Mutual Aid

This is a hugely significant and timely book articulating a key big idea whose time has surely come. In the wake of the publication of Darwin’s books, Herbert Spencer formulated the idea of the survival of the fittest, which the authors show is the central myth underlying our dominant (toxic and ultimately destructive) neoliberal economic and political systems: the predatory competition for power and wealth in a world of scarcity. However, already in 1902, Prince Kropotkin published his Mutual Aid as a counterpoint to the Spencer view. Interestingly, he advocated decentralised federalism and self-management, policies underpinning localism in the green movement. More recently, biology has been catching up with the development of Gaia theory, symbiosis, synergy, mutuality and even the Wood Wide Web in terms of distributed intelligence. Socially, this is showing up in movements championing cooperation, altruism, reciprocity, kindness and solidarity. This book provides the necessary theoretical and experimental background from which to argue the case.

The authors demonstrate that ‘all living creatures are involved in relationships of mutual aid. All of them. Mutual aid isn’t a mere news item, it’s a principle of the living world.’ (p. 3) They begin with an analysis of how we have forgotten and neglected this key principle of interdependence, and explain how the central focus of sociobiology has moved from (selfish) genes to the environment, as well as advancing evidence of our intrinsic prosocial behaviour patterns. Another important precursor was Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) whose work on gifts shows how we can create a reciprocal loop of dependence while fostering trust and social bonding. They argue that mirror neurons are the neurological root of reciprocity that shows up in various forms of group reciprocity. Nor do they neglect the negative reciprocity involved in violence, war and revenge in the competition between groups.

A key insight for our times relates to the question of appropriate scale and in particular the work of Leopold Kohr, EF Schumacher and Ivan Ilitch. The authors summarise this by saying that ‘Beyond a certain threshold (called conviviality) organisations and ideologies become tyrannical.’ (p. 120) Illich asserts that wherever something is wrong, something is too big, to which the authors add social complexity, which gives rise – as we have seen with Covid – to situations where ‘managing it all becomes very difficult, if not impossible, for a central authority, which reacts by strengthening its control and its authority, without knowing that it is precisely this which triggers its downfall.’ (p. 120) In in addition, the increasing size of the group is matched by alienating and impersonal institutions that treat people as objects. The danger, also identified by Margaret Wheatley, is that complexity and size are precursors to collapse.

With respect to human relationships to nature and especially climate instability, the authors contend that ‘in our culture, nothing will happen as long as there is more benefit in doing nothing than acting for the future.’ (p. 123) This highlights the logic of individual benefits and collective costs where there is no common narrative and the system is embedded in inequalities. I do share the authors’ view that the time is ripe for our current competitive founding myth that nature – including human nature – as inherently competitive and selfish to be replaced buy a new foundation grounded in mutual aid and reciprocity. The UN SDGs championed by groups like the World Economic Forum are still using a model of centralised command and control, which is only too evident in the draconian policies being imposed by the Dutch government on its farmers. Militarism, as I note in my review of John Mearsheimer, requires the centralised authority of states able to cajole and compel its people, which is why more thinkers are now supporting bioregionalism rather than a looming and authoritarian world government.

We need to popularise what Martin Nowak calls natural mutual aid along with natural selection, as explained in a summary of the main principles (p. 162). We have to redefine who we are in order to become such and free ourselves from the shackles of a culture of fear and preparedness for violence ‘that maintains a climate of violence and mistrust quite unfavourable to mutual aid.’ (p. 175) In addition to asking ourselves how we can practically recreate bonds of reciprocity, trust, security and fairness for ourselves and other sentient life, we need to address atavistic patterns in the collective unconscious and our susceptibility to emotional manipulation through the limbic system. In this way, we can combine politics, ecology and psychology to move forward in a more conscious manner.