r/Anarchy101 • u/JennaSais • 1d ago
Am I wrong in my understanding of Mutual Aid?
It's very trendy right now, especially on Bluesky and in some Discord servers I'm on, to set up GoFundMe's and share Cashapps for people who are short on rent money or who need help with medical expenses, and to brand those as "mutual aid requests." It's often from people who are not likely to be able to return the favour to someone else (and no shame in that).
I had always taken Mutual Aid to mean that it's, well, mutual. That it's distinct from charity in that everyone involved benefits from it, rather than being a top-down approach in which the donors don't benefit from it except for maybe feeling some gratification. So it strikes me as odd that that those requests are being called MA, when it looks a lot more like charity.
I think what I'm seeing is that it's trendier to call these types of requests for assistance MA requests, rather than accurately describing them as charity. But it's also so prevalent that I wonder if I've just misunderstood what MA is all along. Am I wrong about what MA is supposed to be?
29
u/Rolletariat 1d ago
Mutual aid fundamentally is aid between peers, working class people helping each other out in arrangements that they may theoretically benefit from, rather than condescending patriarchal support from wealthy people who think they know what's best for you.
In this regard I think fundraising is a form of mutual aid, I don't think it is as effective as building long-term horizontally organized networks of support, but it is mutual aid nonetheless.
3
u/JennaSais 1d ago
That makes sense. Thanks!
4
u/Rolletariat 1d ago edited 1d ago
In a way you can see the rise of GoFundMe and the like as the emergence of a decentralized social insurance net based on impromptu action rather than government welfare or corporate-for-profit insurance, it has its flaws but it is capable of being relatively nimble and efficient (but nowhere near comprehensive or reliable).
3
u/DirtyPenPalDoug 1d ago
That is basically hopeful mutial aid.. you hope the person will pay it forward.
Mutial aid can be online community's but it usually has a irl community as well. Many of my mutial aid organizations are local, we do group buys, have meetings, etc. We have online groups for organizing and assisting as well.
4
u/turnmeintocompostplz 9h ago edited 7h ago
A lot of apología for using the phrase in place of charity or assistance. All good and well-meaning, but you need reciprocation and online fundraisers don't uphold that.
If they are a known part of a community who DOES do something/has involvement and is in dire straits and needs more aid at the moment, that's one thing - that's part of the 'mutual' part. Direct assistance in general can also be important even if they aren't involved in a community. But mutual aid is a specific thing with specific outcomes.
I don't have a lot of money or things to give, but I will give my time and administer to things. I bring in what I can as I can do so, and I'll do the collection/distribution parts.
There's a role for everyone at different capacities, but everyone involved needs to take on a role.
7
u/Anurhu 1d ago
ehhh I would label this as charity under capitalism
I use the term "mutual aid" with the understanding that it is mutual.
Around here, I grew up being taught to be "neighborly" in that you look out for your neighbors in any way you can, understanding that you'd want them to do the same should the need arise.
However, I somewhat disagree with the concept of money being used as aid in the first place. I get that our capitalist society will be fed with cash or blood. But, these kinds of aid requests often feel like begging with no intent to contribute to the greater good or return the favor. Therefore, most of the time, I personally object and refrain from participation.
3
u/Legal-Law9214 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean, yes, you understand correctly for the most part, but I think you're forgetting just how deep structural inequality goes, and how that impacts what mutual aid means and what it looks like.
Imagine that one of my friends/online mutuals shares a gofundme request, for them or for someone they know or follow, and I donate some money because I can spare it. In theory, if I were to fall on hard luck, and that person had received the assistance that they needed and were in a better place, I might post a GoFundMe and they might donate. If we were both in the same online circles where I had seen their request to begin with, then it seems likely that a post I might make would be shared by some of the same people and make it back to someone I had helped, who would then return the favor. This would be mutual aid as you are thinking of it - everyone comes together to share these requests and everyone benefits from it when they are the ones in need.
This actually does happen in practice sometimes - you'll see it, for example, in queer communities, when someone might generally be financially okay but then they need to ask for help with a transition related expense like a surgery. Often these people do donate to others requests in the same groups, later on after they have been able to pay for their own expenses.
However, in reality - it is pretty likely that I continue to be privileged and the person who was asking for help continues to be disadvantaged by all the same factors that led us to being in these situations to begin with. My donation to a Palestinian family who is fleeing Gaza, for example - it might help them obtain some food or shelter or medical care, but it won't give them their home back. They will continue to be refugees relying on the kindness of others for, in all likelihood, a very long time. Meanwhile, I have an education and a stable job and parents who are still alive and earning their own money. I will probably never be in a position where I am less fortunate than those refugees and need to ask them for help.
In a utopia where we are all truly equal, mutual aid will look much more like the ideal that you describe. Everyone comes together to help someone who has a temporary need, and then later they will pay it back when someone else needs something, and the cycle will continue with people lifting eachother up forever. But we do not live in a utopia.
To me, in today's world, charity IS mutual aid. If I were to only engage in mutual aid when I felt like it would be repaid, I would not be helping the people who need it the most. If everyone in the world gave away everything they possibly could to charity, then it would probably start to look a lot more like your idea of mutual aid. But the sad reality is that many of these people will never receive enough assistance to be able to pay it back. Mutual aid as it is in reality does not look like mutual aid should in a perfect world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do it.
