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Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid
- p1esk 4y agoI grew up on a street named after him, but I had no idea who he was until now. Fascinating.
- psychoslave 4y agoI’m rather surprised he might not be not better known here. Kropotkin is a major figure of anarchism that you’ll found revered even in some Russel's books. Surely hackernews readership red all Russel works — both color, didn’t it? Don’t you search for a Wikipedia biography each time you cross an antonomastic street, creating it if needed?
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI’m very familiar with Kropotkin, but not Russel.
- DocTomoe 4y agoOh boy, do you have an opportunity here. I suggest starting with "Understanding History and Other Essays".
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoOhhhh Bertrand Russell... Yeah he is great. I have just never heard anyone refer to him without including his first name.
- lynx23 4y ago[flagged]
- mad_tortoise 4y agoIf you consider the ideological philosophy of anarchy as 'leftism terror', then you only serve to out yourself as having no idea of the tenets of anarchism itself. He is also not saying HN readers should lean that way, but having an intellectual and enlightened view on life, often means having read up on multiple ideologies, theories or philosophies. Which if the HN reader base would generally consider themselves well read, then it is quite possible many would know about one of the most famous political and philosophical minds in history, Petr Kropotkin.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago> one of the most famous political and philosophical minds in history, Petr Kropotkin. That's rather a stretch. What's your threshold for "most famous"? Top ten? Top one hundred? Top thousand? Top ten thousand? If it's top ten, no way. If it's top ten thousand, yes, he's definitely in. Top thousand? Probably in. Top hundred? Probably out. But if your definition of "most famous" is "top thousand", I suspect that your threshold is in a different place than most peoples'...
- mad_tortoise 4y agoI would ultimately say he is top one hundred (probably top 20 for me), but that's a personal opinion. If we look at the impact his ideas, beliefs and teachings had on the first half of the 20th century then he was a giant. Anarchism, and specifically how he taught it grabbed hold of much of the disparate political movements that occurred in that part of time. Anarchist movement's and mutual aid, take a grip in many parts of the third world even today. Perhaps that's because I have taken note of these movements that I see him as one of the most famous, perhaps you see it differently which is fair. I see him as a contemporary to arguably the most famous political mind of all time, Karl Marx, and was regarded along similar lines for his impact. Sure there are a range of people on the left and right of political ideological thought who could be considered famous, but not many who have produced what he has.
- avodonosov 4y agoIn some countries almost every street is named after a person, so it would be too much trouble to research every street name. We have a square named after indian city of Bangalore - the Bangalore square. I was sure for a long time that's just another (jewish?) surname. Even though I knew that city, in context of street names I simply assume surnames, it didn't occur to me to think anything else.
- cuteboy19 4y agoWe had a Minsk Square in Bangalore too. They are sister cities
- avodonosov 4y agoYes, I learned that at some point. You say "had" - I hope it's not renamed / destroyed?
- ngc248 4y agoIts still there ...
- shmerl 4y agoNestor Makhno considered himself a student of Kropotkin.
- culi 4y agoIf anyone's unaware: famous Ukrainian anti-anti-semitist/anarchist revolutionary who lead a peasant revolt that supported farmer communes in much of Ukraine before getting crushed by both the White and Red Army pro-russian tankies hate him
- 082349872349872 4y agofwiw, even Lyube has a song memorialising Makhno, Батька Махно, and I don't know if they're considered tankies, but they're definitely tankie-adjacent (they sang at the pro-"Z" concert at the start of the invasion, ffs). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMfa6MSAaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMfa6MSAaY
- shmerl 4y agoI suppose they aren't too bright then.
- pessimizer 4y agoPro-Soviet, not "pro-Russian."
- culi 4y agoI was specifically referring to the vein of tankies that are pro-Russia in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine (yes they exist)
- aebtebeten 4y agoThere may be less distance than we think. I'm not sure what's going on in https://youtu.be/LffLqUwlY2Y?t=200 https://youtu.be/LffLqUwlY2Y?t=200 , but would not be surprised if it's something to do with rehabilitating Stalin (of the eponymous tanks)?
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoIt's really weird seeing letter ё in English language title. I'd rather spell his name as "Pyotr Kropotkin" or even "Peter Kropotkin", following a commong convention to spell Russian tzar Pyotr Romanov's as Peter.
- usrnm 4y agoI actually like it, it's a great idea. You wouldn't be surprised if you saw words like Köln or Malmö (or even Malmø) in an English text, right, so how is this different?
