Mutual Aid: A Factor of EvolutionKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Science
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Cooperation; Social groups; Social institutions
Common hunting, common fishing, and common culture of the orchards or
the plantations of fruit trees was the rule with the old gentes. Common
agriculture became the rule in the barbarian village communities. True,
that direct testimony to this effect is scarce, and in the literature of
antiquity we only have the passages of Diodorus and Julius Caesar
relating to the inhabitants of the Lipari Islands, one of the
Celt-Iberian tribes, and the Sueves. But there is no lack of evidence to
prove that common agriculture was practised among some Teuton tribes,
the Franks, and the old Scotch, Irish, and Welsh.(8) As to the later
survivals of the same practice, they simply are countless. Even in
perfectly Romanized France, common culture was habitual some five and
twenty years ago in the Morbihan (Brittany).(9) The old Welsh cyvar, or
joint team, as well as the common culture of the land allotted to the
use of the village sanctuary are quite common among the tribes of
Caucasus the least touched by civilization,(10) and like facts are of
daily occurrence among the Russian peasants. Moreover, it is well known
that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to
cultivate their fields in common, and that the same habit is widely
spread among some Malayans, in New Caledonia, with several Negro stems,
and so on.(11) In short, communal culture is so habitual with many
Aryan, Ural-Altayan, Mongolian, Negro, Red Indian, Malayan, and
Melanesian stems that we must consider it as a universal--though not as
the only possible--form of primitive agriculture.(12)
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