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
41. Lists of such works which came under the notice of the zemstvo
statisticians will be found in V.V.'s Peasant Community, pp. 459-600.
42. In the government of Moscow the experiment was usually made on the
field which was reserved for the above-mentioned communal culture.
43. Several instances of such and similar improvements were given in the
Official Messenger, 1894, Nos. 256-258. Associations between "horseless"
peasants begin to appear also in South Russia. Another extremely
interesting fact is the sudden development in Southern West Siberia of
very numerous co-operative creameries for making butter. Hundreds of
them spread in Tobolsk and Tomsk, without any one knowing wherefrom the
initiative of the movement came. It came from the Danish co-operators,
who used to export their own butter of higher quality, and to buy butter
of a lower quality for their own use in Siberia. After a several years'
intercourse, they introduced creameries there. Now, a great export
trade, carried on by a Union of the Creameries, has grown out of their
endeavours and more than a thousand co-operative shops have been opened
in the villages.
CHAPTER VIII
MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES (continued)
Labour-unions grown after the destruction of the guilds by the State.
Their struggles. Mutual Aid in strikes. Co-operation. Free associations
for various purposes. Self-sacrifice. Countless societies for combined
action under all possible aspects. Mutual Aid in slum-life. Personal
aid.
When we examine the every-day life of the rural populations of Europe,
we find that, notwithstanding all that has been done in modern States
for the destruction of the village community, the life of the peasants
remains honeycombed with habits and customs of mutual aid and support;
that important vestiges of the communal possession of the soil are still
retained; and that, as soon as the legal obstacles to rural association
were lately removed, a network of free unions for all sorts of
economical purposes rapidly spread among the peasants--the tendency of
this young movement being to reconstitute some sort of union similar to
the village community of old. Such being the conclusions arrived at in
the preceding chapter, we have now to consider, what institutions for
mutual support can be found at the present time amongst the industrial
populations.
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