- JustinVx 4y agoWell it’s different as in this case it’s translated from a Cyrillic alphabet. Also, I would be surprised to read Köln in English as an English name exists for the city: Cologne.
- usrnm 4y agoSo? I'm going to transliterate stuff from Russian with ё from now on, it just looks great. A language is whatever we want it to be, after all
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoYou'll hardly achieve anything by it, besides really breaking spellchecking software.
- iakov 4y agoAnd annoying the language speakers. Pёtr is painful to read. Peter, Pyotr, Peter, Пётр, pick any, but don't mix and match please!
- 082349872349872 4y agoWhat about the other way? Would it be legit to transliterate the english nickname Pete as Пить? Много городов у вас в России))
- romwell 4y agoIncidentally, I've just been unpacking moving boxes, and put the beautifully illuminated [1] print of Mutual Aid on my "to-read" bookshelf. I wonder how often this particular instance of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon happens on HN, i.e. what's the intersection of regulars here and people familiar with names like Kropotkin, Makhno, etc. [1] PM press edition: https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1272 https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1272
- SyzygistSix 4y agoIt's not difficult to find Kropotkin's name popping up in many places online.
- romwell 4y agoOf course it's not. I just wonder how common it is with people who frequent HN, which is a very unrepresentative sample of the population.
- 082349872349872 4y agoInteresting. While reading this, I wondered idly if solidarity might be more acceptable phrasing than mutual aid in the US?
- FireInsight 4y agoI'd say that it could be confusing, since people often "Stand in solidarity" without any actions, but "Giving mutual aid" is something active, like protesting, monetary aid, a large scope if things.
- civopsec 4y agoSolidarity is all about mutuality… doesn’t matter what pretenders and virtue signallers in the digital age try to lead you to believe.
- dluan 4y agoSolidarity usually means a specific action - e.g. joining a strike action, critical support, organizing, etc. Mutual aid usually means intra class action.
- psychoslave 4y agoIn French you would translate solidarité and entre-aide respectively each term, so they worth having each a dedicated word. Actually I was surprised when I wanted to find a straight forward equivalent to "entre aide". It seems that "interhelp" is sufficiently obvious for having an organization taking this name, but this apparently not an idiomatic word per se.
- 082349872349872 4y agoAfter 5 minutes L1 reflection, my most idiomatic translation for « entre-aide » would be not a word but the phrase "one hand washes the other".
- richiebful1 4y agoMutual aid is a fairly common term in my region: https://www.lpm.org/news/2022-11-27/eastern-ky-mutual-aid-groups-need-your-help-ahead-of-the-holidays https://www.lpm.org/news/2022-11-27/eastern-ky-mutual-aid-gr...
- acabal 4y agoI produced a free ebook edition of Mutual Aid for Standard Ebooks last year: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid It's very readable and quite interesting. It aimed to have a veneer of science, when the science of animals and nature was still fairly undeveloped; and it succeeded in a sense, because its observations are still held in regard, but I think it succeeded much better as a work of philosophy. In any case, it suffers a little for what I think is the naive thesis of "if only mankind could cooperate like the animals do, we would live in a utopia." Of course, mankind has demonstrated through thousands of years of history that tribes of men can't really cooperate in any grand sense, so the point seems rather moot.
- culi 4y agoIn what ways has mankind demonstrated that "tribes of men" can't cooperate? Humans have been able to live in large decentralized polities for millennia and modern archeology strongly backs this up. Göbekli Tepe (~11kya), the still-standing mammoth houses of North Eastern Europe (~15kya), or perhaps best exemplified by "the new archaic" or "monuments without kings"[^0] which is a term used by archeologists to describe the study of certain North American monument sites like Poverty Point where massive complex monuments were built by mobile groups of foragers without the need for permanent habitation. These massive geo-engineering projects were taken on by many different independent but connected tribes of peoples. Wherever you look we see constant evidence of humanity's ability to cooperate to achieve grand accomplishments. I mean we're on the internet ffs. Ever heard of Wikipedia? Or how most modern tech companies are only possible because of the massive efforts of the open source communities? These aren't really new behaviors for humanity. In fact, I'd argue that if you take a look at the way language evolved you'd find a lot of support for the idea that it's actually a defining characteristic of humanity [^0]: https://documents.saa.org/container/docs/default-source/doc-publications/publications/the-saa-archaeological-record/tsar-2008/nov08.pdf?sfvrsn=b93c98bb_2 https://documents.saa.org/container/docs/default-source/doc-...
