Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of Capitalism
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Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of Capitalism
Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and Charity
Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of Capitalism
To get the most out of mutual aid, we ought to create participatory commons in which everyone can contribute and there is no fundamental division between organizers and beneficiaries.
CrimethInc. (crimethinc.com)
Much has been made of the distinction between charity and mutual aid. Charity is top-down and unidirectional, while mutual aid is supposed to be horizontal, reciprocal, and participatory. In practice, however, the majority of today’s self-described mutual aid projects remain more or less unidirectional efforts to provide goods and services to those in need.
This has contributed to a situation in which conventional non-profit organizations are rebranding themselves with the language of “mutual aid,” while some anarchists have given up on the concept entirely, fed up with a rhetoric that some say amounts to “mutual aid being good and radical, and charity being bad and conservative.”
Is there more to the distinction than this? How can we unlock the revolutionary potential of mutual aid?
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