difference between mutual aid and charity
via michel bauwens tweet [https://x.com/mbauwens/status/1940303397783281963]:
Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and Charity
mutual aid.. mutual aid (spade).. mutual aid (kropotkin).. david on mutual aid
full title: Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of Capitalism
Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and Charity
* Zine: Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of Capitalism: Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and Charity, 2025
https://nl.crimethinc.com/zines/mutual-aid-the-commons-and-the-revolutionary-abolition-of-capitalism
also in anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-crimethinc-mutual-aid-the-commons-and-the-revolutionary-abolition-of-capitalism]:
“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.
if reciprocal.. then top down.. ie: one who ‘gives’ first is in on top; making it participatory is top down
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 could we unlock the revolutionary potential of mutual aid?”
doesn’t have revolutionary potential..
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen (to get to root of problem): the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
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notes/quotes from rest of article:
Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of Capitalism – Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and Charity – (2025) by anonymous, crimethinc
Is It Mutual Enough?
rather.. it’s too mutual.. again.. reciprocity ness is itself top down.. so a cancerous distraction
Is the difference between charity and mutual aid simply that mutual aid involves reciprocity? There are a few problems with this proposition.
First—in a world in which resources are distributed so unevenly, is mutual aid only possible between those who have similar access to time or resources, so that they are capable of reciprocating? Is mutual aid just barter in disguise? Are those who benefit from mutual aid indebted? How should we determine whether our aid is reciprocal enough?
even deeper.. the obligation (socrates supposed to law) ness of having to do something other people are essentially telling you to do..
again.. need to let go of reciprocity ness if want it to not be ie: barter/debt et al
A senior citizen who has dedicated her life to caring for her community should be able to leave Food Not Bombs with a bag of bagels without anyone accusing the organizers of engaging in mere charity. Likewise, it should be possible to receive treatment from volunteers with medical expertise even if you cannot provide comparable treatment in return. The idea of mutual aid is not to establish a market in which people trade volunteer services, *but to create a commons in which all of the participants can meet their needs without keeping score. In the long run, the goal is to bring about a situation in which everyone is at liberty to do what they most wish to do and can share the fruits of their activities with everybody else without need of compensation. This is what we call a gift economy.
*yeah that.. this is something we’ve not yet (to date) tried/seen.. again.. the unconditional part of left to own devices ness.. legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
**just as much ‘baggage’ as you’re worried about mutual aid having.. giving.. gift\ness.. et al
The gift economy prevails wherever people can share things freely without keeping score. In gift economics, the participants receive more the more they bestow—not only because generosity tends to beget more of the same, but also because gift-giving is its own reward. Everyone who has shared a real friendship or attended a successful potluck has seen that when the opportunity presents itself, human beings enthusiastically return to this way of relating.
ie of score keeping.. oi
What is “mutual” in this context is not reciprocity, per se, but rather that the activities enable people to give and receive freely, fostering relations without measure.
need global detox leap to get to that place.. otherwise we remain in the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world (world of measuring ness et al)
If that is indeed our goal, however, it sets a much higher bar than mere reciprocity. To get there, we will have to do more than redistribute resources. We will have to foster a widespread sense of agency and initiative and faith in the value of sharing—and ultimately regain collective control over parts of our lives and our world that capitalism has taken from us. This provides a better criteria for evaluating the success of mutual aid efforts than simply how many goods changed hands.
another ie of score keeping.. oi
Properly understood, the commons is not a discrete aggregate of resources. Rather, it is a consequence of collective behavior: commons emerge as the organic result of *ways of relating to one another that do not impose artificial scarcity or hierarchies of access and control. In this regard, the commons is inherently outside the control of bureaucracy and the state. The extent of the commons is not determined by the quantity of resources designated as such, but rather by how effectively a given community is able to produce and share resources through egalitarian collective activity—and to defend those practices, **ideally in a way that spreads contagiously.
*and any form of governing ness (ie: michel on commons ness defined commons as needing humans that govern resrouces)
**only way to do that is if we org around legit needs.. ie: 2 things every soul already craves
The Ones with the Problem Are Themselves the Solution
The revolutionary idea at the core of the concept of mutual aid is that those who have a problem can solve it themselves by working together.
deeper.. since we’re spending our days obsessed with ‘problems’ that would be irrelevant if legit free.. taleb center of problem law et al.. need a means to legit get to teh root of problem..
“When we come into AA, we find a greater personal freedom than any other society knows. We cannot be compelled to do anything. In that sense our Society is a benign anarchy. The word ‘anarchy’ has a bad meaning to most of us. But I think that the idealist who first advocated the concept felt that if only men were granted absolute liberty, and were compelled to obey no one, they would then voluntarily associate themselves in the common interest. AA is an association of the benign sort he envisioned.”
but peer pressure et al.. makes it not legit free.. otherwise.. everyone would be in it
— Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, in [“Benign Anarchy and Democracy”
Rather than continuously evaluating each other to see who is worthy of support and who is not, we should begin from the premise that we are setting out to create a mutually beneficial context in which we can grow together and build long-term connections.
enter record keeping.. so enter cancerous distractions
So mutual aid is not a distraction from the project of changing the world; it is a fundamental aspect of changing the world, just as changing the world is necessary if we want to expand the scope of mutual aid. What’s more, the idea of mutual aid implies a model for social change that is structurally different from what Marxist-Leninists and other authoritarians propose.
*um.. yeah it is.. and a cancerous one.. since we don’t think it’s one
By contrast with the authoritarian model for social change, the anti-authoritarian proposal is that we establish horizontal, decentralized forms of grassroots organization that put decision-making power in the hands of those who are most immediately affected by the decisions. In place of top-down structures, this means fostering rhizomatic mutual aid networks according to reproducible models. Without the privation and pressure imposed by policing and property rights, people will naturally gravitate to the networks that meet their needs most efficiently and in the most joyous and fulfilling manner.
enter hierarchy.. et al.. need to try curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
If we are trying to bring about liberation rather than authoritarianism, establishing mutual aid projects that can meet material needs is not a distraction from the project of decentralizing power and access to resources. Rather, it is an essential part of developing and propagating the practices via which people can engage in that project. Some call this “building the new world in the shell of the old.”
oi.. oi .. oi.. cancerous distraction
“We want to bring about a society in which human beings will consider each other brothers [sic] and by mutual support will achieve the greatest well-being and freedom as well as physical and intellectual development for all.”
–”Mutual Aid” (1909), Errico Malatesta
Mutual Aid Means Resistance
To sum up, then—if we want to get the most out of mutual aid, we should create participatory commons in which everyone can easily contribute and there is no fundamental division between the organizers and the beneficiaries.
ie of record keeping
Individual affinity groups or organizations can play a crucial role in activities like this—for example, by announcing and promoting them and building infrastructure to sustain them. But the best way to evaluate the effectiveness of those contributions is by asking to what extent those efforts create a situation in which others can establish a more robust relationship to their own agency. If the organizers create a bottleneck for decision-making and action, reducing others to passivity, that will not advance the project of mutual aid and liberation.
aka: record keeping
If your mutual aid project is not creating the kind of social connections, political consciousness, and collective momentum that will move us towards revolutionary social change, the problem is not with mutual aid, per se. The problem is with your project.
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be you. 