What Bonobos Taught Me About Anarchism (Anarchism for Civilians series)
This is part of a series introducing aspects of anarchism for those new to the idea. As I wrote in Part 1, it is inevitable that there will be some people who will disagree with my representation of anarchism here. And I could never do justice to the complexity of anarchism. So rather than attempting any kind of authoritative definition of anarchism (which would really be contrary to the spirit of the thing), I want instead to dispel some of the myths that I had to unlearn in order to grasp what anarchism is about—this time by talking about what I learned from bonobos.
Lesson 2: Anarchism isn’t about hyper-individualism. Anarchism is about community and cooperation.
When people think of anarchists, they often have in mind a loner, a rebel, somebody who rejects all social norms. This is because we wrongly associate the absence of hierarchy with the absence of social order. Though there are some individualist forms of anarchism, many are actually communalist. Communalist forms of anarchism recognize that no person is an island, that we are already a part of society even before we are born, that our very identities are formed in relation to one another.
This runs counter to the hyper-individualist philosophy that informs much of American politics today, which assumes that individuals exist prior to our relationships and that human relations are inherently adversarial. “Your rights end where my rights begin,” we are told. According to that logic, the more freedom you have, the less freedom I have. The anarchist sees things differently:
“Freedom is not a tiny bubble of personal rights. We cannot be distinguished from each other so easily. Yawning and laughter are contagious; so are enthusiasm and despair. I am composed of the clichés that roll off my tongue, the songs that catch in my head, the moods I contract from my companions. When I drive a car, it releases pollution into the atmosphere you breathe; when you use pharmaceuticals, they filter into the water everyone drinks. The system everyone else accepts is the one you have to live under—but when other people challenge it, you get a chance to renegotiate your reality as well. Your freedom begins where mine begins, and ends where mine ends.”
The individualist view of society can be traced to the philosopher John Locke, who theorized that individual human beings exist “naturally” outside of society in a state of war of all against all. Eventually, he imagined, individuals enter into a “social contract” in which they agree to respect the individual rights of others in exchange for the same respect of their own rights. This view of social relations is atomistic and adversarial.
This idea got a boost in the mid-1800s with social Darwinism. An example of social Darwinism is the use of the “survival of the fittest” meme to justify preexisting hierarchical relations in human society. Darwin gets a lot of blame for this idea. But the ideas which came to be called “social Darwinism” were already circulating before Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Social Darwinism was the ideology (and the propaganda) of the emerging industrial capitalist class. In fact, the phrase “survival of the fittest” was coined not by Darwin, but by Herbert Spencer.
Darwin himself recognized that cooperation is an important driver of evolution:
“There can be no doubt that the tribe including many members who are always ready to give aid to each other, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over other tribes. And this would be natural selection.”
“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”
— The Descent of Man (1875)
The late-19th/early-20th century anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, believed that competition had been given too much credit for human progress and that cooperation was at least as important. In his journeys through Eastern Siberia and Manchuria, he was surprised by what he didn’t find when he looked at animal life:
“Even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find—although I was eagerly looking for it—that bitter struggle for the means of existence among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution.
— Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Kropotkin concluded that there was as much cooperation in nature as there was competition, and this inspired his philosophy of “mutual aid”:
A soon as we study animals…we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species…there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle…if we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: “Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?” we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development and bodily organization…we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle; but that as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.
— Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Today, many biologists are confirming Kropotkin’s observations. Cooperation is found, not only between individuals within the same animal and plant species, but also between different species! (This is called “mutualism” in biology.)
The story we have been taught about our innate selfishness is only part of the truth. As such, it is capitalist propaganda, and something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Psychological studies have shown that, as they advance in their studies, students of orthodox (i.e., capitalist) economics gradually become more self-interested, less trusting of others, and more competitive. Primatologist Frans de Waal has warned:
“Don’t believe anyone who says that, since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing.”
— Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (2010)
De Waal has spent his life studying bonobos, who together with other great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans), we human share the name “hominid”. Bonobos and chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to homo sapiens. We share 98.7% of our DNA with bonobos and 99.6% with chimps. De Waal reports that bonobos are less aggressive and more altruistic than chimps. Among bonobos, there’s no deadly warfare, no male dominance, and enormous amounts of sex. Some researchers even call them the “make love, not war” apes.
