Mutual aid
Resources are shared unconditionally, contrasting this model from charity where conditions for gaining access to help are often set, such as means testing or grant stipulations.Mutual aid groups are distinct in their drive to flatten the hierarchy, searching for collective consensus decision-making across participating people rather than placing leadership within a closed executive team.[3] Mutual aid participants work together to figure out strategies and resources to meet each other's needs, such as food, housing, medical care, and disaster relief while organizing themselves against the system that created the shortage in the first place.In the 1800s and early 1900s, mutual aid organizations included unions, the friendly societies that were common throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,[10] medieval craft guilds,[11] the American "fraternity societies" that existed during the Great Depression providing their members with health and life insurance and funeral benefits,[12] and the English working men's clubs of the 1930s that also provided health insurance.[18] During the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid and grassroots solidarity groups around the world organized networks distribution for food and personal protective equipment.
Mutual aid (disambiguation)Libertarian socialismAnti-authoritarianismClass conflictDecentralizationEgalitarian communityFree associationMutual aidRevolutionary spontaneityWorkers' controlAnti-capitalismCo-operative economicsDecentralized planningEconomic democracyIndustrial democracyParticipatory economicsSocializationSocialist economicsWorker cooperativeWorkers' self-managementAlbertAndrewsBakuninBerkmanBookchinCastoriadisChomskyDéjacqueFotopoulosFourierGuérinKropotkinLefortMakhnoMarcosMargallMorrisMarcuseÖcalanPallisPankhurstPannekoekProudhonRockerRussellRühleAnarchistSocial anarchismCommunistCollectivistIndividualist anarchismMarketMutualismAnarcho-syndicalismMarxistAutonomismChaulieu–Montal tendencyCommunizationCouncil communismSituationismWestern MarxismDemocratic confederalismGuild socialismLibertarian municipalismUtopian socialismNeozapatismoInternational Workingmen's AssociationRevolutions of 1917–1923MakhnovshchinaKorean People's Association in ManchuriaSpanish Revolution of 1936New LeftNew social movementsZapatista uprisingRojava RevolutionCommunismLibertarianismSocial democracySocialismDemocratic socialismEco-socialismSyndicalismorganizational modelnatural disasterspandemicsCOVID-19charitymeans testingsoup kitchenMission HallPeter Kropotkinevolutionbiological mutualismnatural selectionsocial Darwinismsurvival of the fittestliberalsJean-Jacques Rousseaunon-hierarchicalnon-bureaucraticegalitarianparticipatory democracyequalityleadershipconsensus-based decision-makingDean Spadesolidarityfriendly societiesmedievalcraft guildsGreat Depressionhealthlife insurancefuneral benefitsworking men's clubsLGBT communitiesBlack Panther PartyCommon Ground Reliefdisaster relief for the 2005 Hurricane KatrinaCOVID-19 pandemicpersonal protective equipmentBenefit societyCommunal workCommunity fridgeGift economyMutual credit