Theory Of Mutual Aid Research Articles

Peter Kropotkin and Social Ecology: Between Biology and Revolution

Research or concepts in the biological field have often been used as a basis to root political projects of different orientations. In the libertarian literature, there have also been attempts to explore the link between the natural world and the possibility of freedom by combining discoveries in biological fields and research in philosophical/political fields. In the first part of our work, we analyse Peter Kropotkin's thought, especially his theory of mutual aid, focusing on his protoecological concepts. This section also focuses on the Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin in the context of the evolution of life in the natural world. The concepts of cooperation, empathy and mutual aid are explored, and also revolution, federalism and egalitarian ethics. In the second part, we review these ideas and concepts, drawing on insights from recent discoveries in the study of ecology and evolutionary biology. We conclude our review by discussing how these natural principles can inform social projects and social organisation, identifying how mismatches between social and biological organisation have contributed to inequality and domination.

Mutual aid and competition as driving forces of economic development

The theory of competition is one of the main theories of modern economic science and is an important component of its methodological and theoretical apparatus. In the classical and neoclassical paradigm of economic science, competition is objective, independent of individual economic entities, the basis of the market mechanism, an “invisible hand” that coordinates the activities of producers and consumers, the distribution of limited resources, the creation, distribution and use of economic benefits. Over the past 250 years, the theory of competition has gone through the path of formation and development and currently has a developed methodology that has made it possible to distinguish and study various types of competition and various types of market structures: pure competition, oligopoly, pure monopoly, monopolistic competition. The developed economic and mathematical apparatus of the microeconomic theory of competition makes it possible to realize its cognitive, practical and ideological functions. But throughout the entire period of formation and development of the theory of competition, there has been criticism of it. The object of criticism are both theoretical and practical aspects of the theory of competition. The most prominent opponents of the supporters of the theory of competition are Russian scientists: P. Kropotkin, A. Chayanov, N. Kondratiev, M. Tugan-Baranovsky, S. Kirdina-Chandler, G. Kleiner and others. They contrast the theory of competition with the theory of mutual aid, according to which mutual aid, not competition, is the driving force behind economic development. The authors of the article reconstructed the process of formation and development of the theory of competition and the theory of mutual assistance, revealed the relative heuristic significance of both theories, clarified the concept of “mutual assistance” in relation to the concept of “cooperation”, substantiated the existence of the dichotomy “mutual assistance – ​competition” and proved that it is driving force of economic development.

Proudhon criticizes political economy

Proudhon, who was in the same historical period with Marx, has also criticized the political economy. In The Philosophy of Poverty, Proudhon clearly shows his reasons for criticizing political economy. Proudhon aims to expose the evil of capitalist private ownership by criticizing political economy, and to reorganize socioeconomics, and then introduce his own anarchist proposition and mutual aid theory.

Materialist Premises in Hobbes and Kropotkin for Antipodean Conclusions: The State of War and the Mutual Aid

A methodological similarity between Thomas Hobbes and Petr Kropotkin is the intention to elucidate a theoretical foundation to a broad audience, in the sense that they are willing to popularize a clear description of the reality and a subsequent political view. To do so, they use a scientific method, deductive (starting from empirical observations) in the case of Hobbes, inductive-deductive in the case of Kropotkin. Kropotkin also underlines the educational value of the scientific method. Although they both start their argumentations from a materialist ontology, Hobbes and Kropotkin conjecture two completely different states of nature. Hobbes describes the state of nature through the two famous metaphors homo homini lupus and bellum omnium contra omnes, while Kropotkin introduced the theory of mutual aid. Hobbes has been influenced by the scientific revolution initiated by Francis Bacon, one of his mentors, and Galileo Galilei. Kropotkin has been influenced by the ground-breaking writings of Charles Darwin together with a very fruitful Russian scientific environment. The disenchanted view of the human nature in Hobbes, a state of war due to the fact that everyone has rights on everything, helps him to legitimate sovereignty, while the positive view of human nature in Kropotkin, a spontaneous mutual aid among people in a community, helps him to legitimate anarchy. Therefore, the fascinating scientific methods of the two materialists Hobbes and Kropotkin to structure a solid political theory cannot neglect different views on human nature due to their historical contexts.

