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Books: Mutual Aid

P >> P. Kropotkin >> Mutual Aid




It happened with Darwin's theory as it always happens with
theories having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of
widening it according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it
still more. And while Herbert Spencer, starting on independent
but closely allied lines, attempted to widen the inquiry into
that great question, "Who are the fittest?" especially in the
appendix to the third edition of the Data of Ethics, the
numberless followers of Darwin reduced the notion of struggle for
existence to its narrowest limits. They came to conceive the
animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half-starved
individuals, thirsting for one another's blood. They made modern
literature resound with the war-cry of woe to the vanquished, as
if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the
"pitiless" struggle for personal advantages to the height of a
biological principle which man must submit to as well, under the
menace of otherwise succumbing in a world based upon mutual
extermination. Leaving aside the economists who know of natural
science but a few words borrowed from second-hand vulgarizers, we
must recognize that even the most authorized exponents of
Darwin's views did their best to maintain those false ideas. In
fact, if we take Huxley, who certainly is considered as one of
the ablest exponents of the theory of evolution, were we not
taught by him, in a paper on the 'Struggle for Existence and its
Bearing upon Man,' that,

"from the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on
about the same level as a gladiators' show. The creatures are
fairly well treated, and set to, fight hereby the strongest, the
swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The
spectator has no need to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is
given."

Or, further down in the same article, did he not tell us
that, as among animals, so among primitive men,

"the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest
and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their
circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life
was a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary
relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all
was the normal state of existence."(2)

In how far this view of nature is supported by fact, will be
seen from the evidence which will be here submitted to the reader
as regards the animal world, and as regards primitive man. But it
may be remarked at once that Huxley's view of nature had as
little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the
opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love, peace, and
harmony destroyed by the accession of man. In fact, the first
walk in the forest, the first observation upon any animal
society, or even the perusal of any serious work dealing with
animal life (D'Orbigny's, Audubon's, Le Vaillant's, no matter
which), cannot but set the naturalist thinking about the part
taken by social life in the life of animals, and prevent him from
seeing in Nature nothing but a field of slaughter, just as this
would prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but harmony and
peace. Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the
beak-and-claw fight from his thoughts; and Huxley committed the
opposite error; but neither Rousseau's optimism nor Huxley's
pessimism can be accepted as an impartial interpretation of
nature.

As soon as we study animals--not in laboratories and
museums only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe
and the mountains--we at once perceive that though there is an
immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst
various species, and especially amidst various classes of
animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even
more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst
animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same
society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual
struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate,
however roughly, the relative numerical importance of both these
series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect test, and ask
Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war
with each other, or those who support one another?" we at once
see that those 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. If the numberless facts
which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into
account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of
animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of
evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance,
inasmuch as it favours the development of such habits and
characters as insure the maintenance and further development of
the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and
enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of
energy.

Of the scientific followers of Darwin, the first, as far as I
know, who understood the full purport of Mutual Aid as a law of
Nature and the chief factor of evolution, was a well-known
Russian zoologist, the late Dean of the St. Petersburg
University, Professor Kessler. He developed his ideas in an
address which he delivered in January 1880, a few months before
his death, at a Congress of Russian naturalists; but, like so
many good things published in the Russian tongue only, that
remarkable address remains almost entirely unknown.(3)

"As a zoologist of old standing," he felt bound to protest
against the abuse of a term--the struggle for existence--
borrowed from zoology, or, at least, against overrating its
importance. Zoology, he said, and those sciences which deal with
man, continually insist upon what they call the pitiless law of
struggle for existence. But they forget the existence of another
law which may be described as the law of mutual aid, which law,
at least for the animals, is far more essential than the former.
He pointed out how the need of leaving progeny necessarily brings
animals together, and, "the more the individuals keep together,
the more they mutually support each other, and the more are the
chances of the species for surviving, as well as for making
further progress in its intellectual development." "All classes
of animals," he continued, "and especially the higher ones,
practise mutual aid," and he illustrated his idea by examples
borrowed from the life of the burying beetles and the social life
of birds and some mammalia. The examples were few, as might have
been expected in a short opening address, but the chief points
were clearly stated; and, after mentioning that in the evolution
of mankind mutual aid played a still more prominent part,
Professor Kessler concluded as follows:--

