If you’re within arm’s reach of any leftist spaces (and you’re at art school — or at least read an art school’s paper — so I’m going to assume you are), you’ve probably heard the term “mutual aid.” It pops up in discussions about effective organizing, on lists of resistance methods, and Instagram story fundraising requests. But, if you were really hard pressed to define the term, could you? If you could, do you think everyone else using the term would agree with your definition?
Most people using the term “mutual aid” agree it’s naming an action that is in the practice of community care. But there are almost as many perennial squabbles on the term’s exact meaning as there are on how it should be executed.
While I think it’s important to have some kind of definition for a word you’re using regularly, even an abstract and broad one, I’m not hung up on finding the “correct” definition for mutual aid. Investigations into singular definitions are always barely hiding a more interesting question: “What is the most helpful way for this word or term to be used?” With “mutual aid” there are lots of cases to be made for slightly different answers.
The term “Mutual aid” was first popularized in 1902 by Russian anarchist philosopher and scientist Pëtr Kropotkin in his book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.”
At the time Kropotkin was writing, evolution was still a very new concept. It still was missing large amounts of research and nuance; it was easy to co-opt to scientifically justify oppression that was already occurring. In 19th and early 20th century Europe, notions of “survival of the fittest” were beginning to be used to fuel eugenics, cultures of hyper-individualism, pseudo-scientific justifications for race and gender oppression, and other concepts still poisoning our water today.
Kropotkin, while still very much informed by the scientific revolution and its ideals, was appalled by this. He picks apart the idea that struggle and individualism are nature’s inherent truths by first refuting them from an evolutionary standpoint. Kropotkin argues that while violence and struggles for power do exist in nature, aid and cooperation are perhaps more common and important to the survival of a species. Borrowing from a deceased colleague, Kropotkin uses the term mutual aid to describe a variety of pro-social animal and human behaviors including village building, pack hunting, and guilds.
He writes, “Animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization.”
Kropotkin, while an anarchist, does not attach mutual aid as a practice to any particular political ideology or system of government. In contrast to later uses of the term, he instead sees it as inherent to humanity and nature itself.
This historical approach traces the term “mutual aid” to its source, but it does not trace the history of its practice, which has roots all over the world with particularly strong examples in Black and Indigenous communities. It also does not trace the word’s use past the early 20th century, where it has been transformed in meaning and scope by some political thinkers.
A more contemporary definition for mutual aid might look like this: mutual aid is a non-hierarchical practice that works in conjunction with social movements to distribute resources, education, survival, and thriving without the strings attached or paternalistic attitudes typically found within charity or state-aid models. (“Solidarity not Charity” is a popular contemporary slogan).
This is the definition shaped by organizers over generations and articulated by author and organizer Dean Spade in his 2020 book “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next).” A definition like this one is used by most contemporary organized mutual aid groups.
Many past organizing efforts, like the Black Panther’s free breakfast program, also meet this definition without necessarily using the term. Other prominent examples fitting this definition include the food distribution efforts of Food Not Bombs (which has chapters all over the US including one in Chicago), grassroots needle exchange programs during the AIDS crisis, and PPE distribution during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even under this definition, mutual aid groups don’t have to be distributing anything material to still be called mutual aid, like ICE watch/rapid response groups here in Chicago. The important thing is that these efforts are in conjunction with other social movements, and usually organized.
This sort of definition is helpful for political organizers who want to make their programs effective and distinguish themselves from governmental/charity assistance, but it sometimes narrows to the point of excluding the more everyday behaviors — think babysitting your neighbor’s kids — that Kropotkin sought to illuminate.
Most controversially, mutual aid is sometimes used to refer to any context in which you would give/take money/resources while being vaguely some kind of leftist. This use of the term is frequently disparaged, particularly in an individual fundraising context, where the actual actions of both parties make it indistinguishable from some people’s conceptions of charity.
However, from a utility perspective, I’m not entirely convinced it’s wrong to use the word this way. It helps people get what they need sometimes, and that’s all that this is really about. I don’t see this usage falling out of fashion anytime soon, though I do understand the concerns about it potentially weakening the power and clarity of mutual aid as a term.
I am much more concerned by the way in which I think some people’s conceptions of mutual aid focus too heavily on the word “mutual.” People sometimes expect to take as much as they give or vice versa. In reality, relationships of any kind rarely work that way. Even under perfect conditions, some people will always need more/use more resources than others. While this can cause power imbalances worth analyzing, it does not, as some claim, mean mutual aid is not occurring. Mutual aid is not a balancing scale, or a set of scores to settle. To me, this narrative operates under the same individualism that mutual aid (regardless of definition) is trying to be an alternative too. The term can have a lot of uses, but it should not become useless. Care needs to remain at its core.
That said, I almost always like a broad definition. Mutual aid then can be characterized (not quite defined), as doing work that needs doing, that systems like governments and nonforprofits aren’t attending to. It’s conversing and sitting with your fellow man as simply another fellow man, not a savior and not someone to be saved. It’s doing what we were made to do, the acts of care that are natural to us. It’s informed by early 20th century Russian anarchists, modern organizers, and centuries old Indigenous traditions of community care. It’s all of the above, and maybe more, if we need it to be.
