Kropotkin's Theory of Mutual Aid in HistoricalContext*
RUTH KINNA
Summary: This paper examines the relationship between science and
anarchism in Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid and analyses it in the light of
his concerns about the rise of social democracy and individualism. Tracing the
development of the theory from the 1890s to Kropotkin's death in 1921, it
affirms the centrality of mutual aid in his work but argues, contrary to
existing readings, that the theory can be seen as an attempt to inspire the
revival of the anarchist movement. It concludes that there is an unresolved
tension in Kropotkin's work arising from the imbalance between the idea of a
"natural anarchist tendency" and anarchist propaganda.
Tuesday, March 03, 2020
Mutual Aid:A Factor of EvolutionPeter Kropotkin[1902]
ALSO SEE
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/lawrence_blum/courses/306_12/readings/kropotkin_mutual.pdf
CONCLUSION
If we take now the teachings which can be borrowed from the analysis of modern society, in connection with the body of evidence relative to the importance of mutual aid in the evolution of the animal world and of mankind, we may sum up our inquiry as follows. In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense — not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. Going next over to man, we found him living in clans and tribes at the very dawn of the stone age; we saw a wide series of social institutions developed already in the lower savage stage, in the clan and the tribe; and we found that the earliest tribal customs and habits gave to mankind the embryo of all the institutions which made later on the leading aspects of further progress. Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. And when new requirements induced men to make a new start, they made it in the city, which represented a double network of territorial units (village communities), connected with guilds these latter arising out of the common prosecution of a given art or craft, or for mutual support and defence. And finally, in the last two chapters facts were produced to show that although the growth of the State on the pattern of Imperial Rome had put a violent end to all medieval institutions for mutual support, this new aspect of civilization could not last. The State, based upon loose aggregations of individuals and undertaking to be their only bond of union, did not answer its purpose. The mutual-aid tendency finally broke down its iron rules; it reappeared and reasserted itself in an infinity of associations which now tend to embrace all aspects of life and to take possession of all that is required by man for life and for reproducing the waste occasioned by life. It will probably be remarked that mutual aid, even though it may represent one of the factors of evolution, covers nevertheless one aspect only of human relations; that by the side of this current, powerful though it may be, there is, and always has been, the other current — the self-assertion of the individual, not only in its efforts to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallized, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words, there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element. It is evident that no review of evolution can be complete, unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. However, the self-assertion of the individual or of groups of individuals, their struggles for superiority, and the conflicts which resulted therefrom, have already been analyzed, described, and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time, this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the annalist, the historian, and the sociologist. History, such as it has hitherto been written, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which theocracy, military power, autocracy, and, later on, the richer classes’ rule have been promoted, established, and maintained. The struggles between these forces make, in fact, the substance of history. We may thus take the knowledge of the individual factor in human history as granted — even though there is full room for a new study of the subject on the lines just alluded to; while, on the other side, the mutual-aid factor has been hitherto totally lost sight of; it was simply denied, or even scoffed at, by the writers of the present and past generation. It was therefore necessary to show, first of all, the immense part which this factor plays in the evolution of both the animal world and human societies. Only after this has been fully recognized will it be possible to proceed to a comparison between the two factors. To make even a rough estimate of their relative importance by any method more or less statistical, is evidently impossible. One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good. But when we see that in the animal world, progressive development and mutual aid go hand in hand, while the inner struggle within the species is concomitant with retrogressive development; when we notice that with man, even success in struggle and war is proportionate to the development of mutual aid in each of the two conflicting nations, cities, parties, or tribes, and that in the process of evolution war itself (so far as it can go this way) has been made subservient to the ends of progress in mutual aid within the nation, the city or the clan — we already obtain a perception of the dominating influence of the mutual-aid factor as an element of progress. But we see also that the practice of mutual aid and its successive developments have created the very conditions of society life in which man was enabled to develop his arts, knowledge, and intelligence; and that the periods when institutions based on the mutual-aid tendency took their greatest development were also the periods of the greatest progress in arts, industry, and science. In fact, the study of the inner life of the medieval city and of the ancient Greek cities reveals the fact that the combination of mutual aid, as it was practised within the guild and the Greek clan, with a large initiative which was left to the individual and the group by means of the federative principle, gave to mankind the two greatest periods of its history — the ancient Greek city and the medieval city periods; while the ruin of the above institutions during the State periods of history, which followed, corresponded in both cases to a rapid decay. As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that. Once the great discoveries of the fifteenth century were made, especially that of the pressure of the atmosphere, supported by a series of advances in natural philosophy — and they were made under the medieval city organization, — once these discoveries were made, the invention of the steam-motor, and all the revolution which the conquest of a new power implied, had necessarily to follow. If the medieval cities had lived to bring their discoveries to that point, the ethical consequences of the revolution effected by steam might have been different; but the same revolution in technics and science would have inevitably taken place. It remains, indeed, an open question whether the general decay of industries which followed the ruin of the free cities, and was especially noticeable in the first part of the eighteenth century, did not considerably retard the appearance of the steam-engine as well as the consequent revolution in arts. When we consider the astounding rapidity of industrial progress