Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Mutual Aid

  • A Factor of Evolution
  • By: Pyotr Kropotkin
  • Narrated by: Peter Kenny
  • Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
  • 4.9 out of 5 stars (22 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Mutual Aid cover art

Mutual Aid

By: Pyotr Kropotkin
Narrated by: Peter Kenny
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.00

Buy Now for £13.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Conquest of Bread cover art
Fields, Factories, and Workshops cover art
Anarchism and Other Essays cover art
Debt - Updated and Expanded cover art
History of the Russian Revolution cover art
On Anarchism cover art
Quarterly Essay 1: In Denial cover art
Our America cover art
The Jakarta Method cover art
God and the State cover art
Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Iroquois Confederacy cover art
African Genesis cover art
American Slavery, American Freedom cover art
Seeing Like a State cover art
1619 cover art
The Philosophy of Social Ecology cover art

Summary

Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), one of the most individual political figures of his time, is best known as an influential anarchist communist. But he was also a scientist, geographer and philosopher, a man who, having grown up on his aristocratic father’s extensive country estate in Russia, had a deep understanding of and love for animals (wild and domesticated), the countryside and wildernesses. And all this was underpinned by a life committed to work for the good of humanity.

Though his two best-known works, The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops, are revolutionary economic texts, Mutual Aid, a collection of essays published in 1902, is a jewel of another kind. In it, Kropotkin argues that Darwin’s views on evolution and the survival of the fittest show only one aspect of life on planet Earth. Taking a kindlier - but equally scientific - look at the existence and growth of societies, both animal and human, Kropotkin takes great pains to demonstrate that the principal of mutual aid is just as important a feature in life on Earth - in fact, even more important.

In this most engaging, absorbing and even endearing book, Kropotkin shows that societies evolve and develop better though the principle of mutual aid than by challenge, conflict and conquest. His chapter headings provide the overview: 'Mutual Aid Among Animals', 'Among Savages', 'Among the Barbarians', 'In the Medieval City', and 'Amongst Ourselves'. His positive and uplifting conclusion is clear: ‘In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of man, mutual support - not mutual struggle - has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.’

This humane attitude was the driver behind his politics, because Kropotkin the scientist was also very much a political personality. But Mutual Aid is endlessly entertaining and informative because it contains thousands of well-documented examples of his thesis, whether drawn from colonies of ants and bees, or ‘mutual protection among small birds; or rodents and ruminants; Bushmen, Eskimos, Caucasian mountaineers; village life in Switzerland, Germany; or from the history of Guilds and trade unions.’ Mutual Aid - A Factor of Evolution is a classic that should be far more widely known and appreciated.

Public Domain (P)2019 Ukemi Productions Ltd

What listeners say about Mutual Aid

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    19
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    19
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    16
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

excellent

Read in two parts due to other reading however I loved the truth it holds

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

Very passionately read which makes listening immensely enjoyable and fascinating. Much more than other readings

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!