A Factor of EvolutionMutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Peter Kropotkin 1902 Chapter 5: MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIÆVAL CITY Growth of authority in Barbarian Society. -- Serfdom in the villages. -- Revolt of fortified towns: their liberation; their charts. -- The guild. -- Double origin of the free mediæval city. -- Self-jurisdiction, self-administration. -- Honorable position of labor. -- Trade by the guild and by the city. Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts of human nature that at no time of history can we discover men living in small isolated families, fighting each other for the means of subsistence. On the contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two preceding chapters, proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common ancestors. For thousands and tho...
When Kropotkin was invited by Jean Grave, editor of Les Temps Nouveaux, to take part in a series of lectures to be held in the Milles Colonnes Hall in Paris in March 1896, he chose two subjects: The State: Its Historic Role and Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Its Ideal. Bearing in mind that his greatest work, Mutual Aid, had been appearing as a series of articles in The Nineteenth Century from 1890-1896 his choice of subjects for these lectures is not surprising. Kropotkin explains in the French edition of his Memoirs "The research that I carried out in the course of familiarizing myself with the institutions of the barbarian period and those of the free cities of the Middle Ages, led me to carry out further interesting research on the role played by the State during the last three centuries, from the time of its last incarnation in Europe. In addition the study of institutions of mutual aid in th...
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. Originally, this article was a statement for the fourth faction active in SDS during its final days. This faction is often overlooked by historians, who typically only emphasize the other three factions (i.e., Progressive Labor Party, RYM I and RYM II. Toward a post-scarcity society: the American perspective and the SDS Radical Decentralist Project, Resolution No. I The twentieth century is the heir of human history - the legatee of man's age-old effort to free himself from drudgery and material insecurity. For the first time in the long succession of centuries, this century has elevated mankind to an entirely new level of technological achievement and to an entirel... (From : Anarchy Archives.)