from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries — in weaving, working of metals, architecture and navigation, and ponder over the scientific discoveries which that industrial progress led to at the end of the fifteenth century — we must ask ourselves whether mankind was not delayed in its taking full advantage of these conquests when a general depression of arts and industries took place in Europe after the decay of medieval civilization. Surely it was not the disappearance of the artist-artisan, nor the ruin of large cities and the extinction of intercourse between them, which could favour the industrial revolution; and we know indeed that James Watt spent twenty or more years of his life in order to render his invention serviceable, because he could not find in the last century what he would have readily found in medieval Florence or Br gge, that is, the artisans capable of realizing his devices in metal, and of giving them the artistic finish and precision which the steam-engine requires. To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of our century to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse certainly are, as they have been, much more advantageous than mutual struggle. However, it is especially in the domain of ethics that. the dominating importance of the mutual-aid principle appears in full. That mutual aid is the real foundation of our ethical conceptions seems evident enough. But whatever the opinions as to the first origin of the mutual-aid feeling or instinct may be whether a biological or a supernatural cause is ascribed to it — we must trace its existence as far back as to the lowest stages of the animal world; and from these stages we can follow its uninterrupted evolution, in opposition to a number of contrary agencies, through all degrees of human development, up to the present times. Even the new religions which were born from time to time — always at epochs when the mutual-aid principle was falling into decay in the theocracies and despotic States of the East, or at the decline of the Roman Empire — even the new religions have only reaffirmed that same principle. They found their first supporters among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of society, where the mutual-aid principle is the necessary foundation of every-day life; and the new forms of union which were introduced in the earliest Buddhist and Christian communities, in the Moravian brotherhoods and so on, took the character of a return to the best aspects of mutual aid i n early tribal life. Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made, its fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the stem, to the federation of stems, to the nation, and finally — in ideal, at least — to the whole of mankind. It was also refined at the same time. In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of “due reward” — of good for good and evil for evil — is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of “no revenge for wrongs,” and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality — a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.
ALSO SEE
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/lawrence_blum/courses/306_12/readings/kropotkin_mutual.pdf
CONCLUSION
If we take now the teachings which can be borrowed from the analysis of modern society, in connection with the body of evidence relative to the importance of mutual aid in the evolution of the animal world and of mankind, we may sum up our inquiry as follows. In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense — not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. Going next over to man, we found him living in clans and tribes at the very dawn of the stone age; we saw a wide series of social institutions developed already in the lower savage stage, in the clan and the tribe; and we found that the earliest tribal customs and habits gave to mankind the embryo of all the institutions which made later on the leading aspects of further progress. Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. And when new requirements induced men to make a new start, they made it in the city, which represented a double network of territorial units (village communities), connected with guilds these latter arising out of the common prosecution of a given art or craft, or for mutual support and defence. And finally, in the last two chapters facts were produced to show that although the growth of the State on the pattern of Imperial Rome had put a violent end to all medieval institutions for mutual support, this new aspect of civilization could not last. The State, based upon loose aggregations of individuals and undertaking to be their only bond of union, did not answer its purpose. The mutual-aid tendency finally broke down its iron rules; it reappeared and reasserted itself in an infinity of associations which now tend to embrace all aspects of life and to take possession of all that is required by man for life and for reproducing the waste occasioned by life. It will probably be remarked that mutual aid, even though it may represent one of the factors of evolution, covers nevertheless one aspect only of human relations; that by the side of this current, powerful though it may be, there is, and always has been, the other current — the self-assertion of the individual, not only in its efforts to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallized, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words, there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element. It is evident that no review of evolution can be complete, unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. However, the self-assertion of the individual or of groups of individuals, their struggles for superiority, and the conflicts which resulted therefrom, have already been analyzed, described, and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time, this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the annalist, the historian, and the sociologist. History, such as it has hitherto been written, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which theocracy, military power, autocracy, and, later on, the richer classes’ rule have been promoted, established, and maintained. The struggles between these forces make, in fact, the substance of history. We may thus take the knowledge of the individual factor in human history as granted — even though there is full room for a new study of the subject on the lines just alluded to; while, on the other side, the mutual-aid factor has been hitherto totally lost sight of; it was simply denied, or even scoffed at, by the writers of the present and past generation. It was therefore necessary to show, first of all, the immense part which this factor plays in the evolution of both the animal world and human societies. Only after this has been fully recognized will it be possible to proceed to a comparison between the two factors. To make even a rough estimate of their relative importance by any method more or less statistical, is evidently impossible. One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good. But when we see that in the animal world, progressive development and mutual aid go hand in hand, while the inner struggle within the species is concomitant with retrogressive development; when we notice that with man, even success in struggle and war is proportionate to the development of mutual aid in each of the two conflicting nations, cities, parties, or tribes, and that in the process