hey i know you you're that jaywalking
punk anarchist you're that jaywalking
punk anarchist
jaywalking publican hello this is the
radical reviewer taking a look at
mutual aid a factor of evolution by
peter kropotkin
porter sergeant publishers originally
published in 1902
the key idea of this text is that mutual
aid
collaboration working together is part
of nature
it's part of animal nature it's part of
human nature it's as the title states
a factor of evolution you see many
people then
and now took darwin's ideas about
competition and
survival of the fittest to construct
this dog-eat-dog
gotta hate that phrase this dog-eat-dog
world of you
but no the fittest in survival of the
fittest
isn't about stabbing your friend in the
back so you can steal all their stuff
it's about fitting in what species
uses their resources most effectively
what species works together to survive
what species are most capable of
learning from one another and passing on
what they've learned to future
generations
let's take a look at the text in depth
chapter one
mutual aid among animals to start kropotkin posites
if we resort to an indirect test and ask
nature
who are the fittest those who are
continually at war with each other
or those who support one another we at
once see
that those animals which acquire habits
of mutual aid are undoubtedly
the fittest from here kropotkin discusses
how insects like
ants and termites and bees create
complex dwellings using mutual aid
kropotkin then discusses what he calls
hunting associations of birds
for example pelicans who form a half
circle on a bay
closing in and catching fish by hunting
as a group
and krapakan concludes the war of each
against all
is not the law of nature mutual aid is
as much a law of nature as mutual
struggle
chapter 2 mutual aid among animals
continued
this is a continuation of the previous
chapter except discussing mammals
here kropotkin discusses beavers mice
squirrel marmots elephants rhinoceroses
monkeys
oxen foxes seals horses donkeys camels
sheep and even
dogs kropotkin states all these mammals
live in societies
and nations sometimes numbering hundreds
of thousands of individuals
and cropokin explains how these
societies of mammals engage in mutual
aid
and it's true as a dog i can tell you
with confidence
so you might not know this but all dogs
are anarchists
we don't believe in private property we
don't discriminate on the basis of color
size or ability
we don't believe in capitalism we read
theory and we
take to the streets from the protest at
the governor's residence yesterday
a doberman named envy was there trying
to help comfort and cheer up some of the
grieving demonstrators
and kropotkin concludes while fully
admitting that force
swiftness protective colors cunningness
and endurance to hunger and cold which
are mentioned by
darwin and wallace are so many qualities
making the individual or the species
the fittest under certain circumstances
we maintain
that under any circumstances sociability
is the greatest advantage in the
struggle for life
chapter 3 mutual aid among savages
savages that's a pretty outdated term
uh this was written in 1902 let's put a
pin in that for now
kropotkin critiques what is called the
hobbesian war of each against
all this idea that human evolution was
fraught with violent struggle for
survival
of the fittest you know dog eat dog
basically people thought that humans of
prehistoric times were
like tigers solo hunters rugged
individuals and all that
but in fact you were more like me
living in packs and working together for
survival
and kropotkin argues the very persistence
of the clan organization
shows how utterly false it is to
represent primitive mankind
as a disorderly agglomeration of
individuals who only obey their
individual passions
and take advantage of their personal
force and cunningness against all other
representatives of the species
unbridled individualism is a modern
growth
but it is not characteristic of
primitive mankind
i mean ask yourself would you rather be
a
lone individual trying to survive in the
wild like the
into the wild guy or goddamn castaway i
mean
hell even tom hanks had winston to keep
him company
or would you rather live as humans
actually did
in groups with maybe some people being
experts in herbs and delivering babies
and setting broken bones and
other people being experts in tracking
animals or knowing how to make tools for
hunting and fishing and
some folks knowing when and where to
plant crops or what fruits or vegetables
are edible
folks knowing when and where to move
with the changing seasons things like
that
i think it's kind of a no-brainer
and kropotkin concludes the savage is not
an ideal of virtue
not like pocahontas or avatar or some
shit
nor is he an ideal of savagery not like
swarthy horde circling the wagons in
some spaghetti western
but the primitive man has one quality
elaborated and maintained by the very
necessities
