Most leftists know the pandemic kicked up a lot of interest in mutual aid. And most of us like mutual aid, even if we hesitate on it. Not all of us, though, which raises a few issues.
When we debate mutual aid, either pro or con, we almost always start by distinguishing it from charity. Supporters say it’s better than charity, while opponents say it’s just charity wrapped in leftist rhetoric. In other words, both sides agree that mutual aid is (mostly) good and charity is (mostly) bad. They usually disagree only on which box – ‘mutual aid’ or ‘charity’ – in which we ought to place certain projects.
I’ll take a new route here. I’ll argue that the distinction between mutual aid and charity doesn’t help us decide what to do as leftists. Why? It’s a false dichotomy, and it doesn’t cleanly map onto ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ anyway. In practice, most projects flying the ‘mutual aid’ banner use both mutual aid and charity. Often they’re a mix of the two, and at other times they’re something in between. This false dichotomy, then, leads us astray when we decide what to work on.
Let’s talk details.
Mutual Aid vs. Charity: The (Apparent) Distinction
What do people have in mind when they distinguish mutual aid from charity? In fact, different sources say lots of things. And while these things appear coherent on the surface, this covers over odd tensions.
Let’s take a look at an article in The Cut that presents several definitions of ‘mutual aid.’ It defines it first as a system where “people work cooperatively to meet the needs of everyone in the community.” Then it defines it as “an act of solidarity that builds sustained networks between neighbors.” It’s “not just a response to crisis, but instead, a more permanent alliance between people united against a common struggle.”
These definitions center community needs. Other sources tend to put emphasis on horizontal structure. The wikipedia article on mutual aid, for example, calls it a “voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit.” While I don’t usually advocate using wikipedia as a major source, this comes pretty close to historical definitions.
For a third route, Mariame Kaba explicitly contrasts mutual aid to community service. For Kaba, with mutual aid “you’re not doing service for service’s sake. You’re trying to address real material needs.”
Kaba opens up a useful way to draw a contrast to charity. Leftists define ‘charity’ as a one-way relationship between a giver of aid (maybe individuals, maybe NGOs or non-profits) and a recipient of aid (people in need). Many claim that this addresses only symptoms of problems rather than causes.
A Muddled Distinction, At Best
This all sounds nice on paper. We have participatory, democratic aid for working-class communities with material needs (mutual aid), on the one hand, and a system geared around putting band-aids on the results of capitalism (charity), on the other. The former is about people giving and receiving aid, in turn. In the end, it’s about social reproduction, helping working-class people to survive so they can unite into a common class that fights for its interests. By contrast, the latter separates givers and receivers.
But this all gets muddled as soon as we kick the tires or look into the details. Why? For one, the things people define as ‘mutual aid’ often don’t go together in practice. Some groups address real needs, as Kaba would have it, but they can do so either democratically or non-democratically. And they can do so with many different kinds of structure.
Second, in practice, we often find groups doing both mutual aid and charity, or things that sit somewhere in the middle. Certain things tend to fit very well into the mutual aid ideal of giving and receiving, in turn. Consider, for example, skill share workshops or potluck dinners, where (almost) everyone can give and receive. Other groups do things like food aid or rent relief, which is almost always a one-way relationship between giver and receiver. And some groups rely heavily on a core set of volunteers who give far more often than they receive.
Not Necessarily Good or Bad
Critics of mutual aid tend to see those latter cases – groups that give in a one-sided manner – as always bad. That’s what they oppose. They imply that those groups aren’t doing good work.
But I don’t think that’s fair. At all. And this unfairness gets at the heart of the issue of why the distinction we began with is a bad one. Some working-class people suffer from great material needs. People with these needs – homelessness, hunger, and so on – might not be able to give back. If they need the kinds of aid that tend to be one-sided – food aid, rent relief, etc. – they need to receive that aid before getting to a position where they can give, in turn.
Sure, groups can stick to things that easily fit the core ‘mutual aid’ model. They can do nothing but skill share workshops and potluck dinners. But that might not really address the community needs the group set out to address. This means they might need to do a few things closer to ‘charity.’
And that’s fine.
Mutual Aid vs. Charity: A False Dichotomy
And so, we have a false dichotomy here (see the note below). Some mutual aid groups sometimes do charity. I’d even say this includes most of them. And often they do things in between the two camps. As long as they run it in a democratic and participatory way – and they keep in mind the key goal of strengthening working-class communities – that’s OK! Indeed, it’s exactly what they should do.
From this situation, people should stop bashing mutual aid groups for ‘really doing charity.’ And, in turn, those groups themselves should stop denying that what they’re doing is charity. The best groups start from a vision of how to best build a working-class community, and then they use the tools and methods best suited to reaching that vision.
A Note on False Dichotomies
My background is in philosophy, where we use terms like ‘false dichotomy‘ all the time, and we all know what it means. But some of you come from different backgrounds. I reviewed informal fallacies in a different post. But I’ll say a word here on false dichotomies.
A false dichotomy is where someone presents a range of options as the total of all options available, when, in fact, there are additional ones they’re not considering. A person usually presents it in order to rule out options they don’t want to talk about.
‘Mutual aid’ and ‘charity’ count as a false dichotomy because they’re not clearly distinct from one another and there are other options available (e.g., mixing the two approaches, doing things that don’t quite fit into either camp, et al.).
