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
mutual-aid institutions, habits, and customs, grown up in the tribe and
the village community, remains; and it keeps men united in societies,
open to the progress of civilization, and ready to receive it when the
day comes that they shall receive civilization instead of bullets.
The same applies to our civilized world. The natural and social
calamities pass away. Whole populations are periodically reduced to
misery or starvation; the very springs of life are crushed out of
millions of men, reduced to city pauperism; the understanding and the
feelings of the millions are vitiated by teachings worked out in the
interest of the few. All this is certainly a part of our existence. But
the nucleus of mutual-support institutions, habits, and customs remains
alive with the millions; it keeps them together; and they prefer to
cling to their customs, beliefs, and traditions rather than to accept
the teachings of a war of each against all, which are offered to them
under the title of science, but are no science at all.
NOTES:
1. A bulky literature, dealing with this formerly much neglected
subject, is now growing in Germany. Keller's works, Ein Apostel der
Wiedertaufer and Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, Cornelius's Geschichte des
munsterischen Aufruhrs, and Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes
may be named as the leading sources. The first attempt at familiarizing
English readers with the results of the wide researches made in Germany
in this direction has been made in an excellent little work by Richard
Heath--"Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Munster,
1521-1536," London, 1895 (Baptist Manuals, vol. i.)--where the leading
features of the movement are well indicated, and full bibliographical
information is given. Also K. Kautsky's Communism in Central Europe in
the Time of the Reformation, London, 1897.
2. Few of our contemporaries realize both the extent of this movement
and the means by which it was suppressed. But those who wrote
immediately after the great peasant war estimated at from 100,000 to
150,000 men the number of peasants slaughtered after their defeat in
Germany. See Zimmermann's Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen
Bauernkrieges. For the measures taken to suppress the movement in the
Netherlands see Richard Heath's Anabaptism.
3. "Chacun s'en est accommode selon sa bienseance ... on les a
partages.. pour depouiller les communes, on s'est servi de dettes
simulees" (Edict of Louis the Fourteenth, of 1667, quoted by several
authors. Eight years before that date the communes had been taken under
State management).
4. "On a great landlord's estate, even if he has millions of revenue,
you are sure to find the land uncultivated" (Arthur Young). "One-fourth
part of the soil went out of culture;" "for the last hundred years the
land has returned to a savage state;" "the formerly flourishing Sologne
is now a big marsh;" and so on (Theron de Montauge, quoted by Taine in
Origines de la France Contemporaine, tome i. p. 441).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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