform, then both implicate themselves and if both remain silent then they are released. In this situation, the “selfish” action (inform on your partner) is actually the worse one. Moreover, if you assume this dilemma is repeated with the knowledge of what the other person did last time, then an interesting thing develops – co-operation becomes the most sensible action.

As Dawkins recounts in The Selfish Gene (in a chapter added to its second edition entitled “Nice guys finish first”), political scientist Robert Axelrod conducted an investigation into which strategies were best and the results support Kropotkin’s position that co-operation is beneficial.[57] This work took “the idea of reciprocal altruism on in exciting new directions” Simply put, the winning strategy was to co-operate by default and was named “Tit for Tat.” In slightly more complicated experiments, “Tit for Tat” was superior to the “competitive” strategies. It won five out of six trials and when it did not, another co-operative strategy won. Moreover, this applies to competition between groups as well, with Dawkins noting that internally competitive groups “will be more likely subsequently to go extinct. There can therefore be a kind of higher-level . . . selection in favour of reciprocal altruism.” [58]

Dawkins suggests that tit-for-tat ensures animals “prosper from mutual co-operation”[59] and does so by rewarding co-operative behaviour and punishing those do not reciprocate. This echoes Kropotkin, who when discussing ants argued that uncooperative individuals would be penalised, that “selfish” ants would be “treated as an enemy, or worse.” For bees “anti-social instincts continue to exist” but “natural selection continually must eliminate them” as those with “predatory inclinations” would be “eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of sociable life and mutual support.” He generalised this to other species, such as birds and mammals.[60] So, to use Dawkins’ words, Kropotkin does not assume mutual aid implies that individuals are “indiscriminate altruists” (or “suckers”) but rather are "grudgers”, individuals who co-operate but “if any individual cheats them, they remember the incident and bear a grudge.”[61]

This means that Mutual Aid is not in contradiction with modern, gene based evolutionary theory and, in fact, prefigures many of its arguments and conclusions. Sadly, Dawkins does not discuss or mention Kropotkin’s work anywhere in the book.[62] He does, however, mention Kropotkin in passing in his Unweaving the Rainbow, on a chapter entitled “The Selfish Cooperator” but there seems no evidence that he is familiar with Kropotkin’s work beyond simply its title and stereotypes. Dawkins places Kropotkin (“the Russian anarchist and author of Mutual Aid”) on one end of a “continuum” along with the “gullible” Margaret Mead and “a spate of authors reacting indignantly to the idea that nature is genetically selfish”. At the other, are those like Darwin, Huxley and “today's advocates of ‘the selfish gene’” who “emphasise that nature really is red in tooth and claw.” But this, he suggests, is “a false opposition” and then goes on to argue along lines it is doubtful that Kropotkin would have objected to:

“The position I have always adopted is that much of animal nature is indeed altruistic, co-operative and even attended by benevolent subjective emotions, but that this follows from, rather than contradicts, selfishness at the genetic level. Animals are sometimes nice and sometimes nasty, since either can suit the self-interest of genes at different times. That is precisely the reason for speaking of ‘the selfish gene’ rather than, say, ‘the selfish chimpanzee.’”

“It is now widely understood,” Dawkins continues, “that altruism at the level of the individual organism can be a means by which the underlying genes maximise their self-interest.” [63] That was precisely Kropotkin’s argument, although he based it on individual animals rather than genes. So biologists have acknowledged that competition within animals, including humans, contributed to the evolution of co-operative behaviour within groups. In fact, the Hobbesian assumptions of Huxley have been proven as bankrupt as Kropotkin argued: “For the biologist, this imaginary history is as wide of the mark as can be. We descend from a long line of group-living primates, meaning that we are naturally equipped with a strong desire to fit in and find partners to live and work with.” [64]

So, regardless of the assertions of Hobbes and Huxley, there was never a point at which we decided to become social. We are descended from highly social ancestors and, as with most other creatures, our ancestors lived in groups. This was not an option but an essential survival strategy and from this mutual aid ethics arose. Simply put, humans are not born as loners – our bodies and minds only flourish in social life and the absence of others results in depression and deteriorating health. Thus notions of social contracts (i.e., “the underlying assumption of a rational decision by inherently asocial creatures”) are “untenable in light of what we know about the evolution of our species.” In fact, “[o]ur social makeup is so obvious that there would be no need to belabour this point were it not for its conspicuous absence from origin stories within the disciplines of law, economics, and political science.”[65]

Unsurprisingly, work in anthropology has also confirmed Kropotkin's refutation of Huxley's assertions, although his classification of early human societies (“savages” and “barbarians”), like most writings of that period, would make modern anthropologists cringe. So while the terminology is dated, the evidence and conclusions have not. Modern anthropology has confirmed Kropotkin’s basic insight that life in society is the normal situation for humanity, that Huxley’s assertion of individualistic competition had no basis in fact. [66] Thus, notes Christopher Boehm, “foragers often co-operate with non-kin spontaneously and with a spirit of generosity” and “people in bands tend to co-operate intensively, with apparent good will and with great benefit to group members in general.” Moreover, such groups of egalitarian foragers “uniformly eschew strong, authoritative leadership. Yet they do not give up on making decisions at the band level. Consensus-seeking is a strong feature of all egalitarian societies.” This suggests that egalitarian co-operation in hunter-gatherers can lead to the “robust selection of genes for altruism.” [67] This is, surely, unsurprising as it is doubtful humanity would have survived if it had not lived in societies and practised mutual aid.