of evolution war itself (so far as it can go this way) has been made subservient to the ends of progress in mutual aid within the nation, the city or the clan — we already obtain a perception of the dominating influence of the mutual-aid factor as an element of progress. But we see also that the practice of mutual aid and its successive developments have created the very conditions of society life in which man was enabled to develop his arts, knowledge, and intelligence; and that the periods when institutions based on the mutual-aid tendency took their greatest development were also the periods of the greatest progress in arts, industry, and science. In fact, the study of the inner life of the medieval city and of the ancient Greek cities reveals the fact that the combination of mutual aid, as it was practised within the guild and the Greek clan, with a large initiative which was left to the individual and the group by means of the federative principle, gave to mankind the two greatest periods of its history — the ancient Greek city and the medieval city periods; while the ruin of the above institutions during the State periods of history, which followed, corresponded in both cases to a rapid decay. As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that. Once the great discoveries of the fifteenth century were made, especially that of the pressure of the atmosphere, supported by a series of advances in natural philosophy — and they were made under the medieval city organization, — once these discoveries were made, the invention of the steam-motor, and all the revolution which the conquest of a new power implied, had necessarily to follow. If the medieval cities had lived to bring their discoveries to that point, the ethical consequences of the revolution effected by steam might have been different; but the same revolution in technics and science would have inevitably taken place. It remains, indeed, an open question whether the general decay of industries which followed the ruin of the free cities, and was especially noticeable in the first part of the eighteenth century, did not considerably retard the appearance of the steam-engine as well as the consequent revolution in arts. When we consider the astounding rapidity of industrial progress from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries — in weaving, working of metals, architecture and navigation, and ponder over the scientific discoveries which that industrial progress led to at the end of the fifteenth century — we must ask ourselves whether mankind was not delayed in its taking full advantage of these conquests when a general depression of arts and industries took place in Europe after the decay of medieval civilization. Surely it was not the disappearance of the artist-artisan, nor the ruin of large cities and the extinction of intercourse between them, which could favour the industrial revolution; and we know indeed that James Watt spent twenty or more years of his life in order to render his invention serviceable, because he could not find in the last century what he would have readily found in medieval Florence or Br gge, that is, the artisans capable of realizing his devices in metal, and of giving them the artistic finish and precision which the steam-engine requires. To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of our century to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse certainly are, as they have been, much more advantageous than mutual struggle. However, it is especially in the domain of ethics that. the dominating importance of the mutual-aid principle appears in full. That mutual aid is the real foundation of our ethical conceptions seems evident enough. But whatever the opinions as to the first origin of the mutual-aid feeling or instinct may be whether a biological or a supernatural cause is ascribed to it — we must trace its existence as far back as to the lowest stages of the animal world; and from these stages we can follow its uninterrupted evolution, in opposition to a number of contrary agencies, through all degrees of human development, up to the present times. Even the new religions which were born from time to time — always at epochs when the mutual-aid principle was falling into decay in the theocracies and despotic States of the East, or at the decline of the Roman Empire — even the new religions have only reaffirmed that same principle. They found their first supporters among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of society, where the mutual-aid principle is the necessary foundation of every-day life; and the new forms of union which were introduced in the earliest Buddhist and Christian communities, in the Moravian brotherhoods and so on, took the character of a return to the best aspects of mutual aid i n early tribal life. Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made, its fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the stem, to the federation of stems, to the nation, and finally — in ideal, at least — to the whole of mankind. It was also refined at the same time. In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of “due reward” — of good for good and evil for evil — is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of “no revenge for wrongs,” and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality — a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.
TAKING PYOTR KROPOTKIN SERIOUSLY
DARWINISM, ANARCHY AND SCIENCE
Alvaro Giron
Illustrations by Ana Donat
https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5117/511751285006.pdf
More than a decade ago I began to take the first in what would eventually become an extensive research into Pyotr (or Piotr) Kropotkin. At that time, newly installed in England for a postdoctoral sojourn, one tended to think that few would be interested in a theoretical anarchist decades after the final collapse of anarchism's brief revival after 1968.
It seemed that there would, at best, remain some smouldering embers,appropriately ground down in those days when the Thatcherite orthodoxy suitably modernized with convenient Blairite clothing prevailed in Britain and beyond. Well, I soon realized that on the island where he lived for over thirty years of exile, from 1886 to 1917, he was never wholly forgotten.
However, the fact that Kropotkin was not entirely forgotten did not necessarily
mean that he had been taken seriously. The related ambiguities are particularly pronounced
when it comes to his thoughts on Evolution. On the one hand, he has been praised for his strong resistance to the wrongly-called social Darwinism.
Also, he is often mentioned as one of the clearest pioneers in the study of altruism among animals. However, general opinion tends to present Kropotkinian vision of nature as something that had more to do with his personal (supposedly benevolent) inclinations or his political ideals than with the dispassionate analysis that he, as a scientist, would be expected to have. In fact, the idea had an earlier origin.
Much earlier, in the review published in Nature in 1903 on his major work, Mutual Aid (1902), the reader would find that Kropotkin attached ´to the lower animals a benevolence similar to his own. ( F.W.H., 1903. ´Mutual Aidª. Nature, 67: 196-197.)
One of the relatively recent attempts to scientifically rehabilitate Kropotkin's interpretationof the Theory of Evolution came, and perhaps not coincidentally, from the pen of the late Stephen Jay Gould, in his essay ´Kropotkin Was No Crackpotª(1997).