Piotr Kropotkin i ewolucyjne źródła moralności

Piotr Kropotkin był najważniejszym przedstawicielem tzw. darwinizmu rosyjskiego oraz teorii pomocy wzajemnej, która podkreślała znaczenie współpracy wewnątrzgatunkowej w procesie doboru naturalnego oraz walki o byt. Na jej kanwie rosyjski badacz wysunął tezę o ewolucyjnych źródłach moralności, będącej problem badawczym w niniejszym artykule. Stanowi to jednocześnie powód dlaczego poza przedstawieniem wspomnianej tezy i jej założeń, w publikacji zilustrowana została także teoria pomocy wzajemnej. Zaproponowana przez Kropotkina wizja moralności suponowała, iż stanowi ona „przyrodzoną” właściwość ludzkiej natury. Podstawę dla niej stanowić ma instynkt społeczny oraz jego przejawy, takie jak: równość, solidarność, sprawiedliwość, itd., a także pomoc wzajemna. Stawiało to propozycję rosyjskiego darwinisty w opozycji wobec dominujących trendów w myśleniu o ludzkiej moralności na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, zwłaszcza wobec tzw. darwinizmu społecznego i charakterystycznego dlań dualizmu moralnego. Ponadto zrywała z antropocentryzmem zakładając, iż poza gatunkiem ludzkim, także inne gatunki cechują się uczuciami moralnymi.

‘The murderous civilisation’: anarchist geographies, ethnography and cultural differences in the works of Élie Reclus

This article, based on primary sources, addresses the early anarchist ethnography of Élie Reclus (brother of the more famous French geographer Élisée Reclus), placing it in the context of anarchist geographers’ elaboration of the theory of mutual aid, as well as in the construction of a scientific discourse opposed to racism, colonialism and Eurocentrism recently addressed by international literature on this group. Drawing on the double critical frame of present-day anarchist anthropologies and cultural geographies addressing the debates on otherness, postcolonialism and differences, this article analyses an early but radical attempt to build a scientific discourse on empathy and understanding of different cultural standpoints in the political context of an explicit denunciation of colonial crimes by all nations of European culture, as well as scientists’ complicity therein. I argue that European science at the time of imperialism and evolutionism was not a homogeneous field but a battlefield where heterodox and nonconformist thinkers tried to develop different discourses in order to build cultures of solidarity linked to a consistent political action.

Social Harmony Paradigms and Natural Selection: Darwin, Kropotkin, and the Metatheory of Mutual Aid

This article proposes the mutual aid theory of Charles Darwin and Peter Kropotkin as an engendering metatheory for social harmony paradigms within public relations, including communitarianism, excellence theory, and fully functioning society theory. It extends current research in public relations beyond Darwin's Origin of Species to include that author's later Descent of Man as well as the neglected works of Russian evolutionary biologist Peter Kropotkin. Drawing upon the research of those authors, the article presents evidence that the evolutionary processes of natural selection created the social instinct that provides both positive and normative status for the social harmony paradigms within public relations.

Converging on harmony

A growing number of frameworks for envisioning and enacting public relations posit social harmony as a core goal of the discipline. Such frameworks include two-way symmetry, communitarianism, fully functioning society theory, Isocratean rhetoric, and aspects of the reflective paradigm. A goal of social harmony, however, has been challenged as being overly idealistic, utopian, and incongruous with the competitive nature of human beings and organizations. This article examines the evolutionary biological theories of Charles Darwin and Peter Kropotkin – in particular, Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid – and details their conclusion that the processes of natural selection favor communities built upon cooperation rather than competition. The processes of evolution and natural selection thus provide a scientific foundation for a goal of social harmony within public relations frameworks.

Book Review: Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective

Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective by Judith Suissa. PM Press, 2010. Pp. 176. $19.95 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781604861143[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2012 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]In 2010, PM Press published a new edition of Judith Suissa's 2006 work Anarchism and Education, a philosophically informed genealogy of social anarchist educationalist theories. Suissa, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at Institute of Education, University of London, has written an extensively researched, and yet rather dry and procedural, historical account of anarchist educational ideas and (PM Press, 2010). This book is useful to situate nineteenthcentury social in relationship to other (i.e. liberal) philosophies of education, as it seeks to recast them as relevant actors in educationalist debates on future of schooling. It is a fine, and at times enjoyable, introduction for an intrepid reader interested in relationship between anarchism and philosophy of education. Suissa's book raises several important questions: if anarchism seeks explicitly to abolish state and all forms of coercive social institutions, what does look like in anarchist society? How do you create a non-coercive free form of education without replicating free-market liberal logic of rational choice? Who should be educated, and how? For Suissa, answers to these questions rest on assumption that purpose of education is to assist in formation of a human being in social world and to hold society together (37). However, Suissa's socially integrative view of education, and her account of anarchist education itself, leaves much to be desired.Suissa focuses her study on work of nineteenth century social anarchists, including Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Proudhon. She also references contemporary anarchist scholars and theorists, notably Colin Ward and Noam Chomsky. Suissa claims that social-anarchists are drawn to education for two of its most vital characteristics: its for social transformation and its for cultural transmission. The social-anarchists' conception of what education should be, argues Suissa, is grounded in their belief in an underlying common human nature (25). This human nature has both an altruistic or benevolent potential (from which arises Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid) and a competitive, egotistical one. Education which, according to Suissa's reading of these thinkers, systematically promoted and emphasized cooperation, solidarity and mutual aid would have effects of both suppressing selfish side of human nature that has so far taken root in capitalist society, and reinforcing moral qualities and values of revolutionary one to come (32).Unfortunately, Suissa's advocacy of a moral education based on a concept of universal human nature often ends up reproducing same neutral subject of liberal state. Her narrow study of the anarchists does not often leave safe confines of an imagined commonality of experience in nineteenth-century Europe. When she discusses historic and contemporary American experiments in anarchist education, she neglects to mention race, class, and gender context in which these projects occurred. This omission does have consequences, particularly when applied to today's educational climate. For example, Suissa's call for an increase in vocational and integral education in public school system, while well-founded on an anarchistic theoretical basis, could be contested by experiences of poor students of color tracked into highschool vocational classes (see Rodriguez 1996:22). Such an oversight may seem understandable given Suissa's choice of theorists; however, contemporary landscape of American schools is so far removed from relative ethnic, linguistic and cultural homogeneity of Tolstoy's Yasnaya Polyana that it seems anachronistic to omit a discussion of identity-based oppression and particularity of individual communities. …