Confirming Kropotkin, both anthropologists and archaeologists have found widespread co-operation within tribal societies so repeatedly confirming that there is nothing inherent in “human nature” which precludes egalitarian, co-operative, societies. As anarchist anthropologist David Graeber points out, “what we see in the more recent ethnographic records is endless variety. There were hunter-gatherer societies with nobles and slaves, there are agrarian societies that are fiercely egalitarian. Even in . . . Amazonia, one finds some groups who can justly be described as anarchists, like the Piaroa, living alongside others (say, the warlike Sherentre) who are clearly anything but.”[68] Harold Barclay, another libertarian anthropologist, has documented the more anarchistic tribes in his People without Government.[69]

Melanie Killen and Marina Cords, in an aptly titled piece “Prince Kropotkin’s Ghost,” suggest that recent research in developmental psychology and primatology indicates “that human aggressive inclinations are balanced by equally strong tendencies to co-operate with one another – an argument Prince Piotr Kropotkin made a century ago in Mutual Aid.” They note that “counter to prevailing ideas” that aggression is the norm, “there is now a large body of work on the psychological development of children that suggests otherwise. This research demonstrates that children do not automatically resort to aggression when conflicts arise between them. Instead, they often use an array of strategies to prevent, mitigate and resolve discord and to minimise its effects on their social relations.” Children, for example, “sometimes promoted their own interests, they also worked very hard to make things work out for the group.” These “results have come as no surprise to primatologists, who already have abandoned their simplistic preconceptions about the sorts of aggressive ‘instincts’” “Observations from the natural world,” they summarise “suggest that there is, in fact, a biological basis for our social predispositions.”[70]

Useful insights on the advantages of mutual aid in securing individual survival can be found in recent research in the effects of inequalities of wealth and power, effects which are wide-reaching. For example, health is affected significantly by inequality. Poor people are more likely to be sick and die at an earlier age, compared to rich people. Indeed, the sustained economic hardship associated with a low place in the social hierarchy leads to poorer physical, psychological and cognitive functioning. Moreover, the degree of inequality is important. Wealth does not determine health, what does is the gap between the rich and the poor – the larger the gap, the sicker the society. Inequality, in short, is bad for our health. According to an editorial in the British Medical Journal “what matters in determining mortality and health in a society is less the overall wealth of that society and more how evenly wealth is distributed. The more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society.”[71] As the gap grows between rich and poor, the health of a people deteriorates and the social fabric unravels. The psychological hardship of being low down on the social ladder has detrimental effects on people, beyond whatever effects are produced by the substandard housing, nutrition, air quality, recreational opportunities, and medical care enjoyed by the poor.[72]

This is not all. As well as inequalities in wealth, inequalities in freedom also play a large role in overall human well-being. According to Michael Marmot's The Status Syndrome[73], as you move up any kind of hierarchy your health status improves. Autonomy and position in a hierarchy are related (i.e. the higher you are in a hierarchy, the more autonomy you have). Thus the implication of this empirical work is that autonomy is a source of good health, that the more control you have over your work environment and your life in general, the less likely you are to suffer the classic stress-related illnesses, such as heart disease. Needless to say, the potential to control your own environment is related to your class and position in the social hierarchy.

So the inequality of autonomy and social participation produced by hierarchy is itself a cause of poor health. There would be positive feedback on the total amount of health – and thus of social welfare – if social inequality was reduced, not only in terms of wealth but also, crucially, in power. This is strong evidence in support of anarchist visions of egalitarianism. Some social structures give more people more autonomy than others and acting to promote social justice along these lines is a key step toward improving our health. This means that promoting libertarian, i.e. self-managed, social organisations would increase not only liberty but also people's well-being, both physical and mental. Precisely the kind of social organisations Kropotkin documented in Mutual Aid. All this is to be expected as hierarchy (by its very nature) impacts negatively on those subject to it. Kropotkin would, of course, have not been surprised by this research.[74]

This suggests that in terms of evolutionary advantage, practising mutual aid within self-managed organisations allows individuals to flourish and so confirming Kropotkin’s basic argument that association rather than conflict gives an evolutionary edge. Nor would Kropotkin have been surprised that those at the top of the social hierarchy (i.e., those who benefit from it) would seek to dismiss and destroy such popular institutions. He was well aware of classes and hierarchies – and the need for those subject to them to abolish them!

Myths about Mutual Aid

Anarchists have long been subjected to somewhat bizarre interpretations and assertions about our ideas. Kropotkin’s classic is no exception. It often seems to be the case that those who discuss Mutual Aid get no further than the title! Richard Dawkins’ words on his own misunderstood classic seem appropriate: “I can see how the title The Selfish Gene could be misunderstood, especially by those philosophers who prefer to read a book by title only, omitting the rather extensive footnote which is the book itself.”[75] With Kropotkin’s masterpiece, there is even less excuse for it, for if its critics had bothered to consult the sub-title (“A Factor of Evolution”) then the most obviously wrong claims would have been averted.

Given the multitude of inaccurate interpretations to Kropotkin’s work, it is sadly necessary to discuss them and indicate their inaccuracies.