It also doesn't mean we shouldn't try to build models that show what could be possible. I engage in mutual aid both by donating to people who will never be able to return the favor AND by pooling my resources with people who are my economic peers to create community resources - such as working on a community farm and helping to purchase supplies for it. The latter is more how we conceptualize mutual aid, because we like to think of concepts and systems in their perfect form, untainted by the conditions of reality. However, those conditions mean that in many cases, the theory of mutual aid will, in practice, look a lot more like charity. This is a great tragedy, but to me engaging in imperfect forms of mutual aid is much better than waiting until conditions allow for the perfect forms to exist.
The thing that keeps it "mutual" is that ideally they will be able to someday help me OR someone else. They will probably help someone somehow, even if its as simple as being able to feed their child, who might grow up to be a great doctor who saves a lot of lives. That's the other thing about mutual aid - it might not come back to me, specifically, but it will probably eventually come back to someone and make the world better in some way.
2
u/countuition 19h ago
I think OP is questioning your broad view of mutual aid in its strategic efficacy. Is it truly helpful toward revolutionary ends to siphon mutual aid money to those who “most need it” in an online sphere where everyone is connected to everything, while not existing in proximal community? How much money is spent on harm reduction that leads to no revolutionary development due to the extreme and expensive oppression experienced by those receiving these funds/resources?
Rather than diluting mutual aid to “anything we do that helps other oppressed people”, can we perhaps consider OP’s question typologically? There are certainly patterns of community care that feel like mutual aid, but do not lead to furtherance of or networks for community mutual aid. The idea that “this will hopefully lead to them helping the next person” falls into more of a karmic belief system, which again is not a bad thing, than an intentional approach to what mutual aid can look like. It seems OP is getting at this lack of organization behind what those in desperate need (or those advocating for them) may be misattributing as “mutual aid requests”.
-1
u/Legal-Law9214 9h ago edited 9h ago
Well, I think I simply disagree with you about how worth it this form of aid is and if it builds those networks.
Remember, we are talking about something like a GoFundMe here, NOT an anonymous charity where all donations are funneled through a third party to many other people.
If I am able to see someone's GoFundMe online, it means we are in community and we have a shared network of mutual peers that allowed their request to reach me. By donating to and/or sharing that GoFundMe request, I am bolstering the bonds of that network and making it stronger so that future requests have even better chances of success. I really don't see how that could possibly be considered something other than mutual aid, or how anyone could argue that it's not worth doing when I can spare the resources to do it.
I also highly disagree that this is some kind of hope for karmic redistribution as you put it. I do not pretend to know whether someone I help will eventually be able to return the favor or not. I am not automatically assuming that the only good my donation will do is the potential future good that someone's child might do. How do I know that someone who benefits from my donation won't donate back to others GoFundMe's? While it's possible that they won't be able to, soon or ever, it's also very possible that they can. Why should I not have faith that their situation will improve enough that they can participate more robustly in this online aid network? If we all assume that they won't be able to participate, and thus don't give anything because we think it's only worth it when we're guaranteed to be bolstering a mutual network, we have secured the conditions that make it so they will in fact never be able to participate in that network. The more we assume the best, and donate & help others out in good faith, the more likely it is that they will in fact be able to put more resources back into our shared network.
I am not in the business of predicting the future or judging how worthy or able someone is of participating in mutual aid. If we had enough shared connections that I saw their request for aid, then we are in community, and helping any member of my community inherently makes it stronger and helps me. Yes, I hope that they can in turn help others, but I am not going to make that a requirement before helping them in what ways I can. I have no right or ability to judge how or when someone might return or pass on that aid. I assume that they share some similar values to me and that they will want to return the aid and that they will try to do so if and when they can.
You could see the same kind of situation in an in-person aid network as well. Say the two of us are neighbors and have worked together with our other neighbors to build a collective. If someone showed up asking for help who was extremely disadvantaged - homeless, disabled, sick, etc. and we assumed that they would never be able to give anything back to our collective, so we turned them away - isn't that just cruel, and reinforcing their disadvantaged position? If we did help them - yes, it is possible they still wouldn't have anything to give back. But wouldn't they be incentivized to repay our kindness in whatever way they could? And why wouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt that they would try to do so and would return something to the collective as they are able to?
1
u/countuition 50m ago
Again I’m arguing that these kind of resource sharing are worthwhile, but they may not fall into strategic mutual aid networking. To respond to your point about seeing gofundme’s online and therefore being in community with that person, I have seen countless gofundme’s online of random individuals spread across the globe I do not consider myself in community with (as I imagine everyone has given their online proliferation in the last several years).
I think it’s nice to imagine we are in “community” with every other oppressed person, but that dilutes this term completely (and also erases our subject positions as oppressors of those we are claiming community with), and overlooks defined forms of community which generally refer to shared proximity, culture, and values. We may be part of a global proletariat, which certainly must unite, but is that truly community when it comes to establishing stateless societies and support networks for community care? Defining and interrogating our ideas of “community” and “mutual aid” is indeed worthwhile, and how these differing forms of care can look when it comes to effective revolutionary praxis.
88
u/MagusFool 1d ago
Yeah. Generally, it's considered "mutual aid" insofar as there's an assumption that all the people receiving will also be giving to others who need it when they can.
But in an online setting, where no one is in actual community with each other, and everyone is just asking strangers, that really isn't "mutual aid" in the classic sense of the word. It's a bunch of strangers who will never really interact again, and in a world where many people are very poor for their whole lives, there isn't much chance that this is really coming back around.
Not that it's bad to help out a comrade. But you're right in identifying these requests as charity.
If someone in my local org were to ask for money from the other members, that would be properly mutual aid, because there is an assumption that they all members can rely on each other, and we are providing a mutual safety net.
Mutual aid requires infrastructure. It requires proximity (even virtual proximity), and community, and friendship, and conviviality.