Solidarity, Not Charity: Mutual Aid’s An-archic History

Cover image: Molly Costello

Although mutual aid has long been practiced by community organizers and activists, it gained prominence in U.S. media over the last year as hundreds of mutual aid networks rapidly formed to address the COVID-19 crisis. From New Jersey to
California, mutual aid is being used to support community needs by sharing material goods (such as food, PPE, and harm reduction supplies), advocating for housing justice and tenants’ rights, and offering grief support among other things.

You may have heard the slogan, “solidarity, not charity,” used to distinguish mutual aid from more traditional nonprofit charity efforts. But what exactly is mutual aid and what exactly does solidarity mean in this context? I think we can best illustrate this difference by taking a detour through the philosophy of Peter Kropotkin before opening up two sites of debate within activist communities regarding the
tensions between mutual aid work and charity work.
For Kropotkin, mutual aid refers descriptively to a set of natural biological practices and processes, and prescriptively to a philosophical or ethical orientation to praxis that requires ongoing negotiation between action and thought. By unpacking the latter facet of his account, I want to suggest we arrive at a dynamic understanding of solidarity that can significantly deepen our understanding of contemporary mutual aid projects.

Kropotkin’s An-archic Theory of Mutual Aid

Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) is sometimes called the “founder of mutual aid” despite the fact that most people involved in contemporary mutual aid projects have never read his work and despite the fact that Kropotkin himself identified the origin of mutual aid within biological life itself and called attention to the fact that indigenous societies practiced mutual aid long before he theorized about it. Kropotkin first developed his account of mutual aid in the late 19^th century as a corrective to Darwinian evolutionists. While mutual aid is inextricably linked to his commitments to anarchism and anarcho-communism, he did not first and foremost develop mutual aid as a political prescription, but as a descriptive mechanism to explain how living beings flourished and evolved within a world in natural flux and, later, as the core of his naturalistic account of ethics, as an orientation for what I will argue can best be understood as praxis.
Kropotkin’s work on mutual aid attempted to provide an alternative to Darwinian accounts of social evolution that promoted survival of the fittest and to refute the Hobbesian view of nature and sociality as fundamentally driven by hostility, competition, and violence. Drawing on the work of Russian zoologist, Karl Kessler, as well as his own extensive empirical studies of birds and animals, and human history and sociology, Kropotkin argued that mutual aid was as influential as (and quite probably more influential than) competition for guiding the evolution of biological species. When we observe biological life, Kropotkin claims, we see ample evidence that species thrive by helping one another navigate hostile environmental factors and that these behaviors tend to shape the evolution of species over time. While it may sound as if Kropotkin thinks that mutual aid is either that which is always, already taking place all the time, across all species, or that which we should evolve in order to fully realize, he is actually making a much more nuanced claim. For Kropotkin, mutual aid is the name for both the kinds of care animals, birds, and humans tend to show other members of their species when surviving in the face of common environmental struggles, and the form of relationships that spur evolutionary selection. This is to say that mutual aid is an explanatory mechanism for how changes already take place and, at the same time, insofar as we apply it to human society, an aspiration for ethical living in solidarity with one another with a goal of holistic flourishing rather than individual advantage.

Kropotkin’s ethics may seem to advocate a return to primitivism or assume access to some universal ethical code we might discover by observing natural biological life. However, Ruth Kinna’s historical work on Kropotkin  shows that Kropotkin’s ethics are far more amorphous and dynamic than either of these readings suggest. Instead, Kinna argues, mutual aid should be understood as an an-archic approach to the ethical that recognizes that ethics ought to be negotiated in concert with the shifting movements and needs of “the masses” within a common environment rather than imposed through sanctions or obligations mediated by state or religious institutions. As an an-archic ethics, mutual aid is without transcendent first principles and absolute origins. Kropotkin was careful to note that his account, while evolutionary, was neither teleological (that is, progressing toward a set goal) nor deterministic (that is, determined in advance through some natural or transcendent universal law). He was a vicious opponent of Hegel and Marx based, in part, on his perception that both assumed some predetermined course of action for the universal realization of an ideal society. Kinna’s research on Kroptkin’s views of revolutionary change further explains mutual aid as part of Kropotkin’s commitments to build long-term ethical relationships with others that remain open to revision and influence from those involved, and work toward an indeterminate future wherein resources are held in common for the sake of human flourishing.