of his hard struggle for life he
identifies his own
existence with that of his tribe and
without that quality
mankind never would have attained the
level it has attained
now chapter four mutual aid among the
barbarians
whoa barbarians okay first drop in the
s slur and now the b slur
what is this 1902 the date that this
book was written in
okay i'm kind of belaboring the point
but i noticed that this
chapter and the previous chapter are
full of what's called historical
materialism this idea that human
civilization
evolves in stages first savage then
barbarian then
feudal then capitalist and finally
communism
like this chapter that we're on right
now look at this quote here
the stems of africa offer such an
immense variety
of extremely interesting societies
standing at
all intermediate stages from the early
village community
to the despotic barbarian monarchies
that i must abandon the idea of giving
here
even the chief results of a comparative
study
of their institutions now kropotkin was
certainly
more woke than someone like darwin
but still calling people savages and
barbarians is just kind of not the thing
we do these days
in fact i wonder what the modern terms
even are
i know i'll call tristan from step back
history i'm sure he knows
so the real secret of the justinian
plague is actual
one second looks like uh
it's that dog that learned how to dial a
phone one second
i thought i'd block this number go for
tristan
hey tristan it's radical reviewer don't
hang up
um i'm stuck on some history stuff
and i need some history help all right
what's up
so i'm doing a review of mutual aid and
kropotkin
uses a lot of terms like savage and
barbarian and
it's clear that he's talking from a
historical materialism perspective
but do people still use historical
materialism
and what about these outdated terms as a
historian could i get an update on this
stuff
yeah terms like barbarian and savage
are definitely not used anymore there's
just way too much of a
colonial association with them so we've
kind of stopped
today terms like nomadic or hunter
gatherer or even more recently
foraging societies are a little bit more
common than
nomad or savage but when you're talking
about materialism historical materialism
specifically
historical materialism and sort of
marxist analysis is actually still
fairly common in the social sciences and
even non-marxists have found
lots of value in studying the
relationship between economics and
society
so it's a fairly common tool in a lot of
people's tool belts
but just not the only tool for example
in medieval
european history a lot of wealth was
generated through
agriculture so you have an entire social
and political system focused around the
ownership of land
okay awesome thank you that's really
helpful actually
tristan would you mind sticking around
for a bit after this chapter on
barbarians or i mean
nomadic peoples there are some chapters
on medieval towns and guilds and stuff
like that
that part of human history is a little
out of my wheelhouse
frankly i'm more comfortable with the
chapters about animals to be honest
um after i finished this chapter would
you like to take chapters five and six
yeah okay sure i'll be back in a little
bit okay awesome
back to the text chapter four mutual aid
among
barbarians to start kropotkin argues
as he's argued in the previous chapters
that our ideas of an individualistic
dog-eat-dog world are inaccurate he
states
and i tried several jordan peterson and
ben shapiro impressions on this one but
they never quite sounded right warfare
warfare and oppression of the
warfare and oppression are the very
existence of human warfare and
i'm just going to read it normal the
pessimist philosopher triumphantly
concludes
that warfare and depression are the very
essence of human nature
that the warlike and predatory instincts
of man
can only be restrained within certain
limits by a strong authority
which enforces peace and thus gives an
opportunity
to the few and nobler ones to prepare a
better life
for humanity in times to come gripakin
counters this assertion and argues we do
not know
one single human race or one single
nation which has not had
its period of village communities it was
a universal
phase of evolution a natural outcome of
the clan organization
with all those stems at least which have
played or
play still some part in history
okay so the village community existed
everywhere
but what the hell is the village
community the village community which
kropotkin refers to a lot here
is basically in historical materialism
terms
the historical stage just before the
medieval city
it's villages of people living a
pre-capitalist
more democratic self-managed
non-hierarchical mutual aid kind of
existence
something that totally flies in the face
of the myth that
humans need authoritarian rule or that
humans are naturally predatory or
warlike but how did this work
kropotkin then explains how the modern
barbarians
