Professor of biosociology Mr. Imanishi from Kyoto University (Japan) showed that the theory of the struggle of species completely ignored a large number of cases of co-development, symbiosis and harmonious coexistence, which prevail in all nature during evolution. Even our own bodies would not be able to stay alive for long without the symbiotic cooperation of billions of microorganisms, for example, in our digestive tract.
Evolutionary biologist Elisabeth Saturis also points out that the dominance of competitive behavior is characteristic only of young systems that first appeared in the world. In contrast, in mature systems, like the old forest, competition for light, for example, is balanced by intense collaboration among species. Species that do not learn to cooperate with other related species invariably disappear.
According to Kessler, in addition to the law of mutual struggle, in nature there is also the law of "mutual assistance", which for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of species, plays a much more important role than the law of mutual struggle. The importance of the factor of Mutual Aid did not escape the attention of Goethe, in which the genius of the natural scientist was so clearly manifested.
Mutual assistance, Justice, Morality - these are the successive steps of the ascending series of moods that we learn when studying the animal world and man. They represent an organic necessity, carrying in itself its own justification, confirmed by the entire development of the animal world, starting from its first stages (in the form of colonies of the simplest animals) and gradually rising to the highest human societies. Speaking figuratively, we have here a universal, world law of organic evolution, as a result of which the feelings of Mutual Aid, Justice and Morality are deeply embedded in a person with all the strength of innate instincts; moreover, the first of them, the instinct of mutual assistance, is obviously the strongest of all, and the third, which developed later than the first two, is a fickle feeling and is considered the least obligatory.
Like the need for food, shelter, and sleep, these three instincts represent the instincts for self-preservation. Of course, at times they can weaken under the influence of certain conditions, and we know many cases where, for one reason or another, these instincts are weakened in one or another group of animals or in one or another human society. But then this group is inevitably defeated in the struggle for existence: it goes to decline. And if this group does not return to the conditions necessary for survival and progressive development, i.e. to Mutual Aid, Justice and Morality, it, whether it is a tribe or a species, dies out and disappears. Since it has not fulfilled the necessary conditions for progressive development, it inevitably goes to decline and disappearance.
Mutual assistance is as natural a law as mutual struggle; but for the progressive development of the species, the first is incomparably more important than the second. In the animal world, the vast majority of species live in communities and that in sociability they find the best weapon for the struggle for existence, understanding, of course, this term in its broad, Darwinian sense: not as a struggle for direct livelihood, but as a struggle against all natural conditions, unfavorable for the species. The mutual protection obtained in such cases, and as a result of this - the possibility of reaching old age and the accumulation of experience, higher mental development and further growth of communicative skills - ensure the preservation of the species, its distribution over a wider area and further progressive evolution. On the contrary, uncommunicative species, in the vast majority of cases,condemned to degeneration.
The concept of mutual assistance is opposite to the concept of competition (opposition, conflict) and together with it represents two sides of one and the same phenomenon. One of the important means of ensuring cooperation is the unification of people (and animals) into clans, tribes and tribal alliances for more successful and effective survival and development (that is, to counter threats). Mutual help is based on trust.
We find man living in communities at the very dawn of the Stone Age; we have seen a wide range of social institutions and habits already developed at the stage of development within the genus. The oldest tribal customs and skills gave humanity, in embryo, all those institutions that later served as the main impulses for further progress. The village community grew out of the family life; and a new, even wider circle of sociable customs, skills and institutions, some of which have survived to our time, developed under the canopy of the principles of common ownership of this land and the protection of it by common forces, and under the protection of the judicial rights of the village mundane gathering and the federation of villages that belonged to, or who thought they belonged to the same common tribe. And when new needs prompted people to take a new step in their development,they formed the people's rule of free cities, which represented a double network: land units (village communities) and guilds that arose from the general occupation of a given art or craft, or for mutual protection and support.
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History, as it has been written so far, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which the ecclesiastical, military power, political autocracy, and later the wealthy classes, established and maintained their rule. The struggle between these forces is, in fact, the essence of history. Meanwhile, the factor of mutual assistance has remained completely forgotten until now; writers of the present and past generations simply denied it, or made fun of it. As a result, it was necessary, first of all, to establish the huge role that this factor plays in the evolution of both the animal world and human societies.
The practice of mutual assistance and its consistent development created the very conditions of social life, thanks to which a person was able to develop his crafts and arts, his science and his mind; and we see that the periods when institutions with the aim of mutual assistance reached their highest development were also periods of the greatest progress in the arts, industry and science. Indeed, the study of the inner life of medieval cities and towns of ancient Greece reveals the fact that the combination of mutual assistance, as it was practiced within the guild, with the community or the Greek family, - with a broad initiative given to the individual and the group through the application of the federal principle - gave to mankind, the two greatest periods of its history - the period of the cities of ancient Greece and the period of medieval cities,while the destruction of the institution of mutual assistance, which occurred during the subsequent periods of state history, corresponds in both cases to periods of rapid decline.
The great importance of the beginning of mutual assistance is being revealed, however, especially in the field of ethics, or the doctrine of morality. That mutual assistance is at the heart of all our ethical concepts is clear enough. But whatever opinions we hold about the initial origin of feelings or the instinct of mutual assistance - whether we attribute it to biological or supernatural reasons - we must admit that it is possible to trace its existence already at the lower stages of the animal world, and from these stages we can trace the continuous its evolution through all classes of the animal world and, despite a significant number of opposing influences, through all stages of human development, up to the present time. In the widespread use of the principle of mutual assistance, even now,we also see the best seed for an even more sublime further evolution of the human race.
"The Future of Money" Bernard Lietard.
"Mutual assistance as a factor of evolution", "Ethics. The origin and development of morality. " Kropotkin P. A.