As an anarchist, Kropotkin was suspicious of both those who assumed that the state would be abolished by a large scale and irreversible event of the revolution and those who appeared as charismatic revolutionaries commanding an ideological following. In “Revolutionary Studies” he critiques propagandists for failing to recognize that evolution has always and will always require revolution insofar as all institutions, like all living things, eventually perish and give way to new forms. We might ask why Kropotkin continued to fight for revolutionary anarchism if he believed this was the case, but on his view, that things change is inevitable, whereas how they change is at least in part, determined by us and is, more often than not, gradual. Even if life itself evolved such that mutual aid was preserved as a human instinct (or as Malabou puts it a bodily memory), human institutions that worked against mutual aid were capable of thriving for some time and of effecting beliefs, knowledge, and habits. By practicing mutual aid he thought that humans could push against the engrained historical violence of capitalism and authoritarian governance that allow some to flourish at the expense of the suffering many to form social habits that favor highly localized anarchist societies wherein needs are met in common and all persons might flourish. While Kropotkin was in favor of direct action against oppressive institutions and while he gave a prominent place to shared struggles in his accounts of mutual aid, he also fought to defend anarchism from impressions of chaotic violence and stressed that anarchism required cooperation and mutual support. If we want social revolution, he suggested, then we need to begin by developing the kinds of revolutionary relationships of mutual aid we would like to participate in now rather than waiting for the revolution to arrive at our doorstep. In The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin further railed against so-called revolutionaries who spent more time debating ideal forms of communism than working to feed people left starving here and now. “Bread, it is bread that the Revolution needs!” became a famous slogan for those practicing mutual aid.

Contemporary Understandings of Mutual aid: Solidarity, Not Charity

Dean Spade, a trans activist and associate professor at Seattle University School of Law recently published a primer on the topic that situates mutual aid as “survival work” practiced in conjunction with movements for social transformation. Spade’s work not only lays out incredibly helpful tools for organizing but offers a discussion of what Spade takes to be the three key facets of mutual aid that are more or less agreed upon among contemporary organizers. 1) Mutual aid addresses survival needs while building understanding of the root causes of inequity. 2) Mutual aid acts as a mobilization tactic for building solidarity around movements for political and social transformation. 3) Mutual aid projects are organized through direct participation and collective action. All of these distinguish mutual aid from charity in significant ways.

Whereas nonprofits often work with state and/or private funding sources to serve those in need, mutual aid organizers recognize that the same mechanisms that create wealth disparity cannot be used to heal it. Mutual aid is organized with awareness of the oppressive systems that create need and is centered on building solidarity and strength through cultivating direct networks of community care. While Spade focuses on mutual aid as a survival tool, many mutual aid efforts seek to move beyond survival to build a world where all can not only survive, but flourish. Mutual aid is thus intended to empower those participating in it, inviting collaboration within larger movements that challenge existing institutions and offering correctives to extant models of justice and care. In these senses mutual aid is distinct from charity, which tends to fill gaps by moving wealth from the top down without being able to address the systems that create wealth and resource gaps and/or offer aid recipients a place at the organizing table. Moreover, because mutual aid networks are horizontally organized and guided by continually shifting collectives of those involved, they tend to be adaptable and dynamic, changing shape to accommodate the desires and needs of the local communities participating in them without the limitations of accountability to a larger organization’s business plan and/or stakeholder requirements. This gives mutual aid groups freedom that many nonprofits and state agencies do not have and allows mutual aid networks to form direct relationships with, and organize directly around the needs of, those they benefit.