those considered barbarian during his
day did not
buy or sell goods within their community
but would only buy and trade with other
communities
which actually makes sense when you
think about it we often
hear about how people in ancient times
would use bartering systems trading
eggs for shoes or whatever but that
trading goods was
inefficient and so currency was invented
to make trading easier
and so then markets were formed which
then naturally developed into capitalism
but trading in this way makes no sense
sure if someone came to town with wares
for sale they could trade with others
but within one's own community how often
someone needs
eggs or shoes greatly varies
so kropotkin and others have argued that
what actually took place
is that people who wanted eggs could get
them from the community
chicken keeper if they need it as needed
knowing that
as the community cobbler for example if
the chicken keeper ever needed shoes
he could help out in kind you know
mutual aid anyway let's hear from
tristan
chapter five mutual aid in the medieval
city
so chapters five and six of mutual aid
focus on what's called the medieval city
what it does describe is something about
the middle ages that a lot of people
have a
strong misunderstanding about today
which is that
medieval life feudal life wasn't exactly
the
nightmarish overworked conditions that
you'd think of
feudalism did not imply a disillusion of
the village community
although the lord had succeeded in
imposing servile labor upon the peasants
and had appropriated for himself such
rights as were formally vested in the
village community alone
taxes mort main duties on inheritances
and marriages
the peasants had nevertheless maintained
the two fundamental rights of their
communities
the common possession of the land and
self-jurisdiction
we have a rather work view of medieval
societies which comes mostly from the
victorian age and the nightmares of wage
work in that period
but for the most part feudal lords you
know
dukes and barons and kings and
everything they tend to live in nice
manners
and oftentimes the land that they were
technically in charge of they didn't
live in they would actually go somewhere
else
or live somewhere else or constantly be
in battle so
fairly often feudal lords weren't around
and even if they were
they were generally disinterested in
the day-to-day running of society of the
people who were
working under them so fairly often
peasants were under self-management
they didn't really exchange money nobody
really had any like hard currency and so
they work together in what is usually
called
primitive communism which is a informal
debt
based economy the sort of economy that
you have with your friends you know uh
hey if you get me a beer i'll buy the
next one not to try and plug another
book while we're
talking about mutual aid but a really
good follow-up on this kind of
discussion and how this sort of economy
worked
is a book called debt the first five
thousand years by
another anarchist david graber
explaining the mutual aid of the guilds
gripaken states
if a brother's house is burned or he has
lost his ship
or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage
all the brethren must come to his aid
if her brother falls dangerously ill two
brethren must keep watch by his bed
till he is out of danger and if he dies
the brethren must bury him
a great affair in those times of
pestilence and
follow him to the church and the grave
after his death they must provide for
his children
if necessary very often the widow
becomes a sister to the guild
now guilds were most definitely a form
of mutual aid but
we are thinking about this in terms of
capitalist alienation where
we are felt like we are at war with
other people in our same industry or
ourselves one of the more
common criticisms you might hear of
anarchism
or leftist socialist ideas in general
is the human nature argument that humans
are just
naturally predisposed to individual
selfishness and a focus on greed in our
very alienated capital society it's
assumed that humans and dogs
are in ruthless competition with each
other and only really interested in
advancing their own self-interests at
the expense of everybody else
it's almost as if the idea of economics
is a zero-sum game in which there are
winners and losers
but what we've seen in mutual aid so far
as well as oftentimes in nature
and multiple studies of how groups work
together
is that cooperation is a much more
successful strategy than competition
in fact fairly often people who
cooperate will find themselves doing
better overall
than even the people who individually
try to advance themselves
the expense of others cooperation is
just
overall a better strategy for winning at
pretty much everything
the more we begin to know the medieval
city the more we see that it was not
simply a political organization
for the protection of certain political
liberties it was an attempt