Mutual Aid and Competition

One of the strangest claims about Kropotkin’s work is that it ignores competition within species, between individuals. This flows into the similar claim that Mutual Aid showed that Kropotkin was blind to the “nasty” side of human nature. Yet this hardly makes much sense, given that he became an anarchist, forsaking a promising scientific career, precisely because he saw the horrors and evils of class society: “Science is an excellent thing. I knew its joys and valued them – perhaps more than many of my colleagues did . . . . But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle.”[76] If he were “blind” to the “bad” side of “human nature”, he would have remained a member of the Russian aristocracy and pursued his scientific work.

Moreover, even a glance at Mutual Aid shows that he did not deny the role of struggle, in fact the opposite as he stressed that the book's examples concentrated on mutual aid simply because mutual struggle (between individuals of the same species) had “already been analysed, described, and glorified from time immemorial” and, as such, he felt no need to illustrate it. He did note that it “was necessary to show, first of all, the immense part which this factor [mutual aid] plays in the evolution of both the animal world and human societies. Only after this has been fully recognised will it be possible to proceed to a comparison between the two factors.” As he repeatedly stressed, it was “a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution -- not of all factors of evolution and their respective values.”[77]

Kropotkin, summarised Stephen Jay Gould, “did not deny the competitive form of struggle, but he argued that the co-operative style had been under emphasised and must balance or even predominate over competition in considering nature as a whole.”[78] Todes echoes this, arguing that for Kropotkin, intraspecific relations “contained elements of both competition and co-operation, the relative importance of which varied according to circumstances . . . Although the relative importance of competition and co-operation fluctuated by season and circumstance, natural selection generated a historical tendency toward co-operation . . . Species that co-operated had a better chance of survival in the struggle for life than did less sociable ones.” This applied to humans too, as history “testified to a constant struggle between tendencies toward competition and co-operation” [79] Thus Kropotkin was “interested in showing that co-operation as well as competitiveness can help organisms to survive and reproduce, and thus be favoured in evolution.”[80]

This can be seen when Kropotkin stressed that Mutual Aid was (to use its subtitle) “a factor of evolution.” As he put it, mutual aid “represents one of the factors of evolution”, another being “the self-assertion of the individual, not only to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallised, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual.” Thus Kropotkin recognised that there is social struggle within society as well as “the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element” (i.e., struggle against forms of social association which now hinder individual freedom and development).[81] In other words, Kropotkin’s research traced the evolution of mutual aid through history, indicating when (and how) it was defeated by mutual struggle, and showed how it provided the foundation for continual efforts at co-operative self-emancipation from various forms of domination (the state, feudalism, institutional religion and capitalism).

Mutual Aid also presents some insights on the question of social progress which indicate that he did not think that only “co-operation rather than conflict lay at the root of the historical process,” as Paul Avrich claimed.[82] The reality is more complex than that. For example, Kropotkin noted that “[w]hen Mutual Aid institutions . . . began . . . to lose their primitive character, to be invaded by parasitic growths, and thus to become hindrances to progress, the revolt of individuals against these institutions took always two different aspects. Part of those who rose up strove to purify the old institutions, or to work out a higher form of commonwealth.” But at the same time, others “endeavoured to break down the protective institutions of mutual support, with no other intention but to increase their own wealth and their own powers.” In this conflict “lies the real tragedy of history.”[83]

At best, it could be argued that, for Kropotkin, the mutual aid tendency produced what was best in the historical progression of humanity. As he put it, “whenever mankind had to work out a new social organisation, adapted to a new phasis of development, its constructive genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure from that same ever-living tendency.” Insofar as these new economical and social institutions “were a creation of the masses” they were based on mutual aid, as were “new ethical systems” and so “the ethical progress of our race . . . appears as a gradual extension of the mutual aid principles.”[84] However, this is not identical with arguing that co-operation was at the heart of social progress. Kropotkin was well aware of the role of conflict between classes, between rulers and ruled, in history and modern capitalist society and this is reflected in Mutual Aid.

So, to state the obvious, there is no need to ponder why we have the state and capitalism if we are “naturally” co-operative. Both have arisen precisely because we are also “naturally” competitive and, as a result, people exploit and oppress others – as long as the others let them. Anarchists have no illusions about “human nature” – if we did, we would not be anarchists – and argue that we cannot appeal to the better nature of our masters to be less oppressive; we need to organise to limit their powers until such time as we can get rid of them!

Given that Kropotkin did not deny the role of competition, it does seem ironic that the supporters of competition often make (obviously ideological driven) exceptions to their peons to it. For example, while “competition” is generally praised within the economy it is almost always limited to competition within classes, not between them. Thus the competition between companies or between workers is lauded but struggle between classes, between workers and bosses, is condemned in the strongest terms, often wrapped up in appeals to nationalism. Equally, the most extreme “market advocates” are often those most opposed to anti-monopoly laws and actions while, at the same time, the most opposed to unions. Thatcher and Reagan, for example, were unconcerned about corporate oligopoly and “collusion” (co-operation) between companies while, at the same time, using state power to regulate, hinder, crush and generally undermine unions.

