Mutual Aid, Anarchist Preparedness and COVID-19

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on mutual aid disaster relief and associated forms of preparedness instantiated by anarchist and allied autonomous social movements. In order to understand the state perspective on grassroots action, it begins with some background on the current policy context, particularly changes in understanding that have occurred in the shift from Fordist social democracy to post-Fordist neoliberalism. This chapter then considers the phenomenon of mutual aid disaster relief: the current conjecture has seen an unprecedented proliferation of self-identifying mutual aid groups in the UK and globally. While these groups often form the basis of ‘feel good’ news stories, this chapter situates mutual aid in the history of anarchist political thought, first coined by Kropotkin as a radical alternative to the social Darwinism of his era, and in working-class social practice. This chapter presents the contemporary anarchist position drawing on sources written by anarchists in response to the COVID-19 crisis, particularly in the form of internet articles and blogs. It is argued that mutual aid is part of a broader anarchist movement, which engages in more confrontational activities such as strikes and occupations as well as longer-term co-operative infrastructure and permaculture projects, in order to defend a sphere of autonomy from capitalism. The anarchist response links local, immediate actions like mutual aid to structural critiques of capitalism, and to longer-term infrastructure building, and needs to resist attempts by state and capital to recuperate and co-opt their radical activities into bureaucratised and regulated forms of ‘social capital’.