Chimpanzees
prominent sexual differences in anatomy
strong male-male bonds
weak female-female bonds
hierarchical relationship among males
males dominate
aggressive control of territorial boundaries
will kill other chimps
avoid others from neighboring territories
high ranking males monopolize sexual access to females
sexual behavior limited to reproduction
use tools
Bonobos
few sexual differences in anatomy
strong mother-son bonds
strong female-female bonds
weak hierarchy
females exert dominance over males
territorial boundaries overlap
no lethal aggression
will mate with others from neighboring territories
sexual behavior between partners of all types
frequent non-reproductive sexual activity, including homosexuality
more food sharing, social cooperation, and play
Honestly, which of these lists would you choose?
De Waal argues that our ideas about human nature have been shaped by an incomplete or selective view of animal nature. “The book of nature,” he says, “is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want.” Because we have spent so much time studying chimpanzees, who are competitive and hierarchical, he says, we tend to view human beings in the same way. If we had instead spent more time studying bonobos, who are cooperative and egalitarian, then we would have a very different conception of human nature. In fact, de Waal says that the reason bonobos have gotten less scientific attention was because they didn’t confirm pre-existing ideas about human nature.
Unless people are socialized otherwise, there’s evidence that they can be more cooperative than competitive. In A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit has documented how, in the face of natural disasters, when we might expect people to be at their most selfish, they often come together to create new communities to take care of one another:
“These remarkable societies [disaster communities] suggest that, just as many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power outage, human beings reset themselves to something altruistic, communitarian, resourceful and imaginative after a disaster …”
— Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell (2009)
This is not to say that there aren’t people who will sometimes violate others if given the opportunity. But from an anarchist perspective, the best way to respond to these acts is not to create an oppressive police state, but rather to allow communities to enforce their own standards of conduct.
There is good reason to believe that a lot of anti-social behavior is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are taught to believe that, without the order imposed by large government, people would revert to a bestial state and start “raping and pillaging”. As a result of this indoctrination, when the state order does break down, some people will act anti-socially simply because they anticipate other people doing the same. The recent hoarding during the Coronavirus pandemic is a good example of this.
In this time of pandemic, we are witnessing the collapse of many state and market functions. Many people have been surprised at how fragile these systems are. Now that we are being forced to find alternative ways of doing things, many are realizing that neither the state nor capitalism were very good at taking care of people in the first place. In response, both anarchists, as well as people who have never heard of anarchism as a political philosophy, are turning to mutual aid.[FN 1]
Mutual aid means creating new ways of organizing ourselves—horizontally rather than hierarchically—new ways of meeting our needs, making decisions, and solving problems, without the force employed by the state and the competition employed by the capitalist system. Mutual aid isn’t unidirectional charity, nor is it quid pro quo transaction; it is a network of reciprocal care built on the idea that we are all better off when each of us is taken care of. These networks depend on relationships of trust, which can take a long time to build, but can also arise spontaneously in times of disaster and collapse, like right now.
Anarchists invite us to question the myths we’ve been taught about human nature and consider ways of being together that don’t involve competition or force.
To be continued in part 3 of the Anarchism for Civilians series: “What Midwives Taught Me About Anarchism”.
Notes
1. To read about how anarchists are using mutual aid to respond to the Coronavirus, check out these articles:
JOHN HALSTEAD
John Halstead is the author of Another End of the World is Possible, in which he explores what it would really mean for our relationship with the natural world if we were to admit that we are doomed. John is a native of the southern Laurentian bioregion and lives in Northwest Indiana, near Chicago. He is a co-founder of 350 Indiana-Calumet, which worked to organize resistance to the fossil fuel industry in the Region. John was the principal facilitator of “A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment.” He strives to live up to the challenge posed by the Statement through his writing and activism. John has written for numerous online platforms, including Patheos, Huffington Post, PrayWithYourFeet.org, and Gods & Radicals. He is Editor-at-Large of HumanisticPaganism.com. John also edited the anthology, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans and authored Neo-Paganism: Historical Inspiration & Contemporary Creativity. He is also a Shaper of the Earthseed community, more about which can be found at GodisChange.org.