The result of this “co-operation” between classes was predictable – rising inequality as workers were unable to keep the wealth they produced in their own hands. This is unsurprising, given that the only form “co-operation” between boss and wage slave, like master and slave, is that of obedience of the latter to the former. By strange co-incidence, the “market advocates” who argue against class competition do so because, they claim, it is against the long term interests of the subject class – which is, by pure co-incidence, exactly what the bosses want to hear.

All of which explains Kropotkin’s statement that “the origin of the anarchist conception of society” lies in “the criticism . . . of the hierarchical organisations and the authoritarian conceptions of society”[85] For anarchists, genuine mutual aid is based on the recognition of equality between the participants – which is precisely why Kropotkin pointed to unions and co-operatives as examples of mutual aid, as means for working class people to improve their conditions within the hostile environment of an oppressive and exploitative social system, capitalism.

Mutual Aid and class struggle

A related myth is the notion that Mutual Aid denies the class struggle. Even a normally well informed libertarian socialist like Maurice Brinton fell into this stereotype of Kropotkin’s argument. Too influenced by his Leninist background, he asserted that the Russian anarchist's “aim is to convince and reason with (rather than to overthrow) those who oppress the masses” and that he stood for “a co-operation that clearly transcended the barriers of class.”[86]

Yet a study of Kropotkin's anarchist writings (such as Words of a Rebel, Conquest of Bread and, more recently, Act for Yourselves) would soon show they are clearly based on class struggle and only someone who had never read him could claim otherwise. To quote Kropotkin from the 1880s: “What solidarity can exist between the capitalist and the worker he exploits? Between the head of an army and the soldier? Between the governing and the governed?”[87] He makes the same point after Mutual Aid, in his essay “Anarchist Morality.”[88]

Kropotkin was well aware that co-operation could not be applied between classes. This awareness is reflected in Mutual Aid as well, which is hardly silent on the importance of social struggle, highlighting as it did trade unions and strikes (both of which developed in the face of extensive state repression). These are hardly the perspectives of someone who ignored class conflict and its role in society! Indeed, a major theme of the book is the evolution of mutual aid institutions in response to social change and class conflict.

A similar assertion to Brinton’s was made more recently by Pat Stack, a leading member of the British Socialist Workers Party, in a staggeringly inaccurate rant against anarchism.[89] His summary of Kropotkin’s ideas left a lot to be desired:

“And the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, far from seeing class conflict as the dynamic for social change as Marx did, saw co-operation being at the root of the social process. He believed the co-operation of what he termed 'mutual aid' was the natural order, which was disrupted by centralised states. Indeed in everything from public walkways and libraries through to the Red Cross, Kropotkin felt he was witnessing confirmation that society was moving towards his mutual aid, prevented only from completing the journey by the state. It follows that if class conflict is not the motor of change, the working class is not the agent and collective struggle not the means.”

There are three issues with Stack's summary. Firstly, Kropotkin did not, in fact, reject class conflict as the “dynamic of social change” nor reject the working class as its “agent.” Secondly, all of Stack's examples of “mutual aid” do not, in fact, appear in Mutual Aid. They do appear in other works by Kropotkin but not as examples of mutual aid.[90] Now, if Kropotkin had considered them as examples of mutual aid then he would have listed them in that work. Thirdly, in Mutual Aid Kropotkin discusses such aspects of working class “collective struggle” as strikes and unions.

All in all, it is Stack's total and utter lack of understanding of Kropotkin's ideas which immediately stands out from his comments. Which suggests that Stack has either not read Kropotkin's works or that he has and consciously decided to misrepresent his ideas. In fact, it is a combination of the two. Stack gathered his examples of "mutual aid" from an essay by Paul Avrich on Kropotkin. For example, Avrich lists many of the same examples Stack presents but not in his discussion of Kropotkin's ideas on mutual aid. Rather, he correctly lists them in his discussion of how Kropotkin saw examples of anarchist communism “manifesting itself ‘in the thousands of developments of modern life.’” Significantly, while over-stressing the role of co-operation in Kropotkin’s ideas, he also notes (unlike Stack) that the Russian did not “deny that the ‘struggle for existence’ played an important role in the evolution of species” and that he “did not shrink from the necessity of revolution” (and “did not expect the propertied classes to give up their privileges and possession without a fight”). This “was to be a social revolution, carried out by the masses themselves” achieved by means of “expropriation” of social wealth. [91] Not only had he not read Kropotkin's works, he misrepresented his secondary source.[92]

Kropotkin never claimed, as Stack asserts, that mutual aid “was the natural order.” Rather, he repeatedly argued that “the war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle”[93] At no stage did he deny either factor (mutual aid and mutual struggle), unlike the bourgeois apologists he was refuting. He recognised the importance of struggle or competition as a means of survival but also argued that co-operation within a species was the best means for it to survive in a hostile environment. This applied to life under capitalism. In the hostile environment of class society, the only way in which working class people could survive would be to practice mutual aid (in other words, solidarity). Little wonder, then, that Kropotkin listed strikes and unions as expressions of mutual aid in capitalist society.