- 082349872349872 4y agoMutual Aid Among Animals mentions the existence of Defectors. I would argue both that the existence of the internet in particular and civilisation in general is a sign that great numbers of people can cooperate effectively, and that the woeful Covid response is a sign that small numbers of people defecting can be ruinous. The best laid plans of mice and men, therefore, would seem to be those that (a) allow Cooperators to combine with at least linear effect, and (b) are resistant to sizeable Defecting populations.
- phillc73 4y agoThe article links to a few book pages scanned as PDFs and an HTML version of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Also worth mentioning is that there is a very large collection of Kropotkin's writing at the Anarchist Library[1], including an epub version of Mutual Aid[2] and his autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionist[3], which was also mentioned in the article. [1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/petr-kropotkin https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/petr-kropotk... [2] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutua... [3] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-memoirs-of-a-revolutionist https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-memoi...
- derelicta 4y agoKropotkin would weep to what has become Jura's anarchist dream. We may have reached independance from Bern but at the cost of a parlement filled with liberals and conservatives.
- 082349872349872 4y agoany good reading for Jura's anarchist dream? (le français, ça joue)
- pimbrah 4y agoA movie "Unrueh" (Unrest) has just been released in the theaters about Kropotkin's Swiss period. Haven't seen it yet but it is on my list
- 082349872349872 4y agoTiptop (one wonders if an anarchist Jura would or would not have reacted in a more timely fashion to the invention of the quartz watch?)
- serverholic 4y agoAnarchism is an interesting topic, and learning about it has lead me down some interesting paths of learning and thought. At its core, it’s the position of being against hierarchies of power where humans dominate those with less power. In simple terms, it’s being against humans dominating each other. The big question is can we have a functioning society with less human domination and how far can we reduce it? That’s a deep question that involves everything from economics to the study of human nature. In terms of human nature, I think people are far too quick to ascribe certain behaviors to human nature.
- greenie_beans 4y agoagreed. the human nature argument is a lazy one against something like anarchism or any other alternative system. if we can be socialized to seek money (it starts with the piggy bank when we're like 4 years old), we can be socialized to not seek those things and instead seek something else. replace "money" or "greed" with any negative way that humans behave, like power or domination.
- serverholic 4y agoYes, the environment we grow up in plays a huge part in our development. Everything from nutrition during development to culture, values, etc. All shape how we think. I was learning recently about Christopher Columbus and his encounters with native peoples and it’s fascinating how differently these people thought. The natives had a hard time understanding the colonizers and their endless need for gold and things. Eventually some of them theorized that the European’s god is actually gold lol.
- ausbah 4y agowhere does the ability to mold humans to fit a certain set of standards end? incentives, culture, norms, etc. I think can shape someone's default mode of thinking and actions on the margin, but eventually you reach some point like the "New Soviet Man" where you're asking someone not to be human?
- 4y ago
- Deprogrammer9 4y agoWhy hello my hacker anarchist sisters & brothers. If anyone would like to listen to Mutual Aid and many, many other FREE anarchist audio-books as you drive or workout, have got the plug for you! https://librivox.org/conquest-bread-2-by-peter-kropotkin/ https://librivox.org/conquest-bread-2-by-peter-kropotkin/ https://librivox.org/anarchy-by-errico-malatesta/ https://librivox.org/anarchy-by-errico-malatesta/ https://librivox.org/god-and-the-state-by-mikhail-bakunin/ https://librivox.org/god-and-the-state-by-mikhail-bakunin/ https://librivox.org/mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution-by-peter-kropotkin/ https://librivox.org/mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution-by-pet...
- hyperpape 4y agoNot on the subject of mutual aid per se, but the relation between Anarchism and Communism, late in his life, Kropotkin returned to Russia, and met Lenin. That meeting was documented: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1917/a-meeting.html https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1.... A friend of mine described this as "essentially the same as every conversation between anarchists and communists today", which seems largely accurate. In particular, I enjoyed one comment: > “No, no,” Kropotkin replied, “if you and your comrades think in this way, if the power is not going to their heads, and if they feel that they will not be going in the direction of oppression by the state, then they will achieve a lot. Then the revolution is truly in good hands.” Draw your own conclusions.