In it, while making generous use of the contribution of Daniel Todes (1989) on Russian Darwinism, Gould challenged the image of the idiosyncratic character who shapes the contours of natural economy in terms of his own peculiar political convictions: Kropotkin was not a rare bird, rather his ideas had their roots in a tradition peculiar to the Russian slant on evolution.It was a Darwinism without Malthus, which tended to emphasize the capital importance of sociability, if not solidarity,in the struggle that living beings sustained against environmental challenges. What Gould found reassuring was to know that, despite the political connotations that Darwinism had acquired in Russia, not a little of that anti-Malthusian tradition was based on solid field work in vast, sparsely inhabited territories of the Russian Empire.
This contrasted with the foundational experience of someone like Darwin, who was born and lived in an overcrowded island and spent part of his first steps as a scientist in tropical environments. Put another way, the substrate of Kropotkin's anti-Malthusian Darwinism is based, not only on political ideals that may seem eccentric, but rather supported by a respectable scientific tradition, firmly anchored in empirical knowledge of a particular natural environment.
2011 MÈTODE Annual Review 21
Alvaro Giron
Illustrations by Ana Donat
https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5117/511751285006.pdf
More than a decade ago I began to take the first in what would eventually become an extensive research into Pyotr (or Piotr) Kropotkin. At that time, newly installed in England for a postdoctoral sojourn, one tended to think that few would be interested in a theoretical anarchist decades after the final collapse of anarchism's brief revival after 1968.
It seemed that there would, at best, remain some smouldering embers,appropriately ground down in those days when the Thatcherite orthodoxy suitably modernized with convenient Blairite clothing prevailed in Britain and beyond. Well, I soon realized that on the island where he lived for over thirty years of exile, from 1886 to 1917, he was never wholly forgotten.
However, the fact that Kropotkin was not entirely forgotten did not necessarily
mean that he had been taken seriously. The related ambiguities are particularly pronounced
when it comes to his thoughts on Evolution. On the one hand, he has been praised for his strong resistance to the wrongly-called social Darwinism.
Also, he is often mentioned as one of the clearest pioneers in the study of altruism among animals. However, general opinion tends to present Kropotkinian vision of nature as something that had more to do with his personal (supposedly benevolent) inclinations or his political ideals than with the dispassionate analysis that he, as a scientist, would be expected to have. In fact, the idea had an earlier origin.
Much earlier, in the review published in Nature in 1903 on his major work, Mutual Aid (1902), the reader would find that Kropotkin attached ´to the lower animals a benevolence similar to his own. ( F.W.H., 1903. ´Mutual Aidª. Nature, 67: 196-197.)
One of the relatively recent attempts to scientifically rehabilitate Kropotkin's interpretationof the Theory of Evolution came, and perhaps not coincidentally, from the pen of the late Stephen Jay Gould, in his essay ´Kropotkin Was No Crackpotª(1997).
In it, while making generous use of the contribution of Daniel Todes (1989) on Russian Darwinism, Gould challenged the image of the idiosyncratic character who shapes the contours of natural economy in terms of his own peculiar political convictions: Kropotkin was not a rare bird, rather his ideas had their roots in a tradition peculiar to the Russian slant on evolution.It was a Darwinism without Malthus, which tended to emphasize the capital importance of sociability, if not solidarity,in the struggle that living beings sustained against environmental challenges. What Gould found reassuring was to know that, despite the political connotations that Darwinism had acquired in Russia, not a little of that anti-Malthusian tradition was based on solid field work in vast, sparsely inhabited territories of the Russian Empire.
This contrasted with the foundational experience of someone like Darwin, who was born and lived in an overcrowded island and spent part of his first steps as a scientist in tropical environments. Put another way, the substrate of Kropotkin's anti-Malthusian Darwinism is based, not only on political ideals that may seem eccentric, but rather supported by a respectable scientific tradition, firmly anchored in empirical knowledge of a particular natural environment.
2011 MÈTODE Annual Review 21
Towards an intellectual history of evolutionary economics: competition and struggle versus cooperation and mutual aid
Rumo a uma história intelectual da economia evolucionária: competição e luta versus cooperação e ajuda mútuaBrazilian Journal of Political Economy
Print version ISSN 0101-3157On-line version ISSN 1809-4538
Brazil. J. Polit. Econ. vol.37 no.3 São Paulo July/Sept. 2017
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572017v37n03a05
JOHN HALL1
SVETLANA KIRDINA-CHANDLER*
*Professor of Economics and International Studies; Portland State University; Oregon, USA. E-mail: hallj@pdx.edu;
1Head of the Sub-Division for the Evolution of Social and Economic Systems; Institute of Economics; Russian Academy of Sciences; Moscow, Russia. E-mail kirdina@bk.ru.
ABSTRACT
Our inquiry considers the origins of Evolutionary Economics by reintroducing a debate that took place in Russia in the 19th and early 20th century. Responses to Charles Darwin’s The origin of Species are considered, especially critiques stressing Darwin’s emphasis upon competition and struggle in natural selection, that can be traced directly to Thomas Robert Malthus. Considering challenging contributions made by several Russian scholars, we place special emphasis upon Peter Kropotkin’s focus on cooperation and “mutual aid” in natural selection and evolution. We then speculate upon the commonality found in the evolutionary views advanced by Kropotkin and his American contemporary, Thorstein Veblen.