So if Stack had bothered to read Kropotkin's classic he would have been aware that it listed both unions and strikes as expressions of “mutual aid” (a fact which would undermine Stack's silly assertion that anarchists reject collective working class struggle and organisation).[94] For Kropotkin “Unionism” expressed the “worker's need of mutual support” and he was well aware of how the state repressed and “legislated against the workers' unions”, that these were “the conditions under which the mutual-aid tendency had to make its way.” This repression failed, as “the workers' unions were continually reconstituted” and spread, forming “vigorous federal organisations . . . to support the branches during strikes and prosecutions.” In spite of the difficulties in organising unions and fighting strikes, he noted that “every year there are thousands of strikes . . . the most severe and protracted contests being, as a rule, the so-called 'sympathy strikes,' which are entered upon to support locked-out comrades or to maintain the rights of the unions.” Anyone (like Kropotkin) who had “lived among strikers speak with admiration of the mutual aid and support which are constantly practised by them.” [95] This is hard to square with Stack’s assertion that Kropotkin, like anarchists in general, thought that “class conflict is not the motor of change, the working class is not the agent and collective struggle not the means.”

Moreover, if we take Stack's arguments at face value, then he clearly is arguing that solidarity is not an important factor in the class struggle and that mutual aid and co-operation cannot change the world! Similarly, Stack's argument that Kropotkin argued that co-operation was the source of progress is in contradiction with his other claims that anarchism “despises the collectivity” and anarchists “dismiss the importance of the collective nature of change.” How can you have co-operation without forming a collective? And, equally, surely support for co-operation clearly implies the recognition of the “collective nature of change”?

Finally, Mutual Aid is primarily a work of popular science and not a work on revolutionary anarchist theory like, say, The Conquest of Bread or Words of a Rebel. As such, it does not present a full example of Kropotkin's revolutionary ideas and how mutual aid fits into them. However reading it quickly shows that Kropotkin saw history marked by both co-operation and conflict as you would expect in a society divided by class and hierarchy. Unsurprisingly, Kropotkin was a firm supporter of unions and strikes. In his article on Anarchism for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he stressed that anarchists “have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst the labour organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary legislation.”[96]

Mutual Aid and Sociobiology

One scientist states that Kropotkin was the “most influential mutual aid theorist, and one of the most important evolutionary theorists and sociobiologists of his time.”[97] For Noam Chomsky, sociobiology “is reasonable enough as a research program. It has substantial results for simpler organisms, but little to say about humans, to my knowledge, beyond speculations of various kinds, the earliest, to my knowledge, in Kropotkin's work on mutual aid as a factor in evolution.”[98]

However, Kropotkin’s relation to sociobiology is not straight forward. He is often attacked for writing Mutual Aid in an attempt to use animal behaviour to show that we are naturally altruistic, attempting to employ science to make a political point. Needless to say, those who use animal behaviour to justify the notion we are naturally competitive or hierarchical suffer no such attacks. As primatologist Frans de Waal recounts, euphemisms for friendly, co-operative or altruistic behaviour are often utilised as using those terms are considered “overly anthropomorphic. Whereas terms related to aggression, violence, and competition never posed the slightest problem.” He notes that he was expected to “switch to dehumanised language as soon as the affectionate aftermath of a fight was the issue” rather than the fight itself.[99] This is to be expected, as the notion we are “competitive” and “hierarchical” is just “common-sense” as we live in such a society.

As noted above, using “natural” or “natural law” to justify inequalities has a long history, particularly in the social sciences. This has been, to some degree, the argument against sociobiology by many on the left.[100] These attacks are understandable given that, when it appeared in the 1970s, numerous articles were published in the media using it to justify the status quo. For example, Business Week published an article entitled, “A Genetic Defense of the Free Market” (April 10, 1978) which claimed that “Bioeconomics says that government programs that force individuals to be less competitive and selfish than they are genetically programmed to be are preordained to fail.” Newsweek and Time both ran articles on sociobiology which asserted the inevitability of patriarchy. Since then, dubious genetic defences of racism, sexism, capitalism and such like have surfaced with depressing regularity. It does not help that many supporters of, and commentators on, sociobiology make the fatal error of confusing “selfish” genes with “selfish” individuals and draw inappropriate conclusions from such inaccurate assumptions.[101]

Kropotkin’s work has not been utilised in the same way, something Chomsky has discussed. He notes that Edward O. Wilson[102] is considered one of the founders of this school because his 1975 book Sociobiology “has interesting material on simpler organisms, and ends with a few pages of speculations on human sociobiology.” He goes on to speculate on the reaction to Kropotkin’s similar work:

“The field was actually founded 85 years earlier by the leading anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin, also a natural scientist, in seminal work that led to his classic Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution, published in 1902. His studies criticised the conclusions on ‘struggle for existence’ drawn by the noted Darwinian T.H. Huxley, who never responded publicly, though in private he wrote that Kropotkin's prominently-published work was ‘very interesting and important.’ Kropotkin's Darwinian speculations about the possible role of co-operation in evolution, with their implications for anarchist social organisation, remain about as solid a contribution to human sociobiology as exists today. But somehow this work has not entered ‘the canon’; one can hardly imagine why.”[103]

This use of sociobiology to justify capitalism and the marginalisation of Kropotkin’s masterpiece come as no surprise, as elites have always seized upon theories that can be used to perpetuate and justify inequalities of power and wealth, particularly those who base themselves on “natural” factors rather than institutional ones.[104] This was the case in the 19^th century with the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, when it was utilised to defend laissez-faire capitalism against social reform and spawned the repulsive “Social Darwinism” which Mutual Aid was written to refute. So while the more conservative and religious elements of the ruling class were taken aback by the “atheistic” implications of Darwin’s idea, the more liberal elements of the capitalist class clearly saw its utility to their social position – just as they had with Malthus’s essay on population – regardless of its factual merits.

