Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

A book by the Russian anarchist and naturalist Peter Kropotkin, written in English and collected in 1902 from essays first published in the London periodical The Nineteenth Century during the 1890s. It answers Thomas Henry Huxley's 1888 essay 'The Struggle for Existence', which presented nature and early human life as a constant fight of each against all. Drawing on his observations in Siberia, Kropotkin argues that cooperation within species is at least as important a factor in evolution as competition, and that the most sociable species tend to be the fittest. The book moves in stages: two chapters on mutual aid among animals, then among so-called savages and barbarians, then in the medieval city with its guilds and self-governing communes, and finally among his contemporaries, in village communities, trade unions, friendly societies and everyday solidarity. He argues that the modern state has repeatedly destroyed these institutions. Critics say he chose evidence that suited his politics, though later biology has given more room to cooperation than his opponents allowed.

It is a readable challenge to social Darwinism and a founding text for anarchist ideas of self-organisation, and it anticipates later scientific work on cooperation.