5.1 Peter Kropotkin’s 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Many trace the lineage of coöperationism through Peter Kropotkin’s 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.²⁷⁴ Kropotkin’s book was a scientific intervention, intended to prove that solidarity, rather than competition, was central to animal flourishing and evolution, including among humans. Although the notion of evolution suggests that Kropotkin was writing in response to Charles Darwin, he was actually responding more directly to the essay by Thomas Huxley, “The Struggle for Existence.”²⁷⁵ Nevertheless, Kropotkin was clearly making an evolutionary argument in the wake of Darwinian theory. As Jia Tolentino of the New Yorker explains:

Kropotkin identifies solidarity as an essential practice in the lives of swallows and marmots and primitive hunter-gatherers; coöperation, he argues, was what allowed people in medieval villages and nineteenth-century farming syndicates to survive. That inborn solidarity has been undermined, in his view, by the principle of private property and the work of state institutions. Even so, he maintains, mutual aid is “the necessary foundation of everyday life” in downtrodden communities, and “the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.”²⁷⁶

Kropotkin, himself an anarchist, pushed his argument toward the abolition of private property and state institutions.

Many political theorists, though, trace coöperationism further back to the early nineteenth century and the social utopians like Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Louis Blanc, as well as to the British practitioner, William King. The histories of coöperatives and of the birth of the coöperatives movement always refers primarily to Owen and Fourier. In Europe, a key historical moment for the coöperatives movement was the establishment of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844, which is often considered to be the archetype and exemplar for modern coöperative associations.²⁷⁷

In the United States, the histories of coöperatives most often pay homage to Benjamin Franklin. Franklin founded a mutual fire insurance company in 1752, the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, which is considered by many as the first recognized coöperative business in the United States and the oldest property insurance company in the country.²⁷⁸ It continues to operate today under the name “The Philadelphia Contributionship.”²⁷⁹ Other key historical moments for the emergence of coöperatives in the United States include the organization in 1810 of the first recorded dairy and cheese coöperatives, which were then followed by coöperatives for other agricultural commodities²⁸⁰; the establishment of “The Cooperative League of the United States of America” (CLUSA) in 1916, which was intended to promote a broad coöperative agenda²⁸¹; the passage of a first credit union statute in the state of Massachusetts in 1909²⁸²; and the passage in 1922 of the Capper-Volstead Act, in response to the Sherman Antitrust Act, allowing farmers to work together coöperatively, under certain circumstances, to process and market commodities.²⁸³

Here, for instance, is a good illustration of a history of the coöperatives movement from Lynn Pitman of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives—a premier academic research center dedicated to the promotion of coöperatives:²⁸⁴

The development of U.S. cooperative organizations is rooted in the upheavals that characterized the Industrial Revolution in England during 1750-1850. During this period many small, home-based enterprises disappeared, forcing workers to move to cities where they faced harsh working conditions and low wages. In rural areas, the enclosure movement and changes in land tenure patterns drove many small farmers off their lands into towns and cities looking for work.

Building on trade and social guild traditions, mutual aid and “friendly society” organizations sprang up to address the conditions of the times, and contributed to the development of the cooperative business ideas. Robert Owen (1771-1858) and Charles Fourier (1772-1837), searching for paths to a more harmonious, utopian society, articulated arguments that provided a broader rationale for cooperative organizations.

The more pragmatic William King (1786-1865) advocated the development of consumer cooperatives to address working class issues. His self-published magazine, “The Cooperator,” provided information on cooperative practice as well as theory. King emphasized small cooperatives that could be started with capital supplied by members. He stressed the use of democratic principles of governance, and the education of the public about cooperatives.

The wave of consumer cooperatives that followed were part of a broader vision in which social needs could be met through cooperative action. The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, considered the prototype for the modern cooperative association, was organized in 1844.