at organizing on a much grander scale
than in the village community
a close union for mutual aid and support
for consumption and protection
and for social life altogether without
imposing upon men
the fetters of the state but giving full
liberty
of expression to the creative genius of
each separate group
of individuals in art crafts science
commerce and political
so organization what we're seeing here
at odds with our common understanding of
the middle ages
is that guilds did not have the
victorian idea
of capitalist alienation it's very bad
form
50 dkp minus even in cities feudal lords
were generally disinterested in managing
day-to-day life so
society was generally managed by either
guilds or
by the people level just communities
working together in a sort of mutual aid
system
and a common criticism of anarchist
philosophy is
how do you keep such a large and complex
society such as ours organized
well we can probably look at medieval
cities as
one example of possible ways of
organizing without needing the
micromanaging of an overarching
government or state
multiple different communities worked
together
and cooperated in order to advance
themselves and keep themselves together
now this is by no means a perfect system
the middle ages definitely had their
problems and these cities definitely had
their
moments mismanagement for example
communities could be pitted against each
other fairly often this happened in the
form of
anti-semitic violence against the jewish
community for example
chapter 6 mutual aid in the medieval
city
continued and so this whole system
actually fell apart due to the beginning
of capitalism and there was
actual pushback there was resistance to
a lot of things like enclosure where a
lot of common land that was held by
peasants were literally had like fences
built around them in order for them to
become private property
and as capitalism a very unnatural way
of
setting up a society began to become
more mainstream
there was the increase of authoritarian
governments
stronger states and notably more forces
of coercion i.e violence
in order to enforce a capitalist order
on people who
by their natural predisposition would
tend towards cooperation
the medieval artisan did not produce for
an unknown buyer
or to throw his goods into an unknown
market
he produced for his guild first for a
brotherhood of men
who knew each other knew the techniques
of the craft
and in naming the price of each product
could appreciate
the skill displayed in its fabrication
or the labor bestowed upon it
the medieval guild like the medieval
parish street or
quarter was not a body of citizens
placed under the control of state
functionaries
it was a union of all men connected with
a given trade
now there's a lot of comparison between
medieval guilds and unions which is
a bit reductionist i have to say what
does make them similar is that they are
yes indeed
coalitions of workers in a certain
industry coming together and working
towards a common goal
it's just that guilds often were used to
maintain
a trade to maintain trade secrets to
maintain their own
power and to generally take care of each
other within the guild
while unions are unions of workers in
order to create
a unified political
unit that is made up of people who
individually don't have much political
power on their own
in order to exert forces over their
capitalist bosses
to gain some sort of benefit
uh either it being you know a good
employment contract that
ensures lots of benefits or if you are
like
the iww trying to completely change
society
so that uh the world is run by uh
people who actually work in individual
industries
so these were syndicates this is the
early version of what
what an anarchist would call syndicalism
and is in direct violation of the
capitalist idea that everybody would be
just out to advance themselves
at the expense of each other once
capitalism became more of a thing
the guilds were having a harder time
functioning became more professional
organizations
because the competition between
different types of artisans
actually led to the breakdown of
cooperation and solidarity between them
the losses which europe sustained
throughout the loss of its free cities
can only be understood when we compare
the 17th century
with the 14th or the 13th the prosperity
which formerly characterized scotland
germany the plains of italy was gone the
roads had fallen into an abject state
the cities were depopulated labor was
brought into slavery
art had vanished commerce itself was
decaying
the greatest and most fatal error of
most cities
was to base their wealth upon commerce
and industry to the neglect of
agriculture
they thus repeated the error which had
once been committed by the cities of
antique greece
and they fell through it into the same
crimes the estrangement of so many
cities
from the land necessarily drew them into
a policy
hostile to the land now one of the
things that krapotkin does push for is a
