Pitting the boys against the girls
Peter L. Hurd
September 21, 2009 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2009.08.010

Mandatory reading in the subject of my first education (anarchist theory) is Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in which Petr Kropotkin asks ‘Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?’ and concludes that ‘Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle’ [ 1 ]. Kropotkin saw himself as following Darwin's lead when the latter wrote (in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex) that ‘those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring’ [ 2 ]. The comrade/lab-mates of my second education (animal behavior) remained unconvinced: ‘Really? How does this work Pete, group selection?’ Over a century later, Joan Roughgarden's The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness argues essentially the same point as Kropotkin, but with Darwin, and sexual selection (Supplementary Information §1), cast as the villains.