Re:Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid
by serverholic on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:52AM
(#34093827)
Whenever I see someone talk about The Dawn of Everything I like to link this series of video critiques.
The person critiquing generally agrees that humans are cooperative but he takes issue with the author’s general position that people kinda just decide to organize culture in a certain way. Instead the video creator offers a materialist perspective that I find a lot more compelling.
Dawn of Everything shares the latest anthropology about prior societies. Spoiler: Science indicates a whole lot more cooperation than was previously assumed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
I'm quite bullish on the future of cooperatives. Perhaps like the worker directed social enterprises advocated by Richard Wolfe.
One missing "technology" is better, more durable governance. Cooperatives have been vulnerable to corporate capture (or transmutation). Like the farmer's cooperatives of yore. And they need better protection against coups, usurpers.
But surely that's solvable. We have 1,000s of successful examples to learn from.
Imagine a world where participating in a home owner association, local government council, or a volunteer org's executive board wasn't considered cruel and unusual punishment.