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View allMutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Kropotkin
1902
The naturalist's case that cooperation, not competition, drives evolution.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Peter Kropotkin · 1902
Kropotkin wrote this as a direct answer to the social Darwinists of his day — the claim that nature, and therefore society, runs on ruthless competition between individuals. Drawing on his own years of field observation in Siberia, then working forward through insects, birds, and mammals, early tribes, barbarian confederacies, the medieval city, and modern institutions, he builds a sustained case that mutual aid is at least as important a factor in evolution and progress as struggle. It is Kropotkin's most scientific book and the biological foundation for the political program of The Conquest of Bread — read them together to see the argument move from natural history to practical politics.
10 chapters · 94,825 words · ~7.2 hr read
Contents
Introduction
Kropotkin's own field observations in Siberia and the doubts they raised about competition as the chief factor in evolution.
Mutual Aid Among Animals
Ants, bees, birds, and mammals — the case that cooperation is widespread and consequential in the animal world.
Mutual Aid Among Humans, Early and Medieval
From tribal societies through barbarian confederacies to the self-governing medieval city and its guilds — mutual aid as the basis of successive human institutions.
Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves
Village communes, trade unions, and voluntary societies surviving and adapting under the modern state.
Conclusion
Kropotkin's summary claim: mutual support, not mutual struggle, has had the leading part in the ethical progress of humanity.