‘Migrants in a Feverland’: State Obligations towards the Environmentally Displaced

This paper considers whether states have a duty to accept those who cross borders to escape environmental disasters associated with climate change. It then examines how such a responsibility might be distributed, focusing on the predicament of the citizens of small island states expected to be inundated by rising sea levels. In assessing states' responsibility to admit these individuals, I draw on Walzer's theory of mutual aid, demonstrating that even under this narrow conception of states' obligations, a duty to accept displaced islanders can be established. However, the proximity principle is ill-suited to determining which states should shoulder responsibility in this situation. Drawing on Miller's account of remedial responsibility and his ‘connection theory,’ I suggest that the obligation to accept ‘environmental refugees’ should be shouldered principally by affluent states that share significant degrees of causal and moral responsibility for climate change, and also have particularly strong capacities to assist the displaced.

Evolution and Anarchism in International Relations: The Challenge of Kropotkin’s Biological Ontology

This article will utilise Peter Kropotkin’s theory of Mutual Aid to reconsider ontology in International Relations (IR). Mutual Aid Theory holds that the evolution of organisms is shaped by cooperation within a group of species against a variable ecology; thus giving rise to a sociality instinct. This is contrasted with the Malthusian assumption that evolution takes place at the individual level according to their intraspecific fitness. Mutual Aid Theory, applied to the realm of politics, overturns collective-action-problem-grounded theories that hold that the egoistic and competitive drive of humans must be overcome to promote cooperation. Bradley Thayer applied the orthodox individual-fitness interpretation of evolution in an attempt to shore up realist arguments. I argue that such reductionist approaches to studying politics are archaic and not congruent with current scientific understanding. A Critical Realist (CR) approach, placing analytical priority on ontological investigations over epistemological/methodological commitments, is employed to assist in the criticism of orthodox reductionist ontologies. However, equally in line with Kropotkin’s Anarchist ideas, I argue that this critical realist approach also provokes ontologically-driven inquiries into post-sovereignty global politics and can inform the emancipatory intent of Critical IR theory, along side the basic Anarchist ontological claim: society precedes the State.

Evolution and Anarchism in International Relations: The Challenge of Kropotkin’s Biological Ontology

Abstract This paper will utilize Peter Kropotkin’s theory of Mutual Aid to reconsider ontology in IR. Mutual Aid Theory holds that the evolution of organisms is shaped by cooperation within a group of species against a variable ecology; thus giving rise to a sociality instinct (Kropotkin 1902). This is contrasted with the Malthusian assumption that evolution takes place at the individual level according to their intraspecific fitness. Mutual Aid Theory, applied to the realm of politics, overturns collective action problem-grounded theories that hold that the egoistic and competitive drive of humans must be overcome to promote cooperation. Thayer (2004) applied the orthodox individual-fitness interpretation of evolution in an attempt to shore up Realist arguments. I argue that such reductionist approaches to studying politics are archaic and not congruent with current scientific understanding. A critical realist approach, placing analytical priority on ontological investigations over epistemological/methodological commitments, is employed to assist in the criticism of orthodox reductionist ontologies. However, equally in line with Kropotkin’s anarchist ideas, I argue that this critical realist approach also provokes ontologically-driven inquiries into post-sovereignty global politics and can inform the emancipatory intent of critical IR theory, along the basic anarchist ontological claim: society precedes the State.

Surviving After Suicide Loss: The Healing Potential of Suicide Survivor Support Groups

With participant observations from peer-facilitated suicide survivor support group meetings, collected over a four-year period, this article applies Shulman's dynamics of mutual aid theory to explain how survivors' healing is facilitated by support group participation. Shulman's principles provide guidance on how survivors help and empower each other to deal with their grief in survivor support groups. Group facilitators can provide more clarity and direction to survivors with Shulman's principles, better helping survivors to navigate the bewildering course of healing after suicide loss. We also suggest ways group facilitation knowledge—an essential resource for enhancing healing—can be more widely distributed.

