We all know the eventual answer, which the discovery of genes made possible. Animals were simply trying to maximize the propagation of their own genetic codes. Curiously, this view—which eventually came to be referred to as neo-Darwinian—was developed largely by figures who considered themselves radicals of one sort or another.

Mutual Aid grew from a series of essays written in response to Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known Social Darwinist, and summarized the Russian understanding of the day, which was that while competition was undoubtedly one factor driving both natural and social evolution, the role of cooperation was ultimately decisive.

An alternative school of Darwinism emerged in Russia emphasizing cooperation, not competition, as the driver of evolutionary change. In 1902 this approach found a voice in a popular book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, by naturalist and revolutionary anarchist pamphleteer Peter Kropotkin.

the early insights of Kropotkin in Mutual Aid find contemporary scientific validation. Kropotkin’s idea was that evolution, although partly consisting of both conflict and cooperation within and between species, was more fundamentally a result of cooperation and mutual aid. This insight can now be re-asserted as crucial for all aspects of human enterprise. As he wrote, “in the practice of mutual aid, which can be traced to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support—not mutual struggle—has had the leading part.”[11]

Collegial pedagogy, a term introduced by Lissa Soep and Vivian Chávez, describes a dynamic where both teacher and learner stand mutually invested in a shared project, where neither party could complete the work without the other. They need each other to get it right. “Collegiality is a relationship of shared collective responsibility.”

mutual care

Mutual aid societies were built on the razed foundations of the old  guilds, and cooperatives and mass political parties then drew on the  experience of the mutual aid societies."