Which raises the question, does a sociobological argument become more acceptable because it reaches libertarian (“left-wing”) conclusions? Usually the people who are, rightly, critical of sociobiology as little more than apologetics for social hierarchies and capitalism become more receptive when it is suggested that co-operation rather than competition is programmed into us by “Nature.” Yet, Kropotkin does not draw such stark conclusions himself. He does not deny the role and importance of competition within and between groups, suggesting that he was well aware that our “nature” does not preclude one or the other. As he was at pains to suggest, the environment has an impact on the evolutionary process and, as such, whether co-operation or competition predominates in a given society is dependent on many environmental and cultural factors.

In this Kropotkin’s position is identical to Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that “the range of our potential behaviour is circumscribed by our biology” and if this is what sociobiology means “by genetic control, then we can scarcely disagree.” However, this is not what is meant. Rather, it is a form of “biological determinism” that sociobiology argues for. Saying that there are specific genes for specific human traits says little for while “[v]iolence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviours” so are “peacefulness, equality, and kindness.” And so “we may see their influence increase if we can create social structures that permit them to flourish.” That this may be the case can be seen from the works of sociobiologists themselves, who “acknowledge diversity” in human cultures while “often dismiss[ing] the uncomfortable 'exceptions' as temporary and unimportant aberrations.” This is surprising, for if you believe that “repeated, often genocidal warfare has shaped our genetic destiny, the existence of nonaggressive peoples is embarrassing.”[105] Ultimately, if some people are co-operative or peaceful now, at other times competitive and aggressive, then neither aggression or competitiveness are encoded in our genes, merely the potential for them: “If innate only means possible, or even likely in certain environments, then everything we do is innate and the word has no meaning.”[106]

That Kropotkin would share this analysis and critique can be seen from his discussion of cultural differences in “savage” cultures and so-called “civilised” ones. He would have agreed with Gould that the “issue is not universal biology vs. human uniqueness, but biological potentiality vs. biological determinism.” That suggests that “[b]asic human kindness may be as ‘animal’ as human nastiness” and that upbringing, class, culture and other influences “determine how we restrict our behaviours from the wide spectrum – extreme altruism to extreme selfishness – that our genes permit.”[107] As Mutual Aid put it: “Man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education.”[108] For Kropotkin, human action was not genetically predetermined but rather influenced by nurture:

“While the fundamental features of human characters can only be mediated by a very slow evolution, the relative amount of individualist and mutual aid spirit are among the most changeable features of man. Both being equally products of an anterior development, their relative amounts are seen to change in individuals and even societies with a rapidity which would strike the sociologist if only he paid attention to the subject, and analysed the corresponding facts.”[109]

This was a theme Kropotkin continually returned to, namely the impact of the environment on organisms (animals and plants are “altered by the direct action of their changing surroundings”[110]). A hierarchical society will shape people in certain (negative) ways and produce a “human nature” radically different from a libertarian one. “In a society based on exploitation and servitude,” he stressed, “human nature itself is degraded” and “authority and servility walk ever hand in hand.”[111] Yet, if hierarchy degrades, freedom can raise. So “when we hear men saying that Anarchists imagine men much better than they really are, we merely wonder how intelligent people can repeat that nonsense. Do we not say continually that the only means of rendering men less rapacious and egotistic, less ambitious and less slavish at the same time, is to eliminate those conditions which favour the growth of egotism and rapacity, of slavishness and ambition?”[112] Thus we have the potential to change ourselves while we change the world and by changing the world we cannot help but change ourselves.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention a co-incidence between Kropotkin’s critique of the limitations of Darwinism and Gould’s critique of sociobiology. The former noted that the section in the Origins entitled “Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species” had “none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single instance: it is taken as granted.”[113] Decades later, Gould lamented that “[a]fter twenty-six chapters of careful documentation for the nonhuman animals, Wilson concludes [Sociobiology] with an extended speculation on the genetic basis of supposedly universal patterns in human behaviour.”[114] It is simply because such speculation fits so well with the assumptions of the dominant (capitalist) culture that it is simply treated as “science” rather than what it is – speculation.

This afflicts sociobiologists as well, regardless of their claims that they are scientists who are somehow objective or above politics. As anarchist anthropologist Brian Morris put it, “many anthropologists have been critical of Wilson's presentation of empirical data, which is selective and which tends to universalise what are essentially the values and attributes of a particular kind of society – one with a capitalist market economy. Wilson's depiction of hunter-gatherers as aggressive carnivores hardly matches the empirical evidence . . . Equally evident is Wilson's tendency to describe other cultures in terms that derive from his own culture . . . Even the genes they possess are described as 'capital' . . . As with Thomas Hobbes, Wilson seems to equate the state of human nature with the ideology of capitalism” [115]

As such, rather than the likes of Kropotkin's and Gould's position on human nature being influenced by politics rather than science, it is just as, if not more, likely that sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists are themselves heavily influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by their own prejudices, interests and the societal influences of the dominant culture as well as economic and political systems.