more agrarian society and
it's sort of built on a marxist reading
of historical materialism
which states that uh cities lead towards
authoritarianism
and that to keep an anarchist way of
life you have to keep
a simple pathway a simple economy
i.e back to farming this is sort of a
superstructure and base type argument
and of course there's some of that that
makes sense in order for capitalism to
take hold
who owns what needs to be more strongly
delineated and
control needs to be more cut and dry
however as we see in the medieval cities
we can make some pretty good arguments
that actually
you can have a complex urban environment
that is still run on anarchist
principles
it's just that marx much like kropotkin
grew up in a capitalist system and while
they were visionaries of their time
they are still limited by the
superstructure in which they grew up in
and the opposition to the enclosure and
the encroaching capitalist movement of
workers
would become the prototypes of what
would become
socialists the fight against capitalism
in the 1600s 1700s 1800s
would become what would be the
international socialist movement of the
19th century that we're more familiar
with
that has a strong genealogy and pedigree
that goes all the way to today
chapter 7 mutual aid amongst ourselves
the entire book has slowly built up to
this point
from the least complex animals bugs and
stuff like that
to the most complex primates and of
course dogs
from the least technically advanced
societies of humans hunter-gatherers
to well judging by the device that
you're watching this video on
probably yourself and kropotkin is
basically asking
if mutual aid collaboration and working
together are so
natural to so many species including
ourselves
well then what the hell happened why are
we so
atomistic so individualistic so
doggy dog today kropotkin answers this by
stating
for the next three centuries the states
both on the continent and in these
islands
systematically weeded out all
institutions in which the mutual aid
tendency
had formally found its expression we see
this in everything from the theft of
communal lands and
vagrancy laws that were discussed in
marx's capital for beginners
to the attacks on labor unions that were
explained in
the rise in repression of radical labor
to assaults on public institutions
and imposing privatization that was
discussed in the shock doctrine
to the kind of cointelpro stuff that i
covered in my video about
dicks and the fbi kropotkin continues
it seems therefore hopeless to look for
mutual aid institutions and practices
in modern society what could remain of
them
and yet as soon as we try to ascertain
how
the millions of human beings live and
begin to study their everyday relations
we are struck with the immense part
which the mutual aid and mutual support
principles play
even nowadays in human life
and think about it think about your own
life everything from being babysat by
your grandparents to
bringing chips and soda to your dmd
campaign with your friends
people working together and doing things
for each other engaging in mutual aid
from here kropotkin discusses the theft
of the communal lands
and the imposition of capitalism he
states
nowhere did the village community
disappear of its own accord
everywhere on the contrary it took the
ruling classes
several centuries of persistent but not
always successful efforts
to abolish it and to confiscate the
communal lands
chapter 8 mutual aid amongst ourselves
continued
expanding on the theft of communal lands
kropotkin states
the properties of the guilds were
confiscated in the same way
as the lands of the village communities
and the inner
and technical organization of each trade
was taken in hand
by the state laws gradually growing in
severity
were passed to prevent artisans from
combining in any way
for example unionists were persecuted
wholesale
under the master and servant act workers
being summarily arrested and condemned
upon a mere complaint of misbehavior
lodged by the master
so don't let anyone try and tell you
that bartering naturally flowed into
markets which naturally flowed into
capitalism
and that socialism and mutual aid are
somehow against human nature because
human nature is all about being greedy
and competitive
hogwash capitalism was violently imposed
on the public
and the communal lands and the guilds
and the unions and
any semblance of workers banding
together was viciously
attacked krapakan then discusses
clubs and associations societies
brotherhoods alliances institutes and
other
forms of social voluntary
groupings and he also named several
anecdotal stories of
individuals adopting children or feeding
the hungry or
doing sympathy strikes and things like
that and
look around yourself i mean look at all
the mutual aid that's taken place
for example since this coronavirus
pandemic
people making masks for free or at cost
people doing grocery shopping for others
food deliveries