"I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I
maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom,
and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual
support than by mutual struggle.... All organic beings have two
essential needs: that of nutrition, and that of propagating the
species. The former brings them to a struggle and to mutual
extermination, while the needs of maintaining the species bring
them to approach one another and to support one another. But I am
inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world--
in the progressive modification of organic beings--mutual
support among individuals plays a much more important part than
their mutual struggle."(4)

The correctness of the above views struck most of the Russian
zoologists present, and Syevertsoff, whose work is well known to
ornithologists and geographers, supported them and illustrated
them by a few more examples. He mentioned sone of the species of
falcons which have "an almost ideal organization for robbery,"
and nevertheless are in decay, while other species of falcons,
which practise mutual help, do thrive. "Take, on the other side,
a sociable bird, the duck," he said; "it is poorly organized on
the whole, but it practises mutual support, and it almost invades
the earth, as may be judged from its numberless varieties and
species."

The readiness of the Russian zoologists to accept Kessler's
views seems quite natural, because nearly all of them have had
opportunities of studying the animal world in the wide
uninhabited regions of Northern Asia and East Russia; and it is
impossible to study like regions without being brought to the
same ideas. I recollect myself the impression produced upon me by
the animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in
the company of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff
was. We both were under the fresh impression of the Origin of
Species, but we vainly looked for the keen competition between
animals of the same species which the reading of Darwin's work
had prepared us to expect, even after taking into account the
remarks of the third chapter (p. 54). We saw plenty of
adaptations for struggling, very often in common, against the
adverse circumstances of climate, or against various enemies, and
Polyakoff wrote many a good page upon the mutual dependency of
carnivores, ruminants, and rodents in their geographical
distribution; we witnessed numbers of facts of mutual support,
especially during the migrations of birds and ruminants; but even
in the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life swarms in
abundance, facts of real competition and struggle between higher
animals of the same species came very seldom under my notice,
though I eagerly searched for them. The same impression appears
in the works of most Russian zoologists, and it probably explains
why Kessler's ideas were so welcomed by the Russian Darwinists,
whilst like ideas are not in vogue amidst the followers of Darwin
in Western Europe.

The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying
the struggle for existence under both its aspects--direct and
metaphorical--is the abundance of facts of mutual aid, not only
for rearing progeny, as recognized by most evolutionists, but
also for the safety of the individual, and for providing it with
the necessary food. With many large divisions of the animal
kingdom mutual aid is the rule. Mutual aid is met with even
amidst the lowest animals, and we must be prepared to learn some
day, from the students of microscopical pond-life, facts of
unconscious mutual support, even from the life of
micro-organisms. Of course, our knowledge of the life of the
invertebrates, save the termites, the ants, and the bees, is
extremely limited; and yet, even as regards the lower animals, we
may glean a few facts of well-ascertained cooperation. The
numberless associations of locusts, vanessae, cicindelae,
cicadae, and so on, are practically quite unexplored; but the
very fact of their existence indicates that they must be composed
on about the same principles as the temporary associations of
ants or bees for purposes of migration. As to the beetles, we
have quite well-observed facts of mutual help amidst the burying
beetles (Necrophorus). They must have some decaying organic
matter to lay their eggs in, and thus to provide their larvae
with food; but that matter must not decay very rapidly. So they
are wont to bury in the ground the corpses of all kinds of small
animals which they occasionally find in their rambles. As a rule,
they live an isolated life, but when one of them has discovered
the corpse of a mouse or of a bird, which it hardly could manage
to bury itself, it calls four, six, or ten other beetles to
perform the operation with united efforts; if necessary, they
transport the corpse to a suitable soft ground; and they bury it
in a very considerate way, without quarrelling as to which of
them will enjoy the privilege of laying its eggs in the buried
corpse. And when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made
out of two sticks, or suspended a toad to a stick planted in the
soil, the little beetles would in the same friendly way combine
their intelligences to overcome the artifice of Man. The same
combination of efforts has been noticed among the dung-beetles.

Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of
organization we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the
West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to
travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn; and each
such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support.
As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), I was struck (in 1882, at
the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which
these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in
case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of
the tank, and its heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from
returning to its natural position, the more so as there was in
the corner an iron bar which rendered the task still more
difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour's
time I watched how they endeavoured to help their
fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from
beneath, and after strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it
upright; but then the iron bar would prevent them from achieving
the work of rescue, and the crab would again heavily fall upon
its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the
depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin
with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless
comrade. We stayed in the Aquarium for more than two hours, and,
when leaving, we again came to cast a glance upon the tank: the
work of rescue still continued! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse
credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin--namely,
that "the common crab during the moulting season stations as
sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent
marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their
unprotected state."(5)

Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants,
and the bees are so well known to the general reader, especially
through the works of Romanes, L. Buchner, and Sir John Lubbock,
that I may limit my remarks to a very few hints.(6) If we take
an ants' nest, we not only see that every description of
work-rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of aphides,
and so on--is performed according to the principles of
voluntary mutual aid; we must also recognize, with Forel, that
the chief, the fundamental feature of the life of many species of
ants is the fact and the obligation for every ant of sharing its
food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of
the community which may apply for it. Two ants belonging to two
different species or to two hostile nests, when they occasionally
meet together, will avoid each other. But two ants belonging to
the same nest or to the same colony of nests will approach each
other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and "if one of
them is hungry or thirsty, and especially if the other has its
crop full... it immediately asks for food." The individual thus
requested never refuses; it sets apart its mandibles, takes a
proper position, and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid
which is licked up by the hungry ant. Regurgitating food for
other ants is so prominent a feature in the life of ants (at
liberty), and it so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry
comrades and for feeding larvae, that Forel considers the
digestive tube of the ants as consisting of two different parts,
one of which, the posterior, is for the special use of the
individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the
use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been
selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as
an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its
kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall
back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even
upon the enemies themselves. And if an ant has not refused to
feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be
treated by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend. All this is
confirmed by most accurate observation and decisive
experiments.(7)

In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies
more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the
Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men,
competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of
nests, does not exist. However terrible the wars between different
species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time,
mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a
habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are
the rule. The ants and termites have renounced the "Hobbesian
war," and they are the better for it. Their wonderful nests,
their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their
paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their spacious
halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting"
of grain;(8) their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and
larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides
whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the
ants"; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and, superior
intelligence--all these are the natural outcome of the mutual
aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and
laborious lives. That mode of life also necessarily resulted in
the development of another essential feature of the life of ants:
the immense development of individual initiative which, in its
turn, evidently led to the development of that high and varied
intelligence which cannot but strike the human observer.(9)

If we knew no other facts from animal life than what we know
about the ants and the termites, we already might safely conclude
that mutual aid (which leads to mutual confidence, the first
condition for courage) and individual initiative (the first
condition for intellectual progress) are two factors infinitely
more important than mutual struggle in the evolution of the
animal kingdom. In fact, the ant thrives without having any of
the "protective" features which cannot be dispensed with by
animals living an isolated life. Its colour renders it
conspicuous to its enemies, and the lofty nests of many species
are conspicuous in the meadows and forests. It is not protected
by a hard carapace, and its stinging apparatus, however dangerous
when hundreds of stings are plunged into the flesh of an animal,
is not of a great value for individual defence; while the eggs
and larvae of the ants are a dainty for a great number of the
inhabitants of the forests. And yet the ants, in their thousands,
are not much destroyed by the birds, not even by the ant-eaters,
and they are dreaded by most stronger insects. When Forel emptied
a bagful of ants in a meadow, he saw that "the crickets ran away,
abandoning their holes to be sacked by the ants; the grasshoppers
and the crickets fled in all directions; the spiders and the
beetles abandoned their prey in order not to become prey
themselves; "even the nests of the wasps were taken by the ants,
after a battle during which many ants perished for the safety of
the commonwealth. Even the swiftest insects cannot escape, and
Forel often saw butterflies, gnats, flies, and so on, surprised
and killed by the ants. Their force is in mutual support and
mutual confidence. And if the ant--apart from the still higher
developed termites--stands at the very top of the whole class
of insects for its intellectual capacities; if its courage is
only equalled by the most courageous vertebrates; and if its
brain--to use Darwin's words--"is one of the most marvellous
atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of
man," is it not due to the fact that mutual aid has entirely
taken the place of mutual struggle in the communities of ants?

