Did he really say this? Isn’t he famous for finding mutual aid in nature? I think he said something like competition is the way of predators and that’s what many people, including biologists, focus on, but most of nature does a lot of mutual aid
Yes, he said the both competition and cooperation are found in nature, but that cooperation/mutual aid lends itself more to survival, and he cites examples from both animals and humans: theanarchistlibrary.org/…/petr-kropotkin-mutual-a…
I think it’s kinda a semantic dispute. Rules are mostly a human construct, utilized to organize a hierarchy of understanding of the natural world and how we interact with it as social groups.
So, I’m not really sure if an idea like mutual aid can be used to accurately describe copacetic relationships outside the human experience. Mostly because when nature engages in mutually beneficial relationships, there isn’t a goal of organization, nor is there any understanding of hierarchy.
These types of relationships could better be described by someone like Bookchin, as a network of natural codependent relationships is more in the realm of ecology than it is a political science.
I wasn’t really disputing that he applied it to nature, just giving my two cents of why I don’t think that application is really appropriate.
It’s kinda an apple to oranges comparison. For example, we wouldn’t be excited about conducting mutual aid with a fascist organization. We understand that fascist would be more than happy to take part, and eventually use that relationship to destroy us.
Nature in comparison is full of relationships that start as mutually beneficial and then become parasitic after a slight change in ecology. The examples of mutual aid in nature are also likely products of survivorship bias, the organisms that find harmony in mutual beneficial relationships are the product of filling the gaps left behind of other mutually beneficial relationships failling.
To condense my rambling… We can find examples of mutually beneficial relationships/actions in both nature and human society. Technically all forms of commerce is a form of mutual beneficiary action, but not all mutually beneficial actions are mutual aid. Mutual aid requires intent to organize or intent to diminish the dependency of the current organizational hierarchy.
I think the difference would be that the concept of mutual aid is meant to build something further than just surviving within a niche of mutual benefits. It’s a means of political organization, not a means of simple existence.
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