KEYWORDS: Charles Darwin; Evolutionary Economics; mutual aid; Peter Kropotkin; Thomas Robert Malthus; Thorstein Veblen
RESUMO
Nossa investigação considera as origens da Economia Evolutiva reintroduzindo um debate que teve lugar na Rússia no século XIX e início do século XX. Respostas ao Origem das Espécies de Charles Darwin são consideradas, especialmente as críticas que enfatizam a ênfase de Darwin na competição e na luta na seleção natural, que podem ser traçadas diretamente a Thomas Robert Malthus. Considerando contribuições desafiadoras feitas por vários eruditos russos, colocamos uma ênfase especial no foco de Peter Kropotkin na cooperação e na “ajuda mútua” na seleção natural e na evolução. Em seguida, especulamos sobre a semelhança encontrada nas visões evolucionistas avançadas por Kropotkin e seu contemporâneo americano, Thorstein Veblen.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Charles Darwin; economia evolucionária; ajuda mútua; Peter Kropo-tkin; Thomas Robert Malthus; Thorstein Veblen
Rumo a uma história intelectual da economia evolucionária: competição e luta versus cooperação e ajuda mútuaBrazilian Journal of Political Economy
Print version ISSN 0101-3157On-line version ISSN 1809-4538
Brazil. J. Polit. Econ. vol.37 no.3 São Paulo July/Sept. 2017
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572017v37n03a05
JOHN HALL1
SVETLANA KIRDINA-CHANDLER*
*Professor of Economics and International Studies; Portland State University; Oregon, USA. E-mail: hallj@pdx.edu;
1Head of the Sub-Division for the Evolution of Social and Economic Systems; Institute of Economics; Russian Academy of Sciences; Moscow, Russia. E-mail kirdina@bk.ru.
ABSTRACT
Our inquiry considers the origins of Evolutionary Economics by reintroducing a debate that took place in Russia in the 19th and early 20th century. Responses to Charles Darwin’s The origin of Species are considered, especially critiques stressing Darwin’s emphasis upon competition and struggle in natural selection, that can be traced directly to Thomas Robert Malthus. Considering challenging contributions made by several Russian scholars, we place special emphasis upon Peter Kropotkin’s focus on cooperation and “mutual aid” in natural selection and evolution. We then speculate upon the commonality found in the evolutionary views advanced by Kropotkin and his American contemporary, Thorstein Veblen.
KEYWORDS: Charles Darwin; Evolutionary Economics; mutual aid; Peter Kropotkin; Thomas Robert Malthus; Thorstein Veblen
RESUMO
Nossa investigação considera as origens da Economia Evolutiva reintroduzindo um debate que teve lugar na Rússia no século XIX e início do século XX. Respostas ao Origem das Espécies de Charles Darwin são consideradas, especialmente as críticas que enfatizam a ênfase de Darwin na competição e na luta na seleção natural, que podem ser traçadas diretamente a Thomas Robert Malthus. Considerando contribuições desafiadoras feitas por vários eruditos russos, colocamos uma ênfase especial no foco de Peter Kropotkin na cooperação e na “ajuda mútua” na seleção natural e na evolução. Em seguida, especulamos sobre a semelhança encontrada nas visões evolucionistas avançadas por Kropotkin e seu contemporâneo americano, Thorstein Veblen.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Charles Darwin; economia evolucionária; ajuda mútua; Peter Kropo-tkin; Thomas Robert Malthus; Thorstein Veblen
Kropotkin between Lamarck and Darwin: The impossible synthesisArticle (PDF Available) in Asclepio; archivo iberoamericano de historia de la medicina y antropologíamédica 55(1) · June 2003
Cite this publication
Álvaro Girón-Sierra 6.17 Institución Milá y Fontanals-CSIC
Abstract
Prince P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921) was the most important leader of revolutionary anarchism of his generation. He was also a respected explorer, geographer, and wrote a variety of books on the French Revolution, prison systems and Russian literature. However, he is better known for his contribution to the debate on Social Darwinism, exemplified by his book Mutual Aid. A Factor Evolution (1902). Actually, Kropotkin was trying to build his own brand of evolutionary Ethics: a complete socio-biology consistent with revolutionary goals. But there was a serious obstacle. The presence of the Malthusian population laws at the very core of Darwinism blocked any potential progress in this direction. Kropotkin tried to extirpate the Malthusian sting by making a critical analysis of natural selection and proposing a synthesis between Lamarck and Darwin in the 1910s. The aim of this article is to study the basics of the argument deployed by Kropotkin. It has been paid especial attention to the criticisms addressed to the hard heredity theory of August Weismann, and the reasons why Kropotkin’s contribution in this field has been ignored.
