Mutual aid once meant reciprocal community support but has been diluted into charity, obscuring power disparities. To reclaim its radical roots, we must restore mutuality, embed it in lasting communal structures, and resist its co-optation as crisis relief rather than collective survival.
View article
View summary
The term
mutual aid has long been associated with forms of cooperation that enable communities to sustain themselves outside of or against state and market forces. Yet, over time, its meaning has shifted in ways that weaken its emphasis on mutuality and reciprocal obligation. What was once a framework for collective survival has become, in many cases, a vague label for charity or benevolent giving—stripped of its original structural critique.
This deep dive will explore the evolution of
mutual aid, how its contemporary usage has loosened its reciprocal requirements, and how it might be reclaimed to serve more radical, communal purposes. Along the way, we will also reintroduce key analytical terms—such as
idiotism,
possessive individualism, and
jackpot capitalism—to further illuminate the conditions under which
mutual aid has lost its edge and how it might be restored.
1. The Origins and Evolution of Mutual Aid
The concept of
mutual aid was most famously articulated by Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in which he challenged the then-dominant interpretation of Darwinian competition as the primary force of natural selection. Instead, Kropotkin argued that cooperation, not competition, was the basis of survival among species and human societies alike. His formulation of
mutual aid was explicitly political—offering both a naturalistic argument against social Darwinism and a prescriptive model for how societies could function without reliance on state coercion.
Historically, mutual aid societies flourished in working-class and marginalized communities, particularly where state support was absent or oppressive. These groups provided insurance, funeral services, legal defense funds, and other forms of communal support, rooted in
horizontal reciprocity rather than vertical patronage. Mutual aid was an infrastructure for collective autonomy, distinct from both charity and market exchange.
However, over the last century, particularly with the rise of state welfare programs and the later retrenchment of those programs under neoliberalism, the meaning of
mutual aid has gradually drifted. It has been increasingly depoliticized, operating more as an ad-hoc emergency response framework rather than a sustained strategy for community self-determination.
2. The Contemporary Dilution of Mutuality
In its current usage,
mutual aid often lacks the explicit reciprocity that defined its earlier forms. Many contemporary initiatives labeled as
mutual aid function more like acts of redistribution—helping those in need but without an expectation of reciprocal participation. This shift, while understandable in an era of extreme inequality, creates several risks:
- Blurring the Line Between Mutual Aid and Charity – When mutual aid is used to describe one-way giving rather than reciprocal exchange, it becomes nearly indistinguishable from philanthropic models rooted in hierarchical power relations.
- Softening the Perception of Power Disparities – Hegemonic forces have co-opted the language of mutual aid to create the appearance of care without ceding real power.
- Lack of Structural Continuity – Many contemporary mutual aid projects operate in disaster-response mode, mobilized for crises but lacking the long-term stability of historic mutual aid societies.
In many ways, what was once a
tool of autonomy and resistance has been subtly transformed into
a pressure-release valve for systemic inequities.
3. Reintroducing Key Terms: Idiotism, Possessive Individualism, and Jackpot Capitalism
To understand how
mutual aid has been neutralized, we can turn to several key analytical concepts:
- Idiotism – When mutual aid becomes a self-referential activist buzzword rather than a lived communal practice, it risks falling into idiotism—a language that is internally legible but externally ineffective.
- Possessive Individualism – Some distortions of mutual aid reflect possessive individualism, where aid is seen as a private moral act rather than collective responsibility.
- Jackpot Capitalism – Under jackpot capitalism, mutual aid is often a stopgap for wealth disparities, addressing symptoms rather than causes.
4. Reclaiming Mutual Aid as a Structure of Obligation
To revitalize
mutual aid, we must reassert its
mutuality—ensuring that it is not merely about resource redistribution but also social cohesion.
- Embedding Mutual Aid in Speech Communities and Communities of Practice – Durable relationships must sustain mutual aid beyond temporary relief efforts.
- Emphasizing Mutual Obligation Over Altruism – Mutual aid should be framed as shared survival, not charity.
- Developing Communitarian Infrastructures – Instead of relying on episodic generosity, mutual aid should be tied to material projects like worker co-ops and land trusts.
Conclusion: Mutual Aid as a Living Practice
If
mutual aid is to be more than a fashionable term, it must be
a living structure of communal obligation. It must resist its reduction to crisis relief and reclaim its role as a foundation for
self-determination and autonomy. The question before us is not just how we use the term
mutual aid, but how we build the conditions in which it is
a material necessity rather than an ideological affectation.