Debates Within Contemporary Contexts: The Revolution Must Have Bread and Roses Too

Of course, it would be wrong to assume that the key features discussed above describe every historical conception of mutual aid or that there is one, common set of rules and strategies practiced by everyone who uses the name, “mutual aid,” to describe their work. As Grubačić and O’Hearn have shown, mutual aid has long been practiced within international and diverse social contexts from the Zapatistas of Mexico to prison populations within the U.S. And, of course, mutual aid was a way of life for indigenous communities, such as the Navajo, long prior to its adoption by activists. While many political and nonprofit organizations have adopted the name “mutual aid” during the last several months and progressive politicians such as congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have even helped organize mutual aid efforts, mutual aid’s origins in activist culture appear to have arisen from a commitment to autonomous organizing outside the mechanisms of state power. Many of the earliest historical examples of mutual aid within U.S. activist contexts come out of abolitionist movements for Black self-determination.

Some mutual aid collectives, for example, do not work with police or politicians and are wary of state efforts to co-opt mutual aid work while targeting and criminalizing organizers, as happened with the Black Panthers Free Breakfast Program. Likewise, there are and have always been debates within the left about whether mutual aid is a sufficiently revolutionary practice or a mere distraction from the real work of liberation from oppression; in particular insurrectionary anarchists, like the militant Marxists Kropotkin argued with, tend to devalue mutual aid as just another form of charity incapable of changing material conditions or of constituting revolutionary force.

Without being able to give a detailed view of these interesting and complex debates here, I do want to attempt to offer some indirect responses to them by maintaining that mutual aid is best understood as an-archic praxis in Kropotkin’s deep sense, and as such that mutual aid asks us to refuse hardened programs, institutionalized roles, and/or ideological adherence to a set of universal prescriptive principles regarding the ideal forms for social and/or political evolution. Mutual aid seems to be a commitment to the idea that we build joy and power in forming bonds of solidarity with one another and organizing our lives in common without adhering to rigid structures that inhibit autonomy or cement others within predetermined social roles. Of course, a lot hinges on what we take “solidarity” to mean here and what kind of work the term does within the practice of mutual aid.

As we learned from Kropotkin, mutual aid can both descriptively refer to a set of practices and prescriptively refer to a philosophical or ethical orientation to practices; that is, mutual aid, like most forms of liberatory thought and action, is best understood as a praxis that requires the ongoing negotiation of action and reflection. In the same way that Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed distinguishes false generosity, which seeks credit for alleviating disparities created and furthered by the same institutions that claim to offer relief, from true generosity, which requires entering into solidarity with the oppressed and constant attention to motives, actions, and alliances to avoid replicating oppressive relationships, mutual aid asks that we do the work to liberate, decolonize, and transform our own historically inherited baggage while learning to relate to others in ways that may be unfamiliar to us. Because, as Mariame Kaba noted in a recent talk with Dean Spade and Ejeris Dixon, these relationships often involve conflict as people learn to organize together as well as reparations for past harms, many mutual aid projects attempt to include working groups in transformative justice and radical re-education to provide space for the kinds of changes necessary to carry out this work.

In some cases, such as projects within areas historically targeted by state violence and characterized by a lack of resources, mutual aid efforts begin from a place of solidarity along lines of class, race, and/or cultural positionalities, and in others, participants may need to build solidarity as they go. This is to say that solidarity is not a goal that can finally be achieved through an individual’s practice of mutual aid but is rather an achievement and character of dialogical and dynamic relationships, one that requires ongoing action and care to thrive. It means very little for a white person to say that they are in solidarity with BLM if they stand by and watch racial oppression without risking any privileges to act on behalf of anti-racism. Likewise, white allies may join myriad organizations and participate in various actions advertised as anti-racist, but so long as they do not take time to unpack their own biases or speak to those they advocate for, they have not successfully entered into real solidarity with those they claim to fight on behalf of. If mutual aid promotes solidarity, then this solidarity must be achieved on an ongoing and provisional basis through actions and behaviors that respect the dynamic desires and needs of all those involved.

I expect that this is far more difficult for politicians and other government officials than for most workers, although it is not, theoretically, impossible so long as changes are made to align one’s work with one’s vectors of solidarity without sacrificing the autonomy and desires of those one purports to be in solidarity with. Kropotkin may have been more stringent here. He was adamantly against state institutions and his critique of democratic socialism was precisely that it led revolutionaries to occupy political offices that prevented the realization of anarchy and seduced them into authoritarianism. However, if we take seriously his commitment to an-archism, we also have to allow that people, like all of the natural world, can change, and that political re-education is possible. Of course, many mutual aid groups may not have the time or desire to facilitate the re-education and transformative justice processes necessary to invite ex-police or reformed white nationalists to participate in solidarity actions even while they believe in transformative justice. Doing so takes capacity that could be spent elsewhere as well as an enormous amount of labor and trust. Membership within each mutual aid collective will be contingent upon the community agreements, desires, and abilities of that particular group.