Mutual Aid and Group Selection

Michael Glassman argues that in “modern parlance Kropotkin’s theory is one of group selection.”[116] Stephen Jay Gould suggested that Kropotkin “did commit a common conceptual error in failing to recognise that natural selection is an argument about advantages to individual organisms, however they may struggle . . . Kropotkin sometimes speaks of mutual aid as selected for the benefit of entire populations or species – a concept foreign to classic Darwinian logic (where organisms work, albeit unconsciously, for their own benefit in terms of genes passed to future generations).”[117]

However, a close reading suggests that it is not true that Kropotkin emphasised evolution taking place at the level of species rather than Dawkins’ later more convincing argument that evolution takes place at the level of the gene. Not that Kropotkin could have known about genes or how they work, as this came later.[118] As such, his arguments are not centred on “group selection”, an old view which is currently going through something of a revival.[119] It argues that adaptations can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the effect on the fitness of individuals within that group. This possible because of the differential survival of groups and species (e.g., while altruistic individuals may be at a disadvantage as regards selfish ones within groups, internally co-operative groups are more likely to survive than internally competitive ones and so, overtime, natural selection favours co-operative behaviour).

While Kropotkin would not have been surprised by this, the notion of “group selection” is somewhat irrelevant as the benefits of mutual aid apply at the individual level as well as the group level. As an anarchist, he was well aware that groups are made up of individuals and, unsurprisingly, argued in Mutual Aid that “we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favours the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.”[120] Thus mutual aid is seen as benefiting the individuals who practice it as well as giving their groups an advantage in the struggle of life. The two outcomes, for Kropotkin, are not mutually exclusive.

This is recognised by Gould, which drains his criticism of much of its force: “But Kropotkin also (and often) recognised that selection for mutual aid directly benefits each individual in its own struggle for personal success.” As such, the Russian was well aware that the “result of struggle for existence may be co-operation rather than competition, but mutual aid must benefit individual organisms in Darwin’s world of explanation” and so “did include the orthodox solution as his primary justification for mutual aid.”[121] Kropotkin simply made the obvious point that individuals can and do benefit when they practice mutual aid and live within groups based on it.

Kropotkin, like many of his fellows of the time, did, at times, use language which could be interpreted to imply he thought that evolution worked at the level of the species rather than the individual. Yet he was hardly alone in this – for example, many used Darwinism to justify laissez-faire capitalism and the “war of all against all” because it strengthened “the species” by weeding out the “unfit.”

For a good overview of co-operative and altruistic acts and a theory on how group selection gives rise to co-operation, see Unto Others by Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson.[122] Interestingly, “Darwin did invoke group selection to explain sterile forms among ants”[123] as well as using “the principle of group selection to explain the evolution of human morality.”[124] It should be noted that there is nothing in the “selfish gene” which automatically excludes group selection, regardless of Dawkins' protestations otherwise. As Kim Sterelny summaries, it is “now uncontroversial” that an embrace of gene selection “need not reject group selection” as “the evolution of the organism itself involves” the same problems usually associated with group selection. Both are claims about vehicles. This means that Sober and Wilson “have reopened the debate about group selection, arguing that animals are not just co-operative, they are altruistic.” [125]

However, it is useful to sketch the flaws in Matt Ridley’s argument against group selection to illustrate how Darwinism can be misused for political agendas (he is keen to enlist evolutionary theory to support his neo-liberalism). Ridley dismisses it because he argues that only individuals can be selected, not groups. He raises the question: “But what happens when something is good for the species but bad for the individual?” And answers it: “We know what happens. The individual's interest comes first. Selfless groups would be perpetually undermined by the selfishness of their individuals.” He seems to have forgotten that he earlier stressed that genes were what counted, not individuals: “But always, without exception, living things are designed to do things that enhance the chances of their genes or copies of their genes surviving and replicating.” [126]While confusing the selfish gene with the selfish individual (like confounding communal property with private property, as he also does) may be good for his ideology, it is bad science.[127] If genes can be replicated by promoting adaptations which favour group survival then surely this is as feasible as genes co-operating within an individual to ensure their survival.

Then there is his ideological dichotomy between individuals and groups. Co-operation, he argues, is “not group selection: it is individual selection mediated by groupishness.” Thus while individual interests can lie “with which group,” it means that we “are an extremely groupish species, but not a group selected one. We are designed [sic!] not to sacrifice ourselves for the group but to exploit the group for ourselves.” [128] Fine; except for two things. First, he should be focusing on the gene, not the individual and so simply cannot dismiss the possibility that gene survival could produce such “sacrifice.” Second, groups are made of other individuals. Surely they would act to stop an individual exploiting the group (i.e., themselves)? Ridley seems to assume that “altruist” equates to “stupid”, as can be seen from his fictional example of how “selfish” people will abuse “altruistic” ones over commonly owned resources that assumes that the “law-abiding” individuals just let the “law-breakers” do what they want. [129] In reality, it is extremely unlike that the “altruistic” individuals (or would that be their genes?) would let themselves be sacrificed by the actions of others and would, unsurprisingly, act to stop it. Ridley himself, ironically, indicates such communal pressures at work later in his book when discussing “the commons” in real life rather than in ideologically driven “just-so” stories.[130]

