KROPOTKIN’S MUTUAL AID – A READING GROUP 

YOU ARE WARMLY INVITED TO THE FIRST MEETING:

Wednesday, MAY 31, 7 PM EST 

FOLLOW LINK TO JITSI – 

https://meet.jit.si/MutualAidReadingGroup2023

This reading group is a project of the Labor Committee of Workers Solidarity Alliance — all are welcome. Our goal is to help make this difficult book as accessible as possible in a relaxed environment. 

If you’d like to stay in the loop, send us an email:

philly-metro-wsa@proton.me

At the first meeting we will start at the inspiring end, Chapter 9. Please come regardless if you have done the reading. Here is a link to an audio version of Chapter 9:

Some questions we might include:

• What does Mutual Aid mean to us today as Anarchist-Syndicalists?  
• What was the geographic and biological/evolutionary science of Kropotkin’s time? 
• How does Kropotkin’s ethical and political values connect to his scientific worldview? 
• How does this book relate to the tradition of Anarchist Geography? 

Backstory

Our comrade Clarissa proposed this reading group, after a conversation with a fellow activist about Mutual Aid being a revolutionary act. 

“My response was to really ask myself, well, what is mutual aid, really? And is it always as revolutionary as we make it out to be?” 

She realized she’d never read Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. Since this book has had a far reaching impact on the anarchist and Syndicalist movements, reading the book and the history of its influence would be a good project for us. 

She proposed this reading group could be a kind of small focus group on the question of what Mutual Aid is, and what our anarchist and syndicalist literature means when we use the word Mutual Aid. And further, how do our Revolutionary Syndicalist commitments relate to  science in our own time?

Especially now, in a time of pandemic, we are more likely to use the word Mutual Aid in our propaganda, as a uniquely anarchist  contribution to overcoming the catastrophe.

This could be a perfect time for us to make this re-examination, to ask ourselves some harder questions of when, and under what conditions can Mutual Aid be revolutionary?