Regarding leftist critiques of mutual aid as that which mirrors rather than challenges charity efforts, I find that Kropotkin’s concerns are in sympathy with many who work on mutual aid projects currently. Like Kropotkin, many practitioners and organizers of mutual aid feel that revolutionary change is multifaceted and multitiered—we may call for the revolution, but we are aware that revolutionary movements unfold across a long history of struggle. This does not mean that direct action against the state or other oppressive institutions is condemned, but that most organizers see a need for a diversity of tactics. As Kropotkin already realized, the revolution needs bread. It is quite difficult for a well-fed “revolutionary” to convince a hungry person to risk themselves on the front lines of a demonstration by holding the promise of free bread for all one day over their head; if you are too hungry to stand, you are too hungry to fight. But if we break bread together, we create the opportunity to build solidarity and trust through discussions that identify the causes of manufactured scarcity and obstacles to common flourishing. And these bonds often allow direct action against those obstacles to unfold with more intensity and coordination than would otherwise be possible.

While not all of those practicing mutual aid share Kropotkin’s strong views of social democracy and/or Marxist politics, most people involved in mutual aid projects seek to decenter the role of individuals and eliminate social hierarchies, and most practice consensus based decision-making and horizontal organizing. These tactics allow for radical action beyond the protest site or the picket line by teaching those of us living with the hangover of individualistic notions of the subject to relate to others in new ways that allow for reciprocal changes in beliefs and/or behaviors to be understood as a collective strength rather than a personal injury.

Within anarchist and abolitionist struggles in particular, mutual aid is one way to demonstrate that the world we are fighting for is not only imaginable, but possible. And, moreover, it is pleasurable! During COVID-19, when feelings of isolation, alienation, despair, and hopelessness permeate our collective existence more acutely than ever before and when the evidence of state violence against BIPOC people and workers is even more strikingly evident than it already was, many have turned to mutual aid and other organizing as a means of coping with the affective dimensions of crisis. In working together to directly solve problems and take action with others, people discover power and joy, and build direct relationships that allow political movements to grow and sustain themselves. Whereas some claim that mutual aid simply makes the neoliberal landscape more palatable, I would argue that it opens new terrain for solidarity and action by bringing people into contact with one another while building confidence in our abilities to act together and skills in our means of caring for one another.

For evidence of this, I think we can look at the ways in which people were prepared to organize protests against police violence over the summer at lightning speed. While much of the credit for this belongs to long-term movements against racialized police violence, mutual aid networks were ready and waiting to organize protest supplies, jail support and bond funds for incarcerated protestors, medical care for those injured by militarized police and/or federally contracted security firms, and personal support for families directly impacted by violence. As we move into winter, some mutual aid programs are organizing support for unsheltered persons and other forms of housing justice, such as eviction defense and know your rights campaigns, and some are participating in disability justice campaigns that engage in pressing biopolitical debates regarding healthcare. Countless new mutual aid projects rapidly organized to address the impending crisis of the pandemic, but many will remain active well beyond this crisis and our movements will be stronger because of them and the lessons and relationships they brought us along the way.

So long as mutual aid remains an an-archic form of praxis, it avoids many of the pitfalls of revolutionary movements that depend on charismatic leadership, strict adherence to an ideological framework, or purity politics that alienate and confine multiplicitious personalities, perspectives, and possibilities for living. Mutual aid, as praxis, is neither a doctrine nor a discipline, but a radical orientation toward living with and struggling alongside others in an ever-changing world.

Jennifer Gammage

Jennifer Gammage is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow and a member of the APA Graduate Student Council. She works on problems within the philosophies of history, temporality, trauma, and ethics. Jennifer is also an organizer with the COVID Mutual Aid Solidarity Network.