El príncipe P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921) fue el líder mas importante del anarquismo revolucionario de su generación. El fue también un respetado explorador y geógrafo, y escribió una variada serie de libros sobre la revolución francesa, el sistema de prisiones o la literatura rusa. Sin embargo, el es más conocido por su contribución al debate sobre el Darwinismo Social, ejemplificada por su libro El apoyo mutuo. Un factor de la evolución (1902). En realidad, Kropotkin estaba tratando de construir su particular versión de la ética evolucionista: una acabada sociobiología consistente con los objetivos revolucionarios. Pero existía un serio obstáculo. La presencia de las leyes de la población maltusianas en el mismo corazón del darwinismo bloqueaban cualquier tipo de progreso en esa dirección. Kropotkin trató de extirpar el aguijón maltusiano haciendo un análisis crítico de la selección natural y proponiendo una síntesis entre Lamarck y Darwin en los años 1910. El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar los elementos básicos del argumento desplegado por Kropotkin. Se ha prestado especial atención a las críticas dirigidas a las teoría dura de la herencia de August Weismann, y a las razones por las cuales la contribución de Kropotkin en este campo ha sido ignora
Links between Kropotkin’s Theory of ‘Mutual Aid’ and the Values
and Practices of Action Research
CAROL MUNN-GIDDINGS
Anglia Polytechnic University, Colchester, United Kingdom
PDF 11 PAGES
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to outline some of the key ideas of
Peter Kropotkin on Mutual Aid, which can be seen to have a resonance and
relevance to the value base and practices of action research. Written in 1902 as
a refutation of the appropriation of Darwin’s theories by social philosophers,
Kropotkin’s work stresses the importance of cooperation, rather than
competition amongst humans as the basis for a creative, supportive and
developmental human community (society). His ideas can be seen to have a
particular importance or relationship to the growing body of action research in
the community health and social care fields, where Kropotkin’s theory can also
be seen to support and explain the activity of the growing numbers of self
help/mutual aid groups in both condition specific groups and in
social/community concerns more generally.
and Practices of Action Research
CAROL MUNN-GIDDINGS
Anglia Polytechnic University, Colchester, United Kingdom
PDF 11 PAGES
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to outline some of the key ideas of
Peter Kropotkin on Mutual Aid, which can be seen to have a resonance and
relevance to the value base and practices of action research. Written in 1902 as
a refutation of the appropriation of Darwin’s theories by social philosophers,
Kropotkin’s work stresses the importance of cooperation, rather than
competition amongst humans as the basis for a creative, supportive and
developmental human community (society). His ideas can be seen to have a
particular importance or relationship to the growing body of action research in
the community health and social care fields, where Kropotkin’s theory can also
be seen to support and explain the activity of the growing numbers of self
help/mutual aid groups in both condition specific groups and in
social/community concerns more generally.
BMJ REVIEW
Evolution And Heredity
Mutual Aid: A Factor Of Evolution by P. A. Kropotkin
The British Medical Journal,
Vol. 1, No. 2836 (May 8, 1915),
pp. 804-805
Published by: BMJ Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25313538
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
the ruminants that we find a highly developed practice of mutual aid. The squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of them builds its own comfortable nest, and accumulates its own provision. Their inclinations are towards family life, and Brehm found that a family of squirrels is never so happy as when the two broods of the same year can join together with their parents in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a close intercourse, and when the pine-cones become rare in the forest they inhabit, they emigrate in bands. As to the black squirrels of the Far West, they are eminently sociable. Apart from the few hours given every day to foraging, they spend their lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they multiply too rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as numerous as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the forests, the fields, and the gardens; while foxes, polecats, falcons, and nocturnal birds of prey follow their thick columns and live upon the individuals remaining behind. The ground-squirrel — a closely-akin genus — is still more sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its subterranean halls large amounts of edible roots and nuts, usually plundered by man in the autumn. According to some observers, it must know something of the joys of a miser. And yet it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found several individuals in the same apartment; they must have stored it with common efforts. The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still more sociable and still more intelligent. They also prefer having each one its own dwelling; but they live in big villages. That terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia — the souslik — of which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man alone, lives in numberless colonies; and while the Rus-
- Books Received
- Published:
Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution
Nature 67, 196–197(1903)
Abstract
THIS book is undeniably readable throughout. The author has a creed which he preaches with all the fervour of genuine conviction. He is anxious to make converts, but his zeal never leads him to forget fairness and courtesy. Those who disagree with him may learn much by studying the book.
Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution.
By P. Kropotkin. Pp. xix + 348. (London: Heinemann, 1902.)
Parrots get probability, use stats to make choices: study
Does Polly want a cracker? That all depends on statistics.
Parrots can learn to choose based on probability, making them the first animal outside of the great ape family that uses statistical modelling in their decision-making process, researchers said Tuesday.
Parrots can learn to choose based on probability, making them the first animal outside of the great ape family that uses statistical modelling in their decision-making process, researchers said Tuesday.
Wildlife experts taught six kea, a species of large parrot native to New Zealand renowned for their intelligence, to play a variation of a game designed to test their statistical understanding.
The birds—Blofeld, Bruce, Loki, Neo, Plankton and Taz—were trained to associate black tokens with a food reward and orange pegs with none.