rent strikes and the like as kropotkin
puts it
for everyone who has any idea of the
life of the laboring classes
it is evident that without mutual aid
being practiced among them
on a large scale they never could pull
through all
their difficulties and kropotkin
concludes
neither the crushing power of the
centralized state nor the teachings of
mutual hatred
and pitless struggle which came adorned
with the attributes of science
from obliging philosophers and
sociologists could weed out the feeling
of human solidarity
deeply lodged in men's understanding and
heart
because it has been nurtured by all our
preceding
evolution conclusion
this chapter is basically a summary of
the entire text
discussing the mutual aid of bugs and
birds and
dogs and hunter-gatherers and modern
humans
and kropotkin states the animal species
in which individual struggle has been
reduced to its narrowest limits
and the practice of mutual aid has
obtained the greatest development
are invariably the most numerous the
most prosperous
and the most open to further progress
the mutual protection which is obtained
in this case the possibility of
obtaining old age
and of accumulating experience the
higher intellectual development
and the further growth of sociable
habits secure the maintenance of the
species
its extension and its further
progressive evolution
what about great men theories what about
rugged individualism
and humankind's inherent drives for
greed and competitiveness
what about the bootstraps and the
pulling
well to all of these kropotkin states the
practice of mutual aid and its
successive developments have created the
very conditions of society
life in which man was enabled to develop
his arts
knowledge and intelligence conclusion
a lot of this book reminds me of another
book i'm currently reading
anarchy works by peter gerdelus they are
both
encyclopedic collections of various
groups and activities that demonstrate
the tendency
towards and success of mutual aid
and anarchism for a while i considered
not reviewing this book
because knowing that bees work together
or that dogs work together
seems like such a commonly understood
reality
but unfortunately because of
lobsters and rugged individualism and
myths about alpha dogs and
alpha males people totally not
understanding that we are products of
our environment and that our nature
is collaborative and not competitive i
guess that
even a hundred years later it just still
needs to be said that mutual aid
is a factor of evolution and that the
natural state of human beings
is working together in mutual aid
like these right-wing individualist
folks
do they like distribute the food in
their fridge
competitively do they treat their
friends and family according to
market forces like as if we lived in a
dog-eat-dog world
or do they like you and i engage in
mutual aid mutual aid in our dnd
campaigns
in our magic card tournaments while
playing minecraft or arc
while teaching a friend how to play a
musical instrument or program a computer
while playing in a band or playing on a
sports team when cleaning up around the
house or throwing a potluck
when doing a food drive or helping an
elderly person cross the street
or when donating your used goods or when
volunteering for a church group
or when house sitting for a friend or
babysitting your nephew
or making an educational youtube video
in your spare time
or helping a friend move or saving a dog
from drowning or
performing cpr or the heimlich community
over on a stranger or getting someone's
car a jump
anyway i'd like to thank tristan of step
back history for helping me out with
this one
if you have some questions about history
i recommend going to his channel
link in the description i personally
would recommend his video on feminism
witchcraft and beer making that's a
great one
and as always i'd like to thank my
wonderful patrons your tremendous
support has allowed me to get
dog insurance and support other creators
i couldn't otherwise support and
engage in some mutual aid with them if
you will
and things like that which is really
awesome i appreciate you folks a lot
and if you like what i do here and you'd
like to support the show you can go to
patreon.com slash radical reviewer
and if you're interested in radical
theory or looking for a book
recommendation or whatever you get your
radical reviews here with
a lot of reviews we should listen to our
elective politicians who perpetuate a
system that oppresses and kills
we list to each other and we comforted a
pain
we all shares we sat together realizing
that
source is much to the same so we
form relationships based on mutual aid
and we'll take those streets and we'll
not be ashamed
we've got to work together you know like
a tribe we'll never make it
by stopping to help you i ended up
helping myself
and my friend those kids unified against
the forces of oppression
it's so beautiful i've got you you've
got this
we've all got each other
