The other critique I have of mutual aid is that typically the same people who think it's empowering to work "political education" into repairing people's taillights will characterize the practice of feeding the hungry but also "sharing the Gospel" with them as exploitative religious coercion. And I'm honestly not sure exactly where I stand on trying to bring people into your ideology while you've got them there because you're meeting their basic needs, but I think I'm more inclined to sympathize with the idea that it's exploitative.
I don't think the advantage of public health charities over GiveDirectly is entirely, maybe not even primarily, about knowledge asymmetries. It's at least in part about externalities and coordination. An individual family only wants a couple malaria nets; the Against Malaria Foundation can get a much better deal on several thousand. And each net kills mosquitoes and slows transmission, protecting more people than just the family using it. So it's possible for every individual family in an area to prefer "everyone gets malaria nets" over "everyone gets the same amount of money as cash", but not be able to turn cash into malaria net coverage as effectively as a large-scale charity that's been around for years.
I notice I am confused: what conceptually separates mutual aid from the (presumably broader) set of reciprocal assistance activities practiced in all communities?
For instance, I note that you write that "communities of color and working-class communities have always had mutual-aid practices, and everyone starts doing mutual aid when a flood or a fire hits."
But ethnically-dominant, wealthy communities not in emergencies also have (often intense!) structures of reciprocal assistance. The acts in question may be different; I suppose the central example of "mutual aid" is "I scrape together a hundred bucks to help pay for my neighbor's abortion" while the central example of dominant reciprocal assistance would be something like "I get my frat-brother's kid a high-paying sinecure at my firm". But that seems to suggest a continuum in practice rather than a conceptual distinction, and I suspect there may be something fundamental I'm missing.
"It’s important to contrast this with the empowering work of mutual aid—superficially similar, actually very different!"
I mean, I don't *disagree* with this. But I think most advocates of the conventional work-welfare model don't consider the requirements to be pointless busywork, at least in their ideal version of the program. The "pointless busywork" is a failure mode of conventional welfare, not the objective. The fact that it's a very common failure mode is certainly a point against the conventional welfare model, to be sure, but it's also a reason to cautiously consider whether that same failure mode might also exist for other models where work participation is expected.
This post made me appreciate anarchism a bit more, since I finally see an example of praxis that is concerned more with creating than with destroying (internet anarchists seem to be much more proud of protests, riots and fantasies of beheading rich people).
It seems like the main benefit of mutual aid (whether it's the main intended function or not) is to build up social trust. That's an important cause, since trust is possibly the most important factor in how good a certain place is to live. It also must be especially important in an anarchic society, where you can't rely on a rigid legal system to stand up for you. It's basically a slow and steady struggle uphill against Moloch.
There used to be - and in cheaper cost of living areas with more homemakers there still is - a giving economy from/among homemakers for childcare, volunteer work, meal trains, and other mutual aid in the community.
IIRC Elizabeth Warren talks about this in The Two-Income Trap, as does Leah Libresco on her blog:
In small tight knit communities charity is mutual aid. The problem is how to scale up to the whole world or even the whole city. Does the book address that question?
The other critique I have of mutual aid is that typically the same people who think it's empowering to work "political education" into repairing people's taillights will characterize the practice of feeding the hungry but also "sharing the Gospel" with them as exploitative religious coercion. And I'm honestly not sure exactly where I stand on trying to bring people into your ideology while you've got them there because you're meeting their basic needs, but I think I'm more inclined to sympathize with the idea that it's exploitative.
I don't think the advantage of public health charities over GiveDirectly is entirely, maybe not even primarily, about knowledge asymmetries. It's at least in part about externalities and coordination. An individual family only wants a couple malaria nets; the Against Malaria Foundation can get a much better deal on several thousand. And each net kills mosquitoes and slows transmission, protecting more people than just the family using it. So it's possible for every individual family in an area to prefer "everyone gets malaria nets" over "everyone gets the same amount of money as cash", but not be able to turn cash into malaria net coverage as effectively as a large-scale charity that's been around for years.
I notice I am confused: what conceptually separates mutual aid from the (presumably broader) set of reciprocal assistance activities practiced in all communities?
For instance, I note that you write that "communities of color and working-class communities have always had mutual-aid practices, and everyone starts doing mutual aid when a flood or a fire hits."
But ethnically-dominant, wealthy communities not in emergencies also have (often intense!) structures of reciprocal assistance. The acts in question may be different; I suppose the central example of "mutual aid" is "I scrape together a hundred bucks to help pay for my neighbor's abortion" while the central example of dominant reciprocal assistance would be something like "I get my frat-brother's kid a high-paying sinecure at my firm". But that seems to suggest a continuum in practice rather than a conceptual distinction, and I suspect there may be something fundamental I'm missing.
"It’s important to contrast this with the empowering work of mutual aid—superficially similar, actually very different!"
I mean, I don't *disagree* with this. But I think most advocates of the conventional work-welfare model don't consider the requirements to be pointless busywork, at least in their ideal version of the program. The "pointless busywork" is a failure mode of conventional welfare, not the objective. The fact that it's a very common failure mode is certainly a point against the conventional welfare model, to be sure, but it's also a reason to cautiously consider whether that same failure mode might also exist for other models where work participation is expected.
This post made me appreciate anarchism a bit more, since I finally see an example of praxis that is concerned more with creating than with destroying (internet anarchists seem to be much more proud of protests, riots and fantasies of beheading rich people).
It seems like the main benefit of mutual aid (whether it's the main intended function or not) is to build up social trust. That's an important cause, since trust is possibly the most important factor in how good a certain place is to live. It also must be especially important in an anarchic society, where you can't rely on a rigid legal system to stand up for you. It's basically a slow and steady struggle uphill against Moloch.
There used to be - and in cheaper cost of living areas with more homemakers there still is - a giving economy from/among homemakers for childcare, volunteer work, meal trains, and other mutual aid in the community.
IIRC Elizabeth Warren talks about this in The Two-Income Trap, as does Leah Libresco on her blog:
https://www.otherfeminisms.com/p/you-pay-for-slack-either-way
I liked this article
In small tight knit communities charity is mutual aid. The problem is how to scale up to the whole world or even the whole city. Does the book address that question?