During early tests, they used their beaks to pick up the black tokens and were given a treat.
The researchers then displayed the pegs in clear jars, with differing ratios of black and orange, picked up one token from each and concealed them in their palms, before offering them to the birds.
The kea preferred tokens from the jars that had a relatively higher proportion of black to orange tokens, showing that they were playing the percentages.
In addition, the kea showed a clear preference towards researchers who had previously demonstrated a "bias" towards picking more black tokens than orange.
"What was most surprising is that they can integrate social or physical information into their probabilistic judgements," she told AFP.
Bastos and her research team aren't currently sure what evolutionary advantage is bestowed by the ability to recognise probability.
But the trait was long thought to be the reserve of intelligent primates and humans, and shows the kea and possibly its relatives may not be so bird-brained, after all.
"Kea have the boldest personalities of all the bird species I have ever met," said Bastos.
"Each individual has their own quirky preferences and idiosyncrasies that we learn about when we work with them. They are curious and not at all shy, making them very easy to work with.
"They have definitely outsmarted me on more than one occasion," she added.
More information: Kea show three signatures of domain-general statistical inference, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14695-1 , https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14695-1
© 2020 AFP
The mysterious Asian longhorned tick invades Virginia
When seven cattle mysteriously died on a farm in Albemarle County, Virginia, in 2017, veterinary anatomic pathologist Kevin Lahmers had no reason to suspect the culprit: a tiny pest carrying a disease commonly confined to the Eastern Hemisphere.
"I was investigating cows that had died from Theileria," said Lahmers, clinical associate professor of anatomic pathology in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology (DBSP) at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. "I was asked if I wanted to look at the ticks found on the property, so I agreed."
In short order, Bruce Bowman, a field veterinarian for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' (VDACS) Veterinary Services, delivered the ticks to Lahmers.
An expert in the epidemiology of tick-borne diseases in domestic animals, Lahmers serves as the associate director and the head of research and development for the veterinary college's on-site diagnostic lab, the Virginia Tech Animal Laboratory Services, or ViTALS. He works in conjunction with the lab's clinical microbiologist to identify threats, develop appropriate diagnostic tests, and rapidly respond to emerging diseases.
Upon receiving the ticks from Bowman, Lahmers knew immediately that something was amiss. "I saw they weren't what they should be," he said. "They weren't typical, and that's when we alerted the federal authorities."
Lahmers brandished a glass vial with tick samples floating in alcohol. "Here, we've got the big engorged ticks, we've got the medium-sized ticks that are not engorged, and we've got the smaller ticks," he explained. Nymphs, adults, and well-fed specimens swished together in the fluid. They are a striking burgundy color, and the blood-engorged samples have collapsed a bit, resembling partially dried cranberries.
Testing in ViTALS determined that the ticks were a species called the Asian longhorned tick, first reported in the Western Hemisphere in 2017, and now present in 30 counties in Virginia and 12 states nationwide.
The presence of the pest in Virginia and the disease it transmits—Theileria orientalis—are still unexplained. In addition, although T. orientalis has been identified in other regions of the U.S, the Ikeda subtype found in 21 Virginia counties is a new discovery. At present, ViTALS is the only laboratory in the U.S. capable of testing for the Ikeda genotype, which causes anemia in cattle.
ViTALS' director, Tanya LeRoith, clinical professor of anatomic pathology in DBSP, was particularly eager to work with the ticks. "Having done my Ph.D. on a related parasite in cattle, I welcomed the opportunity to study hemoparasites," she said. "Other strains of T. orientalis, one of which we have found in Virginia, are considered nonpathogenic."
In order to limit the spread of the parasite, LeRoith said, it is important to distinguish between the Ikeda strain and other strains. The clinical signs can mimic those of Anaplasma marginale, but do not respond to antibiotic treatment.
To that end, ViTALS runs a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test that can identify both T. orientalis and A. marginale concurrently, decreasing cost and turnaround time.
Lahmers noted that the Ikeda strain was identified in the course of looking for a disease that could potentially spread to other animals—and humans.
"We had the knowledge that this tick existed in New Jersey, and T. orientalis Ikeda genotype was considered a foreign disease," he said. "If we hadn't gotten this information from a human medicine angle, the connection between the tick and this disease might not have happened. The fact that this tick has the potential to carry human diseases, as well as animal diseases, is significant."
Even though no cases of human disease from the ticks have been reported in the U.S., Lahmers said, "lots of people are looking." He points to the unusual case in the New Jersey suburbs, where an Asian longhorned tick was found on a man who had picked it up on his mowed, suburban lawn—an unexpected development, for the longhorned tick is typically associated with leaf litter and tall grasslands.
Other potential complications have also surfaced. "This tick can feed on multiple species," said Lahmers. "The second issue is it reproduces asexually. So one tick, translocated somewhere else, can reproduce."
