Produced by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com
MUTUAL AID
A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION
BY P. KROPOTKIN
1902
INTRODUCTION
Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which Imade in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of themwas the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which mostspecies of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; theenormous destruction of life which periodically results from naturalagencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territorywhich fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in thosefew spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed tofind—although I was eagerly looking for it—that bitter struggle forthe means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species,which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwinhimself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and themain factor of evolution.
The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion ofEurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that oftenfollows them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year inthe second half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom andinsect life swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, theheavy snowfalls in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads ofinsects, as well as the second broods of the birds in the prairies; thetorrential rains, due to the monsoons, which fall in more temperateregions in August and September—resulting in inundations on a scalewhich is only known in America and in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on theplateaus, areas as wide as European States; and finally, the heavysnowfalls, early in October, which eventually render a territory aslarge as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable for ruminants, anddestroy them by the thousand—these were the conditions under which Isaw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me realize at anearly date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what Darwindescribed as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in comparisonto the struggle between individuals of the same species for the means ofsubsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited extent, butnever attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life,under-population—not over-population—being the distinctive feature ofthat immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceivedsince then serious doubts—which subsequent study has only confirmed—asto the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within eachspecies, which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and,consequently, as to the dominant part which this sort of competition wassupposed to play in the evolution of new species.
On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, forinstance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions ofindividuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies ofrodents; in the migrations of birds which took place at that time on atruly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in a migration offallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores ofthousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immenseterritory, flying before the coming deep snow, in order to cross theAmur where it is narrowest—in all these scenes of animal life whichpassed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on toan extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatestimportance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of eachspecies, a