Mutual Aid Theory and Human Development: Sociability as Primary

Mutual aid theory emerged as a model for evolution in pre-revolutionary Russia, roughly parallel to the rise of evolutionary theory in England. Perhaps the most well known exponent of mutual aid theory was the sociobiologist and political theorist Petr Kropotkin. In his writings Kropotkin embraced the general framework of Darwin's ideas, but stressed the issue of social cooperation, as opposed to egoistic competition, as the keystone of species development. Kropotkin suggested that sociability, the desire of members of a species to be in relationship with their own, and the quality of life they get from these relationships, is primary; and that all species development flows from this sociability. Sociability is developed over the course of evolution through a process of natural selection: organisms with greater capabilities for social organization based on mutual aid have far greater chances for survival across a wide spectrum of ecological conditions. Kropotkin's theory of sociability is both unique and scientifically valid, and it calls into question some of the basic pre-suppositions of not only current, dominant models of sociobiology, but much human development theory and research. The final part of this paper suggests some of the ways mutual aid theory might lead the field to rethink issues concerning culture and human development.

Mutual Aid Groups with Mentally Ill Older Adults

ABSTRACT There is a growing body of literature that describes the theory of and practice with mutual aid groups. Much of the literature is generic in nature in that it describes mutual aid groups in general terms. However, groups of persons experiencing one vulnerable life condition or circumstance will bring different issues and behaviors to mutual aid groups than groups experiencing other conditions or circumstances. Hence, the knowledge base supporting practice with mutual aid groups must be particularized to the different vulnerable populations. This paper attempts to particularize mutual aid theory to group practice with mentally ill older adults. Mutual aid themes that are unique to older persons with a mental illness are explored.

Kropotkin's Theory of Mutual Aid in Historical Context

SummaryThis paper examines the relationship between science and anarchism in Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid and analyses it in the light of his concerns about the rise of social democracy and individualism. Tracing the development of the theory from the 1890s to Kropotkin's death in 1921, it affirms the centrality of mutual aid in his work but argues, contrary to existing readings, that the theory can be seen as an attempt to inspire the revival of the anarchist movement. It concludes that there is an unresolved tension in Kropotkin's work arising from the imbalance between the idea of a “natural anarchist tendency” and anarchist propaganda.

The future society according to Kropotkin

Ya'acov Oved, The future society according to Kropotkin. This article reviews the development of Peter Kropotkin's views on the future society since 1873, and traces the stages of the elaboration of his anarcho-eommunist vision. Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid as a factor of survival is presented as the basis of the world view which buttresses the structure of the future society. A special attention is given to the notions of the spontaneous character of the transitional stage of the social revolution preliminary to the emergence of the new society. The article describes extensively the values and social structures which will be embedded in the post-revolutionary era. Subjects such as the system of rewards according to needs, the integration of industry and agriculture, the combina- tion of manual and intellectual work, the integral education, and women's liberation, are presented as highlights of the character and scope of this Utopian vision. The article concludes with an evaluation and criticism of Kropotkin's approach based on the assessment of contemporary scholars as well as rivals and anarchist partners.

The Reception of Darwin's Origin of Species by Russian Scientists

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Reception of Darwin's Origin of Species by Russian ScientistsJames Allen RogersJames Allen Rogers Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 64, Number 4Dec., 1973 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/351177 Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1973 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Mikhail B. Konashev Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in Russia and in the USSR: some aspects of translation and publication, Studia Historiae Scientiarum 20 (Sep 2021): 285–315.https://doi.org/10.4467/2543702XSHS.21.011.14042M Asım Karaömerlioğlu, Murat Yolun Turkish nationalism and the evolutionary idea (1923–1938), Nations and Nationalism 26, no.33 (Feb 2020): 743–758.https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12600Maciej Drabiński Piotr Kropotkin i ewolucyjne źródła moralności, Etyka 58, no.22 (Dec 2019): 26–49.https://doi.org/10.14394/etyka.950Lee Alan Dugatkin Strange bedfellows: A Russian Prince, A Scottish economist, and the role of empathy in early theories for the evolution of cooperation, Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution (Jul 2013): n/a–n/a.https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.b.22518Michael J. Benton, Andrey G. Sennikov, Andrew J. Newell Murchison's first sighting of the Permian, at Vyazniki in 1841, Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 121, no.33 (Jan 2010): 313–318.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pgeola.2010.03.005Ruth Kinna Kropotkin's Theory of Mutual Aid in Historical Context, International Review of Social History 40, no.22 (Feb 2009): 259–283.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000113227