Mutual aid is a term in political economy used to signify the economic concept of voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. The concept is central to libertarian socialist and anarchist thought. Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government. ... Libertarian socialism includes a group of political philosophies that aims to create a society without political, economic or social hierarchies - a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals. ... Anarchism is a political philosophy or group of doctrines and attitudes centered on rejection of any form of authoritarian relationship, hierarchical institution or compulsory government (cf. ...

As a concept it was developed and advanced by Proudhon and also by the anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin. Mutualism was a fundamental concept in the invention of labor insurance systems and thus trade unions, and has been also used in cooperatives. In his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Kropotkin explored the utility of cooperation as a survival mechanism for animals, in order to counteract the conception of evolution as a fierce competition for survival between individuals that provided a rationalization for the theories of Social Darwinism. His observations of indigenous peoples in Siberia guided him to conclude that not all human societies were so competitive as Europe's. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (pronounced Pruood-on, not prowd-hon) (January 15, 1809 - January 19, 1865) was a French anarchist of the 19th century. ... Anarcho-Communism, or Libertarian Communism, is a political ideology related to Libertarian socialism. ... Peter Kropotkin Prince Peter Alexeevich Kropotkin (In Russian Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин) (December 9, 1842 - February 8, 1921) was one of Russias foremost anarchists and one of the first advocates of what he called anarchist communism: the model of society he advocated for most of his life was that of a communalist society... Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. ... A trade union or labor union is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment. ... A cooperative (also co-operative or co-op) comprises a legal entity owned and democratically controlled by its members, with no passive shareholders. ... This article is about cooperation as used in the social sciences. ... This article is about evolution in biology. ... This article needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ... Indigenous peoples are: Peoples living in an area prior to colonization by a state Peoples living in an area within a nation-state, prior to the formation of a nation-state, but who do not identify with the dominant nation. ... It has been suggested that Western Siberia be merged into this article or section. ... World map showing the location of Europe. ...

In another of his books, The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin proposed a system of economics based on mutual exchanges made in a system of voluntary cooperation. Kropotkin's thesis was based on the premise that scarcity was unnecessary, and it was possible to produce enough wealth to satisfy the needs of everybody by working only five hours a day during adult life (leaving the rest of the day to satisfy desires for luxuries, if so desired), but that flawed economic systems had led to inefficient allocation of resources which prevented this bounty from being achieved. Cover of Elephant Editions reprint of Conquest Of Bread, 1985. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ...

In Fields, Factories and Workshops, Kropotkin, a geographer by training, gives a detailed accounting of the physical evidence for his claim that the earth was fully capable of satisfying the resource needs of all its citizens with a minimum of work. Fields, Factories and Workshops is a landmark anarchist text by Peter Kropotkin, and arguably one of the most influential and positive statements of the anarchist political position. ... A geographer is a crazy psycho whose area of study is geocrap, the pseudoscientific study of Earths physical environment and human habitat and the study of boring students to death. ...

However, Kropotkin never fully outlined how such a system would be achieved, nor did he answer the questions of how such a system would be structured or make decisions, other than to make broad pronouncements about mutual exchanges. For example he gives the examples of farmers in the countryside producing grain for the city based on the understanding that workers in the city will then provide them with finished goods.

See also

• Benefit society
• Peter Kropotkin
• Gift economy
• Meitheal
• Mutualista
• Political science