The lab's findings regarding the T. orientalis Ikeda genotype and how it may be transmitted in cattle by the Asian longhorned tick were published in the September 2019 edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
First author, Vanessa J. Oakes (D.V.M. '16), a fourth-year resident in veterinary anatomic pathology and a third-year Ph.D. student in biomedical and veterinary sciences, collaborated with veterinary college co-authors LeRoith, S. Michelle Todd, Katie M. Boes, Meghan Brookhart, and Lahmers, along with researchers from the University of Georgia, Kansas State University, VDACS, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In a November 2019 story in Bovine Veterinarian about the threat posed by the tick and the disease, Lahmers underscores the impact of T. orientalis and discusses how the disease can result in lower profits for farmers and a compromised quality of life for cattle.
In the absence of any immediate threat to humans, Oakes likewise considers the disease process from a farm-to-table perspective because, obviously, healthy production animals yield a more secure food supply.
"A human who eats beef or drinks milk from an animal that may have had T. orientalis isn't going to contract T. orientalis," she said. "But that sick animal will be contributing less to the food supply. It's easy for us to walk into Kroger and forget that the burgers we're picking up for dinner come from an animal that had to make muscle first."
In plain terms, production animals that are chronically sick fail to produce enough for farmers to earn a living. "For example, a beef cow that's infected with T. orientalis Ikeda will spend energy fighting off disease instead of laying down muscle," Oakes explained. "The more time she spends sick, the less time she spends making muscle, which translates to less money for the producer and less food for the general population."
More expansively, Oakes makes the case for human commitment to animal health, reflecting the veterinary college's One Health orientation. She believes that veterinary researchers must do more than just prevent disease from spreading to humans; they must also work to ensure that domesticated animals live well.
"The moment in our evolutionary history that we started taking wild animals and domesticating them to serve our purposes, we became the stewards of their health," Oakes said. "We really owe it to the creatures that give their lives for us to ensure those lives are as free from discomfort as possible."
As the son of a dairy veterinarian who was raised on a cattle and swine farm, Lahmers is similarly inclined. "I got into this field to answer questions," he said. "I've been given an opportunity to do something that helps the agricultural community, and I want to do it well. Having to contend with a new disease is not ideal, but I want to be part of the solution."
That expertise will most certainly be needed. In late January, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture confirmed the presence of Theileria orientalis Ikeda genotype in three West Virginia counties through work with ViTALS to determine the extent of the disease across the region and its impact on the livestock industry. At this time, additional surveillance samples are being collected throughout the state.
More information: Vanessa J. Oakes et al. Theileria orientalis Ikeda Genotype in Cattle, Virginia, USA, Emerging Infectious Diseases (2019). DOI: 10.3201/eid2509.190088
HERSTORY MONTH
Yin-Yang Dualism in Gethenian Biology and Politics in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
Philology, Culture and Education, 2018
Artea Panajotovic
Ursula K. Le Guin’s relationship with Daoism is one of the most widely known, but at the same time least researched, aspects of her work. In her SF classic The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin takes dualism as her central theme, and the view of dualism expressed here is firmly grounded in Daoist philosophy and its theory of the dynamics of yin and yang. In order to shed light on this influence, the paper analyzes two aspects of dualism in the novel: the specific physiology of the people and the political balance of power on planet Gethen. The dynamic androgyny of the Gethenian race is examined as a fictional transposition of the mixing of yin and yang characteristic of Daoist internal alchemy. At the level of society, duality finds expression in the organization of and interaction patterns between Karhide and Orgoreyn, two Gethenian countries founded on the principle of yin and yang respectively. The analysis of biological and socio-political dynamics on Gethen thus provides an insight into the specificities of Le Guin’s understanding of duality and reveals its deep Daoist roots.
Publication Date: 2018
Publication Name: Philology, Culture and Education
Towards a genderless society: Androgyny in late 20th century
Jane Allcroft
This dissertation will look at the concept of androgyny and the form this takes in contemporary novels, focusing on four different works of fiction taken from the late 1960s to early 2000s. A brief overview of the development of the idea of androgyny within literary texts from early creation mythology, through Plato to the fiction of the modernists provides contextual background to understanding current representations. Concepts of androgyny within contemporaneous literary and social theory will also contextualise the fictional representations, looking at how they both draw on and reflect theoretical concepts and social discourses.
Androgyny will be shown to be an archetype which takes on various forms depending on the social circumstances in which it emerges. The forms in which androgyny is manifested in the four novels under consideration here will be seen to range from the embodiment of both maleness and femaleness in futuristic androgynous humans in Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), the earliest novel analysed here, through to poststructuralist genderless and intersexed narrators in the two later novels, Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body (1992) and Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (2002). The dissertation will look at how this is achieved within the novels through a consideration of plot, narrative and textual analysis.
Concepts of androgyny will be shown to be bound up with destabilizing the categorization of people via gender and sexuality in its ultimate aim to become obsolete as a referent in a post-gender society. Androgyny’s ability to bring this about can be seen to lie in its fluid and multidimensional nature.
Family Frontiers: The Space Age Fiction of Marge Piercy and Ursula K. LeGuin
https://www.academia.edu/9687360/Family_Frontiers_The_Space_Age_Fiction_of_Marge_Piercy_and_Ursula_K._LeGuin
Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association, 2014
Sue Dib Norton
Issue: 277
More Info: Issue No. 277
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