Kropotkin, significantly, was not blind to this issue and indicates in Mutual Aid how social customs arise to stop the anti-social exploiting the group. He notes that “[i]f every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society-life would be possible” and so animals, like humans, intervene to stop such action.[131] Addressing the issue of the stability of an anarchist society, he argued that direct action would stop the “gradual and temporarily imperceptible regeneration of the old evils.” If someone were oppressive or “drawing from society all that he can, and monopolising from others as much as possible” then the others “have it in their power to apply a prompt check by boycotting such a person and refusing to help him with their labour or to willing supply him with any articles in their possession. They have it in their power to use force against him. They have these powers individually as well as collectively. Being either past rebels who have been inspired with the spirit of liberty, or else habituated to enjoy freedom from their infancy, they are hardly to rest passive in view of what they feel to be wrong.”[132] In The Conquest of Bread, he indicated how the individuals in a group within a free society can protect themselves from anti-social activities of their members by, for example, asking the work-shy to leave.[133] In other words, the tit-for-tat refusal of reciprocity to uncooperative individuals and so anarchists have long been aware that, to quote Robert Trivers, “co-operation required perpetual vigilance to enjoy its fruits, but tit-for-tat . . . could bring this co-operative world.” [134]

Whether this mutual aid, expressed in community self-defence, amounts to “group selection” or not will, undoubtedly, be much discussed but if it is true that individuals will try to exploit groups, so it is that the other individuals who make up those groups will act to discourage it. Who wins this struggle cannot be predicted, but whoever it is will see their genes survive and flourish.

Mutual Aid and Altruism

A common mistake is to confuse mutual aid with altruism. For example, during his attempt to justify Thatcherism genetically, Matt Ridley asserts that “Kropotkin argued that because ants were nice to each other, so must we be instinctively virtuous.”[135] It is hard to think of a more misleading caricature of Kropotkin’s argument (and there is stiff competition for that prize!).

Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London, presents a similarly inaccurate diatribe against Kropotkin. In his book Coral he asserts that the “split between the anarchists and the capitalists reflected a fundamental clash of beliefs. Is humankind ruled by self-interest, or is it altruism our true state? What is the lesson from Nature: mutual aid or inevitable strife?” For Jones, anarchists “see a benevolent message in the natural world.” [136] He is echoing Matt Ridley, who asserted that Kropotkin “could not stomach the idea that life was a ruthless struggle of selfish beings.” [137]

The grim reality is, Jones asserts, that symbiosis “marks each stage in evolution, but the notion of mutual aid, a joint effort to a common end, has been superseded by a sterner view: that such arrangements began with simple exploitation. Disease, parasitism and cannibalism have been around since life began.” He does admit that many creatures “do appear to indulge in mutual aid” and that the “semblance of co-operation is all around.” However, this is just appearance, for this is, in fact, based “not on mutual aid but on greed and mutual exploitation.” [138]

First, the awkward fact that Kropotkin was not discussing symbiosis in Mutual Aid needs to be mentioned. [139] This term commonly describes close and often long-term interactions between different biological species and this is not what the book is about. Nor is it about mutualism, which describes any relationship between individuals of different species where both individuals derive a fitness benefit, although this does not contradict Kropotkin’s argument. Rather, as is clear once you read the book, it is about co-operation, i.e., individuals of the same species living together within groups of varying sizes to derive a fitness benefit.[140]

Second, Kropotkin would hardly have disagreed. He was well aware that “strife” and “self-interest” in both the animal world and humanity existed – and that it drove mutual aid. “Life is struggle,” he argued, “and in that struggle the fittest survive.” [141] He explicitly and repeatedly noted that Mutual Aid presented a one-sided perspective to counter the dominant perspective that stressed competition between individuals:

“Huxley's view of nature had as little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love, peace, and harmony destroyed by the accession of man . . . Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the beak-and-claw fight from his thoughts; and Huxley committed the opposite error; but neither Rousseau's optimism nor Huxley's pessimism can be accepted as an impartial interpretation of nature.”[142]

The notion of constant struggle between individuals is an “exaggeration” which “is even more unscientific than Rousseau's idealisation.” Kropotkin’s position was that sociability “is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle” and that the question is who is the fittest, those who compete against each other or those who co-operate in the struggle against a harsh environment. He presented evidence that supported his view that “those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest” because “life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life, taken in its widest sense.” Thus co-operation provides “more chances to survive” and animals and humans “find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense.”[143] As Todes correctly notes, Kropotkin’s “arguments rested, not on the notion, which he associated with Rousseau and Büchner, that love was inherent to the natural world, but on an analysis of the dynamics of the struggle for existence.” [144]

In other words, Kropotkin was well aware that the drive for co-operation rested on the “selfish” desire to survive. His argument was that mutual aid, rather than mutual struggle, between members of the same group or species was the best means of doing so. Indeed, he explicitly eschews the notion that “altruism” (in the common meaning of the word) is the basis of mutual aid: it is neither love nor sympathy as such that causes animals to assist one another, but rather a more hard-nosed recognition that it is in their own interests for survival to do so. Moreover, he argued, this group living would have an effect on those subject to it. They would develop attitudes that encouraged co-operative behaviour and so mutual aid was the “broad and necessary foundation” upon which “the still higher moral feelings are developed.”