What is Mutual Aid?

Mutual aid is a form of community cooperation where groups of people in a particular area, or from a particular community join together to support one another, meeting vital community needs without the help of official bodies. Oftentimes arising due to neglect in government provision for certain classes of people, mutual aid is a tool for collective social and economic cooperation. Mutual aid, in simpler words, is cooperation for the common good.

Mutual aid – in all of its forms and varieties – is a universal practice, rather than a catch-all term, or definition. All of the examples listed on this site attempt to speak to the universality of this practice, but by no means aim to define them as a singular concept.

Solidarity, not charity – the words of Uruguyan writer Eduardo Galeano still underpin the philosophy of mutual aid efforts today:

I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.

Origins

Mutual aid is an age-old practice that has characterised social relations between numerous species from the animal kingdom. As a term, it was first conceptualised by Russian naturalists and zoologists, most famously Karl Kressler’s paper The Law of Mutual Aid. This research was used to counter the narratives of Darwinians and Social Darwinism, who solely focused on ‘survival of the fittest’ as the most significant factor of evolution, and one which would justify wars and social engineering on oppressed groups. Building on this tension, Kropotkin advanced the theory of human nature rooted in cooperation in Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution. Inspired by his observation of birds, beavers, and other sociable animals weathering the brutal Siberian tundra, Kropotkin saw all organic life as defined by a communal management of scarcity and reciprocal care.

A lone individual in the wilderness will survive for a time; but with the slightest injury or illness, they will quickly succumb to the elements, starvation, or predators

Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution

For this reason, it is impossible to use any one example as the foundation of mutual aid. It is an evolutionary factor as old as life on Earth. Mutual aid – in all of its forms and varieties is a universal practice, rather than a catch-all term, or definition.

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

It is no surprise then, that natural or man-made disasters often become a mobilising moment to bring communities together to pool their resources.

During ordinary disasters — a hurricane, an earthquake — there’s a phenomenon called volunteer convergence, whereby people eager to help gather in the impacted areas. Sometimes so many people and so much donated material shows up that they even pose management problems — as witnessed during the Grenfell Tower Fire in 2017.

See ‘History of Mutual Aid’ for more detailed examples.

Every picket line needs reinforcement, every rent strike needs support, every comrade deserves care and aid. Instead of envisioning mutual-aid to contain the beginnings of a new world, we have to apply mutual aid to existing organizations that actually are.

Gus Breslauer

Other Examples