The same is true as regards the bees. These small insects,
which so easily might become the prey of so many birds, and whose
honey has so many admirers in all classes of animals from the
beetle to the bear, also have none of the protective features
derived from mimicry or otherwise, without which an isolatedly
living insect hardly could escape wholesale destruction; and yet,
owing to the mutual aid they practise, they obtain the wide
extension which we know and the intelligence we admire, By
working in common they multiply their individual forces; by
resorting to a temporary division of labour combined with the
capacity of each bee to perform every kind of work when required,
they attain such a degree of well-being and safety as no isolated
animal can ever expect to achieve however strong or well armed it
may be. In their combinations they are often more successful than
man, when he neglects to take advantage of a well-planned mutual
assistance. Thus, when a new swarm of bees is going to leave the
hive in search of a new abode, a number of bees will make a
preliminary exploration of the neighbourhood, and if they
discover a convenient dwelling-place--say, an old basket, or
anything of the kind--they will take possession of it, clean
it, and guard it, sometimes for a whole week, till the swarm
comes to settle therein. But how many human settlers will perish
in new countries simply for not having understood the necessity
of combining their efforts! By combining their individual
intelligences they succeed in coping with adverse circumstances,
even quite unforeseen and unusual, like those bees of the Paris
Exhibition which fastened with their resinous propolis the
shutter to a glass-plate fitted in the wall of their hive.
Besides, they display none of the sanguinary proclivities and
love of useless fighting with which many writers so readily endow
animals. The sentries which guard the entrance to the hive
pitilessly put to death the robbing bees which attempt entering
the hive; but those stranger bees which come to the hive by
mistake are left unmolested, especially if they come laden with
pollen, or are young individuals which can easily go astray.
There is no more warfare than is strictly required.

The sociability of the bees is the more instructive as
predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees
as well, and reappear each. time that their growth is favoured by
some circumstances. It is well known that there always are a
number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the laborious
life of a worker; and that both periods of scarcity and periods
of an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the
robbing class. When our crops are in and there remains but little
to gather in our meadows and fields, robbing bees become of more
frequent occurrence; while, on the other side, about the sugar
plantations of the West Indies and the sugar refineries of
Europe, robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become
quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts
continue to exist amidst the bees as well; but natural selection
continually must eliminate them, because in the long run the
practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the
species than the development of individuals endowed with
predatory inclinations. The cunningest and the shrewdest are
eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of
sociable life and mutual support.

Certainly, neither the ants, nor the bees, nor even the
termites, have risen to the conception of a higher solidarity
embodying the whole of the species. In that respect they
evidently have not attained a degree of development which we do
not find even among our political, scientific, and religious
leaders. Their social instincts hardly extend beyond the limits
of the hive or the nest. However, colonies of no less than two
hundred nests, belonging to two different species (Formica
exsecta and F. pressilabris) have been described by Forel on
Mount Tendre and Mount Saleve; and Forel maintains that each
member of these colonies recognizes every other member of the
colony, and that they all take part in common defence; while in
Pennsylvania Mr. MacCook saw a whole nation of from 1,600 to
1,700 nests of the mound-making ant, all living in perfect
intelligence; and Mr. Bates has described the hillocks of the
termites covering large surfaces in the "campos"--some of the
nests being the refuge of two or three different species, and
most of them being connected by vaulted galleries or
arcades.(10) Some steps towards the amalgamation of larger
divisions of the species for purposes of mutual protection are
thus met with even among the invertebrate animals.

Going now over to higher animals, we find far more instances
of undoubtedly conscious mutual help for all possible purposes,
though we must recognize at once that our knowledge even of the
life of higher animals still remains very imperfect. A large
number of facts have been accumulated by first-rate observers,
but there are whole divisions of the animal kingdom of which we
know almost nothing. Trustworthy information as regards fishes is
extremely scarce, partly owing to the difficulties of
observation, and partly because no proper attention has yet been
paid to the subject. As to the mammalia, Kessler already remarked
how little we know about their manners of life. Many of them are
nocturnal in their habits; others conceal themselves underground;
and those ruminants whose social life and migrations offer the
greatest interest do not let man approach their herds. It is
chiefly upon birds that we have the widest range of information,
and yet the social life of very many species remains but
imperfectly known. Still, we need not complain about the lack of
well-ascertained facts, as will be seen from the following.