[policepost]

This is sort of the fundamental building block of many socialist and anarchist movements.

The concept of "mutual aid" as put forward by folks like Kropotkin is basically we should build communities that help one another, offering our communities excess when we have our, and gracefully accepting aid when we need it.

[ramesh31]

>This is sort of the fundamental building block of many socialist and anarchist movements.

It's also the fundamental error that all of the "self reliant, self sufficient" doomsday prepper types make. When the apocalypse comes, your little homestead will be nothing but a supply cache for raiders. It doesn't matter how many guns you have. Without a functioning, hierarchical, tight knit community to aid in defense, you and your family will be sold off to the first band of roaming slavers that come through.

[high_5]

That was the way of life for any community before industrial revolution. It appears that all attempts at creating such communities have more or less failed, because they eventually become coopted either for or against capitalistic economy.

[getmeinrn]

They tend not to fail when religion is a pillar in the community. The Amish and Mennonites are great examples.

[willcipriano]

I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed in a regliously and ethnically diverse population. People have to be basically related to one another, sharing a core common belief for it to work.

[nologic01]

We are all related to each other. A pandemic can wipe us out. A major climate event or a nuclear accident can wreak havoc, increasingly high tech wars can eliminate billions.

We choose to downplay our common dependencies and exaggerate the differences. Its a social game we have learned to play when the stakes for our collective survival were lower.

[varjag]

This is an improperly low level of abstraction to the problem, akin to "we're all made of atoms". True and useless.

[em-bee]

on the contrary, everyone of us needs to realize that we are part of a global community and that all of our actions accumulate to have an effect across the world. so instead of saying that this will never work because we are to diverse, instead we need to strive and MAKE IT WORK! put aside our differences, find common ground and build a global cooperative community that includes every human being on this planet.

[nologic01]

What would be the proper level of abstraction according to your view?

[policepost]

Plenty of communes have existed at varying scales historically.

Plus, something like Mondragon exists with a large scale. It's less commune and more workers coop at the billion dollar scale, but it's nevertheless a useful reminder that we can scale up non traditional models.

[majormajor]

Historically the progression has been (oversimplified):

some sort of reciprocal/mutual aid economy -> exchange (usually external) -> joining in with currency and capitalism

In my view the clear main factor is external disruption that forces groups into the market/currency based economy. That, plus the difficulties to control bad actors if you had a more informal system at huge scale (millions of people).

Without the external economic disruption you simply just don't get much diversity.

As far as specific events, things like disaster assistance volunteer operations in the West tend to be both religiously and ethnically diverse yet performed independently of expected remuneration. Otherwise it's not like we're observing huge samples if we restrict ourselves to looking just for communities that have both been religiously and ethnically diverse. Is the failure of any such alternate community to last for centuries - when the opportunity has barely even been there for that long - conclusive at all?

[neolefty]

I think the trick is to learn how to scale it up. One view of human history is to see it as increasing scales of fellow-feeling and practical cooperation.

[jonathankoren]

That's not true. That's common misinformation, but it's not true. In fact it's not just wrong, but it's the exact opposite of what happens.

You just have to look at pretty much any disaster. Communities come together. They do not become cannibalistic hordes like peppers think. This has been proven again, again, and again. There's entire studies on it.

[forgetfulness]

Both happen, you'll get both neighborhoods organizing as tribes, and the roving gangs of looters and arsonists, the former may spring up in response to the latter.

At least that was the experience in Chile in the most affected localities of the 2010 magnitude 8.8 earthquake.

We called down the breakdown of social order that happened "the social earthquake". Eventually the military had to instate curfews to restore public order, though it was taken to be a display of cracks existing in society that the looting happened in the first place rather than just taken for granted as what will happen in face of disruption of social order, which is the prepper view.

[MisterBastahrd]

The Cajun navy, for example, is well documented as going out to other communities including out of state communities that do not share the same ethnicity and have helped people for years in flood conditions. Only helping people out because of the religion they follow is utterly barbaric anyway.

[RajT88]

Hippie communes. No, seriously.

There needs to be some organizing principle for it to work though - some shared belief in a greater good everyone works towards. Similarly, this is how communism could work without bloodshed (some of those hippie communes are close to classical Marxism).

[landemva]

Those communities have mechanisms to censor mis-behaving persons. Participants must agree, when entering the group, to social rules including censure.

[licebmi__at__]

Feminist concerns aside, I don’t think mutual aid has really succeeded in a hard hierarchical society like these who are explicitly patriarchal, even if it appears like it does to external observers.

[high_5]

You mean like Japan or China? Or Koreas? No success there, nope /s

But they drank all the Western kool-aid they could, though and it slowly shows.

[licebmi__at__]

I don’t say they don’t work. I’m saying that the concept of mutual aid as described by Kropotkin, has not succeeded there. Please refrain to engage in sarcasm if your reading and context understanding is that poor.

[squirtlebonflow]

Unfortunately, the term mutual aid has been co-opted by democrats to mean "charity". Likely because there is a stigma in our society around accepting help...

[johnchristopher]

Democrats mean different things to an international audience. Which democrats are we talking about here ?

[thumbuddy]

Who knows but what is evident is it's just an angry Republican who is struggling to see beyond duality...

[toolz]

You've just committed the same offense you're rebuking someone for. It's not evident that person is republican, it's only evident that they blame the democrats for a problem.

[thumbuddy]

Somewhere between right and wrong there is a field. I will meet you there.

[toolz]

I agree that gray area is optimal, but I don't think you can afford yourself that kind of charity while not providing it to someone else in the very same comment.

Do unto others how you want others to do unto you. If you want to judge strictly, you shouldn't ask to be judged with leniency.

[policepost]

I actually read the critique of democrats are coming from the left. Left wing folks tend to hate the Dems (who are a center right party).